LEWIS HAINSWORTH.
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION.
LIFE AND WORKS OF THE LATE
JAMES HINTON.
LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES HINTON.
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PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
SELECTIONS FROM THE MANUSCRIPTS
OF THE LATE
JAMES HINTON
EDITED BY
CAROLINE HADDON
LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., 1, PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1881
[The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved.]
EDITOR'S PREFACE.
THE anomalous literary form of this book requires a few
words of explanation. Its contents can be classified
neither under the head of Sermons, Essays, Diary nor
Table Talk, although they partake by turns of the nature
of all these.
The readers of James Hinton's Life and Letters will
remember that from the time he began his career as a
philosophical thinker he was accustomed to write down
every day the ideas that presented themselves to him.
Wherever he might be in the street, in society, at a
concert, in church he would jot down memoranda of the
thoughts that struck him, and these he would write out
clearly in the evening. This habit was first begun as a
necessity of his mental life ; he could not, he said, push
on to new discoveries unless he thus disencumbered his
mind of its burden. Afterwards he pursued the practice
with a more distinct conviction of the usefulness of such
a record of the process of the intellectual life as was thus
afforded. Owing to the peculiar nature of his thinking,
no mind could furnish a more admirable field for such
observations. For the more the mental operations re-
701006
vi Editor s Preface.
semble the unconscious animal functions, the more do
they lend themselves to scientific observation. No doubt
there is a thought life in humanity, whose laws, if we
could trace them out, are as invariable as all other laws
of nature, but it is not generally possible to observe this
life in the individual, in whom self-consciousness, arbitrary
determination, or a timid conventionality, interferes with
the freedom of the mental operations. Still more rare is
a mind that can register its own operations without dis-
turbing their spontaneity, or can commit to writing the
utterance of tender and passionate emotion without ren-
dering the fountain of feeling turbid and impure. But
it is this that James Hinton has done in four large
volumes of printed MSS. and an equal mass of written
pages.
It is a wealth which his executors feel as a burden of
responsibility as long as it is practically locked up from
the public. The printed volumes have been placed in the
British Museum, and they may be purchased ; but their
voluminous nature prevents any, save the few, from ex-
ploring them, and many gems of thought and expression
are thus hidden. At the request of numerous lovers of
James Hinton's writings, I have attempted to extract
some of these. As the MSS. follow no order except that
of time, and are as promiscuous as the entries in a diary,
the arrangement of them was not an easy task, and it
was rendered still more difficult by the habitual parallelism
of James Hinton's thinking. He always saw one thing
in and through another. Kegarding matter and mind as
the phenomena of Spirit, how could he avoid speaking of
Editor s Preface. vii
the one in terms of the other ? " Every man who tells us
anything worth knowing tells us one thing," he says
somewhere ; and this is eminently true of himself. Passion
controlled, or motion resisted, is the one thing he sees in
the moral as in the material world : this is holiness ; this,
too, is physical life. How can they be kept apart ? Every-
where, in the life of the individual body and mind, and
in the larger life of humanity, he beholds this double
process, nutrition and function, which constitutes the
vibration of Life. It is by this that truth is evolved, and
that the moral development of the race is effected. To
one not familiar with these large generalizations, the
symbolic language used for brevity by Mr. Hinton is
sometimes enigmatical. He will condense into a single
expression a whole series of analogies previously worked
out and habitually present to his mind. This kind of
shorthand wants deciphering, and in the Preface to the
original volumes which follows this, will be found -expla-
nations of the chief terms used with special meanings.
It will be readily understood that this altruistic
method of James Hinton's thinking made it difficult to
classify a series of extracts under any one title. There
are many passages which might be equally called meta-
physical, physiological, ethical or religious. From his
metaphysics the translation to ethics is easy and inevitable.
The central idea of the former is that the "self" is a
defect, a " not," or minus quantity : by this conception
he transforms the whole field of experience ; it becomes a
key in his hand to unlock some of the most intricate
mental problems. But removed from that abstract region
viii Editor s Preface.
into the sphere of practical ethics, this truth becomes the
very principle of Love. For if the self be a deadness, a
negation, self-sacrifice can be nothing but an entering
into Life, and all pain, regarded as the instrument and
means of sacrifice, changes its character and reveals itself
as good. Evil to the self cannot but be good to that
Being of which self is the negation. The bearing of this
principle upon the conduct of life is obvious. Its appli-
cation is the very " secret of Jesus," the easy yoke that
makes the burden light, the conquest of ills by self-
renunciation, humility, and trust. Thus the classification
of these selections was rendered difficult by the very
characteristic of Mr. Hinton's thinking which gives his
work its chief value, that complete interpenetration of
heart and intellect which harmonized all his conceptions,
and made them converge, as it were, into one focus.
I must disclaim, on behalf of this book, any attempt
to set forth a coherent or complete account of the author's
metaphysical and ethical system. It may, rather, be
looked upon as presenting a transcript of his table talk,
bringing back the image of the man as he appeared to
those who lived in daily converse with him. James
Hinton was, too, by the nature of his genius, emphatically
a seer, not a constructor of systems. He simply took the
conception, to which he gave the name of Actualism, and
flashing it like a torch upon the various dark problems
of life and mind, revealed everywhere glimpses of order
and beauty. He offers no other proof than this : " that
which doth make manifest is light." That much remained
still obscure no one was more aware than himself. " I
Editor s Preface. ix
have not seen that yet," he would frequently say ; and
it filled him with an amazement not of admiration to
find most people ready with a " view " of every subject.
He used to say that wherein he differed most from other
men was in knowing the " feel " of ignorance.
I must call attention to the fact that these extracts are
from the earlier series of MSS., and represent the growth
of the writer's thoughts from 1856 to ahout 1861. This
early date should be borne in mind, because many things
in these papers may seem at variance with the later
utterances of the writer. No man was ever more indif-
ferent to the charge of inconsistency ; not from any dis-
regard of accuracy, still less of allegiance to principles,
but because he viewed all thought as a life, the imperfect
stages of which must seem to contradict one another
until surveyed in their completeness. That a statement
was true was no reason why it should not be denied ;
indeed that process was needful to its fuller re-affirmation.
He was therefore most tolerant of " deniers," and held
them to be eminently useful ; whilst that anyone should
rest contented in a negative stage indicated to him a
curious sort of paralysis of the mental life. He had, he
said, but one advice to learners in the art of thinking :
Go on. This habit of his mind should be remembered in
reading the religious passages, when his language is
sometimes hardly to be distinguished from the crudities
of pulpit theology. Those who are accustomed to his
phraseology know that he often used theology as the
allegorical presentation of philosophy. Illustrations of
this will be found in the following pages,
a 2
x Editor s Preface.
I have not, therefore, altogether discarded such pas-
sages. To have done so would have been to lose some-
thing of the freshness and force with which these thoughts
were originally presented, and also of the interest which
attaches to them as anticipations of truths afterwards
more completely attained. He himself called these anti-
cipations "affirmations of the moral sense," and knew
that they could not be held permanently in that form :
other intellectual elements would come in and demand
recognition, to the temporary exclusion of the truth first
discerned. But it was his delight to trace how these
suppressed affirmations were restored with fuller evidence
at a subsequent stage ; and it was this that induced him,
on revising the MSS., to leave untouched some of those
crude expressions.
It is for their suggestiveness that these " thoughts "
will be chiefly valued. They must not be compared with
the polished sentences of pensee writers such as Joubert
or Novalis. They might rather be called " chips," frag-
ments from the workshop of a great builder.
The important later series of MSS. have not been used
in the preparation of this volume. They are chiefly con-
cerned with working out the position which Mr. Hinton
latterly adopted in regard to some questions in ethics.
To selections from these writings, to which he himself
attached greater value than to any other part of his
work, I propose to devote a subsequent volume.
CAROLINE HADDON.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
THIS volume contains a transcript, unaltered, except by
omissions and by verbal corrections, of papers written at
various intervals, simply as a private record of my
thoughts. They embrace subjects of many kinds, often
having no special connection, save that they were
regarded from a common point of view, and were felt
to throw on each other a mutual light. To render them
intelligible, a few things should be stated.
These papers are not to be assumed to represent my
present opinions. They are not a statement of my
thoughts, but a history of them, and present, not the
results, but the process. Necessarily, therefore, they
contain that which I now think erroneous or partial.
Here and there I have indicated this by a brief remark,
but on the whole I have treated the papers as documents
merely, and not as subjects for criticism or statements
for revision. I have, indeed, specially sought not to
exclude my errors, wherever they seemed to me to have
any vital connection with the progress of my ideas,
because the chief value which I attach to the papers
is that of being an exact transcript of a process that
xii Author s Preface.
has taken place quite independently of any volition of
mine, and the record of which may perhaps have the
same interest that Science finds in every natural event,
quite apart from its intrinsic importance.
I take, however, this opportunity to explain a few
terms which occur in meanings other than their customary
ones.
The terms nutrition and function I have adopted from
physiology, and applied to the mental and moral life of
man. They mean always the production of a tension,
and its ceasing ; with this idea also implied, that the
tension is produced in an " organization," that is, under
conditions wherehy the ceasing of the tension produced
definite results, or a " function." For example : the
process of a reductio ad absurdum, with its impossible
consequences enforced hy sound logic, and ending in a
correction of the premiss, is a mental " nutrition," ending
in a " function ; " the tension against reason is the
nutrition. The change of hasis, in which the tension
ceases, is the function. So too in the cases in which
a false thought of right enforces a false duty, making a
" tension " against the moral reason, which ceases with a
truer apprehension of the duty : here is a moral nutrition
and a function.
The words theory and interpretation are used in a sense
precisely corresponding. Theory means that which is
imposed on us as true while there is an error in the hasis
of our thought; interpretation, the rectifying of the
basis.
The word polarity has been used rather in unusual
Authors Preface. xiii
connections than with unusual meaning. It denotes
nothing more than an oppositeness in two things, which
implies in them a special tendency to union. The
positive and negative electricities are examples of polar
opposites.
Continuous and transitive vibrations are sufficiently ex-
plained by the context. The motion of a pendulum is a
continuous vibration, the upward motion being of the
same form as the downward ; a body falling into water,
and making the water rise, is a transitive vibration ; the
upward motion, though equivalent to the downward,
being changed in form.
One new word I have introduced, which I would prefer
to have omitted if it had not been too much interwoven
with the thoughts the word actualism. This term I
gave, for convenience, to the general conception I had
formed : it is parallel to idealism, materialism, posi-
tiveism, &c., and was adopted to express the idea that
all existence is truly active or spiritual, as opposed to
inert or dead.
As I have been re-perusing these writings, I have
grown more and more conscious how far my words have
often been from conveying my whole meaning ; how my
very thought, indeed, has changed and grown beneath
my hands, and from being what seemed like a clear per-
ception, has become only a suggestion of far distant
things. I have felt this especially in relation to God
and Nature. To me, Nature means God's action towards
me and towards man ; and it is so much, and grows to
me perpetually so much more, and so joins itself with
xiv Author s Preface.
Bevelation, and becomes one with all that I have most
prized in that, that all seems to come into it, and I
cannot draw a line; nor can I even try. But I know
this is no end my eyes are dazzled ; others will judge
for me.
To any reader who has felt interest enough to extend
his glances at these papers even to their end, let me say
that I hope he has felt this ahout them, that with
whatever weaknesses and errors and waste of time and
thought they are mixed, yet there is in them some sign
of the opening of a road into farther truths. This is
all they were wished to afford.
JAMES HINTON.
CONTENTS.
I.
METAPHYSICS.
THE nature of the world The hypothesis of matter The universe
is God's action perceived as motion Nature is action Nature
is one with man Berkeley's error The mind is not more real
than the external world The laws of Nature are given by
man The work of Science is to harmonise our perceptions
with our conceptions Can we know the fact of the world ?
How come we to perceive a physical world ? Wherever sin
is, matter is The law of cause and effect is a form of thought
God's act is not the cause but the fact of the world
Granting illusion, all mysteries are removed The error of
regarding this as an imperfect physical world The mental is
physical Things are forms of the spiritual Science now is
too abstract The error of " inherent tendencies," etc. Nature
is a process felt as matter Metaphysics is a Mathematics
The world is the symbol of an unknown quantity Matter =
x Science, like Mathematics, exists for the sake of the un-
known quantity The point, that is, absence of matter, is
the only infinite, and the symbol of God The molecule is in
reality a point Chemistry and Physics correspond with
Mathematics Metaphysics and Science must be used together
What will make Philosophy popular? The tendency of
Positivism The life of Metaphysics
II.
NATURE KNOWN BY THE MORAL EMOTIONS.
Man's response to right The actual is known by the conjoint
use of sense, intellect and moral being Man fell by the
conscience Men really judge by their feelings The evil of
xvi Contents.
PAGE
thinking that God acts for results Mysticism is allied to
Science The Mystics are interpreters The intellect attains
freedom by subjection to the moral sense The physical is
the moral Nature is Holiness Nature is man's bride Nature
is " the hands of the living God " We must recognise negation
of Being Love of God is the love of all things The world as
a work of genius The organic is not the highest in Nature
The future Science Nature's secrets are won by sympathy
Evil of the doctrine of special creations " Design " is a
necessary consequence of the assumption of matter Science is
done for love To be natural is to love Nature is perfectly
beautiful, therefore ideal beauty is less perfect Nature is
God's ideal All mental life is the representation of Nature
To account for error is to show it beautiful Evil is nutrition
Painting recalls to us the spiritual fact of Nature The
function of Art is to reveal the holiness of Nature Art will
advance as Science has The future of the world . 52
III.
MENTAL PHYSIOLOGY.
Moral and emotional facts stand on the same basis as physical
facts False perceptions are the condition of mental life
Nature is always first misunderstood There is no method for
discovery The relation of logic to imagination The place of
those who want logic The significance of paradox Sleep in
mental life Breathing in mental life Genius and talent
Talent is nutrition, genius function Man's mind is female,
woman's male How genius and talent are affected by paradox
Genius is common sense Mental life arises from failure
Men are parts of a whole May genius be found common ?
In humanity, as in genius, there is no design Nutrition and
function are the life in thinking Submission to the thought
of others is disease Saying is seeing The mental life of
humanity 100
Contents. xvii
IV.
THE ART OF THINKING.
PAGE
How to think rightly Truth is suppressed and comes back in
higher form All thought is necessary Opinions are like insti-
tutions Necessity of surrendering good opinions Opinion
is form only, and must change to preserve its value We only
know form ; to know the fact is to love That which must
be thought must be distinguished from that which is true
Use of analogy Thought is Nature, and therefore cannot be
false All opinions are true under their conditions The
danger of fear in thought The value of logic What are
axioms ? Newton's work great by its incompleteness Truth
is the union of opposites The minus in thinking Necessity
of sacrifice in thought The nature of hypothesis All advance
in thought comes by right use of words No ends in thinking
Thinking is an especial work Parallel of thinking to art
Imagination the chief element in true thought The Art
element in true thought parallel to the Gentile element in
Christianity 133
V.
THE SELF AND CONSCIOUSNESS.
Individuals are states of humanity Individuals are separate
because physical Man as a parasite The self is negation
Eternal life is deliverance from the self Descartes perverted
modern thought by starting from the self The untrust-
worthiness of consciousness True consciousness is the
opposite of self-consciousness Unsatisfactory nature of the
doctrine of immortality The desire for immortality is not
man's highest aspiration What absorption into God means
Love is not self-sacrifice We want martyrs To give love
is to create Men are sacrificed for man How happiness is
attained Only love can satisfy Happiness is a putting
aside of consciousness Pleasure comes from want Personality
is not highest God is not personal The Trinity God is
Being No mind without body God as light The fact is
love and is shown by Christ 163
xviii Contents.
VI.
THE BIBLE.
PAGE
Nature interprets the Bible The work of the Bible is to give man
life What death means Inspiration No need for inspira-
tion To have life is to be inspired We must not be afraid
of the Bible The source of the Bible's power We put the
divine element away from the present The difference between
physical and spiritual is one of perception Kedemption can-
not be partial Religion must not appeal to the selfish
emotions The mistake of our Christianity The supposition
of a physical hell Hell cannot be remorse The world ac-
counted for by God's act and man's death Christ does not
save from the punishment of sin What God's hell is
Heaven is love Christ's work will cease " This is my body "
shows the spiritual nature of all existence Prayer changes, not
the fact, but the phenomenon Christianity is not a theology
but a fact Our Christianity is dead How Christianity may
be surpassed 189
VII.
HOLINESS.
Nature is self-control The moral life is parallel to the mental
To be moral is to act Ago ergo ego Misery only removed
by removing selfishness No action but right action There
is no true arbitrary action or free-will Arbitrary action is sin
Freedom because necessity Man cannot fail because he is
a part of Nature The only mystery is man's death The
moral lesson of Science Our moral life is passion controlled
The phenomenal nature of evil Sin as inaction The analogy
of disease to sin Evil to the individual is good to the race
Life comes only from death We are redeemed, not tempted,
by matter Creation is self-control God has no physical
power " Creation out of nothing " The creature is one with
the Creator Self-sacrifice is not loss A selfish world is the
necessary phenomenon of an altruistic world No nutrition
without a final function The resurrection of the dead comes
by Man 216
Contents. xix
VIII.
ETHICS.
PAGE
The practical problem is to unite work for man with the devotion
connected with work for God Howto keep upthe enthusiasmof
religion Not imagination but faith Stoicism and actualism
The world is altruistic Man's business is with the present
The practical as existing for the sake of the reflective The
evil of exalting individual over general regards The self as
the devil Genius is a sufferer, not a doer Our Christianity
cannot give the enthusiasm which only can raise men above
selfishness Self-sacrifice is extended politeness Poverty does
not involve loss of refinement A return to Nature Good
manners in the sphere of morals The child state of humanity
The value of good manners as showing the pattern for life
The world goes best by being let alone Mill's argument for
liberty What martyrdom is The eternal necessity of
martyrdom Sociology Social evil is nutrition The life of
society Trade should be made a profession The world was
never worse than now The evil of our modern life of refine-
ment Good is determined by its relations Woman, like
religion, needs to be liberated Egoism is not the true basis
of man's life To be heroic we must advance Future times
will owe to this age the culture of the heart 245
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION,
I
METAPHYSICS.
THE nature of the world The hypothesis of matter The universe
is God's action perceived as motion Nature is action Nature is
one with man Berkeley's error The mind is not more real than
the external world The laws of Nature are given by man The
work of Science is to harmonise our perceptions with our con-
ceptions Can we know the fact of the world ? How come we to
perceive a physical world ? Wherever sin is, matter is The law
of cause and effect is a form of thought God's act is not the cause
but the fact of the world Granting illusion, all mysteries are
removed The error of regarding this as an imperfect physical
world The mental is physical Things are forms of the spiritual
Science now is too abstract The error of " inherent tendencies,"
etc. Nature is a process felt as matter Metaphysics is a Mathe-
matics The world is the symbol of an unknown quantity
Matter = x Science, like Mathematics, exists for the sake of the
unknown quantity The point, that is, absence of matter, is the
only infinite, and the symbol of God The molecule is in reality a
point Chemistry and Physics correspond with Mathematics
Metaphysics and Science must be used together What will make
Philosophy popular? The tendency of Positivism The life of
Metaphysics.
MEN may adopt three views concerning the nature of the
world. (1) That there is a material and an actual
(spiritual), both truly existing, and necessarily with a
certain antagonism between them ; this leads rightly to
asceticism. (2) That there is only the material; this
B
2 Philosophy and Religion.
being the true existence (at least to us), and such as
we perceive it. There is (to us) no actual. This is
positivism, as it speaks. (3) That the sole true existence
is the actual ; and that this material, or real, is our way
of perceiving it. This last is actualism (or positivism as
it truly is), the practical inference being that we have to
deal with the real, but on the principle that it is truly
actual, if v. T e could see it aright, getting at the true Being
by leaving out the negation. Now which is the best ?
Newton says, "the first cause is certainly not
mechanical." This is just the point at which science
stops : the conversion as it were of this first cause into
mechanical cause, or motion. Or as the problem may be
better put: what is that wherein consists the act of
spirit becoming motion ? This is the problem, to bridge
the gulf which separates a spiritual act from motion the
mystery of creation is here. The hypothesis of matter
or a substratum in which motion inheres as one of its
properties is evidently simply a mode of solving the
difficulty ; the hypothesis was manifestly invented for that
object. It appeared, I suppose, simpler that a spiritual
being should create matter and put it in motion, which
motion would then " naturally : ' continue, or continue by
the laws of motion (whatever that means) than that a
spirit's action should itself be motion. And indeed at
first sight this solution does seem to have some ad-
vantages ; to our minds it does seem natural that matter
should move, there is a conformity between the nature of
the two things : also it does not seem so hard to under-
stand that a spirit should put matter in motion: not
that the idea is at all simple or intelligible, but I
suppose we readily accept the supposition because we are
conscious of being able to do the same thing ; by our
Metaphysics. 3
spiritual act, our will, we move matter. The idea has
that deceptive appearance of comprehensibility which
arises from familiarity. Also by supposing a creation of
matter once and putting it in motion, which continues as
a matter of course, we throw back the difficulty if we do
not diminish it : it does not press on us as a present
mystery the thing was very wonderful when it took
place, but it was so very long ago that it does not
concern us much, and besides it was altogether a different
process from any that takes place now, so that it is no
wonder if we find it mysterious. But upon this we may
remark (1) That it does not really relieve the difficulty.
(2) That it rather substitutes a greater difficulty for a
less one. (3) That it is in point of fact utterly
inadmissible. If a spiritual may become a physical
action at any time, why not now? Why suppose two
processes or orders of things when one, which must in
any case be supposed, will suffice ? And again, as has been
said, we are conscious continually in ourselves of a
spiritual act becoming a physical act ; why should we
exclude God from doing that which we do ourselves ?
If part of the motion which exists is our spiritual act,
why is not the rest of it God's spiritual act ? Why two
different causes for like events. But the difficulty is, by
the hypothesis of matter, really rendered greater. We
cannot see how a spiritual act, either our own or God's,
can produce or be (which is a better term) motion ; but
hard as this may be we do at least perceive it in our own
experience, whereas the creation of matter is a thing at
once much harder to conceive, and entirely beyond
experience. It is not only inconceivable as a process but
is illustrated by no analogies. That God creates the
world by a spiritual act, as we by spiritual acts take a
part in the production of the phenomena, appears by the
B 2
4 Philosophy and Religion.
side of this past and done creation of matter, a thing of
course, so simple by comparison, that we almost forget
that it too is an impassible mystery. But also this
hypothesis of matter is inadmissible (as long seen) on
scientific grounds. Useless and worse than useless as an
explanation of the fact which it was invented to explain,
it is positively shown to be false alike by metaphysics
and by science. It fills the world with needless mysteries
without helping in the least to remove a necessary
one. But though the hypothesis of matter only makes
bad worse, the problem may be attempted in other ways,
and, as it seems to me, somewhat mitigated if not solved.
Berkeley tried to do this by affirming the world to be
God's action upon man's mind, which is at least better
than the material hypothesis, although open on one side
to fatal objections. I propose this view : That the
universe is God's action absolutely, and quite indepen-
dently of any percipient. But God being a spirit, His
action, of course, is spiritual action. How then do we see
it as physical, i.e. as motion, which is not a spiritual
attribute ? (I do not say as matter and motion, because
the idea of matter is evidently derived from motion, viz.,
through resistance, which is only motion opposed to
motion.) This is my solution. We perceive God's
spiritual action as motion, because we ourselves, by our
own finite nature, impose a limit on it ; i.e. God's action
being in itself unlimited, having relation neither to time
nor space, we, by virtue of our finitude, perceive it in
relation only to such boundaries : that is, we see it as
motion, the material universe.
This is why the laws of Nature are truly the laws of
our minds, why the conceptions by which material
phenomena are bound into science are supplied from
within, not gathered from without ; why it is in truth
Metaphysics. 5
himself that man studies in the universe. Science is
man's view of (rod's action. Doubtless each order of
intelligent heings has a different science; according to
the limit their nature compels them to put upon the
divine action. Our perceptions themselves involve the
ideas of space and time ; they are only human " forms,"
not actualities; and we can conceive of force only as
motion ; whatever God might do, if we perceived it, it
would be motion to us.
We must have action, getting rid of matter altogether.
The one error of science is the considering action as
substance ; and so, in its advance, we get rid of substance
continually, seeing nature more and more truly, till at
last, giving up substance altogether, we get the true
nature, the spiritual, the divine. And we take with
shame, yet a shame that should be full of hope and joy,
the " inertia " wholly to ourselves. Inertia is selfishness,
the subjectness to passion, the not acting, the true or
spiritual death.
Surely Nature is one because knowledge is one. To
comprehend anything is to have it in us one with our
own central " thought." Surely we " comprehend "
nothing but axioms : comprehension is of one fact, at
once primary and ultimate. As I have said of life, it
comprehends all and is comprehended in the least. Our
comprehension is of life ; our minds being life we com-
prehend life. This and this alone we understand or
know. To understand a thing is for it to become one
with us. The mere accumulation of ideas and theories
nutrition is not truly knowledge, in fact it is error,
which is opposed to it : it is a mere preparation for it.
Knowledge is the result of interpretation or function,
6 Philosophy and Religion.
which is always one, however various the nutrition or
assimilation or resulting organization ; the functional
process has ever an absolute oneness. In short we know
a thing only when we see that it is merely a form of our
own thought our own thought being ever and neces-
sarily one.
The conformity of all our senses, the constant im-
pression produced, is due to the fact of organization, and
our forming part of one universal organization.
To affirm of any thing or fact that it is " seen " or
" perceived " is to assert that it is only phenomenal ;
but not therefore that it does not indicate a reality;
that is the very thing it does do, by virtue of the prin-
ciple of causation. Its object and end is to show us the
reality. Eemember the two-fold relation to us of the
universe; to our bodies, as subserving our physical life,
and to our minds ; how much more essential the former
seems to be ; yet is this surely only a phenomenon, for
what is our life, our body and mind, but simply one
miration produced on our spirit by the Divine act ?
When that Ceases, still remains the spirit, still remains
the Divine act. These are eternal and have no relation
to time. Still is there passion in our spirit produced by
the Divine act, still do we live. Our physical and mental
life are but one form of the ever-changing phenomenal
passion, nothing is lost or ceases when that ends ; so the
apparent primary importance of the physical life is
deceptive or phenomenal. And our bodily and mental
life is really as it were only one vibration out of the
boundless series of vibrations which constitute the passion
produced by God's action on the spirit. This life is one
vibration of the music produced in the human spirit by
God's action influencing it. Human spirits are like lyres
Metaphysics. 7
which vibrate when breathed on by the wind, but the
wind does not blow for them, or in order to produce that
music. And our bodies and minds are one note of such
music, which swells and dies away, but only to be suc-
ceeded by another and different one. I perceive that
people are puzzled by confounding relations between
phenomena with the view of the phenomenon as a whole :
the relations of phenomena are not affected in any way by
the subjective view. Just as the sun's path among the
stars is merely phenomenal, yet as a relation among
phenomena remains unaffected by the subjective view of
the sun's motion. It is only understood, which surely is
no detriment.
All phenomena and phenomenal relations are real in
relation to our bodies and minds; as real as they are.
Things, qualities, time, space, are actualities to our bodies
and minds ; really affect and influence them ; these are
relations between phenomena. We are apt to think of
the external world as unreal in comparison with our own
bodies and minds, but the relation of the external world
to them is not altered in the least. In fact the phe-
nomenon remains altogether just as it was, only we
understand it. Thus no alteration is made at all in our
common-sense treatment of phenomena, which are as
ever in relation to each other, and our bodily and mental
interests continue the same as ever.
As for the wonder of perception sensation, thought,
&c. this is the fact of organic mind; and physiology
must afford the explanation. Thus not only is the
externality of the universe conceded in every possible
sense, viz. its externality to our bodies, but the reality
also in every sense in which there is the least evidence or
possibility of it, viz. in relation to our minds and bodies.
It was a fatal error of Berkeley's to make the mind
8 Philosophy and Religion.
a reality in relation to the external world as phenomenal ;
thus he denied the reality of the external world in an
inadmissible sense. The mind being also a phenomenon,
the full reality of the external world is maintained in
every sense, except an artificial one, that might possibly
be asserted by controversialists, but certainly rests on no
possible evidence even of the least conclusive description.
It is real in relation to men's minds and bodies ; that is
all they know or care to maintain, and that is true. The
question is, What are it and our minds and bodies also ?
And this is the question of questions for all, though
disregarded ; it is the " Know Thyself."
It is because the laws of nature exist in ourselves, have
their origin and cause in us, that we know truth when
we see it. We recognize its conformity with our own
mental constitution; see ourselves in it, in fact. But
then how is it that before knowing the truth we always
err ? Surely only because the universe is too large for
us to grasp ; we cannot for a very long time comprehend
the simplicity of nature. Therefore we look wrongly
upon things, but the error is in detail not in principle.
The principles of natural doctrines are ever true, axioms
do not deceive us, enlargement of view is all that is
needed to help us to apply them rightly. And truth
ever succeeds ; it must indeed, for truth is but the
natural action of the mind : and to " arrive at truth " is
only this that the laws and forms the mind imposes
upon that part of God's action with which it has to do,
should not be arbitrary but consistent. And the mode in
which we err is most suggestive ; for what is it but that
we invent things and properties which have no existence.
Error is the seeing what does not exist ; seeing in fact
many things where there is only one. The progress of
Metaphysics. 9
truth consists in the rejection of multiplicity and the
substitution of unity and simplicity of conception. But
this shows what the prerogative and necessary action of
the mind is. No one would say that we are made to err
arbitrarily in our progress towards knowledge ; these
erroneous " creations " or forms imposed on nature by
the mind are the legitimate steps of its advance. Its
prerogative is not to receive but to give laws to nature :
the work of science is how best to do this. Man is the
ruler and lawgiver : things have to conform to him, not he
to them. As he is more and more filled and penetrated
by God's work, so does he rule nature better ; so does he
carry out to greater perfection his own mental action :
and instead of many partial and discordant powers, pro-
perties, and laws, comes to see around him one act : the
normal operation of his own mind, and that alone, ever
presented and repeated before him in that which God
does. Knowledge is not a being filled to the brim;
science is not a submission of the intellect to laws.
Knowledge is power; science is dominion. Hence the
twofold aspect of science: it sprang first complete into
existence. Man gave laws and right laws to the world
when first he was placed upon his throne : he enunciated
right laws when by the first philosophers his statute
books were written. But also he had need of larger
knowledge of God, of a nearer approach to Him in His
work, before he could use his power fully. Man by
studying nature brings himself into communion with
God, that from Him he may learn how to discharge his
Godlike office of Lawgiver.
Man constructs Science as the bird builds its nest ;
the bird arranges things in a way accordant with its
nature, and its sensations ; it does what it must, it carries
i o Philosophy and Religion.
out its laws of thought, just as man does in Science : it
puts them right, it groups them in what appear to it
their natural and necessary relations, solely with reference
to themselves and then it is a nest ! So Science becomes
a moral nest, in which man's spirit reposes.
Woman being taken out of man affords an excellent
allegory to illustrate the relation of man and nature.
Nature is " taken out " of man ; it is himself that he sees
thus as something external and secondary, and sub-
ordinate to himself. Yet not himself merely not a
phantom or illusion but God and he working together ;
not man without God nor God without man, but God
using man, as it were. In nature God uses man's
mental constitution to educe out of His spiritual action a
material universe suitable to himself. Nature is thus, as
woman was, the product of God's action and man's
" substance." It is man's mental substance or constitu-
tion, which, brought into relation with God's (spiritual)
action, is nature: i.e. man imposing a limit on God's
action (itself infinite) perceives it as matter and motion.
And the relation of nature to man should be that of
woman to him it should be his second self : it should be
known to be so : it should be treated so. Man has
degraded alike woman and nature to be his material
minister : miserable error, miserable loss. Both are his
spirit's peers and friends.
It was the old practical error of the a priori philo-
.sophers that theories to be true needed only to agree
with the laws of our own conceptions ; it is the recent
practical error of the empirical philosophers that theories
to be true needed only to agree with the facts. In each
case the same error of defect.
Instances of the disregard of the laws of our own
Metaphysics. 1 1
conceptions in the formation of recent scientific theories
are innumerable : in fact that vice pervades the whole
scheme and structure of modern science. Either way, of
course agrees equally with the facts; indeed the facts
suggest rather the wrong than the right, and therefore
by men who thought their only or chief business was to
make their theories accord with facts, the wrong was
naturally adopted. But the structure of our minds
demands the reversal of these views : an entire turning
round of science, a re-assertion of the laws of mind.
The a priori chimeras had at least this advantage, that
in the very nature of them they were obliged to be
expressible, and therefore conceivable ; but the chimeras
of experimental science will not even submit to this
slight restraint. They float, many of them, in such an
equivocal region, that when you want to speak of them,
their enunciation is found to be no less than impossible. .
That was a great error of Bacon's : he thought truth
was in nature instead of in man, and that formulae cor-
rectly expressive of natural facts must therefore be true.
The very error of the a priori men, in another form, but
still identical, for they believed that formulae correctly
expressive of laws of thought must be true. And has
not this falsified science ever since, the idea that formulae
correctly expressing facts must be true? The error is
palpable those only are true formulae which bring facts
into accordance with the laws of thought. Is not this
the error of the mathematicians ; using hypotheses merely
as means of calculation? Bacon thought also that by
changing externals he could alter internals ; could eradi-
cate a false intellectual habit by substituting a new
method. Just what those men do who are for reforming
mankind by altering institutions. It was the one-sided-
ness of men that wanted removing, and Bacon essayed to
1 2, Philosophy and Religion.
do this by turning men altogether to the opposite side.
But I also am wrong in thinking that I could improve
history. What is this alternate excess but a vibration,
what the union of the two but development ? We must
excuse the vagaries of the period of liberty ; variety and
apparent caprice are its element. The future science
shall embody both the law and the liberty in one.
The law of science is, to make our perceptions and
conceptions harmonize : thus it is altogether an internal
thing. How recent science has failed even to aim at this,
is palpable : of the two it is more important that our
theories should rightly correspond with our conceptions
than with our perceptions ; [for after all these are what
we mean by facts]. Laws may be true although not
agreeing with facts, the facts being incorrectly observed
or regarded; but laws that do violence to conceptions
cannot be true. The universal error of putting pheno-
menon before cause, almost necessarily arises from the
idea of receiving laws from nature instead of giving them
to her.
How simple, comparatively, it makes the mystery of
perception that we are the cause of the facts which we
perceive, i.e. the cause of their being as we perceive
them. All that mystification about the " authority of the
senses," &c., ceases.
Let us trust ourselves, trust our senses, our mental
senses as well as our bodily ones. Now we place much
reliance on our external senses and none on our internal, as,
before, much on internal and little on external. We should
learn to rely on both : for what is the good of talking
about the external world, when it is absolutely ourselves
that we study and trust. Are not the senses as much we,
Metaphysics. 1 3
as the intuitions ? Have the senses any authority which
they did not derive from us ? By the senses we acquire
a subjective knowledge, viz. of an effect upon ourselves.
By the internal senses or perceptions we learn, from this
effect on ourselves thus known through the senses, the
cause which is external to ourselves. The internal
senses, the rational powers, are in immediate relation
with that which is external to us, which the senses are
not. By the senses we learn the effects on ourselves and
their relations ; that is their value. Our knowledge is
entirely bound in effects on ourselves ; this is the reason
of the necessity for the use of the senses ; without them
no basis for any knowledge ; we cannot know causes if we
do not know effects. Our internal faculties, reasoning,
intuition, &c., bring us into relation with that which is
not subjective, with the causes of these effects on our-
selves which we perceive by the senses ; but these internal
faculties can have valuable results only when they are
employed upon materials gained by the senses. Without
these they are, of course, misleading; trying to learn
cause without knowing effects, is of course hopeless ; for
the effects are the causes in the "present," existing
where alone we can know them.
In one sense the old philosophers were not too much
subjective, but too little. They reasoned of things
external to them, without knowing what was internal ;
tried to get at true external causes of effects on them,
not having first learnt what those effects were. Our
philosophy is becoming as extremely subjective as theirs
was external. They busied themselves wholly about the
causes affecting them without caring to know what were
the effects on themselves ; we busy ourselves wholly about
the effects on ourselves and their relations to each other,
without caring to know their cause external to us. This
1 4 Philosophy and Religion.
is the true relation of the two philosophies. Our material
universe, as we consider it, is altogether an effect on
ourselves (for our reference to God having once created it,
or to His now and then doing or creating some things in
it, is idle in the extreme). The old philosophy was full
of guesses ahout what might be the cause or causes of the
effects on ourselves ; not knowing what those effects were,
nor caring to know, save in the most superficial and
inaccurate way. Put the two things together, and we
have a depth, something satisfactory and worthy of
manhood.
Here is the point for positivism : do we certainly know
(as it affirms) that we do not and cannot know the fact
and being of things ? If so, how and why do we know
this ? If we know this much, surely we may know more ;
for we could not know this unless we knew why we cannot
know it. It is " because of the subjective element in all
phenomena ; " but then can we not find out this subjective
element ? This " self," which must be perceived as
external but is not, what is it ?
The positivists do not see that they are cutting the
bonds which have tied philosophy's feet, and then saying
to her : do not walk. They do not see that their argu-
ments about it, and the presumption from its failure
hitherto, lose all their force in that very fact of the new
starting point they give her. The question is altogether
another one now, and susceptible of an entirely new
treatment ; now that we know that this assumption, that
things exist such as we perceive them, is an illusion ; and
that the cause of our perception is not and cannot be this.
Positivism must aim to put us into one with the fact of
the world around us. And this it does by saying : Sacri-
Metaphysics. 1 5
fice yourselves, live for others. Then this must be the
fact of the world around us, not passive, not getting ; but
giving, acting. The positivist says : I speak of the law
only, and that is self-sacrifice, love for others ; but as for
the fact, I will not even think what that may be. But
none the less is it involved in this law that the fact is
Love : is that which, in relation to us, is self-sacrifice.
The problem of science (of interpretation) always is, the
phenomeoa being given by accurate observation, to find
something which, being considered as the fact, the pheno-
mena shall necessarily be as we see them; and where
such a fact is found, as it does inevitably force itself
upon the mind of some man, it is self-evidently true ;
comes with irresistible conviction ; it is the fact, we
cannot help seeing it to be ; that which makes the pheno-
menon necessary is unquestionably the cause of it. This
is a good way of seeing it ; it identifies physical cause
and connection in reason. Now the fact which makes the
physical necessary (and has this self-evidence) is a sub-
jective inertia of humanity. Cause is ever that which
makes necessary ; the motion of the earth makes it neces-
sary for us to perceive, therefore it is the cause of our
perceiving. Now surely all finding out of cause is inter-
pretation in this sense ; is it not ? And all other suppos-
ing of cause is hypothesis, making phenomena their own
cause, as gravitation, e.g. : we have to interpret gravita-
tion as gravitation is interpretation of planetary motions.
And see the beauty of this ; our perceiving is the primary
fundamental fact, and necessarily so ; we can have no
other basis to start from or rest on. There is ultimately
nothing else to explain or give cause for ; all questions
of cause resolve themselves into this, the cause of our
perceiving, or of our sensations rather. This is as it
1 6 Philosophy and Religion.
should be ; the final answer, too, must be that which
gives some condition of ourselves as the fact.
The question respecting the universe is not, " How
comes there to be a physical, or what is the physical
world ? " but " How come we to perceive a physical
world ? " He must be dull who cannot see that this is
the " fact," the question, especially with astronomy to
help him, in which the same history has been. Astronomers
started with the assumption that the heavenly motions
existed as such, and puzzled themselves. They did not
ask the right question. In like manner we do not face
the true problem ; we have made assumptions instead of
keeping to facts. The question is, how come we to
perceive a material world ? This we answer by guessing ;
we assume, we jump at once to a conclusion, do everything
that is unphilosophical and sure to land us in error ; we
lay it down, without any reason at all, that it is because
the physical exists externally to us. Let us keep to the
fact and give our attention to the real question, How do
we come to perceive a physical world? That is the
question, and the only question ; to be answered by
investigating first what we perceive.
With regard to the question, "When did the physical
begin ? " I answer, " It began with the not-being of
man, the Fall." It is like the question, when did the
sun begin to move round the earth ? when man began to
perceive. They are alike affairs of perception. All that
is remains the same ; nothing was altered when the
physical began; but a mode of perception commenced
in man.
When and wheresoever there is sin, suppression of
moral Being, there is the physical, there is time and
Metaphysics. 1 7
space, there is nutrition ; i.e. there is redemption or
development. This is the great life. This constitutes
the spiritual universe, this is our not-being from other
spiritual Being, our nutrition-producing failure, our
tendency and function. All other forms of life flow
from, are included in, and re-present this.
What more is there in what I say than this : that God
is all around us and we do not perceive him ? It is this
simply. But then our not perceiving God is our perceiv-
ing matter. Postulate Being instead of not-being ; and
that is the universe.
This also I see; the law of cause and effect, under
which we see nature, is a form of thought. It is nothing
real, truly belonging to the essential action which con-
stitutes the universe ; but a relation like that of time
and space and motion, arising from our constitution ; it
arises as time does from the limit we impose on that
which is unlimited. Hence its absolute authority, hence
its absolute non-entity. It is one of those things which
is and is not (like time and space). And now the value
of this thought : this relation of cause and effect, succes-
sion of " second causes," what is it except the mode in
which we view God's immediate action ? Therefore when
we say anything occurs under or by virtue of this law of
cause and effect, what is it that we affirm ? See if it can
be anything else than that God does it ? We see God's
action as a chain of causes and effects ; seeing them so by
virtue of our finiteness of view, just as we see things in
time. Cause and effect, because they are cause and effect,
may be known to be God's direct action. And it follows
that if cause and effect be God's direct action, God's
direct action consists in cause and effect : and therefore
c
1 8 Philosophy and Religion.
to affirm direct creation is to affirm creation by second
causes : the two things are one. To see the law of cause to
be a form of thought removes that apparent difficulty also.
God's act is not the cause of things but the fact of
them. When we ask for the cause, we ask for the cause
in time ; that which preceded it, which was and is not :
which God's act cannot be, being eternal. The idea of
cause, thus, I see to be wholly phenomenal.
If we consider God's act only as the cause of the origin
of the universe we deny the existence of His act, for the
cause exists only in the effect ; and the effect has all the
reality, the necessity, the fact, of the cause. The cause
is not, and never was, more than the effect ; the effect
contains it in full. We have fallen into horrible con-
fusions from this word " cause," using it with so little
understanding. I see it now clearly ; and that it is
above all necessary to separate from it all idea of
efficiency, that is, acting. We have confounded cause
with actions.
In tracing a chain of " causes " we are not tracing a
" thing " which really exists, but imposing upon nature
accurately and wisely the law of our own minds. We are
bound to make the " facts " agree with our " ideas," and
do not see the facts until we have done so. Our idea of
cause and effect is the true and only possible fact of
cause and effect. There is no other " law " in nature but
a law which we make. God is not the " Lawgiver " to
Nature He is the Doer of it ; we are the Lawgivers.
This strong persuasion that there may really exist
space, infinite space, without matter, is very striking ;
the actual is felt in it dimly and unconsciously. Space
is " the unknown God ;" it is our ignorance makes the
Metaphysics. 1 9
actual to be " space." We are in space because we are
in God, and do not know it.
Being is a property of God ; not-being of the pheno-
menon : they are parallel ; the phenomenon is the Divine,
but without its " Being." This is the puzzle of theology
a God apart from Nature is both asserted and denied.
It means that the absolute of Nature is God ; but this
which we take to be, is not, as it cannot be, God. The
old heathenism identified Nature and God ; ours is a
suppression of this, with a " hypothesis " of God. God
is Nature not the phenomenon but the Fact, the Being :
this is the interpretation. So the classic life was more
harmonious and whole than ours.
If we once get it into our minds that an effect on us,
or passion produced in us, as sentient Beings, causes us
to perceive material things, there is surely no more diffi-
culty about the material world. Then all we have to do
is to ascertain the cause of this passion in us, which
causes us to perceive the material universe, and all is
done. And this of course is a work of induction : how
is it to be settled without any trouble, a priori ? I
want to know what this is, that I am caused to perceive.
If I wish to ascertain a cause, all right reason teaches me
to examine the effect. How is it likely we should be able
to answer this question alone without taking any trouble ?
People say at once that the cause of this passion in us
is that a material universe exists which we perceive.
Now I do not insist upon the absurdity of this answer ;
I will suppose it to be possible, and even rational : but
I say it is a mere guess ; it is a priori : it is doing the
very thing which the same men are never tired of abusing
our forefathers for doing. We argue from our senses,
c 2
20 Philosophy and Religion.
which is the very thing that is under dispute ; a most
vicious circle.
Men who maintain cause to be a form of thought,
an universal law of mind, do not see that if it be so
it must exert an absolute authority over all " primary
qualities"; that the mind as imperatively demands a
cause of gravity as of the ascent of a balloon, and can no
more rightly be put off by a reference to a direct act of
God in the one case than in the other : both are equally
God's act. That is why we perceive them as links in a
chain of cause and effect. To call a thing God's act is to
bid us find its cause that we may see it to be so that is
how we see God acting. The mind, in short the man,
I should say, humanity rejects everything except action.
One action it accepts as the universe ; properties are
mockeries, feeding a hungry and thirsting soul with dust.
God ! is its cry. Let me see God and I see all things.
Blind me not, dare not to stifle me, with those dark veils
of matter ; clothe not the universe in sackcloth. Life
pants for life. I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait.
In affirming action the intellect is only doing for the whole
what it does successively for each of the parts. It is the
exclusion of a hypothesis, a " not ; " or rather it is a trans-
ferring a " not " from without to within. It is but
showing us why there must be this subjective passion in
us, which makes us infer the external world (and such a
one) ; viz., love acting on " not." It is important to
observe that the subjective must ever be first, and that
what we call perception of the external must necessarily
be second, a hypothesis. The not recognising this has
put us wrong, has made us think of " our senses deceiving
us." The truly instinctive must be that which recognises
Metaphysics. 2 1
sensations as in us. Surely this is before intellect
properly so called. Surely intellect begins with the
first inference, i.e. hypothesis. And is not that the first
conception of the external ? As for children, when they
first perceive or infer the external, their apparent
knowledge of " things," as external and acting in rela-
tion to them appropriately, by no means involves that
they have any such conception as that of " external
things," or that all is not purely subjective to them.
An infant (even anencephalous) sucks immediately ; but it
knows nothing of any breasts. Children act well and
truly in relation to " external things," not knowing that
there are, or thinking whether there are, any external
things at all, conscious only of sensations purely sub-
jective, but prompted thereby to actions which are
perfectly adapted to their relation to " things." It is
the same with animals.
This suggests (among other thoughts) how we may be
acting with a true reference to spiritual things, influenced
by them and responding to them, and taking our place
among them, while utterly unconscious and unthinking
of them. While engaged with our own sensations alone
(which material things are, when regarded as physical
only), we yet are truly acting among, and in relation to,
spiritual facts though we are heedless of them utterly
and do not perceive them at all. Yes, our unconsciousness
of the spiritual, while yet that is the whole fact, is like
a child, playing with " things " and educated by them,
without any thought but of his own sensations. After a
time, that which was to him a mere sensation becomes to
him a " thing." The perception of physical " things " is
an interpretation of the physical sensation. Humanity is
such a child taking no thought but of the physical, and
educated thereby to see true existence.
2 2 Philosophy and Religion.
It is quite right that man should perceive the material
world ; this is perceiving the " not," which is the great
thing for him to know. Save as knowing this " not " in
himself he cannot be saved ; and he must first perceive
or " suppose " this " not " as external, before he can know
it as internal (this we know by the history of the human
mind). This is why man is in a material world : to show
him the " not " in himself, he must first see it as without
(i.e. humanity must), and then he will come to know it as
within. (In the meantime individual men, feeling it by
conscience and revelation, are redeemed.) This is the
infancy of humanity ; and still, as we see in the animal
world, the embryonic form remains. Humanity is just
now waking up from perceiving only its own sensations
to perceive the actual around ; just as when a child first
interprets its sensations into external things.
All mysteries are removed if we once grant our feeling
not true. It does indeed seem strange at first, and
unlikely, that we should be thus living a life of illusion
feeling as one thing what is another but then this is
just the mystery of our life : it is odd and unlikely we
should have been as we are. Why not this oddness, as
well as any other ? There is this strangeness, in fact ;
whether we regard it as a mystery or as an unlikely fact :
so far as expressing the case is concerned, we may take
either view ; we have certainly one or the other. In the
untrue feeling is the basis and explanation of the prac-
tical wrongness of our life, and of the theoretical puzzles.
But in fact there are mysteries and wonders any way ;
and this view too gives us the world as larger and more ;
it only means that we are too small.
And again: this fact (of an untrue feeling) is only
strange at first, before it is reflected on and examined ;
Metaphysics. 23
then it is seen evident and most natural ; it is involved
in our finite being only. And observe, this is putting one
oddness, or strange and unlikely thing, in place of many.
It has the law of parsimony on its side. If we do not
grant that, we must affirm innumerable mysteries, and
each of them beyond all proportion greater than it. And
against it is absolutely nothing except a strong natural
tendency the other way, which is involved in the fact
itself that we do feel wrongly. Observe that Copernicus's
was exactly the same argument ; that we must admit one
strange thing, that we are feeling wrongly, instead of
many. And with regard to the moral objections which at
first appear, they soon range themselves on the other
side ; it is a great relief to the moral sense.
Before astronomy was known, men necessarily believed
there was a heaven such as they had impression of by
sight. Till this time we have necessarily believed there
is a material world, answering to the impression we have
by touch. And clearly this arises from our relation to
these bodies ; but in the same way it was from our having
sight our relation to eyes that men were obliged to
believe in such a heaven. There is no such thing ; but
they, having eyes (and in relation with the true pheno-
menon) were necessitated to think so; we understand
why, for our impressions are still the same. So is it not
by our having muscles and nerves that we are compelled
to believe " matter ? " Being so sensed, and brought
into relation with the true world, we must have believed
so. It is surely to our senses we must look for the
explanation of those necessary false beliefs.
Here is our folly, our damnation ; not even for the sake
of taking the deadness out of all the universe besides, will
24 Philosophy and Religion.
we consent to take it to ourselves ! Let the universe be
dead, but respect our life. Let sun and stars whirl round
us like childish toys, but question not our stedfastness.
So we seem to have control over Nature ; it seems that
the sun rises and sets for our convenience !
It is clearly wrong to regard the " not " as the fact, as
we do with our material world ; but there is also another
erroneous way, that of Plato, the considering this world
as an imperfect image of a world similar to it in all
respects except that imperfection the considering this
as an imperfect physical world. To this I conceive is
parallel the theological conception of the world as physi-
cally depraved, i.e. as having been originally in a superior
and perfect physical state from which it is now fallen [and
the same of man]. Plato's super-sensible world is the
right idea ; but it errs in this, that it is not truly
spiritual or moral ; and so also our conception errs. The
Fall, the " not," relates to the moral ; and the " not " of
the moral is that which makes the world physical. But as
physical, it is perfect, as much now as ever, as much as
possible. Clearly it is so, by the axiom of least resistance.
This is the point to recognise : that the " not " in the
universe is a " not moral," and it is that which causes it to
be physical ; but that as physical, it is not, and cannot
be, depraved. And seeing that this "not" is a moral,
actual " not," there can be no longer any question as to
the seat of it, viz. that it is the moral " not " in us. Our
conception makes God intellectual, as conceiving ideas,
instead of moral.
This parallel of the ordinary conception of the effects
of the Fall to Plato's doctrine, shows how far it is from
being an absurd imagination or chimera. And now one
sees why the present doctrine of " real matter " was
Metaphysics. 25
necessary ; it was necessary that it should be seen that
the " not " is the very essence of the physical. The other
doctrine, that the physical was imperfect, would not do ;
because it implied that without the " not " it was still
physical. Only by seeing that the very fact and essence
of the physical is this " not," can it be seen that the true
fact (apart from the " not ") is moral or spiritual; that
the Fall introduced the physical ; i.e. only by the belief
in a " real matter " and in the necessity of the physical
processes and laws, could recognition of the spiritual be
introduced.
Seeing that the " not " is the essence of the physical,
and that it is only from and in ourselves, we see how the
physical is from ourselves, is our mode of perceiving that
which is spiritual or moral. Therefore men have invented
a real matter, have introduced this hypothesis of " sub-
stance " ; it was necessary before they could realise the
moral Being that constitutes the universe. This is the
function of that nutrition. The introduction of " matter "
is the nutrition ; its exclusion reveals a fact. And see it
was introduced by suppressing an instinct.
An act is an act or a passion, according to the view
that is taken of it. It is an act in relation to the doer,
a passion in relation to its effect on others. Act and
passion are two words for one thing. The external
universe is God's act, and at the same time passion in
spirits ; and regarded in this two-fold manner, it stands
before us, as it were, completely revealed. When .1 used
to think of the universe simply as 'God's act, the question
would arise, on what does He act. We have been
accustomed to think of Him as acting on matter; and
.we seem somehow to want a substratum or recipient for
the action. This our own experience suggests to us.
2,6 Philosophy and Religion.
And I conceive this idea is a just one in some sense ; and
that God's act is an act on something ; viz., on the
world of spirits. That God first created spirits, and
that His act, which constitutes the universe, is His act
upon them. Thus I approach towards the great question,
" What is that act of God's which produces such passion
on spirits, that we perceive it as nature ? "
How difficulties and contradictions disappear by seeing
the universe as an act, and not as a thing. And this
simple view is again the first instinct ; always, whatsoever
we perceive, we first, and by our nature, suppose some
one does it. This is the superstitious form of first
science, to which last science returns.
The great difficulty in science seems to have been the
want of seeing that all force, motion, or passion, must
flow from, or rather perhaps, be the re-appearance of,
some previously existing force or passion, precisely equal.
See how this has vitiated physiology, as in the idea of
" vital " force as a ' property " of matter, or any " force "
as a property at all ; not perceiving that life was passion,
and must be referred to equal pre-existing" passion. So
with regard to function, physiologists did not see that the
force of the function involved an equal force as previous
to it, which the function is, in another form : so that they
talked about the contractility of a muscle, and its
contraction causing waste. And throughout science, the
false and impossible doctrines I think must all of them
have rested on this one error, of supposing physical
passion [or psychical] to begin, as it were, not recognizing
the force or passion as ever the same passion with some
previous form. Now the root of this error may be clearly
seen and is beautiful. It is nothing less than that we are
spirits, and can act ; and our consciousness as agents has
Metaphysics. 2 7
led to our attributing in thought (though not designedly)
active powers to " things." The whole philosophy of
science, I think, lies in this; the source of all error,
and therefore of all advance; i.e. of nutrition and of
growth.
Our consciousness of acting has been a continual
illusion to us in nature ; we have thought that " actions "
acted. Just as we have thought ' actions" were real
Beings, by virtue of our consciousness of Being. So
simple and natural to us is this idea of "acting" or
" free-will," that the whole advance of science consists in
separating it from that to which it cannot belong. In
brief this is science : to get rid altogether of " properties
of matter," and to see all such properties as passions, the
same in another form as some pre-existing form of passion,
which becomes the property or passion in question.
It is no wonder there has been so much materialism,
confounding as we have done, the spiritual with the
mental. The mental is truly physical, one with the rest
of the bodily life, and is only perceived as is the rest of it.
It is our mode of perceiving that very same passion which
constitutes our bodies, and of course it depends on our
bodies ; there is nothing about it other than physical,
i.e. passional.
As to animals we are all of necessity poets. The poet
says of a flower that it is " thirsty ;" and he does not
speak figuratively, but strictly. The flower is thirsty ;
if that which is in the flower were in us we should
perceive the thirstiness, or as we say, " be thirsty." This
is only the perception of a bodily condition ; which
condition does not depend on our perceiving it ; nor can
it rightly be called by any other name. The poet has
true and fine perceptions; but the most ordinary man
28 Philosophy and Religion.
is a poet respecting animals, and says of them " they are
hungry " or " thirsty." All recognise in them that
which in themselves they perceive as hunger and thirst.
Of course the animal is hungry, just as we are; but
we are " a Being " to perceive or be conscious of the
hunger ; there is no Being to be conscious of or to perceive
the hunger of the animal ; it is altogether a thing. If the
hunger were not there (independent of our perception),
how could we perceive, feel, or be conscious of it ? Does
our consciousness create that of which we are conscious ?
How can we feel hunger, except because there is hunger
to feel ? We have been deceiving ourselves here as if
our consciousness or perception were something in itself,
instead of a perception of something. It is just an
inversion here of the fancy of a real matter external to
us ; we make in one case that which is internal external ;
in the other that which is external internal. Or again,
how can I be conscious of (or perceive), under the form of
hunger, a condition of the body in respect to proportion
of fluids or of salts ? It is hunger that I feel. These
" conditions of the body " are hypotheses, theories. I
do not perceive them, they are suppositions which
I infer or invent to account for what I perceive.
This advantage for religion is gained by seeing that
the phenomenon is effect and not cause of the subjective
passion, viz., that though when the phenomenon is put
first, some people may deny that it has a cause, no one,
I think, will be found to deny that our subjective passion
has a cause. This is the very basis on which the belief
in an external world reposes ; and has availed to
maintain that belief all these years in defiance of the
most conclusive metaphysical proof to the contrary. If
it once was shown that it is the subjective passion which
Metaphysics. 29
demands a cause and not the phenomenon, there is surely
no class of men that will deny the necessity of a cause
for that. Unfortunately by making it the phenomenon
that demands a cause, unnecessary difficulties are placed
in the way of a full recognition of the divine act as the
cause. The effect does not agree in many ways, as is
plain, and is shown by consequences, e.g., the referring of
the act to a distant period ; the dividing it into direct and
indirect, or supposing it to consist altogether in the
institution of laws, or to be amended and altered : the
whole series of inappropriate and unconceivable pecu-
liarities which are supposed to attach, and one can hardly
avoid attaching, to the Divine act as manifested in
" creation." The one source of all the error is the
attaching the idea of God's act to the phenomenon
instead of the reality. There is but one cause appropriate
to the universe, and that is a subjective passion of the
human spirit. It is the cause of that passion which we
must look for in the Divine act ; and so seeking it we
find it to be in accordance with its effect, what it must be
in itself, an eternal spiritual act, having for its one
emphatic characteristic, holiness.
Interpretation perceiving true relation among phe-
nomena, or perceiving phenomena to be subjective is
merely looking naturally at the facts, as it were closing
our eyes and forgetting our former artificial ideas, and
opening them again to look the facts fairly in the face.
It is like a man who has perplexed himself in vain with
an affair overnight, and after a night's rest sees the same
matter under a totally different aspect and as simple as
anything can be. Genius takes this morning view. The
difficulty lies in the first false perception. At first we
cannot see things in their true relation, we 'do not know
3 o Philosophy and Religion.
the facts sufficiently : then as we discover the facts
we assimilate them, arrange them according to our
false view; and so at last require just to forget them
entirely and look again naturally, to see how they really
are.
To suppose that we can perceive " things " or matter
or anything hut force or passion, is an unsound dynamical
view ; it involves the origination of force or passion.
For perception is a passion ; and all passion is produced
by passion, i.e. by force. It can of course be only force
which produces the passion or perception. We only need
to remember what we are talking about.
Is not a " thing " wholly an affair of relation to us
[an image] ? It begins and ceases ; i.e. it was and
becomes not ; but that is because it ever is not ; if it
were, it could not cease to be. That it is not, is included
in the doctrine that nothing (that is) can be annihilated.
Now I see ; time or succession does not relate to being at
all ; to any thing even ; only to form, but that is surely
only to " appearance " : is not this also a matter of
definition ? How strange it is, we feel no surprise at
form beginning and ceasing, in spite of our conviction
that nothing begins or is annihilated. Clearly it is
involved that nothing that is can be truly in time.
Consider now how it is, and what we perceive as form.
Now I perceive : these forms (that pass away) are the
things the physical they are the images of the spiritual :
they constitute the physical. We know it ; we say things
cease to be ; they become other things : the " thing " is
the "form." Neither the unchanging matter nor the
force is the thing. The universe is real, i.e. it consists of
" forms," which become and cease ; i.e. are not, are but
images. It is the things or the forms that are images
Metaphysics. 3 1
of or correspond to the spiritual; it is the " thing," not
the abstract matter or force, that is the symbol.
The question well arises : things are forms forms of
what ? They say of matter or force ; I say by no means ;
forms of spiritual action. In this sense I use the word
" form " as an equivalent to that of '* image." This is
the thing to insist upon. What we " perceive " in this
world is not mere matter and motion, but more, infinitely
more. They are things, the forms or images of the
spiritual ; it is the materialists who deny it. They are
things ; " forms " replete with divine energy and meaning.
Thus it is that a real world is given to mankind; a
world of things, which the present science denies, and
substitutes an abstract world of matter and force.
" Things " have meaning, they are forms ; forms of fact
or act, which matter and force are not. There are no
" things " to science as yet, only to artists and poets ; but
when science has things it deals with meaning and
significance. Think of this word significance. Things
are " signs." Perhaps this word sign is better than
image, for the relation of the real to the actual.
What a glory and brightness surrounds the world now
to my gaze. That these things which science has taught
me to look on with such cold curiosity, are in truth more
real, more " significant," than ever enthusiast dreamed.
Science outvies in meaning and depth of revelation the
inspirations of the artist and the poet. " Things " are
forms in which the spiritual appears. This is the
basis of poetry and art, for the emotional is also in a true
sense the spiritual. Let science give us back our real
world again. It is the present phenomenal science that
is unreal, is abstract, dealing with our own conceptions.
The old " metaphysical " science had its faults doubtless,
3 2 Philosophy and Religion.
and of course was only a half ; but at least it had a real
world, i.e. a world of things, of forms or signs, each
with its meaning or reality. It did not confine itself to
abstractions as ours does.
I perceive that what I cannot tolerate are those primary
or inherent properties mystical values or powers :
e.g. " contractility," " irritability," the " vital force," the
" inherent tendency to specific form." I see that to go
against these is what I have been doing from first to last :
trying to see all as necessary ; but that is, as forms. It
is curious, for each of these aspects of life function,
nutrition, and form there has been supposed an inherent
primary property. This is how the case has stood: first,
there is an inherent tendency to form ; then there is a
peculiar vital property; then there is an unaccountable
irritability, a property of performing special functions.
How clearly this is mere hypothesis ; how miserably
monotonous, if nothing worse. All the known, certain
laws of physical action, adapted as they are to the results,
are set aside as if they were not. The tension that must
be from the manifest forces at work where life exists ; the
tendency to action from such tension; the necessary
moulding into different forms all these are ignored !
And as for the recognition of these doing away with the
wonder the recognition of and reverence for God let
us be rational, and apply our wonder and reverence to
these, and to Grod in them.
But the basis and foundation of all this is evident it
lies in the assumption of the existence of the phenomenon.
The " primary qualities " must be supposed in some way
or other on that hypothesis : there must be a first, an
inherent virtue or nature. So that it is clear the reject-
ing these means the rejecting of a real matter. This is
Metaphysics. 33
in the nature of Science : its entire work is the doing
away with these primary and inherent virtues ; its work
is precisely that of showing that the phenomenon does
not exist, freeing us from this illusion, and thereby
necessarily revealing to us the fact.
How a process may have effect like a substance, one
sees in a jet of water supporting a ball ; as it were by a
solid mass. Is it not thus Nature is to us : a process, an
operation, felt as " substance " by us ? And as for this
view of the " actual " making us feel that our apprehen-
sion is so false and mistaken, is not that exactly right ?
Ought not science to press home upon us this very cor-
rection that spiritual realities are our true concern, not
such things as we feel ? Surely that case of the jet .of
water supplies a good idea of "life" the physical
organic. The body is a process, appearing as a
substance.
Surely it is right to call the separate forces, as elec-
tricity, " things." The forces are forms, i.e. things, and
the one abstract force bears the same relation that the
abstract matter does. The separate forces cease to be ;
therefore they never were. Surely the fact is just the
same, whether we draw water from the earth by a bucket
and pass it into a receiver, or whether we draw electricity
by a machine, and pass it into one. The fact is as truly
the same as the process appears identical ; in neither case
have we operated on any real matter, alike only on
form.
I see in reading the writings of the mathematicians, so
far as I can understand them, that my reasoning is a
mathematics. I do not go into details and employ for-
mulas, but as to the essential nature and self-evident and
D
34 Philosophy and Religion.
demonstrative character of their reasonings, it is alike.
Mine is a mathematics of things, where arbitrariness has
been. God writes in an unchanging present "on the
instant Eternity " a Geometrical Diagram ; and we deal
with it in the strangest way. In the first place we are
apt not to perceive at all that it is one, but to regard it
as a series of isolated lines and figures, arbitrary, any
part of which might have been otherwise without detri-
ment to the whole ; nay we even consider it rather irre-
ligious to say the contrary. And these isolated lines and
portions of the figure we endeavour to trace out in their
relations to each other; i.e. to gather from them any
consistent meaning that is most obvious : but to make
them accord as parts of one whole, tending progressively
to one result, does not enter our heads. We do not feel
justified in insisting that each single group shall repre-
sent clear geometrical principles; we have no right, as
we think, to do that, we only want to know what they are,
we are " ministers and interpreters " only of Nature, and
whether there be any strict mathematical relations between
the parts we do not know. And then, stranger still,
when we do find out such true relations, such logical
connections of things the meaning of each part we
straightway call them causes ; and imagine that in these
relations exists the power which produces the figures
between which they hold. Only that which we cannot
understand do we give God the credit of doing i.e.
directly : anything that is reasonable and intelligible
we seem to think unworthy of Him, and as soon as we
have traced its relations to other things we sever it from
His hand. But this surely is simply a form of anthropo-
morphism ; because we consider Him to be and to act like
ourselves. We, acting on things only by taking part in
God's action, i.e. only on something that is without on
Metaphysics. 35
a substratum in short do really act primarily and
secondarily; institute chains of causes; do some things
directly and others indirectly ; act " immediately at
first " and " afterwards through the powers of nature " as
Newton says. But this is the very sign of our imperfec-
tion ; it is the result of our creative incapacity. It is
because we are man and not God that we do this, and it
is because the Creator is God and not man that He does
not. This poor fancy rests clearly upon the idea that
God acts and requires to act upon a substratum as
we do.
Metaphysics in truth is but a species of mathematics ;
it is only more comprehensive. Mathematics we may say
perhaps is the " metaphysics of quantity," but it rests
wholly on the mental processes; and the fundamental
conception of the transcendental mathematics is entirely
metaphysical, i.e. it is simply a fact of our mental action,
accurately observed. And metaphysics has the demon-
strative character of mathematics, if it be rightly used
the words rigorously defined and kept to their meaning.
It is then quite on a par with mathematics in that
respect ; both treat merely of the relations of our concep-
tions, and are absolutely alike ; both having also direct
and immediate application to things, mathematics not
more than metaphysics. But the latter is larger, and
therefore more difficult and less advanced. The processes
of mathematics, I believe, will be found to be, in detail,
precisely correspondent to those of a sound metaphysics ;
and hand in hand how prettily the two might walk
together. In short, mathematics is simply a branch of
metaphysics. But of late years it has been separated
from metaphysics, and hence the misery of our Science,
the load of absurd hypotheses.
D 2
36 Philosophy and Religion.
Mathematics surely is so certain, and deductive or
independent of observation, because it is seen to be a
science of forms only [i.e. of relations]. Experimental
science professes to be not of forms, but of that which
truly exists ; yet it is not really so : all science is properly
of forms [which " things " are] and of forms alone, and
when this is rightly seen surely all will be like mathe-
matics in certainty and deductive character. What per-
plexes science, and puts us at fault, is the supposition
that the objects with which it deals truly exist as such
apart from us. The mathematician does not stand so in
respect to his science; he admits an existence to which
his forms relate (matter, &c., in space and number), but
passing this by altogether, he concerns himself only with
forms. Now all science must come to be thus ; admitting
a true existence, an actual to which all " things " relate,
of which they are all forms, we must see that we, in
science, have not to do with this existence at all, but
only with forms. Then we may know. Should we not
see " things " to bear some such relation to the " actual "
as the mathematical conceptions do to " things " ? Then
as the pursuit of these conceptions a priori results in
propositions which are true and necessarily true in
respect to the " things," would the pursuit a priori of
" things " result in propositions true of the " actual " ?
But here a new conception appears ; is not our inductive
science just such a pursuit of " forms " as the mathema-
tician's ; and do we not find what we have thus indirectly
learnt of the forms, or things, to hold good of the actual
or spiritual ?
It is clear if the mathematician considered his " forms,"
or geometrical conceptions, as existing in nature, his
science would be altered altogether; it would become
Metaphysics. 37
then merely experimental, lose all its certainty and
uniformity, all its value and use indeed. He never would
find in nature, nor make, any one of them. His very
definitions are impossible, they exclude that which is
essential to reality. Just so " things " cannot be, in true
actual existence ; the very nature of them excludes that
which is essential to true Being, viz. action. But it is
interesting to note this parallel between the deductive
treatment of mathematical abstraction and the experi-
mental treatment of things ; both are processes dealing
with forms, which result in conclusions that apply to that
which is relatively fact ; abstractions give us results which
apply to " things " ; " things " results which apply to
Being. So that, in truth, mathematical deduction and
experimental induction are parallel rather than contrasted ;
they are the same process in relation to forms which have
a different relation to us. Mental forms, or abstractions,
are to be treated by mental induction, or a priori ; sensa-
tional forms, or " things," by sensational induction, or by
experiment. Is not the idea of sensational forms for
things a right one ? The physical is a sensational form,
even as the mathematical is a mental form. Experi-
ment and observation being the same process in respect
of the sensational that deduction is in respect to the
abstract.
Let me think how observation and induction correspond
with mathematical thought ; both are a similar putting
ourselves into relation with the respective subjects. They
are using our senses, bodily and mental respectively. The
mathematician does, in respect to conceptions, just what
the experimenter does in respect to things. Both alike
exert themselves, use their active faculties, bring them-
selves into relation with the subject of their thoughts,
and vary their relation to them. Is there not a strict
38 Philosophy and Religion.
parallel here ; the same life exhibiting itself in many
forms ?
I perceive now a more right way of dealing with the
question of a real matter. By denying that there is
matter we put ourselves in a wrong attitude; virtually
conceding the very point in question. We speak of
" matter " as if it were a thing that could be asserted or
denied ; while the case is that matter is not in a position
to be either. " Matter " is a mere symbol or expression,
without any meaning of its own, for some unknown fact.
To deny it is no less absurd than to assert it : it is to be
interpreted. Clearly if a mathematician were foolish
enough to affirm as a great fact that some unknown
quantity say the diameter of the sun were = x ; we
should be entirely beside the mark in affirming that it
could be x ; or denying that there could be x : the
question would never be settled so ; the whole dispute
would be mere nonsense. So is that about a real matter.
In truth the man who affirmed the x would have the
advantage of him who denied it ; for he could certainly
show that we were obliged to suppose such a conception,
to have some such symbol, to fill the gap which other-
wise there would be.
Our ignorance exists only by virtue of our knowledge
and capacity of knowing. We do not say a beast is
ignorant ; to be ignorant means that we ought to know.
So, to be not-Being means that we ought to be. All
terms of negation are necessarily relative. That of which
we are ignorant we express by a symbol ; but only
because we know it must be, although we are ignorant
of it. So our selfishness has relation only to a love
which ought to be. We suppose a physical or inert in
Metaphysics. 39
nature, i.e. a symbol or unknown, because we perceive
that a fact, a Being, is there which we do not know.
We know it must be there, although we do not know it ;
and we call it (not intelligently, as the mathematicians
do x, but with a poor conceit of knowing) "matter,"
" physical laws," " motion," " force," anything whereby
we can cheat ourselves. Let us thank God and nature,
who carry us on in spite of ourselves, and will not let us
rest in our symbols, as we fain would do.
Now, how come we to perceive that there is this
unknown fact and these circumstances and conditions of
it whereby we determine our symbols ? Can I see how
the mathematician, starting from the smallest point of
known value, lays hold of more and more unknown ; con-
verting more and more into the known, by means of
relations established between them ? So we, starting
with some true knowledge, some spiritual, some con-
sciousness, some conscience rather ; some love or sense
of holiness (yes, all consciousness flows from the con-
science, the moral Being ; the physical is a symbol
standing for an unknown moral) ; starting from this
Being or known love, and brought into relation with
other Being or love which is not known, is not in us (we
being selfish) this unknown love is " passion " in us.
And we, perceiving that it is, but not knowing what, use
a symbol for it, and call it " physical " or " matter."
This we do by virtue of our ignorance, even as the
mathematician does. Only the mathematician does not
mistake his symbol for the true existence he is in search
of ; and we do. Because in reference to our moral Being
there is a " not " in us, which there is not in reference to
our intellectual.
Scientific speculations are very well in their place, but
40 Philosophy and Religion.
do not let them intrude into other regions. It is very
well for physicists to speak of " matter " ; but for men
generally to call this " a material world " is an absurdity.
Should we call it an #-world it would mean as much, viz.,
that we do not know what it is. Matter is a symbol for
an unknown fact ; the world is not a material world, it is
a world of things. To call it an x- world would be a gain,
for then we might suppose there were some reality and
meaning in it at the bottom, if we could find out what
it was ; whereas this word " matter " passes with us as a
sort of voucher that there is truly nothing, no signifi-
cance, in the world at all. Let us abstain from calling
it matter until our wise men have given us a known
quantity for the symbol.
Again, see how the unknown quantity is that for the
sake of which mathematics exists altogether. So it is in
Science : it is by hypothesis that it exists, and for the
sake of the unknown. And only by means of the symbol
for the unknown (the hypothesis), and by using it as a
reality, can the progress, the interpretation, be. Even
so, in all thought, we must use our hypotheses as if they
were real facts ; we can interpret, or do away with the
hypotheses themselves, only by so using them : to refuse
so to use them because they are only hypotheses, would
be like turning out the unknown quantities in a mathe-
matical problem. Berkeley's idea is just this. It is easy
enough to prove " matter " to be merely a non-entity ;
but that is the very reason why we should work with it.
We must use this symbol in order that we may know
what it stands for. By bringing it into all sorts of rela-
tions, more and more complete and extensive, with the
known, we are able at last to say, " it means that" How
we might advance in thought with this conception well
Metaphysics. 41
held in view ! Surely all thought then may have, must
have, mathematical precision. It is a mistake to suppose
that mathematics is so certain because of the peculiar
nature of the subjects it deals with : it is not at all so ;
quantity has no peculiar certainty about it ; the certainty
lies in the method. Mathematics, dealing with so limited
a subject, has been able soonest to arrive at a practical
(not indeed a theoretical or intelligent) realization of the
right method that is all. All thought can be as certain
as mathematics ; and even mathematics itself may be
much beholden to other thought for an explication and
extension of the method which it has unintelligently
instituted.
I say with reference to the life of thought, that
nutrition must precede function ; that we must think
wrongly before we can think rightly. It is only saying
that before we can know an unknown we must have a
symbol. Think what we lose by clinging to hypotheses
as real ; to a real matter as if it were the thing we were
to rest in. We lose nothing less than all ; we stop short
of the very point ; we take up with " nothing," when that
very " nothing " is given us only as a means of getting
at something. We deprive ourselves of all that is of any
true value in our Science, just as if a mathematician
rested in his unknown symbols.
Is it not one chief advantage of mathematics that it
goes straight on with each inference, without this refer-
ence to other considerations ; that it deals with each
sequence of ideas solely in and for itself? It does not
profess to deal with the real absolute truth, but only
with what is under the given conditions, only what
follows from definitions and axioms. And therefore going
straight on and never swerving, it does arrive at the real
4 2 Philosophy and Religion.
truth, and does interpret nature ; because it has assumed
its right position. All reasoning must become similar,
and then will avail equally. We must learn to remember
that in reasoning we have to do, not with that which
really exists, but with our own definitions, postulates,
and data ; and to see what follows from them, and that
only, quite irrespective of whether or not anything " ex-
ternal " agrees with them, or with our deductions from
them. Acting thus we shall have an available art that
will not fail us. In a word, we have to give up the idea
that thinking is a means of arriving at truth, and to
remember that it has its own purpose and use for which
it must live freely its own life. The contradictions of
mathematics to nature are most interesting here ; they
are such as would never be tolerated in any other form
of thinking ; and the superiority of mathematics as a
mode of thinking, which is so inseparable from these
" absurdities," is a good demonstration of the nature and
right relations of the thinking process. The question is
not are the things true, but are they good natural mental
life ; if so, no fear but they will effect their function.
Suppose the mathematician were to falter, and qualify
his deductions respecting the triangle because no perfect
triangle exists in nature ? Mathematical truths are not
true to nature. We let the inadmissibility of a conclu-
sion vitiate the process of deduction, instead of reacting
upon the premisses ; we let the bond go, the bar yield.
It is as if a mathematician, landed in a result which gave
him a part greater than the whole, should refuse to apply
his axiom, instead of arguing back as he does. The
reason of the greater advance of mathematics is partly the
simplicity ; but partly also that mathematical reasoning
does not bring the intellect and the heart into opposition,
as philosophical reasoning seems to do, and so has never
Metaphysics* 43
been vitiated by that stress. It is no matter that a mathe-
matical deduction should be inconsistent with the facts
of nature ; no moral difficulty arises ; there is no forcing
of the mathematical argument to make it agree. There
is no remedy for philosophy but to draw the distinction
between the truth (or belief) and the life of the intellect.
If our thought be natural it will in the end be sure to
agree with nature. Would it not be well to have the
axioms employed in philosophical and moral reasoning
explicitly stated, as those of geometry, and referred to,
and unflinchingly adhered to ; and the definitions and
postulates also ? The simplicity of mathematical ideas
is not directly the cause of the great advance of mathe-
matics ; but this and their very limited scope have
allowed thought to proceed unchecked in those respects,
and hence its advance, as a lower form of life. There
has been resistance to the higher. I seek to make all
thought truly mathematical, to extend the mathematical
process to all. They develope in the same form.
Do I not see this in respect to the point, that it is
the only infinite ? This is what mathematics does when
it deals with the infinite ; it simply gets rid of substance,
becomes spiritual. The point alone has no bounds, no
limits, because it has no dimensions. So soon as ever we
arrive at, or think of, the infinite, we have laid aside the
physical ; no limits mean no " matter." It is wonderful
that in order to treat of the real, or things, mathematics
must go to that which is immaterial ; only from thence
can we gather the power : as the physical flows from
the eternal, so must the interpretation. The point is
infinite ; it has no bounds. It is all in one ; not only the
circle and ellipse in one the two dimensions but all
three, all absolutely in one, are the point; and this is
44 Philosophy and Religion.
the idea of the point, and so absolute unity involves
infinity, and infinity absolute unity ; i.e. no dimensions,
no physicalness. Thus the absolute unity of God in-
volves His infinitude, and His spirituality. The point is
actual [the atom with no substance] ; and it is one, and
infinite.
The " point " is the symbol of God. We look wrongly
at this ; the point is the denial of substance, but if there
be no substance there is the spiritual no-thing, but
therefore spiritual Being.
The infinite is to space as the eternal is to time ; it is
no space at all, it is neither much nor little ; or, if either,
still less much than little ; to assert infinity is to deny
space. The conception of the infinite as very large, is
parallel to our conception of the eternal as very long.
Surely there must be something bearing a similar relation
to time that the point does to space ; that we consider
nothing, yet is symbol of eternity ; something which has
neither past, present nor future. Would not such a con-
ception be aidful to Science, even as that of the point is ;
be to metaphysics, perhaps, as that of the point to
mathematics? Are not our metaphysics perplexed for
the want of it ? If mathematics wants to be freed
from substance, surely much more metaphysics from
duration ?
This mode of conceiving infinitude and eternity as very
much of time and space instead of as having nothing to
do with them, is "natural," it is true, to us, who are
by deadness in a physical world, and in absence of the
physical see absolute not-being. Our way of regarding
the point as absolute negation, our physical conception
of the infinite and eternal, is proof and exemplification of
man's actual deadness.
Metaphysics. 45
Again, with respect to the point : consider how all
physical conceptions relate essentially to molecules ; e.g.
gravitation of masses is only gravitation of molecules,
and of masses through them. But the only true idea of
a molecule is an ultimate molecule, that which cannot be
divided ; but this is having no parts, which is no dimen-
sions, no substance ; it is a point. Here is the true con-
ception of the atom ; it is that which has no substance ;
it is only the physical conception of the point : it is the
" infinitesimal " physics, that is all. It is at the basis,
like the point in geometry. Have not much of our con-
fusion and difficulty arisen from not seeing this, but
introducing the idea of substance into it ? Is not this
what makes mathematics so superior to all other Sciences
its spirituality ; its having discarded the idea of sub-
stance ? With a-chrons for metaphysics, and true atoms,
or points, for physics, will not an equal exactitude be
given ? Clearly I see this about the atom ; physics is
essentially " non-substantial." And surely here is the
reason metaphysics is behind ; as the greatest, of course,
it is the least developed; it has not yet emancipated
itself from the conception of time, as Science has from
that of space. The perplexity that still is in physics is
probably much from the atom, or molecule, not being
yet recognised as a true point (or infinitesimal) ; the con-
ception of true substance still adheres to it, though not
entirely. Here is the philosophy of Boscovich's concep-
tion, surely, as points, surrounded by infinite spheres of
force ; but was he not wrong in introducing space again ?
Is not the true infinite the point itself? Substance
comes, in physics as in metaphysics, from action of the
point, the atom or molecule ; it is secondary, and not
primary.
I must think of the full bearing of this ; that physics
46 Philosophy and Religion.
too is wholly based on action without substance ; how it
clears up that great mystery of the molecular constitution
of bodies, that infinite division which yet is not infinite !
Mathematics and physics alike derive things from
points, and interpret them by it. And do I not see,
it is chemistry that especially relates to the atomic
or molecular, i.e. to the point or infinitesimal ? It is in
this especially distinguished from physics ; and here is
the key to it : it is the Science of infinitesimals. How
strange that we should think of it emphatically as the
Science of substances! The doctrine of atoms is the
doctrine of points. It corresponds with the infinitestimal
mathematics; the other portion of mathematics with
physics proper. The doctrine of the molecular consti-
tution of bodies lies at the basis of all, as the idea of
the point does in mathematics ; but the infinitesimal
mathematics is " atomic," i.e. chemistry.
A physical thing or body no more truly " consists of "
molecules or atoms than a mathematical " thing " or figure
consists of points, for an atom cannot occupy any space,
any more than a point. Space cannot be atomic. Therefore
atoms cannot constitute, or make up a body, any more
than points. A million points occupy no more space
than one ; and just so a million atoms. We must
introduce the mathematical conception here. Its " things "
do not consist of points, but are generated by action of
points. So physical things do not consist of atoms, but
are generated by action of atoms, i.e. action without
substance ; by pure action, i.e. spiritual action. Is it not
plain that nature is spiritual ? Physical science refuses
to have it any other way.
The true use of metaphysics and science is together :
metaphysics, alone, is a failure ; science alone unsatis-
factory and " superficial." They have one object, and
Metaphysics. . 47
should be employed in union. It is as if touch and sight
were used separately; how, in that case, touch alone
would fail of any clear or intelligible result ; and sight
would give us knowledge merely of appearances.
How palpably the faculties science employs answer
thus to sight ! But the existence of that unsatisfactory
metaphysics demonstrates other faculties, which might
be the very ones to make the knowledge of phenomena
the interpreter of fact ; as knowledge of appearances
is of " substance." The phenomenal relation of science,
and the failure of metaphysics, give no ground for any con-
clusion ; like touch and sight, they may be the very things
which mutually give the needful completeness to each
other. The failure of each alone surely is what ought
to be.
We have previously argued that the physical (scientific)
and the spiritual (metaphysics) are one ; let us treat
them on this plan, and see if metaphysics will not be
fruitful (certain and practical), and science penetrate
below appearances : e.g., in physics all action is vibratile;
all the " laws " = no external change ; therefore subjective,
&c. [Metaphysics, in fact, thus is Science.]
This presents us with another parallel, viz. that of
science to sight, and metaphysics to touch. Like touch,
metaphysics assures us of something more real than the
objects of science, but gives us no satisfactory intelligence
of them. Science, like sight, must be the interpreter for
it, recognising the relation of the phenomena it deals
with.
The true revealer has a sort of wonderful power of
making things quite new and different from what we
thought them. But there are two kinds; the one
showing us unthought-of wonders and problems in
things of which we previously were ignorant, and knew
48 Philosophy and Religion.
we were ignorant, and had only vague impressions, but
no contrary ones ; another presents to us, in entirely new
lights and ways, shows us unsuspected wonders in things
which we felt and were convinced we perfectly under-
stood. So the latter meets with an opposition and refusal
the other does not encounter.
People think that philosophy can never be in itself
influential on, or regarded with interest by, the people
generally. I am not so sure of this, when philosophy is
renewed. It was so of old, when it referred to matters of
universal interest, to the instincts of truth, justice, piety,
in a word, to rightness. Why may it not become so
again ? I grant the modern is not, and cannot be, but
the reason is plain; our modern philosophy is nutritive
force- absorbing has no power in the nature of things.
But a philosophy that brings home nature to man's heart,
and sees in the universe the very passions that are
agitating his own bosom, is another thing. Whether
men can find time and attention and love for that,
remains to be seen. Why should we prejudge so ? We
always think nothing can be but what we are used to.
Absolutely all that our modern philosophy has for the
heart is proof that God is very wise and very powerful,
and, on the whole, rather good than otherwise; and
strangely enough these proofs are made to consist in
what we can understand. Moreover, our philosophy and
science have been not only divorced from but almost ever
opposed to religion never one with it, and it has been
therefore watched like a thief, and men ever sought to
bind it in new chains as it burst the old ones.
Abstract philosophy " interpretation," the answer to
the question " why " in its ultimate form, the moral why,
was ever man's passion, is now, and ever will be. This is
Metaphysics. 49
re-introduced with all the added scope and power of five
centuries' nutrition. Our modern nutritive science has
been doing all it can to put it down and keep it from
operating, and in the main, though with hard struggles,
it has succeeded, as indeed was right and necessary ; but
the passion, the tendency, is there still as ever ; becoming
indeed more powerful the more it is opposed (as chemical
affinity does in nutrition) : it will have its way again at
last, indeed the nutrition exists only that it may, and
that in doing so it may effect objects higher than itself
the function, that is, of Science.
Surely platonism arose from a kind of positivism :
indeed it is necessary that the reality of the physical
should be denied, before a doctrine which puts another
reality in place of it can be conceived.
So here one may clearly see the tendency of positivism.
One may point to experience, and say to the positivist :
" Yours must come to a more spiritual doctrine. Look
at platonism ; it could only have come into existence
by aid of a doctrine akin to yours ; and as your denial
is deeper and more complete, so shall the resulting
spiritual doctrine be also. The platonist fails because
of still keeping hold of some kind or degree of true
reality in the physical : this defect you must remove."
The doctrine of a present and only real spiritual waits
for and solicits some one to remove the reality of the
physical.
Positivism must come to an actual doctrine of the
universe : it carries a new platonism in its bosom. It is
like the chrysalis to the butterfly, or the bud to the
flower: the restraint and coercion are for development.
Positivism is negative now, by accident as it were ; i.e.
by the law of the case, this must precede the positive.
50 Philosophy and Religion.
But a positive form must come : there must arise some
view of the existing.
Platonism, as well as actualism, is a system based on a
correction of our impressions and tendencies to think :
i.e., considering the subjective elements, it is essentially
the same. Positivism, or science, taking away the reality
to which the platonist holds, demands the platonic process
to be repeated in new relations.
But the former platonism is proof that this will and
can be done ; it failed because not complete enough.
One chief thing I want to do is to show the life of
metaphysics; how it has been working in a necessary
way to a most important end ; how all has been good ;
how even the nonsense and contradictions are hypotheses
by which the fact is revealed, and the " not " more and
more excluded. How, e.g., less and less value is being
attached to arguments for the existence of God from the
visible world ; and yet the rejecting all such arguments,
as some have done, saying we can know nothing thereby,
is just an anticipation, suppressing hypothesis, but not
putting the fact in its place. (It is as " spiritual," not
as physical, that the world reveals God.) Is it any better
argument, that to create " mind " the creator must be
intelligent, than that to create " matter " he must be
material ? Matter and mind alike are from " not."
Let me come nearer to Thee, oh God ; know more truly
what it is Thou doest. How sad a disappointment it is
to me to find that these principles of Thy acting, as
I have thought, are but shadows projected from myself!
I would know, not more of myself, but more of Thee.
I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory. Hide not Thyself
from my desiring eyes. What is nature to me, of what
Metaphysics. 5 1
value are beauty, delight and use, of what satisfaction
the simplest and the grandest laws, if Thou be not in
them ? May I never know what Thou doest ? Wilt Thou
be recognized alone by faith and love ? Dost Thou say
to me, in these earnest but futile strivings, " Who by
searching can find out God? But with that man will
I dwell who is of an humble and a contrite spirit, and
who trembleth at my word."
E 2
5 s Philosophy and Religion.
II.
NATUKE KNOWN BY THE MOKAL EMOTIONS.
Man's response to right The actual is known by the conjoint use of
sense, intellect and moral being Man fell by the conscience Men
really judge by their feelings The evil of thinking that God acts
for results Mysticism is allied to Science The Mystics are inter-
preters The intellect attains freedom by subjection to the moral
sense The physical is the moral Nature is Holiness Nature is
man's bride Nature is " the hands of the living God " We must
recognise negation of Being Love of God is the love of all things
The world as a work of genius The organic is not the highest in
Nature The future Science Nature's secrets are won by sympathy
Evil of the doctrine of special creations " Design " is a necessary
consequence of the assumption of matter Science is done for love
To be natural is to love Nature is perfectly beautiful, therefore
ideal beauty is less perfect Nature is God's ideal All mental life
is the representation of Nature To account for error is to show it
beautiful Evil is nutrition Painting recalls to us the spiritual
fact of Nature The function of Art is to reveal the holiness of
Nature Art will advance as Science has The future of the world.
THE strongest feeling in human nature is our response
to right ; deepest in man's breast, and ineradicable, lies
that fundamental passion ; it is king and ruler, and
though driven from the actual throne by meaner feelings,
never abdicates its authority. "People will fight for
truth and justice, or that which they think to be such,"
sa^s the Times. If we can therefore but make nature
embody to us the idea of right, how much more it will
be to us; how much profounder and more over-ruling
our love.
Nature known by the Moral Emotions. 53
It only needs to use our whole being in the induction,
and then we know the actual. By sense alone we only
know the apparent (not the real) ; by intellect alone we
only know the abstract. Now taking both, and so
bringing to bear a larger part of our being, we attain a
better and truer knowledge, i.e. of the real. But sense
and intellect still are but part of us : by them we can of
course only know the real still the illusion, though not
so merely an illusion as sense or intellect separately.
But where is the moral nature ? That which the sense
alone learns cannot be true for the intellect also ; that
which the intellect alone learns cannot be true for the
sense also : so that which sense and intellect alone learn
is not true for the moral being also.
The definition of the actual now is : that which is true
for, which answers to, the whole being of humanity;
that which will bear investigation by sense, intellect, and
moral being, the latter correcting the former two, even as
they correct one another. It is that which is learnt by
the joint action of sense, intellect, and moral nature.
And here one may think further respecting that " it
is not good for man to be alone." Take this idea of the
woman as represented by the moral " faculty." Is it not
remarkable to see how well then the old Greek philosophy
will answer to man's state ? For that philosophy wanted
precisely these higher elements. It was "very good,"
but it was not well for it to be alone ; and a help meet
was given it in the newly-awakened, almost newly-
originated, conscience : and see, iifell thereby. As is well
seen in the early ages of the Christian Church, in the
unscientific, unphilosophical, superstitions of the Fathers,
dictated, evidently, by the moral element.
Thus we see how natural, how necessary it is, that men
5 4 Philosophy and Religion.
should turn with such admiration and delight to that old
classic literature. It is like the longing look back to
Paradise, to the true, right, attitude of man ; nor can this
cease till the same attitude is restored and perfected : and
this is what we should seek, or at least be ready to
welcome and expect. And may not this be the true
reason for man's clinging to classical studies ?
What a strange thing it is that people imagine they
decide on doubtful points by their intellects, and not by
their feelings ; and they are even angry if the contrary is
suggested. What a putting of the inferior above the
higher nature : but how beautifully herein does God
attain His higher ends even by human error ! What is
really done when a person with sincere and earnest heart
undertakes to weigh the evidence on a doubtful religious
point such as future punishment, personal reign, &c.
is that under the idea of letting his reason judge, he
listens calmly and intently to the voice of his inner
nature. Painfully and with prayerful resolve he lays
aside prejudice and passion, he puts off indolence and
judges as he feels. Herein is a deep beauty. To what
good all this toilsome process ? Certainly not the attain-
ment of truth ; because equally earnest and capable
people arrive by such means at opposite results; and
evidently not, because such a process has in itself no
adaptation to lead to truth ; and the less, the more purely
intellectual it be made. To arrive at truth involves
many conditions in the person which in the vast majority
are sure to be wanting. What then ? Does the process
fail of its result ? Are the prayers, the tears, the hours of
meditation, the agonizing renunciation of old ties, all of
no avail ? Not so. They fail not of God's purpose, which
is the discipline and development of the moral nature ;
Nature known by the Moral Emotions. 5 5
the education of the soul. In this strife the child grows
into the man : the end is gained. What he thinks about
future punishment or millenarianism is of no consequence :
that he should bring his soul before God, and struggle
earnestly to do the right, that is the point.
The doctrine of virtue or moral Tightness being that
which most promotes happiness (Paley's doctrine), goes
with that view of natural theology, which sees in creation
only God's wisdom in the sense of design and skill.
Nature truly viewed teaches a better lesson ; she is law ;
she does not exist for results. God in nature acts
according to an absolute rule independently of results.
What an infinite (yes, and eternal, for it is moral)
meaning there is in this law of science. God acts by an
invariable rule, and not for results : blessed be the men
who have sought to establish this as a fact of science.
Therefore He does not act in time ; He acts morally.
We think we exalt God by attributing to Him an
optional creation, a supreme and absolute self-determina-
tion apart from any law. We forget that love includes
law, and can only be by it. It is true we act, or seem to
act, optionally, or without any determining power : but
this is our misery, our degradation, our death; it is
because we are passional, inert, not loving. There is no
mere optional with Him, all is holy. Our own true
human characteristics and dignity are entirely in abey-
ance in respect to those things in which we act optionally.
It is amusing how, with all our Science and triumph of
common sense, Mysticism is not put down ; here it
appears again in its extremest form. The cure for it has
not been found yet. Nay, it is clear that Science cannot
56 Philosophy and Religion.
put a stop to it; Science only feeds it. For see how
these Mystics have been the very men who have had the
largest grasp of Science, have done most in it. Not to
speak of Moses, passing hy Plato also, let us come to
modern times look at Swedenhorg and Newton. It is
clear that we must look elsewhere than to the prosecution
of Science for the cure of this disorder of the intellect, if
it is such. As Science grows so does that tendency, that
conviction gain increasing power. Nay, it allies itself to
Science, rests upon it, turns to its own use the means
brought for its destruction. It urges on to perfect
fulfilment all those discoveries and tendencies which are
announced as its destruction.
In this unity of the sensible and spiritual, one sees the
basis of ceremonies in religion; why, too, they are so
misconceived and misused from our separation of the two,
from our thinking that the sensible has any other being
than that which is one with the spiritual, and that
therefore, as sensible, they are of spiritual power or
value. " This is my body ; " " As often as ye eat it ; "
that is, in all eating.
It is interesting to trace the different states of feeling
on the subject of necessity in Nature. The ordinary
supposition of design, i.e. arbitrary will, not necessity
implies that we do understand, that we know all about
the thing, that our faculties are tests and capable.
Seeing it as necessary, we feel that we do not understand
it, that it is something infinitely wonderful to be under-
stood. So we gain, not only a grander conception, but
also a hope of a future understanding above any that now
we think possible. Those who rebuke the belief that we
can understand, do not see the humility that is its source.
Nature known by the Moral Emotions. 5 7
They are too modest to think that men ever will under-
stand more than they themselves do.
Think how the Mystics are the dynamical men : men
who ask why. (See Newton especially.) This is their
character. The mere laying out of phenomena in order
does not satisfy them ; they insist on the knowledge of
causes. Hence they discover the physical causes; and
hence too they see the physical as efflux and effect from
the actual, which is their Mysticism, especially so called.
It is one tendency, one faculty, that makes them dis-
coverers in Science and Mystics. They show causes;
they cannot rest in appearances, but must go to fact;
that is all. Find the fact of the physical, and we have
the actual, the absolute : this is what they do. They
apply practically Comte's principle, that the intellect has
to do only with relations ; so in regarding the fact they
go constantly to that which is not in the intellect, to the
actual. This is the fact to them, and necessarily they
see the physical as an " appearance " flowing from that ;
as indeed Positivism shows it cannot be anything else.
For the fact that the intellect cannot deal with the
absolute, by no means shows that we are cut off from it
it only shows that we cannot intellectually know it ; but
we have other faculties, other Being and nature besides
the intellect, which Comte seems to forget in this con-
nection, though he fully recognizes them in others ; as
where he shows, e.g., the inferiority and subordination
of the intellectual to the moral. Comte is, in truth,
a Mystic himself; only stunted; if he had carried out
this last idea of his he would have had a lofty place
among them.
The Mystics are precisely interpreters : they show the
phenomena necessary and also they show the fact. The
58 Philosophy and Religion.
non-mystics, the men of talent or theory, do not, in truth,
seek causes at all in any genuine sense. They virtually
say of the phenomenon, it is " because it is." This is
the sum of it, though of course they put it under a
pretence of cause ; all these ultimate inherent properties
of matter or things are nothing hut this. As for saying,
God made them so because He chose, this is truly an
irreverent thought. It no more applies to them than to
any other physical fact or process to which superstition
might assign it; yet the feeling that there must be
an ultimate of which this is true, is a wise one : why
does it not lead men to see the eternal fact which alone
truly is ?
Sense alone gives the phenomenal ; intellect alone the
abstract ; conscience alone the moral ; sense and intellect
alone the scientific; sense, intellect, and conscience to-
gether, the true real, actual or spiritual, which alone
truly is. But I do not say this is true Being ; it is as
much as we are ; but it has our own negation in it. The
true Being is not man, or such as he, but Grod. So I
may admit that true knowing is impossible to man ; but
I say that man can know according to his whole Being,
though his knowledge must be subjective; that he can
therefore know altogether more than he does now, in an
entirely different way ; that this knowledge of ours does
not answer to man as he really is. This is the basis of
actualism: that we are as much mistaken as the men
who believed appearances uncorrected by reason.
Comte's position practically is just as if, in old days,
any one should have said : Do not trouble yourself about
the intelligible world ; this sensible is all that concerns
us, meaning us to put up with the uncorrected appear-
ances. Now this would not do. It was because this did
Nature known by the Moral Emotions. 5 9
not answer to the whole man that the " intelligible " was
invented. Yet would such a man have had a certain
right on his side ; for the separate intelligible word was
a chimera. So has Comte ; but his real does not answer
to the whole man, and will not do ; and because it did
not do, the separate spiritual was invented for the con-
science to have its full development and scope in, just as
the intelligible was for the intellect. But the intellect
was given to man to interpret the sensible by ; and so is
the conscience. The real world will fulfil, and more than
fulfil, all our moral demands, if we will employ our moral
faculties on it ; even as the sensible world contents our
intellectual faculties when they are employed on it.
See how, by union of sense and intellect together, an
entirely new " reality " is given to the world. It is a
different thing : the " intelligible world " has ceased to
be a chimera. So from the union of real and spiritual a
new universe is given, and the spiritual ceases to be
a chimera. The eternal is no longer an " everlasting
time," no longer future. Of course we cannot understand
the eternal, with our separate real and spiritual; our
spiritual is in fact only an abstract sensible ; just as the
old intelligible was the sensible, not truly different, only
chimerical, with the same sort of " eternity " as ours.
Bacon said : " You must take the sensible into your
intelligible, and not go dreaming." So I say of the
spiritual : we must take the sensible into our spiritual,
and not go dreaming. Only so, by conforming our
imagined spiritual to the sensible, shall we know the true
spiritual. What we talk about now is our imagination
merely. What an apparent reversion in my thoughts !
Yet the spring of it all has been intolerance of the
chimerical spiritual, the Design argument, and the " sen-
sational " heaven. I have come to this through the
60 Philosophy and Religion.
medium of metaphysics, from the love, not of the sensible,
but of the spiritual. Now I can understand Bacon better
It was not that he regarded the sensible especially ; but
he could not endure the old chimerical "intellectual."
He saw that to be worth anything it must be conformed
to the real or sensible ; in short that the sensible was not
that mere phenomenal that it was supposed to be, but
was more. " Conform the intelligible to it, and see," he
said. I say exactly the same ; the sensible is not the
mere phenomenal that it is supposed to be, it is more \
conform your spiritual to it, and see. So it was by
metaphysics too that Bacon did his work. He was not
an experimenter ; his world was in the intellectual.
The essential point in inductive science is the authority
of the intellect over the senses. This is what distin-
guishes it. (E.g., our knowing the stars for worlds.)
It is the only means of discovering truth, the only true
science ; because the only one subordinating sense abso-
lutely, and compelling it to conform. The " actual "
philosophy deals by the intellect as the " inductive " by
the senses, denies its authority, and subordinates it, and
makes it conform to a power or faculty, together with
which it uses it in investigation. Thus, of course, the
" actual " makes more use of the intellect, even as the
inductive does of the senses. This denial of the authority
of the intellect, taken with the assertion and employment
of the moral sense, constitutes a new inductive science,
in which the intellect bears the same part as, in our
present inductive science, the senses do, is at once the
foundation, and yet subordinate.
It was only by subjecting the senses to the intellect
that they could be properly and freely used. So long as
Nature known by the Moral Emotions. 6 1
they were held to deal with the real, they were neglected,
held so fallible, and a limit placed upon their use;
because they gave results against the intellect against
a part of man felt to be superior. So Bacon necessarily
liberated them ; stimulated, and indeed gave unbounded
play to their use, and relieved them also from the stigma
of being unable to discover. Bacon said : " Do not take
ideas superficially abstracted from the senses." Now just
such is the case with the intellect. See how it is unused,
neglected, repressed by some ; and by all, friend and foe
alike, held incapable, except under narrow limits. By
subordinating the intellect to the conscience, I think it
is set free; its use is stimulated, rendered certain and
unlimited; and the idea of its incapacity overthrown.
This does for the intellect what Bacon did for the senses.
Eefusing to accept from it as truth anything that does
not conform to the demands of the conscience, it is com-
pelled to go on, and Nature is subdued again. All the
reasons which now repress it are removed. First, the
religious reasons : it is no longer opposed to the part of
man felt to be superior to it. Second ; the reasons that
make men say we cannot know by it ; just as Bacon
removed what made men say they could not know by the
senses, the attributing authority to them. Now we see
that the intellect can explore absolutely, that it has a
boundless field, that nothing it can come into relation
with can be beyond its exploration. Of old the intellect
had to be trained and developed before the senses could
be rightly used ; i.e. made servants, not masters ; so the
conscience had to be trained and developed before the
intellect could be rightly used.
Is not the future attitude of thought to be this: that
what the woman's emotions demand is to be thought;
6 2 Philosophy and Religion.
that that is to rule, as intellect or conscience does now ;
but that its demands are to be rightly interpreted, by
sense, intellect, and conscience, working. For here it is,
as it was with intellect of old : its true demands could be
found only by uniting it with the senses, and actively
working by them. The ruling faculty, without this,
takes too little ; invents something not enough, based on
the acceptance of the uncorrected impressions of the
inferior faculties. What union, harmony, beauty and
delight will there be, when men and women are united
thus ; each understanding their position, and each using
it ! This were, indeed, a making of twain one new man.
And into what harmony that discord of the faculties will
then be resolved ; the discord comes from what the earth
abhors the servant-faculties taking upon themselves to
rule.
Man has various " faculties " to exercise on one world
the world that is ; but his plan has been to make as
many worlds as he has faculties. Of old there was that
absurd " sensible " world, through which the intellect
could not work, and an " intelligible " ; even as we have
an " intelligible " world, morally absurd (through which
the conscience will not work) and a " spiritual." We
must invent a world for a faculty that comes into active
exercise, if it will not work in the already recognised
one ; and surely the tendency to do this is felt as each
faculty comes into activity. So now our spiritual world
rests on conscience, as the old intelligible one on the
intellect : the invented world rests, for its evidence, on
the faculty which demands it ; and this is the relation
which ever wants inverting. Yery instructive and inte-
resting is the reference to conscience to prove the spiritual
world : what it proves is that the other (known) world
needs to be differently seen.
Nature known by the Moral Emotions. 63
Note how the intellectual life of man simply re-presents
the moral history, springs from it, exists only by relation
to it. Not the moral is like the intellectual ; but the
mental is only a partial and typical, or veiled, presenta-
tion of the moral; and the physical, as corresponding
with the intellectual, repeats it again. Now may not
this life, which to us is bodily and intellectual, be in
truth moral, a true spiritual life, only seen by us with an
inertia in it, and so to us physical ? This, that we see as
physical, necessarily corresponds to the moral; because
it is moral ; it represents it to us in a lower form because
we do not perceive the moral element in it. We suppose
cause and effect, &c., not seeing that it is true action or
love. The physical is the moral with the love left out ;
and therefore the form without the fact. All the physical
palpably is just that the form of the moral without the
fact. So the law is as we see it ; yet truly it is the very
fact of love ; the not-love, which constitutes it " Law," is
only in us. And so of all : so of the physical world ; it
is the very fact of love ; the not-love which constitutes it
physical, is only in us.
The way to understand nature is by patience and
gentleness, being willing to be ignorant, not using force.
How violent and arbitrary, and therefore unmeaning, is
that idea that we perceive things as we do because they
are so. It is an invention forcibly introduced. Let us be
content with that which nature gives us ; not being in such
a hurry and so violent. There is no possible connection
between things being as we perceive them and our perceiv-
ing them so. Let us think in least resistance ; not insist on
making a thing clear, but leaving it obscure if necessary,
above all things distinguishing thoroughly between things
that differ, not forcing things into unnatural union.
64 Philosophy and Religion.
The moral sense cannot say of the intellectual pheno-
menon that it cannot he thus ; or it must he thus it
cannot deny the phenomenon. That would he like the
intellect asserting or denying what is or must he to the
senses. Scientific inferences or theories should never he
affirmed or opposed on moral or religious grounds. The
point is, not to assert or deny respecting the phenomenon
as such ; hut to show the phenomenon to he only pheno-
menon, and to learn the fact from it.
I see two things in Nature ; giving as it were a douhle
solution to the problem. One of them has reference to
the reality, the other to the human perception of it. The
latter is vibratile motion in direction of least resistance ;
the former God's holy act. The language of sensation
translated into the language of reality, or the reality
deduced from, and seen in, the appearance ; rising from
the phenomenon to the cause : this is the course of true
Science. And this last deduction is the truest Science ;
Science cannot stop short of it, it is her mission to deduce
causes from phenomena. Nor is anything in Nature
truly known until it is thus known ; till it is seen that
moral action is the very heing of all things, Science is
but on the threshold of her domain. She is husied with
subjective impressions, with sensations and ideas which
she professes, and rightly, to despise, and has not entered
on her true work, which is to explore the objective reality.
It must rise to spiritual facts and moral deeds or it does
but sport with illusions, and remains an idle classifier of
sensations. What you would say of him who thought to
study optics by comparing, arranging and grouping
colours unenquiring whence they arise, holds true of all
who trace the laws of matter and ask not what spiritual
fact is there. And here is a new branch of knowledge
Nature Known by the Moral Emotions. 65
opened ; the correspondence viz. of the spiritual and
moral world with Nature ; the parallel, I should say, not
only of Thought and Nature but of character and Nature.
If Nature he holy action, then shall holy action be in some
sense Nature. And we must seek to trace all things not
only in the intellect but in the moral sense ; not only
truly to understand Nature by seeing her repeated in
intellect, but to appreciate her by tracing her again in
the virtues. Then Nature shall be known.
What a glory it casts over the working of the laws of
Nature to regard them as expressions of holiness ! How it
changes them from darkness into light, and renews the
face of the earth ! G-od will not do anything for any one,
nor save anyone from any evil (as we see He will not),
except according to those laws ; not because there is any-
thing in the law, but because it would be wrong. No
necessity is in the laws, only rectitude in the deed ; no
iron bonds of matter, but only free choice of right. This
we do not tremble at, nor submit to, but love. Fearful
and appalling are those laws which work generally for
good, but do harm sometimes ; and with a lurid ludicrous-
ness superadded, because they are represented as binding
the very hand and heart of God. Because it would be
wrong otherwise, it is that God drowns him who saves
others from a watery death ; that God cuts off by quick
disease or wasting penury the best and noblest men,
capable of the highest deeds ; that He gives no success
save by means adapted to secure success. It would be
wrong : and therefore we who suffer thus are glad, and
will rejoice. Co-operation with God in the laws of Nature
is choice of right, the spirit's life.
What madness can be like that of living in the midst
66 Philosophy and Religion.
of eternal verities and busying ourselves exclusively with
a few subjective phenomena, as if we and our thoughts
were all ? Matter, and the sciences founded upon matter,
.are subjective, and touch not the real basis of things; our
knowledge is but a well-ordered dream, until, opening
our eyes to the real light of heaven, we see that each
thing has its place as a moral deed forms part of a holy
act ; is that. What we perceive it as, relates not to its
essential nature, nor is the question true science takes
cognizance of, except to enquire why we so perceive it.
We are not mind and matter ; we are spirit, and our true
concern is with moral beings, and moral action. To that
all things tend; all material, all mental knowledge is but
a stepping-stone. The bringing all things into relation
to the spirit, seeing them as moral, is the end and mean-
ing of all knowledge and all experience. Until things
are spiritual they affect not us ; they are outside us ; far,
far away, as material things, nay, even as intellectual
things ; dreamy mysteries, unintelligible, strange, fan-
tastic ; in which we see a glimpse of meaning here and
there, but the whole is a riddle ; filling us with joy,
indeed, but with a joy mixed with awe, almost with terror,
and full of strange misgivings. If we can see Nature to
be a spiritual deed, a holy act, then we understand her,
then she is ours. A right act ? There is no mystery in
that ; that is native to us ; what we were born to and
would do. It draws us absolutely; not one thing too
much, not one too little, if it be right ; our inmost spirits
claim it all for ours ; the mean and the noble, the painful
and the pleasant. If it be right it is man's, it is human ;
it is our very own. God has done it for us ; we, had it
been our place, would ourselves have done it. Yes, this
world we would have made, with its darkness and pains
and sorrows, its mysteries and doubts, its aspirations that
Nature Known by the Moral Emotions. 67
end in disappointment, its temptations that rule with a
sway so bitter.
The love of Nature is man's instinctive and unalienable
joy in right action ; it is the attractiveness of virtue, but
working as yet blindly, and without a just appreciation
of its objects. And, in truth, herein lies the real mean-
ing of that relation of Nature to man, which so many
have expressed under the image of a marriage. Nature
is the bride of the soul : not wedded yet, indeed, but to
be wedded. And is it not with man's love for Nature as
ever with love? Beauty excites it first; it is an irre-
sistible drawing towards the lovely, but that is not its
end. Its end is for the inmost soul. This play of
charms leads us on through a path of flowers to most
serious duty. When man truly weds Nature he will find
that he has taken to his heart, not a beautiful body, but
a deep and earnest spirit ; not his sensuous or intel-
lectual faculties, but his spirit, his conscience, will be
mated there.
" It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of- the
living God." The " hands of the living God " are what
we call the " laws " of Nature. When God is spoken of
as the " living," it is ever with special reference to
Nature. It is Nature, the creation, that is the life of
God. It is thus, in respect to ourselves ; our life is that
which we produce by our self-sacrifice ; we are living in
respect to that which we have so created by self-control.
Thus the passage means what we daily see. It is a
fearful thing for a man living in this universe to be
wicked ; Nature infallibly and fearfully avenges every
wrong. Not that I mean to bring down the awful mean-
ing of these words to a mere passive operation of physical
and moral laws ; that is just what I wish not to do. This
F 2
68 Philosophy and Religion.
universe, these " laws," these facts, are God, and there is
none other. I mean that this avenging of sin by Nature
is the falling into the hands of the living God ; that this
one fact is stated truly, as it actually is, in the Bible ; and
falsely, unperceivingly, by men of science and moralists.
We have to lift up our conceptions from the dust and
raise them even to heaven, and to see that it is the hands
of the living God that lay hold upon us in these natural
circumstances. Think of this which we have so over-
looked : the power of Nature to make us sin, i.e. act
wickedly, if we are selfish. Is it not a fearful thing to be
unloving, dead, inert, in a world of action, which operating
so on us makes us the willing instruments of crime ?
Because I assert all Being to be Divine, or God, I do
not therefore assert that we are Divine, or that matter is.
Even as in asserting all motion, or light, to be vibration,
I do not therefore assert darkness to be vibration. I
assert (relative) not-being also ; i.e. not-being affecting
us, or appearing to us, as Being. Here is the great error :
men, having assumed the negation which affected them to
be Being, were compelled to suppose some Being not
Divine. Hence all the mystification, past and present,
from which no system has escaped ; not even Pantheism,
though it has altered the form of it, and asserts the
negation to be Divine. For clearly here is the error of
Pantheism : it asserts that to be God which is not-God ;
i.e. it asserts that to be Being which is not-Being. This
is the true relation of Actualism to Pantheism : there is
no harm in asserting all Being to be God, if we only
recognize negation or not-Being. The main error of
philosophy is this of not recognizing negation.
Is not this, in part, why love to God is so much a true
Nature Known by the Moral Emotions. 69
passion, an all-absorbing joy ? It is not only a love of
some unseen person hard to conceive, from which love to
creatures flows merely as corollary ; it is a love of the
universal, the absolute, the infinite Being, that is, the
love of all. It is being united to the source of all delight,
the very height and consummation of all beauty. It is
to be one with Nature, to love, to know God ; what man
longs for, has longed for, in all ages. We need not wait
to be dead for that ; we may be it nj^w.. This is the bridal
union of Nature and the soul. To see God is to love Him,
to see in all Nature that one fact of God Himself, and to
be joined with it in love. Nothing is now unloved,
nothing unloving. Now we know her; know why she
has stood before us so long with deep sad meaning in
those gentle eyes. She has wished us to know and to
love her, but our blindness would not let us ; we have
felt indeed what she must be, but we could not truly know
her. When we sought to clasp her to our hearts oh
horror it was a corpse cold and dead, a painted image
with no heart within. But now we know her, and know
it was our own death alone that made her dead. This is
the love of God, the being one with Nature, the being
holy : no more enslaved, no more doing as we like. It is
the glorious liberty of the sons of God. Words cannot
tell it ; words, which have been poured forth in vain to
paint the joy of human love, how shall they tell of the
Divine? Yet words must be used; for when was joy
silent ?
It is thought alone that is " material " ; man has made
matter, made it by his sin, his selfishness. We see matter,
because only love can see love ; and where there is not-
love is matter. Christ Himself would have been but
matter to a crocodile. Alas, to how many of us is God
70 Philosophy and Religion.
only " matter " for tlie same reason. Our taking all this
world to be mere matter, and using it only for the supply
of our animal wants, and generally for our physical .and
mental purposes, is like a wild beast devouring men as if
there were nothing in them save so much food for its
stomach. The reason is plain ; we have not eyes, we are
not alive, we are not-man. Poor miserable lost creatures
miserable herein, that we might be better off. The
Africans stole the glasses of Anderson's telescope to
ornament their bodies with ; it was merely " matter " to
them. So we use the world, laughing in our ignorance at
those who remonstrate with us.
Logic is a lever by which we elevate ourselves. But
for that purpose we must use it firmly. It is like a pole
by which pressing on the solid earth we push ourselves
up an ascent. But we, feeling the resistance, are so apt
to cease to push ; we come to a " paradox," and say,
"Ah, this is beyond the reach of reason, we must not
adhere to logic here, it is above that." Fools ! let us
push and push and hold hard to our pole ; and though
in truth we shall not move the solid earth, we shall move
ourselves, which to us is of much more consequence.
Logic may prove nothing ; certainly it alters nothing ;
but it may rectify our premisses.
We know of God's gifts only by finding that we have
them. The earnest work given to Science, the faithful,
self-denying loving labour, live to end in better than
mere material knowledge. Love, aspiration, hope, and
toil of the soul, yea, spiritual life and love, have been
given up, freely expended; is the result to be merely
material knowledge, sensuous advantages ? Oh no ; for
spirit spirit shall be given. Love for love. Life for life.
The weary brow, the throbbing pulse, the aspiring heart,
Nature known by the Moral Emotions. 7 1
the longing sighs addressed to God for knowledge of
Himself, are not squandered thus. Men have sought to
know God, that is the good of Science, and lo ! God
shows Himself to them.
Physical things prepare the way, fit us for the revela-
tion; but they are not the fact itself. The fire and
the whirlwind are the knowledge of the phenomenal ;
spiritual science is to the phenomenal which it follows as
the " still small voice." The true deep impulse to Science
is love for God, desire after Him ; and if God gives not to
man love in return, He is still the debtor. For love can
only be paid with love ; not with material gifts, not even
with such as are God's gifts to man. Science is man's
prayer : " I beseech Thee show me Thy glory." How can
God answer it but by showing us His love ? In Science
man has given himself to God ; he cannot be repaid with
universes. Shall love be repaid with " things ? " To
repay Science God must give Himself. The eyes of
shepherds turned long ago to heaven, thinking that in
those stars they saw the very heart of God. They were
not deceived ; we, their late descendants, do see in those
stars the very heart of God. They poured out their love,
not that we might exult in knowledge and traverse
unerringly the seas; this were a poor reward. Their
love, their life comes back to us as love, as life. The
true desire of Science has been to know God, not His
works ; and it must end in knowledge of Him. It was
our spirits, we, that desired to know, to know that which
is like ourselves.
I cannot express truly the sight that flashes on me ; yet
ifc is the very fact. The material and psychical world is
(as I have seen it must be) passion in spirits ; i.e. conscious
7 2 Philosophy and Religion.
passions, emotions ; it can be nothing else. Therefore it
" becomes " in us conscious passions, i.e. passion in our
spirits; we are surrounded by an universe of feelings,
sensations, hopes, fears, sorrows, joys ; an universe, in a
word, of " passion." Here is the foundation of poetry ;
here the truth of imagination ; here their marriage with
logic and with Science. This I have been saying so long,
and did not know it : that the universe was passion in
spirits, not seeing that this is sensation, thought, emotion.
Thus it is that we have no words for spiritual things, but
those derived from physical ; the physical are spiritual.
If I have any power of investigating Nature, it is
because the world is a work of genius and I love it. God's
heart is in it, and I know it as a friend. The solemn
throbs and pulses of its vast vibrations are not merely
mechanical events to my eye, I feel them as the beatings
of a heart pressed close to mine. I throw myself on
Nature and press myself upon her bosom in the passionate
embrace of a friend ; our thoughts are one because we
love.
The imaginative view of God that which attributes to
Him the human, as " passion," " the world a work of
Genius," and so on goes to the heart of theology. It is
not itself the truth, but the road to it. The introduction
of fictions, the theory which leads to interpretation, is
the living theology; the imaginative view of things,
which gives to them human attributes is the truest. But,
alike in respect to things and to the Deity, it should be
remembered, that this imaginative view is not final, but
only a means to an end ; that it is the introduction of
fictions, necessary indeed, to enable us to grasp the phe-
nomena, but whose design is not to remain for ever, but
Nature known by the Moral Emotions. 73
to reveal the fact. [This idea was seen afterwards to be
one with that of the calculusj]
It is truly therefore mind, design, thought, emotion,
that are at work, and embodied in Nature ; even as in our
thoughts, feelings, and so-called " actions." And surely
our mental passion may appear " a world " to other beings.
It is design and feeling that are in Nature ; but not God's.
It is His act, His Holiness, which becomes feeling,
emotion, and all those human passions, when it becomes
passion ; i.e. as it affects created spirits. The design,
the goodness, the wisdom, are in the passion, the result ;
not in the act ; they are phenomenal.
As in a musical composition each sound exists because
the musician chooses it, but each is as it is because it is
right ; and to show each note to be the right note is to
show the cause or reason of its existence ; so Nature is
music, and each vibration in it is such because it is the
right vibration ; the only reason for its being is that God
chooses so to act ; but acting, God acts so because that
is the right act. Herein appears again the likeness of
Nature to a work of Genius. Both are right : but the
Tightness of a spiritual act is Holiness. That other
Tightness of material adaptation flows from this, and
expresses it. It is a secondary thing, having relation
only to those Beings who perceive God's act as matter.
The laws of Nature, as we call them, are the relations
or connections of our sensations. They are beautiful,
nay glorious ; they are well worth knowing ; they must
be known; they constitute the very basis of all our
knowledge. They are what bring us into relation with
God's action, which is the thing to be known. But they
are not themselves the objects of knowledge, but only a
means to it ; as we use colours and sounds for learning
74 Philosophy and Religion.
optics and acoustics. That, in our sensation, motion must
take direction of least resistance, and all motion be
vibration, and develop by interference and subdivision,
and follow in the definite order of cause and effect, and
so on, is beautiful, interesting, and absolutely necessary
to be known. But all this is not what we want to know.
This is not the fact ; this is the effect upon ourselves : it
is the cause of all this that is the true object of know-
ledge ; what is it that thus affects us ?
Nature being thus a representative and expression of
moral rightness, how she justifies and repays an un-
bounded love ! Right is the only thing we cannot love
too much. Will it not be a good thing when the sepa-
ration of the love of Nature from the love of holiness is
no longer possible ? Shall we not be willing to submit,
and to take part with her ? Do we not acquiesce, nay do
we not rejoice? Can we not lay even our torn and
bleeding hearts upon that altar ?
Nature obeys the man who acts right, for he takes
part with God. In right action Nature has her origin
and her existence ; to right action she owes an absolute
allegiance. Hence it is, sin works its own punishment :
there is no deception, no defect, no error in Nature's
justice ; each wrong, however it may seem for a time to
succeed, is fully avenged. No criminal can overrule her
process by his power, no secrecy elude her vigilance. It
is indeed a fearful thought : weak as an insect as man
is in Nature's grasp, absolutely and passively within her
power, how shall he dare to put himself in opposition to
her ! Inevitably those fatal wheels will crush him ; yet
this he does when he does wrong, for Nature is holiness.
The earth's motion, fearful as it is to contemplate, hurts
us not, because we move with it.
Nature known by the Moral Emotions. 75
We are so constituted that the fall of one loved one
outweighs, in our feeling, the happiness and good of any
number ; and so Christ speaks in his parallel of the
hundred sheep. Why have we that feeling ? In what lies
the charm, to a loving heart, in the wandering and
sinning of a loved one ? Is not our heart so because
God's is ? Does not the fact demonstrate some unknown
value and meaning and depth of fact in such wandering
itself, which we have yet to learn ? And as to the illus-
tration, on the other side, of the multitude of seeds of
which only a few develop, is there not an inversion in
our view, arising from our perception of the organic as
the highest in Nature ? Do not those seeds which are
restored to the inorganic reach the highest place ?
That is a beautiful thought of Shelley's, that the dead
are one with Nature. Cannot he who sneers at it see
that Nature is infinitely more to the poet than to him
so much more, that it fills the poet's mind with an
emotion and enthusiasm unknown to him ; making him
even willing and happy to die ?
I rejoice to think of the future Science. How our
children instead of being overwhelmed with the vastness
and multiplicity of Nature, will delight in her simplicity,
will play with her as with a child, and take sweet counsel
with her as with a friend whose whole heart is open to
them. And what a friend ! One who is pure and fresh
ever from the hand of God, holding before us constantly
a pattern of the right, answering to our unceasing
enquiry, What would God have us to do? "God does
this."
Nature is gentle and " easy to be entreated " ; all her
76 Philosophy and Religion.
secrets may be gained by sympathy, by self-devotion.
The way to comprehend her is not to put her to the
torture, and attempt to wring out her laws by crucial
experiments. She gives deceitful answers in her agony,
or indignantly refuses to respond. Confide in her, love
her, talk with her as a friend, woo her by secret, silent,
reverential dwelling of the mind and heart upon her
beauties ; be a lover to her, and she replies with love,
and makes the heart that thus with self-abnegation
devotes itself to her, the participator of her most che-
rished secrets. There is no limit to such a man's insight
into Nature but his own power of comprehending what
she tells him. All this artists and poets have long
known. They have wooed Nature, and not in vain. In
their verses, on their canvas, her inmost heart stands
revealed. But men of Science have done otherwise. With
brutal violence they have sought to wrest from her those
pledges of affection which are due to love alone, and they
have rightly failed. Science and poetry and art are truly
one, and must be cultivated in one spirit. When men of
Science are reverential lovers and worshippers of Nature,
as artists and poets are, then shall they also, as artists
and poets do, comprehend her. The study of Nature is
a study of physiognomy, needing for its successful
presentation not the scalpel of the anatomist, but
sympathy.
It is so far from being the fact that our knowledge
of the laws of Nature is founded on microscopic and
telescopic observations or indeed on minute examinations
of any sort, that in truth our knowledge of the laws of these
remote facts is based upon their analogy with those facts
which are obvious. It is only in so far as we can reduce
the former to a sameness with the latter that we know
Nature known by the Moral Emotions. 7 7
anything about their laws. Hence e.g. it is right to call
the two forms of polarity male and female. Herein also
lies an idea full of joy : as the external and obvious in
Nature is full of artistic and poetic beauty, so also must
that be which is remote and concealed. The excessively
minute, the overwhelmingly large, are one with those
exquisite forms of which our eyes can realise the beauty
and our art idealize. As the external superficial world
has a moral meaning, a sympathizing heart ; as it speaks
to us of our own joys and sorrows, and raises within us
tender emotions and lofty aspirations, so is that world
which is hidden from us bound to us also by ties as close.
The stars that roll through space, the minutest particles
of which millions constitute an atom, are our brethren
also, even as trees and flowers are, share our emotions,
reciprocate our love. This noble work the men of
Science have, to extend the artistic and poetic appreciation
of Nature beyond the scope of the senses, to show that she
is the same in the vast and in the minute as she is in the
forms which we speak of as forms of beauty. I feel within
myself the spirit of those old Greeks who symbolized
Nature and man's relation to it under so many legends and
in so many statues. Science is the " loves of man and
Nature : " Cupid and Psyche speak to me of it ; but it is
love fraught with no disaster. Tearful, painful, full of
doubt it has been indeed, unconscious of its divine and
joyful nature, a blind yearning, torturing and harassing
the soul of man all these long ages, while he knew not what
it was ; his soul passionately smitten with the beauty of
Nature, yet knowing it not, nor how to express his
vague yearnings, knowing only that he was miserable.
Such is ever the dawn of love. Inconceivably removed
and unapproachable appears to us the object of our
passion. Enough for us it seems to kiss the hem of her
78 Philosophy and Religion.
garment, to adore her at a distance ; we shrink into utter
insignificance before her. Thus appears to each man's
heart his destined hride, thus to the universal heart of
man has Nature yet appeared. Oh miserable days and
nights of tears, prophetic of unutterable joy ! Loved
even as he loves, although he knows it not, one soft reply
to stammering, half-uttered words, raises him to bliss he
had not dared to dream ; gives him the empire the dearest
to his soul, his rightful empire too, for there enthroned
he has his home. Does man love Nature, and Nature not
love man ? It is not so ; she is his bride, his wife ; bone
of his bone, flesh of his flesh, soul of his soul. Oh union
made in heaven and yet to be accomplished on earth,
has not thy day come even now ?
To affirm special creation, is a step towards atheism.
The certain effect of introducing God specially into the
past is to exclude Him just so much from the present.
A reality is exchanged for an hypothesis ; a seen and
felt reality for an inconceivable hypothesis. The universe
in truth is full of God ; so full that nothing can be added
thereto. No possible mode of regarding Him as working
can bring Him closer than He is. Only those whose God
is afar off can even conceive of Him as brought nearer.
It is our privilege, and a privilege full of exquisite joy it
is, to see that God does all things so directly, that it is
impossible He can do anything more directly. No cause,
nor chain of causes, has intervened ; God did it : God
does it : just as directly, just in the same sense, as He is
supposed to " create a species." If any one says this
makes no difference, I repeat that he cannot know till he
has tried how much he loses by referring God's immediate
agency to the past. If that idea has any excellence or
virtue, if it be glorious or delightful, if it be true, let us
Nature known by the Moral Emotions. 79
have it now. It sanctifies the world and makes it holy ;
a sacred, awful, joyous thing is that which God is doing.
And worst of all, the best of people with the best of
motives, are committing Christianity to a scientific
hypothesis. It must not be. Christianity is too precious
to be, not indeed imperilled, but impeded so. It
matters not whether the hypothesis be false, as we think
it, or true as so many hold ; the point is, that the oak
shall not cling to the ivy. The remedy for apparently
irreligious scientific dogmas is not to affirm a contrary
scientific dogma, but to show that Nature is so full of God
that no scientific doctrine, rightly stated, can be
irreligious. True science teaches the same thing as the
heart dictates; puts only into definite expression the
indefinable emotion.
If creation had been, as is supposed, by design and
contrivance of each particular thing, it would have been
as Kuskin describes the " wi-imaginative " painting ; and
just as far from its present perfection. Indeed it surely
is our perception of what we think failures and defects
and evils in Nature that makes us take this view of it as
arbitrary, or as a work of talent. Once let us see or
realize its absolute perfection, and we shall immediately
conceive it rather as a work of genius.
Here come a group of vibrations sweeping through the
air, mere matter and motion ; and lo ! they fall upon a
human eye, a human ear, and straightway are become
thought and emotion, an overwhelming passion of love,
or joy, or grief; virtue or penitence, or heroism. If
those vibrations were truly matter and motion here is a
miracle. But what if those vibrations, as we thought
them, were, in very truth, God's spiritual act ; His
8o Philosophy and Religion.
thought, emotion, passion, surging against another spirit's
bosom ? What then more natural and just ? The
miracle resolves itself into sympathy. How can we so
stultify ourselves as to think that what originates and
ends in love and gladness, becomes matter on the way ?
Poet nor madman ever feigned such a metamorphosis ! I
adhere to common sense. That which is once spiritual is
spiritual for ever.
We have to introduce design because of our assumption
of " matter." To deny that, and leave the " matter," is
manifestly bad : but the inadequacy, the impossibility of
design, its making God in time, and indeed altogether
denying Him in fact all this is proof of the wrongness
of our conception. The " design " is a hypothesis
necessary from the wrong assumption. It involves the
personality of God too ; and the very impossibility of it
is evidence of the wrongness of the view, and the means
(in part) of rectifying it. So I find this idea of design to
be as it were the " evil " by which a negation is removed :
and the atheistic argument holding matter but denying
design is an anticipation : it doos not show us why we
perceive design. We must perceive design in Nature
because we perceive it as real or in time (putting our own
" condition " into it) ; only by seeing it as eternal can
design be excluded: for as truly as there is cause and
effect, there is design. Now if we know why we must
perceive design, we can exclude it; just as, knowing
why we must perceive (or infer) the epicycles, we can
exclude them.
This I must apply more widely. The feeling of in-
tolerance which some experience towards the " design "
idea is like that of Copernicus towards the epicycles.
He felt that it could not be so, even though he might not
Nature known by the Moral Emotions. 8 1
be able to show it otherwise. Probably he denied them
long before he showed the motion of the earth. But the
assertion of actualism is involved in this feeling against
design ; even as the motion of the earth is latent in the
disgust at epicycles. Design cannot be got rid of without
making the world eternal, spiritual ; otherwise there is
a blank, a denial of plainest facts. We cannot deny that
we perceive design : and seeing the actual as " real "
involves seeing it as design ; like seeing God as
" personal."
That God is the direct doer of every thing in Nature,
that this present world is full of Him, is not so much
seen with the intellect as felt with the heart. I feel it
throb through all the pulses of my life. I cast myself on
the great ocean of Nature, on my mother's bosom, and
feel God's arms around me, and His loving heart pressed
to mine. It is no longer Nature, it is divine love and
holiness that hold me in their embrace.
In my own experience there is a good illustration of
the identity of two opposite opinions. For example :
formerly I could not be brought to admit special creations,
because it appeared to me that all was law, and accom-
plished by second causes. Now I see that there is no
special creation, because all is God's direct and special
act. Formerly I saw the law, now the liberty ; but not
two things : these are one, the chain of causes is God's
absolutely free and direct action. These two are one,
just as in Nature necessity and freedom are united in
motion in direction of least resistance. The advance is to
see the liberty, but not to see it as exceptional, and
opposed to the law. Because law and liberty are one it
<T
82 Philosophy and Religion.
is that God's direct act appears to us as cause and effect.
One sees that God does as He choses in Nature, and holds
a special providence ; another sees that Nature is the
expression of an absolute law, and holds it to be a chain
of second causes, with which God does not interfere.
But we should open both eyes, grasp Nature with both
hands ; embrace the Deity with head and heart. When
we have most enlarged ourselves still is God too great
for us, but how great He is we cannot see while we shut
ourselves up in less than our native littleness. How
God sets our distinctions at defiance, and bids us learn
from each other. He does as He choses in acting by
law. The chain of causes is His free agency, His direct
and immediate act. The incompatability of law with
freedom, of direct action with unvarying causation,
lies in our imagination alone, is the fruit of our weak
and corrupted will. Let us not bring God down to
ourselves, but rise rather up to Him. Law is His
freedom : be law our freedom too. It is the only freedom.
The absolute Eight alone is liberty. Nature thus, in
her primary conception, in her very foundation and
essence is moral : she is spiritual in truth, as man must
have her to be. Nature is law and liberty because she
is right action the holy deed of a spirit, and regarded
every way teaches that great lesson of the conformity of
the will to right. Trace matter back to its essence and
it is found to be Holiness. This is involved indeed in
saying that the universe is a spiritual act. The great
principle which Nature embodies, its essence, what it
means as a great chain of causes and effects, is Rectitude.
The question may be brought to this : we are to believe
God now why ? Is it because the facts warrant belief ?
Or are we to believe for the sake of some advantage to
Nature known by the Moral Emotions. 83
ourselves, because something will happen if we believe ?
To ask the question is to answer it. And this is, in truth,
the design question over again, whether it is holiness or
contrivance in nature ; whether the thing was done
because it was right; or in order for some advantage.
Our systems form a whole ; our believing for design, and
creation by design, are all one thing. Well may theo-
logians tremble so to have Science touched. They are
right in feeling that their sacredest doctrines are in-
volved : Science and theology are one. The chain, though
hidden, vibrates to the slightest touch ; it is vain to talk
of holding them separate.
Science is done for love. Now what man, that is a
man, would repay a woman's affection with jewels ?
And shall not God too give love for love ? Man has been
struggling, blindly, madly often, to pull down this barrier
that rises up between him and God. Science is the
record of this effort, the achievement of this end. At
last behold infinite eternal love : this is our God ; we
have waited for him. Wherefore hidest Thou Thyself f
What to us is this infinite array of suns and worlds, this
thronging life and innumerable shapes of beauty and
delight, if Thou be not in them ? We cannot, will not
have them ; through and through we search them and
pronounce them all a vanity ; not in them is that true
fact for which we long, which we must attain or die.
They are inert ; our flesh and our soul crieth for God.
With earnest, passionate, self-immolating toil man has
sought for God, for the true Being in nature. Is he now
to be told that he must be content with physical advan-
tages ? That he must be content with getting ? That
there is no Being to whom he may give himself? Oh
weary, longing, steadfast heart, believe it not. Shake
G 2
84 Philosophy and Religion.
thyself from the dust . . . arise, shine, for thy light is
come.
" To be natural " therefore is to love, and willingly to
do the right. Nature is voluntary or spiritual rightness ;
moral goodness : spiritual because absolute freedom ; right
because absolute law. We are surrounded therefore by,
exist in, goodness ; hence the discord with Nature of moral
evil, a discord how powerfully felt, how fearfully seen,
in human life ! Every voice of Nature to man has this
meaning. " Choose the right. Make your liberty con-
formable to law ; in conformity to law achieve and
maintain your liberty." Not driven and compelled, but
how sweetly solicited to good, is man. Each softest or
sublimest object whispers in its beauty, "I am right,"
or in its grandeur thunders, " I am right." This seeing,
God pronounced it good. All good but one thing ; and
that the one that Thou madest, oh God, in Thy image,
the crown and glory of Thy creation, choosing right like
Thee ! How long shall he be thus dishonoured and
abased, walking the earth with step erect, but with heart
crushed down with evil and face bowed in shame ? Teach
us, I beseech Thee, to see Thee so in Nature, that Thy
moral beauty there revealed may win us to be like Thee ;
Thy holiness fill us with shame, Thy tenderness melt us
to penitence. Lead us through Thy works unto Thy
Gospel ; by the condemnation teach us to seek the pardon ;
by proof of ruin and corruption subdue our hearts to
renewing and sanctifying love !
And that this law of Nature the law and liberty seen
in motion in direction of least resistance is given to it
by ourselves, is the expression indeed of our mental con-
stitution, how it shows us to be made for good ! This is
in us intellectual rightness ; the sign and proof of that
Nature known by the Moral Emotions. 85
spiritual Tightness which is our native but now lost
inheritance. This world could have been made only by
a good, or holy, Being ; its very structure involves it.
Eight is stamped everywhere. Holy, holy, holy Lord
God!
Have I not solved that question I proposed to myself
so long ago : What is that action of God's that we see as
matter and motion ? It is His Holiness ; His choosing
the right. Nature is right, and right by His choice,
therefore not infused or filled with the moral element ;
it is morality. Each true thing I have ever heard seems
now to come back to me with a new kind of truth : this
for instance, that the glory of God is His moral character ;
even His creative glory. The universe proclaims not
only His power and godhead, but truly understood His
moral excellence also. God answers prayer. In my
earnest wish to know something of what His work in
Nature was, I prayed, " I beseech Thee show me Thy
glory." And He has shown me, sufficiently for mortal
comprehension, what His glory in creation is. The
lightness of each object in Nature is an instance and
evidence of the spiritual rectitude of its Maker. Beauty,
being, as I have seen, conformity to the universal law,
bears this testimony : He that made me conformed His
will to law. The word is infinitely beautiful, because
God is infinitely holy.
A miracle cannot be an interference with the general
course of nature, because there is no general course of
nature to interfere with. How can a being interfere
with his own action ? How many cases there are in
nature of mischievous result as well as of good : e.g. bees
are destroyed sometimes by the adhesion of pollen which
they are conveying to the stigma. Thus natural theo-
86 Philosophy and Religion.
logians have never been able to look nature fairly in the
face. In truth the idea of nature is not that of use and
design ; it has a deeper basis. Nature is right, and
results shift for themselves : there being the innate com-
pensation in it, because it is right, that every evil, every
failure or loss, becomes tributary to a greater good. The
true idea of nature is that of a work of art ; what it
expresses is not contrivance but passion ; its end is not
use but self-expression ; its spring not benevolence but
the necessity of producing ; its law not adaptation,
but Tightness. This is the truth that God's object in
creation was not the good of His creatures, but His own
glory, " For Thy glory they are and were created."
Creation sprang from God as pictures grow out of an
artist, or melody flows from a musician ; because it was
in Him and must come forth. Thus the universe is
music. It is an impassioned act ; full of a meaning
deeper than thought. Man cannot know nature, starting
with the idea of design ; alter the conception to that of
passion, and it is clear.
The idea that the universe is music was with me the
result of a purely scientific induction ; the studying of
material laws alone developed the conception, and simply
in reference to material phenomena ; yet it contains the
moral secret of the universe as well.
I do not agree with that view of " ideal " beauty which
represents it as more perfect than the true beauty.
Nature is really perfectly beautiful ; infinitely above any
ideal of beauty we can form ; it is blasphemy to say or
think the contrary. Is it not God's act ; and can He not
conceive better than we ? The imperfections and ugliness
of Nature are relative to us only. The real beauty of
Nature as it is, is absolute, infinite, God's act being so ;
Nature known by the Moral Emotions. 87
but we see it under limit of our own nature, partially and
in time ; therefore to us it is defect, and want of beauty.
I object to this in Plato, that he finds the real world not
even beautiful enough for him ! It was a false direction
(i.e. though right then) that he gave to thought in sending
it to the region of the ideal for its highest conceptions.
But this, observe, it was emphatically right to do ; it was
the separation for perfecting.
Man's thought cannot surpass, nay for ever shall fall
infinitely short of God's act. Higher thoughts, more
glorious conceptions, a more perfect beauty, a diviner
truth, a purer and profounder holiness exist here in the
facts of actual Nature than our most elevated imaginations
could ever approach. Nature is perfect and infinite in
beauty and in every form of rightness. That we find her
not so is because we see her wrongly ; in parts and not
in whole, in time and not in eternity. Yet is this right
also ; our proper mental discipline consists in not seeing
all things beautiful ; it is needful for us, this perception
of the beautiful mingled with the ugly. But to accom-
plish this good for us it was not needful that God should
deform His work and really mingle bad with good ; it
was enough to place us with our littleness in a world of
perfect good too large for us. That is all : what makes
our evil apart from sin is only too large a good ; our
ugly is a beauty on too grand a scale for us. The senses
delude us here as everywhere ; we perceive an ugly and
we think therefore that the thing is really so. Here as
everywhere the first step towards true knowledge is to
learn to emancipate ourselves from sense.
Now I know what the " ideal " is. It is to us what
Nature is to God ; that is, a fact perfectly beautiful. We
cannot see the true and perfect beauty of Nature, because
it is too large. Because it is only a part, it has innu-
88 Philosophy and Religion.
merable connexions with other things which we do not
perceive, and so it appears to us defective. Therefore
we conceive for ourselves something smaller, something
that shall be a whole and yet not too large for us ; a
single fact that shall represent to us the universe, isolated,
and without any connection with any other fact ; and
that we conceive of as perfect and complete in beauty, in
itself. This is creative art, the work of genius ; but this
to us is just what creation is to God. The universe is
(rod's Ideal perfectly acted out. Our effort to attain the
ideal is an attempt to do what God did in creation.
This is the meaning also of creation being a work of
Genius, of Nature expressing God's passion. It is God
carrying out His ideal. Little sympathy have they with
God who deem that He did anything worse than He
could have done it ; even an artist worthy of the name
will not do that. No man who can legitimately claim
the title of Poet will do less than his best : shall the
Great Poet be the only one to link shame with the word ?
" The heavens and the earth, and all that is between
them, think ye that I have created them in jest " ? Does
not the Koran rebuke the Christian ? Did not the Great
Heart glow, the Almighty Hand thrill with joy, when
the Ideal of the Universe was realized in act ? Nature
is God's ideal wrought out with no shortcoming. We
have the gift of conceiving an ideal in order that we may
know what Nature really is, if we could see her rightly :
and that we may share with God the joy of creation;
share in the joy, though not in the achievement. God
will not keep even that joy to Himself ; all He has He
gives to His dear loved child ; the joy of holiness, the joy
of love, the joy of making others happy, and even that
joy we might have thought truly incommunicable, the
Nature known by the Moral Emotions. 89
joy of creating. But it is a poor return for this great
gift, yea rather a most melancholy abuse of the gift itself,
to claim for this petty ideal of ours a superiority over
God's own ideal ; to call His creation poor and mean,
defective, marred, and incomplete, and our conceptions
perfect and surpassing : they are but toys.
The absolute and perfect beauty of creation is involved
in its holiness ; if Nature be really partly ugly, it is partly
unholy ; this is no strained analogy, it is mere certainty.
In Nature we perceive a mixture with the beautiful of
that which is ugly, and we conceive a perfect beauty ;
but this is only to teach us that in Nature as God sees it
there is nothing ugly. For sin is not in Nature, not in
God's act ; it is man's act, and corrupt as it may be it
cannot pollute Nature's purity.
As our sympathy with God increases, we shall under-
stand more what His ideal is ; i.e. as we grow holier ; for
sympathy with God is holiness. Therefore it is as I have
said : the source of a true knowledge of Nature lies in
rectitude of heart, in love of right. When we have a
perfect sympathy with God, so that our ideal corresponds
with His (save only as respects our poor capacity), then
we know Nature to her inmost heart, she is our ideal
also. There have been men who have attained near to
this in all ages, I believe ; for it does not depend on great
knowledge. The true poets have come near it ; martyrs
have seen it who have beheld in dark and loathsome
dungeons the path that leads beside the still waters,
strewn with sweet flowers, and overshone by the sun and
a thousand stars ; who have seen in burning piles the
altar of a glad and grateful sacrifice, in chains and cruel
stripes the gems which glitter in the crown of life. Yes,
even we, unworthy to be martyrs, may see it too, if we
90 Philosophy and Religion.
can learn to see in care and want and toil, in self-control
and sacrifice for right, a bright and joyous life.
Is not this God's ideal of Nature, that is, of Life Love
duly regulated ? If we ask, What is Nature ? the reply
should be, What is your ideal ? That may not be, nay
certainly is not, the very truth but it is the nearest you
can come to it.
Now our ideal is to Nature as if some one unable to
comprehend or appreciate a musical strain as a whole,
should take the single chords, and seek to make each one
complete and perfectly beautiful. He would add more
notes, or alter their arrangement, or leave out the dis-
cordant ones, or cause the chord to be played by more
instruments. He would make each chord an " ideal."
But this could not really be done without spoiling the
music, and we should say to him : The whole strain just
as it is, with what you call these imperfections, is to us
just so perfect, just such an " ideal " as you seek to
realize in the separate parts. The ordinary view of the
ideal, regarding it as above Nature, has inflicted on us
woeful injury. It has misrepresented to us alike God
and Nature. It has made Nature teach us false lessons ;
it has closed our eyes to the holiness that is in Nature,
so that we have not in truth really seen Her. And,
pitiful loss indeed, it has taught us to look for our best,
not to God's conception, but to our own. How could we
ever rise, when our own ideal was our standard ? What
can our own ideal express or contain, but ourselves ?
That was not what we were endowed with the ideal
faculty for, but that we might by its means be emanci-
pated from the tyranny of our senses, and see Nature
with our hearts as she really is. So knowing in our
inmost soul, taught by our hearts that Nature is really
Nature known by the Moral Emotions. 9 1
perfect, we shall be led to explore and study her, we
shall seek how we may see mortality swallowed up in
life ; pain, evil, and defect absorbed and lost in perfect
rectitude. And thus studying Nature our heart and
thought will be itself expanded.
" Man sees nothing that he does not say." I perceive
science, philosophy, art, that wonderful impulse to
" represent " nature, which is so specially evident in the
artist, but is equally the fact of all our mental life, is the
child's instinct to say what it sees. I have noticed this in
my own children; whatever they see or think of they
say ; before they do anything they say it. That is the
primary idea and use of language, as a means and form of
our own mental life; to communicate with others is a
secondary application. It is clear we must " represent "
(or say) that which we are, which we understand, or
are the substance of.
Now, incidentally, as our mental life thus is, and con-
sists in, re-presentation of nature ; so, certainly, does our
bodily. Our physical nature is a " saying " or " repre-
sentation " of nature ; all life indeed is so ; i.e. of physical
nature. And the human body, as the ultimate develop-
ment of the physical life, is a complete representation of
nature. When our mental life attains to be a perfect
representation of nature, then will it not have attained to
the stage of manhood ; a perfect " saying " or represen-
tation of nature ?
There seems to be one way in which the unbeautiful
phenomenon already reveals the beautiful reality, and
that is man's most distorted works revealing the beautiful
working and development of the human mind. So that
when we look at the ugly we no longer perceive the ugly
although we see it, but perceive by its means the abso-
92 Philosophy and Religion.
lutely beautiful. I have long ago seen in so many cases
that human errors and follies were among the most
beautiful of all facts; that to account for or give the
reason of anything was always to show the good and the
beauty of it. I have seen this long before I saw that it
was so because it is all life ; that evil is nutrition, and
nutrition necessarily of absolute and equal goodness ; all
except sin.
Life always appears to us beautiful and good. It is a
very synonym for good, indeed. But wherever we see
a whole there we see life ; therefore if we saw the whole,
we should see it to be life ; i.e. absolute beauty and good.
Ugliness and evil are not-life; types of sin, which is
death. Ugly, evil, false, mean simply that we do not see
the life ; they are phenomena of which we are unable to
see that they are vital parts of a living whole.
Art is the interpretation of Nature by the intuition of
Beauty.
Nature has no secrets which she hides from him who
knows that she is holiness ; no love that she withholds
from him who loves the holy.
As I look on a painting I see that its calling is to make
us see that nature is not really matter, but a spiritual
fact which thus appears to us. By painting we are
recalled to the reality of nature. Painting and Science
both deal with the one question : What causes us to
perceive the phenomenon ? Science for the head, painting
for the heart. It is the higher spiritual function they
are destined to achieve that binds man to the arts,
although he knows it not. Nothing he seeks in Art or
Science is the real reason of his impulse towards them, or
can redeem that impulse from being unworthy, but a
Nature known by the Moral Emotions. 93
higher end which he cannot foresee or intend, because it
is to raise him above himself, to elevate his spiritual
standard, which nothing he can himself conceive can do.
As the function of Science is to reveal that Nature is
a holy act of God, so the function of Art must be to
reveal that holiness in the actual facts of Nature; to
show the holiness of Nature. All Nature is beautiful,
and beautiful because holy ; for beauty truly is spiritual,
and the work of Art is to display this, but it must be
done in Nature's living way, and by no short cut. The
phenomenal is God's road to the spiritual therefore, it is
man's.
What course Art will take in showing the universal or
absolute holiness of Nature, one cannot say, but it must
be so. When Science, or the mere tracing of cause and
effect, becomes thus spiritual, in the true sense of moral,
how can Art fall short? It must have even a higher
function, to point out the holiness, not to our intellect,
but to our heart. Art is truly above Science ; Science
makes us see the holiness of Nature, Art shall make us
feel it. And Science as the lower first attains its develop-
ment ; Art follows and depends upon it.
An ideal beauty above Nature must be laid aside, and
Art must sit down to Nature accepting her as absolute
beauty, and making her ideal correspond thereto. It is
not hard to see that there must result a complete revo-
lution of our conception, or rather of our feeling, of
Nature altogether. It will show Nature to be only
phenomenal and the reality quite different. But that is
what we want. In order to rise above Nature we must
first put Nature above us. We are truly above, no doubt,
and shall safely rise again ; but this inversion must be or
we are left in ignorance.
94 Philosophy and Religion.
Of Poetry also as well as Art this must be true. So
long as Poetry deals with an ideal beauty above Nature,
it is in its infantine stage ; like the science of the dark
ages : not wrong absolutely ; this has been a stage all
the mental life of man has passed through and it is only
right, but it must pass.
We err altogether in thinking the dark ages time lost
for Science: it was, as I have said, the preparing of the
instruments; it was infancy laying the only possible
basis for manhood. So now of Art and Poetry.
In the same way, we must study the evil phenomenon
as good, and it will reveal its good reality. We should
say, evil is a subjective phenomenon, produced by a
good reality. Holding it to be good, and studying it
so, in all its details, mastering it phenomenally, it will
reveal to us what that good reality is which causes us to
perceive the subjective evil.
I cannot but believe that human life may become
glorious, beautiful, and happy to a degree almost beyond
our thought by the fulfilment of the promise of such
a Science, when through the false phenomenon we see
the true reality; through the ugly phenomenon the
beautiful reality; through the evil phenomenon the good
reality. Shall we not, must we not, be happier then ;
more conformable to Nature ; yes, better, without which
we cannot be more natural.
It is striking first we use the phenomenally true to
interpret the phenomenally false, then the phenomenally
false when interpreted to interpret the phenomenally
true.
First we interpret the life above by the life beneath ;
then the life beneath by the life above. For as we
Nature known by the Moral Emotions. 95
interpret, more and more comes to require interpretation.
Thus, at first, we divide nature into two portions, the
inorganic and organic, or unliving and living, and first
get a certain knowledge of the unliving, which we use to
interpret the living. Then when we have interpreted
this, we use it again to interpret the unliving, and see
that the whole is life.
Surely Art will advance as Science has done : by nutri-
tion and function, first by making the ugly appear
beautiful; and then by letting it reveal the beautiful
which constitutes it. And this will continue as in Science,
making more and more phenomena which now appear
beautiful to us appear not so, until the entire phenomenon
being seen to be unbeautiful will reveal the real or
spiritual beauty. This is the " function " of Art from the
first, unforeseen by us but not less to be worked out by
us. And it is (as in Science) only a renewal of its
childhood.
How beautiful appears that childish instinct to believe
and to admire everything ; it is not a childish folly, it is
the instinct of humanity to trust in God, and God honors
it, makes it the great, the only instrument of revealing
to man the really true, the really beautiful. Only those
who trust Him so implicitly as to believe all His work
absolutely true and beautiful, will God conduct to a true
knowledge of Himself. Knowledge can only come through
trust and love ; and cannot be when there is not perfect
sympathy.
We imagine to ourselves a God, and then love Him ;
but do we love the true actual God who does all these
things in the world? Is our will one with His? We
must enlarge our conception of good by all the evil that
there is; that is God's ideal. How poor a thing we
g6 Philosophy and Religion.
should have made of His love and mercy ; it would have
been self-indulgence, not self-sacrifice. Here is the
failure of our ideal, the false ideal. Thus Christianity is
spoilt by such " ideal."
Science and Art have done, like other children in their
childish period, only that which they like. It is the
mark of manhood to know that the important things to
do are not those which he likes, but rather the opposite.
He has to do his work against his inclination. Science
has set herein a noble example, and by mere instinct of
advancing years ; seeing indeed some reward, but not
knowing at all the best. Nor can it be known ; how can
the youth who quits his play and sits down reluctantly
to business know the best results that will ensue ; the
place among men, the home, the power that he is creating
for himself. He acts for immediate ends, he gains
respect, he gets a little money to spend, and so on. But
what he does is incomparably more than these, though he
little thinks of it. So Science set herself to her weary
phenomenal task like a good boy leaving school ; she saw
a new scope for her activity ; she saw immediate useful
ends to serve, and she has had her share of these ; but
she does not foresee God's design for her. The thing she
was accomplishing, to which all these were as nothing,
she did not know ; nay she can hardly believe it when it
appears. See too how habit becomes second nature.
This experimental course which Science was so loth to
enter upon has become so pleasant, or at least so usual,
by long custom, that it is hard for her to do anything
else ; or even to believe anything else is to be done.
How the men of the old pseudo-spiritual science must
have scorned the idea of a science wholly material or
Nature known by the Moral Emotions. 97
phenomenal, founded entirely upon nature and obser-
vation. They had been diving into essential being,
talking of deep " spiritual " reality. The mere phe-
nomenal must have been distasteful in the extreme. We
cannot wonder that the struggle was so long. Perhaps
the greatest apparent degradation of the human mind, in
the whole history of humanity, is that abandonment of
a real or spiritual science to take up with a purely
phenomenal and natural one. Yet instead of a descent
it was a rise no less than infinite, as we see now.
We say, with the poor Israelites of old, to man :
" Speak thou to us, but let not God speak to us lest we
die." Alas ! the sad mistake God's " words are life ; "
for they are spirit. But life is a painful, tearful, striving,
failing, desolate, discontented thing ; we do not like it,
we fear it, we think it death and say again : " Speak man
to us ; lest we die." We cling to the " ideal," to the
human ; and dread to plunge into that great ocean of the
phenomenal wherein God's voice alone is heard. For He
speaks in thunders, and lightnings flash from His eye ;
He utters His voice when sorrow chills the heart and
forms of horror affright the soul. In illusions that
bewilder, in anguish that overwhelms, in loathsome
shapes that terrify, God speaks ; and we in our folly say :
" Let not God speak to us lest we die." But we grow
wiser at last, and weary of man's empty words ; athirst,
and finding only broken cisterns, we brace ourselves to our
solemn task, and say : " Let God speak to us, that we may
live." Then we apply our lips with resolute and trustful
heart to the bitter fountain ; we grasp with shuddering
yet undaunted hand the abhorrent fact, and say : " The
cup the Father giveth me to drink shall I not drink it?"
And we prove that the words He speaks to us are spirit
H
9$ Philosophy and Religion.
and are life. The fearful or the sad phenomenon reveals
the joyful fact, the false and ugly evil melts into the
holy.
Will it not be glorious, this future of the world, when
Science, Art, Philosophy and Poetry shall join in showing
to man that Nature is a divine and holy deed ; its truth,
its heauty, its good, all spiritual, and revealed by percep-
tion of false, of ugly, and of evil ; when ugliness and evil
shall be to us only as wrong perceptions are to our sense
of truth : the means only of revealing to us, bringing
at once and of course before our minds, the higher, larger
beauty and goodness, which, except by them, we could
not know.
To affirm the absolute beauty of Nature is at once to
affirm that it is not material, because the material universe
is not absolutely beautiful and cannot be. Has not this,
partly, kept Art back and prevented us from identifying
the ideal with the actual; she has waited for Science.
But when Science also affirms matter not to be a reality
the way is open for her; and for Poetry also, in the
affirmation that Nature is absolutely good, although
phenomenally evil.
And what a new world thus opens before us what
untold, unthought of treasures of beauty and good lie
hidden in the ugly and the evil ! It will re-create our
world for us to " interpret " them. I thank God there is
so much ugliness and evil so many illusions because
each one of them is the voucher for a beautiful and good
reality, as each illusion of the sense in Science is evidence
and voucher for some true scientific fact. I clasp evil
and wrongness to my heart, and love them by antici-
pation : they are life ; they are God's tenderest love ;
and He says to me in them : " Look, my child, and tell
Nature known by the Moral Emotions. 99
Me what I am doing ; 'tis painful to you at first, but you
will love it when you see it." By faith I see it even now,
ray Father; and love it though unseen because Thou
doest it. Blind and ignorant children that we have been,
that we would not look to see what our Father does, but
turned away our eyes, calling it ugliness and evil because
it affects us painfully. Yet is this ideal Art right, as
a step ; nor is this vain attempt to rise by our own ideal
up to God, really in vain. Sad indeed would be a phe-
nomenal Art, or Science, or Poetry, if it had not first
been hallowed by the upward flight towards the throne of
God. Once having learnt to see that the ideal is in
truth divine, Science, Art, Poetry can descend safely to
identify it with phenomena wherein the stamp of divinity
seems almost lost ; once having soared the soul will soar
again. Therefore the false ideal precedes the true. God's
is too large for us at first ; uninstructed by the teaching
of the fancy we should never comprehend the glory of
reality; as a child is taught by toys to deal with the
reality of life.
It is God's voice and not man's that I want to hear in
Music; and in Science too, and in Society; and in all
human works indeed ; for in all this best knowledge is to
be attained. All man's works may and shall express this
higher meaning even human life. We try to put society
right, to carry out our own ideas ; so long as we do this
we shall certainly put it wrong, but, thank God, it will be
vitally wrong ; and in the end it shall express a meaning
beyond any thought or design of man, or possible to man ;
an idea written there by God ; accomplished not by our
efforts, but in spite of them, although by them only
rendered possible.
H 2
i oo Philosophy and Religion.
III.
MENTAL PHYSIOLOGY.
Moral and emotional facts stand on the same basis as physical facts
False perceptions are the condition of mental life Nature is always
first misunderstood There is no method for discovery The relation
of logic to imagination The place of those who want logic The
significance of paradox Sleep in mental life Breathing in mental
life Genius and talent Talent is nutrition, genius function
Man's mind is female, woman's male How genius and talent are
affected by paradox Genius is common sense Mental life arises
from failure Men are parts of a whole May genius be found
common ? In humanity, as in genius, there is no design Nutrition
and function are the life in thinking Submission to the thought
of others is disease Saying is seeing The mental life of
humanity.
WE perceive not only physical facts, but moral, emotional,
intellectual facts. These moral facts are as much ex-
ternal to ourselves as the physical; and they nourish,
constitute, are food of, our emotional and intellectual life,
just as the physical facts are of our scientific life. This
is important to observe ; because though our entire
mental life depends upon observation of physical facts,
yet these physical facts are not only physical, they are
intellectual, emotional and moral, as much as physical.
For instance, when I perceive a person fall in the street,
1 perceive a physical fact illustrating gravity ; but I also
perceive an emotional fact, a fellow creature injured ; a
moral fact, a call for my assistance ; an intellectual fact,
or process of thought and motion. And these emotional,
Mental Physiology . i o i
moral, intellectual elements are as truly in the fact I see
as the physical ones. I no more create them than the
other, indeed perhaps even less ; doubtless the physical
elements, those which involve space, time, and matter,
are much more dependent upon my perception than the
others. Thus each psychical fact is t/tfec-fold, physical,
intellectual, moral ; nourishing pur " three-fold mejital
life. ' -. / ; : ; '
Our emotional life is only one form of the emotional
life of the universe. And observe that our minds must
be nourished with emotional elements in wrong or
organic relations. The entire process of nutrition and
function exists here also, and will reveal itself to patient
thought. Thus an emotional organization is produced,
so that perception of " physical facts " sets up long trains
of feeling. It is psychical facts that we perceive in
nature. But the question returns whence and how come
those physical forms of thought, space and time and
matter ? I know what is wrong ; I have a nutritive
view of the question ; I put the phenomenon before the
fact, effect before cause ; this it is that perplexes me.
It may be objected to the statement of our perceiving
emotional and intellective facts in nature, that we only
perceive these by virtue of our own consciousness,
because by our own experience we have learnt that they
must be there. When we see a person fall we do not
perceive a sentient being in suffering, but know from
our own experience that it must be so. Now this helps
me to the very fact I have been wanting. I grant that
our perception of emotional facts in nature is based upon
our own experience ; but this statement is equally true
of all our perceptions, of physical as of emotional. We
can perceive nothing but that which is homogeneous
with what we have experienced. The foundation of all
IO2, Philosophy and Religion.
that we perceive lies in what we feel ; here is the
foundation of our perception of space, time, matter. Let
a man once perceive a new idea, excite him in a new
emotion, and from that time he sees everything new.
What he sees depends on what he is himself. A child
perceives no " things " in -the facts of nature until hy his
own consciousness he has obtained the idea of himself,
of hie body tis a 'tiling, or occupying space, as being solid ;
nor of time, until he has experienced in himself the lapse
of time. So he perceives in the facts of nature no ideas,
no emotions, until he has conceived ideas and felt
emotions himself. Thus the facts of nature constitute
our minds and yet are independent of what we perceive
in them. The " things " bear the same relations to the
reality as the ideas and emotions do ; they are all, as
perceived by us, self-derived, and yet true.
Our solemn conviction of a real universe around us
would really be almost laughable if it were not so
glorious ; this wrong relation of our ideas is our
nutrition, the very fact and basis of our mental life.
It is, in fact, because of this wrong perception that we
have a mental life at all. I am truly overwhelmed with
the grandeur and solemnity of this thought ; our per-
J ception of a world external to ourselves is the source of
our mental life, the stimulus of all our mental activity ;
in one word, it is our mental nutrition from first to last.
All our mental life comes from obervation of Nature.
Consider how useless it would have been for all pur-
poses of mental life for us to have perceived Nature
as being merely a passion in ourselves ; or, if instead of
seeing the sun moving we had directly perceived that
we were being carried round it.
In this necessity of our perceiving passion in ourselves
Mental Physiology. 103
as external, I conceive I approach to a solution of the
question as to the sense in which our mental life is
maintained by organic or wrongly-arranged materials ;
to seeing how the elements are in themselves organically
arranged. Until the illusion of a real external world had
had its full nutritive operation upon us, it could not he
done away with. Berkeley and other spiritualists at-
tacked it in vain ; its work was not done. And now, if so
be it is overthrown, Nature has another sort of work to do
for us, not less but more. The illusory motion of the
sun was the life of astronomy up to a certain point, but
when that was seen aright, there were other nutritive
errors in astronomy, and it advanced faster than ever.
So when we see matter aright as a passion in ourselves,
there will be other nutrition from Nature, and Science will
advance faster than ever ; for each function is a nutrition.
And see how the nutritive elements of each former
period are cast off, excreted, when they have performed
their function and become decomposed or disintegrated ;
with what contempt we look back upon the idea of the
sun really moving round the earth (though not upon the
men who believed it) ; so shall we before long upon the
idea of real matter.
I see, too, that books presenting new truths, must be
first misunderstood ; men must be so as well as Nature ;
this is nutrition; there can be no function without it.
All new facts of observation must be first organically
arranged ; it is the very law of life. Perhaps we may
say he never really understands a fact or truth who has
not first misunderstood it. A new truth is presented by
a book just as by Nature, and will certainly, by all who
really perceive it, be organically perceived, although the
rectification or function may immediately ensue : the new,
104 Philosophy and Religion.
true food, must be first assimilated, i.e. its elements
arranged in vitally wrong relations, in conformity with
the previous life of the individual ; it could not else effect
its function. And why should men complain ? It is not
a thing to feel hurt about; they only participate in
a common lot with Nature; surely this is enough.
Nature is ever misunderstood at first, and most by
those who most earnestly study her. Did not she show
us, as plainly as it was possible to put the thing, the
earth going round the sun; and did not we, for ages,
think that she meant that the sun went round the
earth? It was too bad, and really very hard for her,
for we are her pet children; our education is her
dearest delight. But we could not help it, and she
has had most pathetic patience with us, never one
harsh or angry word ; she has only said : " Look again,
see this fact, how can it be as you think ? " And
when we put that wrong also, she has still only smiled,
and caressed us gently, and said again : " Look here."
Fact after fact she has tenderly- laid before us, until
at last we could not but see it as she meant it. But
still how far we are from her real meaning. Nature deals
with us as with children ; when we see one thing wrong
she does not scold us nor explain it to us, but shows us
other and other things, yet truly one, till we cannot help
seeing them aright. Hers is the true scheme of edu-
cation. And the true scheme for a writer is not to
explain, but to show fact after fact. Ever by men as by
children, a new fact (and especially a new theory, which
is the fact of facts) must at first be wrongly seen, and
assimilated to that which is in the mind before.
That is a radical error, the idea of a method for dis-
covery. There can be none, any more than a method of
Mental Physiology. 1 05
growing and developing. Mind developes as the body
does, by passion in direction of least resistance. Men
have supposed they made the mind. Have we not
hitherto taken more pains to do G-od's work than our
own ; there is but one work that He commits to us, and
that is moral control of passion ; to do right is the only
thing we have to do, and can truly do at all. All the rest
is His doing. There is no method for thinking, or pro-
secuting Science; thought developes by alternate nu-
trition and function, like other life. If we must have such
a one method it is this alone : sympathy with Nature ;
love, which is life. Life is the " method " of the mind,
as of the body, as of the universe. The mind grows like
the body; the conditions are, in each, plenty of whole-
some food and air, and plenty of exercise. " Which of
us by taking thought," is as true for mind as for body.
This has struck me respecting logic. The logical
faculty helps thus : Every one has certain basic or
fundamental ideas, in accordance with which, more or
less, he arranges all his conceptions and views. Now if a
man have not logic he can arrange his views incon-
sistently without feeling them to be so, and therefore can
rest satisfied, looking at subjects as he likes, seeing them
all under the glow of his favourite moral perfections,
as e.g. of God's goodness and wisdom ; not perceiving that
his opinions are more or less inconsistent with such
general idea. Hence he is eloquent, active, can talk and
interest, and in a word be " charming," Indeed, " ima-
ginative " men are very much characterised by this
deficient logic, and poetry as yet involves it. See Mr.
e.g. "The world is holy; " not perceiving the illogical-
ness of calling a thing "holy." Hence I think, in a
great measure, the weakness of poetry, and that class of
io6 Philosophy and Religion.
thought. The poets do not perceive the illogicalness, but
practically the world feels it, and even to the hest of us,
such thoughts seem to be a thing apart from the real and
actual world ; we call it " imagination," meaning fiction.
[As indeed, in a high, noble (i.e. a vital) sense it is. And,
by-the-bye, surely imagination altogether, as Kuskin
defines it, is the vital introduction of fiction, preparing
only for the function.] Now, the logical man is very
different ; to him it is necessary that his conceptions
should be really consistent ; hence he is ill at ease, does
not know what to believe, does not find that he can
ordinate all facts and phenomena under any such beautiful
basic idea, is therefore at a great disadvantage ; cannot
speak, has no beautiful things to say, finds poetry mystify
him, has no brilliancy, is in short a mere dull, useless
simpleton. But his turn comes, the illogical man rests
content ; the logical man advances. With patient toil he
arranges his ideas consistently ; but then he finds that
they require another basic idea ; by his logic he over-
throws the fundamental conceptions, and introduces one
consistently with which all the phenomena may be
arranged ; making thus an absolute advance or develop-
ment in knowledge. The logic works to and fro, as it
were, vibrates. It is a lever by which he overthrows his
own basic conceptions. I have the image of stone- work
in my eye ; he first lays a rest for his logic, then by
means of that, as with a lever, upheaves his own firm
standing ground. He gets " revelation " in fact, that is,
he interprets. I seem to arrive at this (though it appears
strange to me) : that logic is emphatically the interpreta-
tive faculty. Logic puts right the ideas arranged theo-
retically, or in vital wrongness ; and by that means
reveals or inducts the new basic idea or general con-
ception, i.e. the function ; or in Science the development,
Mental Physiology. i o 7
the new and higher life. This seeing that the elements
of any theory must go so ; this instinctive putting right,
and so interpreting, is in truth the logical faculty. The
interpretation is emphatically logical. I think this must
be so. This " logical faculty " is simply that instinctive
perception of right relation. And here is the relation of
logic and imagination ; imagination is nutrition, theory,
fiction ; logic the function, interpretation, exclusion of
the fiction or vital force. Thus imagination is the
nutritive, the theoretical, the converse of the logical.
Here should be the love between them. Imagination and
logic are man and wife one ; the blessed parents of
truth and mental life. [This agrees strictly with
Buskin.] The logic cannot be without first imagination ;
but imagination exists for logic. " Without poetry can
be no facts."
What a strange divorce and unnatural hatred it is that
has existed between imagination and logic ; or rather, not
unnatural, but only that natural aversion between boys
and girls, which I have noted so widely, and which is the
precursor of the marriage union. But how wonderful it
seems that I should find the logical faculty to be em-
phatically genius. How oppositely we usually think ;
but it is so. The gift of genius is to exclude fictions, to
permit the elements to assume right relations. (Boys, at
a certain age, have just that same contempt for girls that
logical men have for imaginative.) Mozart wrote music
logically ; and so of all interpreters. It was very clear
in Copernicus that he treated astronomy logically. Ima-
gination is theory, after all. All this is merely the old
common sense and instinct of the world that imagination
and strict reasoning should be united. Logic works first
forwards on the phenomena, then backwards upon the
stand point. My own logic has worked thus. I never
1 08 Philosophy and Religion.
could see that the facts of the world agree with God's
skill, wisdom, and goodness, as the " idea of the world."
Accordingly I worked logically upon the phenomena, and
then my logic worked back again, revealing to me a
different, higher, and truer " idea " of the world, viz.,
that of holiness ; revealing it by the interpretation of the
phenomena, or rather, of the imaginative theory of them.
And this holiness, which has been revealed to me as the
" fact " of the universe, is not a fiction, but genuine, real,
and logical holiness, viz., the holiness of a deed. It has
been said before, imaginatively, i.e. fictitiously, the world
has been called a " holy thing"
And here one sees the nature and the use of that class
of men in whom logic is wanting : they can deny results
without denying causes (or systems); can deny con-
clusions, leaving the premisses uncorrected. Now, so far,
this is a defect, doubtless ; but does it not enable a thing
to be done which otherwise might not be ? Is it not by
such people that the evil and wrong of certain facts, or
results, are felt and insisted on ? To these men it is
owing, surely, that others (in whom the logical connection
of things will not be ignored) are made to feel the
wrongness and impossibility of the results ; and so the
system gets altered.
Thus, in fact, three sets of men work out the reductio ad
absurdum. One set deduces the impossible results, and
gravely sets them forth as facts ; another denies and
denounces the results, and insists they are not legitimate
consequences, &c. ; then a third sees what each of the
others points out, and so makes visible the demand to
correct the premisses. Is it not a beautiful organic
co-operation ?
It is interesting to note the dependence of the class
Mental Physiology. 109
who correct the premisses upon the other two ; how they
need not be able doubtless are not able to do the other's
work, not logical enough to make the deduction, nor
sensitive enough to feel decisively, for themselves, the
wrongness ; but capable of seeing both when shown them,
and putting them together ; endowed, that is, with the
faculty of seeing what the new premiss must be. And
doubtless they do that work not by more or stronger
perception, but by a less resistance ; i.e. others may see,
as clearly as they, both the proofs of the results and the
objections to them ; but, not perceiving any way of
escape, they remain passive. The man who finds the new
premiss may do so simply because those forces, as it were,
are able to move in that direction ; there is an opening,
a channel, in him, there. His perception of a new
fundamental conception is a direction of not-resistance.
So it does away with the stress, or tension.
No man can tell you anything new; for in knowing
one thing you truly know all, and until you know one
thing no man can tell you another. The one thing that
is, and only can be, known is life ; and all that can be
known is only life. More and more life you may be made
to know ; more can be told you, but not different, not
new.
How gloriously Coleridge said in answer to " What is
life ? " " What is not life that truly is ? " His instincts
led him to affirm truths of which he did not see the mode,
or strictly the evidence.
The existence of a particularly difficult and manifest
paradox is one of the best of signs ; it is the indication
that the time has come for an advance in thought, for its
i io Philosophy and Religion.
development or advance to a higher grade. The two
opposite opinions must be put together, not by a com-
promise, nor by holding two contradictory opinions, or
making one yield, but by maintaining both in their fullest
and most absolute sense, and seeing how they agree and
are one ; i.e. by adding another element to our knowledge
and raising the level of our thought. Strong and startling
paradoxes are ground for hope and not for despair ; they
are the things which turn the course of thought when in
that direction it has reached its limit ; turn it and elevate
it, if dealt with aright, in a spirit of manful boldness and
earnestness, and not of cowardice and compromise and
distrust of power. In fact paradox is in mind the
analogue of that condition which caused development of
species ; two extremes, two polars. And what did Nature
do sit down and talk about the limitation of her powers ?
She took the two, each in its completeness, and putting
them together, educed a new and higher race ; setting us
there, as ever, an example. A paradox in point of fact
is male and female. Paradox is the puberty, the adoles-
cence, the nubile state of thought. In each new develop-
ment of thought the sexual or polar distinction is there
from the first, but latent. Boys and girls grow up
together and we do not perceive the opposition or mutual
adaptation at first, but by-and-by the two groups declare
themselves ; at first in very trifling differences, then
more deeply, at last absolutely ; then thought has grown
to the paradoxical state. Male and female each assert
their nature and will not yield one atom to the other.
We have, not many views or ideas of like kinds, but two
opposite kinds which each maintain an absolute and
indefeasible footing, and will not be put down. At first
they repel each other and are shy, even quarrel and
dislike; but Nature at last asserts her purposes, mys-
Mental Physiology. 1 1 1
terious sympathies grow up ; each one admires and
respects the opposite and is drawn unconsciously towards
its incomprehensible difference from itself. The magical
charm overcomes pride ; love is established, but at first
the talk is not of marriage but of friendship ; they will
retain their individuality and opposition but live in
amity and mutual kindness and goodwill ; in short they
will make a compromise. Short-sighted ideas ; short-
sighted even as mortal men. You shall not have your
friendship ; your touch is fatal ; it is the vortex of a
Charybdis upon which you enter, which will draw you
certainly within its gulf. You are not two but one ; and
one you shall become by a power higher than your will.
This is the nature of paradox ; it is polarity, and its
issue is a bridal day.
In animal life, when development ensues, the creature
gets into a paradox : i.e. there are two opposite tendencies
or forces with which nothing can be done but by a union
into one. In animal life this is done by instinct, as in
thought it is done by genius. The work of genius in
raising the grade of thought is the very same as that of
instinct in raising the grade of life, and is done too with as
little foresight and design. The instinct and the genius
have no reason for what they do except that the thing
"must be so of course." It is their nature to put it
right. Genius therefore is love, or sympathy, as I have
said; and marries male and female thought; unites the
law and liberty in one. For this also is marriage ; it is
the law of liberty. And this is a further insight : not
only is the law of right the law of liberty, but the law of
love also. Law and liberty in one are holiness and love ;
absolute freedom and absolute law. And Nature, being
the law of liberty, is not only holiness but love. The
1 1 2 Philosophy and Religion.
holiness the law, the love the liberty : one in God. This
union is a true marriage, to he attained as man's spiritual
development. Male and female are holiness and love ; at
war now in man's moral being, as are paradoxical opinions
in his intellectual nature ; hut they must he one. Thus
the progress of thought is a perpetual wedding feast ; the
intellectual repeats the social state of man ; this is why
love and marriage are ever the sources of deepest and
intensest sympathy. So is a true marriage of Nature and
man. They are truly wedded, and all the arts of life
spring from the embrace. All is one : the great fact of
human life is the great fact of Nature's life.
In our mental life we must be content to live and con-
form to the laws of life; to eat, and drink, and sleep,
and be nourished, as well as perform functions. At the
same time fully believing that, by such conformity, all
we aspire after and much more is finally to be achieved ;
not despairing, for the general mind (Science) is the
universal life, to the attainments of which no limits can
be placed. It is no argument that as the powers of the
human body are limited, and pretty well known, so are
those of the mind ; the analogy does not hold. The
human mind, in the sense in which it advances from age
to age, is one living organism, which has a course to run
quite unknown, unknowable until it is revealed in fact.
It can no more anticipate its future than can the child
its manhood, still less can it conceive a greater. Nothing
can conceive a greater than itself; anything that is
growing and developing must of necessity outstrip its
conceptions. Youth indeed casts a splendour on the
future ; but it is never anything more than a pleasant
present ; which is just what our Science anticipates, an
everlasting "feast," forgetting that such a feast would
Mental Physiology. 113
become intolerable torment. Better than that, there is
before it a noble succession of feasting and working,
producing development which may not be anticipated.
What is sleeping in the mental life ? It is the period
during which assimilation most vigorously takes place,
with no eating and very little function. It strikes me it
must be a period of a priori reasoning ; just such a period
as preceded Bacon's epoch, not so badly called the dark
ages. This is no legitimate term of reproach. What
greater blessing than the darkness of night? What
period of greater or more beneficial activity than natural
sleep? Do not the alternation of light and darkness
from the one motion of the earth, represent the vibration,
day and night ; being as function and nutrition ?
I think I shall best discover what mental respiration
is in myself. Thus thinking is like breathing to me. It
is my breath of life, and I cannot leave it off or am
compelled soon to begin again. And the respiration of
the mind of the whole, is it not some constant passion
which cannot but be done ; and the effect of which is to
cast off error and arrive at larger truth? Is not this
work of mine one respiratory act of the great mind of
man?
The human mind is the external world to genius, the
productions of which he seeks to interpret. To say that
a man has genius is to say that all he effects is truly
and entirely the result of others' labors and done by
their power ; that he is merely a stimulus, and owes his
influence solely to his relation to an organization built
up, and a functional power accumulated, wholly by others.
It is manifestly so ; the disproportion were else too vast.
1 14 Philosophy and Religion.
See how many men must labor and die to produce the
edifice which genius with one touch reconstructs. It is
of course because the power is not in him but in the
elements he uses that his power seems so great. To
attribute the deed to him would be like attributing an
explosion to a spark, forgetful of the gunpowder.
The men of genius are sure to exist, yet they can
occur only at intervals. Genius must be waited for ;
talent can be cultivated. Men can always do something ;
they can always observe ; and this they must go on doing
patiently, assured that if they thus effect the nutrition
the function will not fail. They know that in due time
they shall reap. But our experimental science sows and
sows away and never expects to reap.
We must hold fast to the dynamic view in mental
physiology nothing is done without an equivalent ex-
penditure of force. G-enius does things without force
because it does not do them, as the fall of an uplifted body
needs no force.
About transitive and continuous vibrations : a falling
stone and heat resulting must be taken together. If we
take the fall alone, we leave off where no end is, if the
heat alone, we begin where is no beginning. So also of
spirals ; they are transitive and continuous also, and in
one form or other, universal ; continuous in the earth's
motion ; but every possible motion is a transitive spiral,
for every motion is three motions at right angles ; and all
motion also is vibration. Therefore all motion is three
vibrations at right angles, i.e. a true spiral. For there is
in nature no motion that does not involve length, breadth
Mental Physiology. 1 1 5
and depth. This is as true of motions as of things.
Consider the complexity and the simplicity ; how every
motion is accompanied by an opposite while it takes place,
and is succeeded by an opposite when it ceases, doubly
vibratile, and each of these opposites is similarly accom-
panied and succeeded.
Talent absorbs force ; genius reproduces force and
passes it on. It is continuous and transitive again. He
whose work is the result or expression of his passion has
no exterior force. He whose passion is the result of his
work has operative force. Take a painter ; he has a
passion, a conception, he expresses it in a picture, when
he contemplates it he sees the re-presentation of his
passion, he admires it, delights in it, accordingly ; but
the picture can be only admired by others ; it has produced
no passion in him, much less in the beholders. But
another painter paints by instinct, by his nature ; he has
no conception or passion to express, but he must paint
so, and as he paints, behold, his picture reveals to him.
something he had never conceived nor could conceive, and
produces in him an overwhelming emotion or passion.
This picture has power in it ; it is a functional picture,
a force-producer, and it excites passion and emotion in
beholders. It does for others what it has first done for
the author. The thought that moves the thinker will
move the hearer too, and only that ; not the thought that
expresses or is produced by a passion, but the thought
that produced a passion. So Goethe is a nutritive poet.
His thought produced no passion in him, and it produces
none in others. I do not say that the nutritive men are
not deep feelers. I do not speak of them, but of their
works. I say that they absorb the force of passion as
nutrition does ; and that the force can only be reproduced
i 2
1 1 6 Philosophy and Religion.
by just inverting that process. But the force of genius
is only the force of talent thus reproduced ; first the
nutrition, then the function, and only then. [By-the-
bye, the logical people who will have the function without
the nutrition correspond with Berkeley, little as they
think it, and just such was the old pre-Baconian science.]
The men who produce this nutritive, imaginative, forceless
work, must indeed be men of deep feeling. The work
expresses or is the result of feeling or passion ; passion is
the only force; the powerlessness of it arises from its
being the result and not the producer of passion. We
only need to understand this, to see the vital relations of
different men, and we shall put them to their right uses,
and not find fault with them for not being other than
they are. We do not look for work from the growing
child, but we reverence the child not less than the hard-
working man; the latter produces and the former does
but absorb force ; true, but the force-absorber is but the
force-producer of the future ; he grows that he may work ;
nay he may be of greatly higher order than the present
force producer, and be destined to a work greatly more
noble. We must be content. Both force producers and
orce-absorbers we want, and of different grades.
All things, all men, all thoughts, all motions, the
universe indeed, is divisible into the two classes of force-
producing and force-absorbing ; this is the great distinc-
tion. In other words all is vibration ; for these are
precisely the two halves of a vibration ; i.e. all is life, or
nutrition and function. The universe is vibration or life :
may we not say, a vibration, a life. Then, if a life,
whereof ?
Talent has instinct as well as genius. Vegetables have
instincts (as for food, light), as well as animals. But in
Mental Physiology. 117
talent and vegetable they are much less marked and
extensive ; they do not give the character as they do to
genius and animal. In the vegetable the object and
result of all is the nutrition, the growth ; in the animal,
the instincts are for its functions. Observe, in both the
instincts for food, &c., for nutrition ; in genius super-
added those for function. Also note that instinct ever in
both is the result of organisation, and depends upon a
functional process. The idea of talent is nutrition, as of
vegetable. The idea of genius is function, as of animal ;
in each both processes go on necessarily together, but
they are differently subordinate. The vegetable world
is to the animal as placenta to embryo ; so talent to
genius.
How familiar and common-place to us are the facts
which threw into infinite delight those who first saw
them ! How Copernicus's heart must have throbbed when
the fact of the earth's motion, so indifferent to us,
revealed itself; and future generations will coldly take
as matters of course what the men of this glow over with
delight. So when we see the men and women in the streets,
we little think how for each one a mother has groaned
and rejoiced. A man of genius is the mother of new life ;
his the female part in the history of mind ; his the throes
and toil, the exultation and delight. He gives birth
truly to new life. The man of talent does the work of
the man; exerts his own powers and effects his own
objects. The man of genius quietly nourishes unknowing
in his own bosom, and feeds with his own life, patiently,
in sorrow and depression, too often amid cruel taunts, his
living burden ; moving him sometimes to strange fancies,
unappeasable longings and restlessness, until his time is
come. And then his proud eyes weep happy tears, as he
1 1 8 Philosophy and Religion.
folds tremblingly to his heart the image and inheritor of
his soul's life.
The cause of the difficulty in receiving the work of
Genius is the wrong position of the eye, as it were ; people
think they are seeing one thing when in reality they are
seeing another. They have not yet learnt to recognise
the universal human mind, which performs functions,
and of which the individual minds are but parts, elements,
or organs or rather, perhaps I should say, the universal
humanity as a living existence, of which individual men
and women are merely the " organic molecules," so that
the functions of this higher " life " take them by surprise ;
they cannot believe the function because they have not
recognised the organisation and nutrition. They have
not seen that all the labours of men of talent consti-
tute a nutrition, and produce one living organisation
with power to perform functions. They have not seen in
fact what they have been doing; in other words that
they have been acting instinctively; accomplishing a
higher object than any they had in view. In fact men
have not seen that the human mind is a life ; just as they
have not seen that the whole universe is a life. They
look upon what individual men do as isolated things. It
is as if some being with microscopic eye should watch
and register the individual processes which constitute the
nutrition of a human body, without perceiving the
bearing and meaning of them; should see the various
particles mutually reacting and arranging themselves
without understanding that all this made up an organi-
zation and accumulated force. Of course he would be
astonished enough when the function was performed. It
would appear to undo so much of that the doing of which
he had been watching with so much interest and satis-
Mental Physiology. 1 1 9
faction, and which he imagined was done for its own sake,
being, as he might remark, beautiful.
Man's mind is female ; it does the nutrition and re-
production ; it absorbs into itself. Woman's mind is as
man's body ; it gives itself, is instinctive. As the female
body is united with the male, and only so reproduces, is
not man's female mind " quickened " by woman's and
only so rendered truly re-productive ? And development,
in mind, is only from an union of the woman's mind with
man's. In the ordinary progress of mind do we not see,
in fact, that only as man is " quickened " by woman does
the mental life multiply and extend ? For the acquisition
of knowledge is truly a growth, it is a taking in, not a
giving out. This knowledge of the external world is in
the strictest sense subjective knowledge. It is in us, all
this phenomenon. The woman's mind that cleaves to the
moral, acts by instincts, gives itself away in love, is the
externally acting mind. Man's mind grows and re-pro-
duces itself ; woman's mind performs external functions.
And as woman's body is quickened by man's through
mutual love, so is man's mind by woman's through
mutual love. And in the true development, or Genius
in its most perfect sense, the man and woman's mind
are united into one. The new grade of mind is the male
and female in one.
This in fact is just the difference between Genius and
talent : Genius holds its own in spite of paradox, because
it knows it, sees it, and does not care ; the thing is so.
Talent gives up at the sight of the paradox ; it has not
seen the thing, it has only supposed it, to see if it will
do ; and of course when it finds it will not, it gives up
and takes that which will do best a compromise ; it is
1 20 Philosophy and Religion.
its business. It is necessarily so ; and this produces all
sorts of differences ; Genius is bold ; talent timid ; talent
builds up, Genius throws open ; talent seeks to attain an
object, Genius does the right, and the object is attained.
But the great thing is this : Genius is one with the infinite,
i.e. with Nature ; talent is finite, limited, expresses the
man. For Genius comes never to an end; recognises the
infiniteness, the unbeginning; talent makes a closed
circle ; so it is talent that invents the chimeras, which
are always beginnings ; the specific or inherent qualities,
primary properties, or God's especial act. Talent will
ever have a primary beginning ; its chimeras are ways of
attaining that ; it is, and invents, the arbitrary. Genius
ever recognises rightness ; ever carries knowledge higher
up, sets aside the chimeras and shows cause ; shows
necessity for arbitrariness, infinitude for finiteness : its
end and true object ever being the spiritual. It is, in
truth, an infinite, an eternal, we have to do with ; talent
shuts it up in chimerical beginnings and ends ; Genius
throws down these barriers, progresses step by step, ever
larger and higher, towards the eternal ; her goal is the
spiritual ; ever as herself is rightness, so her home is the
Eight.
Common sense is genius, and genius is common sense.
Common sense is the not going by appearances, not
making up ; it is interpretation ; it is letting things come
naturally, not using art and contrivance; therefore it
cannot be first. Genius is common sense in its origin ; it
is the first application of common sense to a subject ; it
is common sense in respect to that which has not yet been
known. That which is genius in one man or age, is
common sense to succeeding ones. The Copernican astro-
nomy is common sense; it rests upon common sense.
Mental Physiology. 121
Common sense in Copernicus discovered it ; but then it
was the first exercise of common sense on that subject,
and that is genius. So common sense belongs to women
(the male mind) ; it is the woman's reason " of course it
is " " it must be " " it is because it is." Common sense
and genius do not prove ; they show. Proving is only
hypothetical truth. It is curious that genius should be
thought the opposite to common sense, deal with what
subject it may. But genius brings new views, opposite
to what has been thought ; does away so with former
common-sense conclusions (or interpretations of smaller
nutritions) and so appears opposed through its greatness
which swallows up the smaller. For common sense is the
interpretation of genius, appropriated by men not of
genius. It is a part of the work of genius to distinguish
between the instincts and fashions ; and say, that is an
instinct, this is a fashion (the instincts being ever the
true). Those who " want common sense " have not appro-
priated the results of former genius. And it is curious,
and curiously right, that these are so apt to have a genius
of their own. Also it is well called common sense ; the
self-element, the individual element, is put aside, which
is emphatically the work of genius.
That which makes us go wrong is that we are con-
stantly making up a system, making a scheme for our-
selves perfect and complete ; this is sure to be false. The
interpreter is just the man who does not do this ; who
suspends his judgment, and whenever he does not see an
absolute must be, says, " I do not know." It is nothing to
him that this or the other " supposition " would make a very
nice, beautiful, and every way desirable system ; must he,
or right, is his law ; his act is the act of love, of necessity,
alone. He has no talent to construct ; he does but over-
122 Philosophy and Religion.
throw ; overthrow chimeras, set aside inventions ; reveal,
unveil, that which was concealed hy hypothesis. He is
the simplifier, the putter of one for many, which is the
great must of the human mind. And on the other hand,
as when he does not see an absolute " must be" no con-
sequences can tempt him to say : " I see " ; so also when
he does see this " must he," no consequences can deter
him from saying it. It is so, and he says it, come what
may; it is no matter to him that a system thereby is
shattered and none seems ready to take its place ; still
less does he attempt to supply one. He has faith, and
is in no hurry, knowing that every termination will be
found the beginning of an illimitable expanse.
It is beautiful to see in the mental world how life
arises from failure, from dissatisfaction. When I try to
express an idea I do not satisfy myself. I try again ; do
it over and over again, and better and better : that is life.
So life in its very idea involves development ; it is not a
stationary condition of activity, but always and necessa-
rily a development. The question whether life has truly
developed itself is absurd ; if it does not develope itself it
is not life. And so the indication of a capacity for a
higher life is ever a dissatisfaction with the present.
Those who advance the intellectual life are first discon-
tented with that which exists. It must be a precisely
parallel process in the physical world that leads to the
development of animal life. And the parallelism may be
traced into the very details as it were ; the passion
resisted by other passion. For what is the reason that a
theory or view that satisfies one man does not satisfy
another (capable of judging) but that in this other's mind
there is more thought which resists the other thought ? A
conclusion cannot be reached ; the passion fails of its
Mental Physiology. 1 23
accomplishment ; that which seems right to the other to
him is absolutely wrong, because there is more than that
view will embrace. It is ever more passion, as it were,
in the same limits, which causes development ; as I have
seen in life, it is more vital passion in the same space ;
this is the doctrine of development by pressure.
Why does the silkworm produce silk ? Because it acts
out its nature. Thus all truly great and valuable deeds
are done. It is God that acts when nature acts, whether
it be the nature of a worm or of a man. In relation to
God, these acts of nature are moral acts ; they are His
spiritual and therefore holy deeds. If we would act like
Him, we too must act morally : in spiritual activity lies
our capacity of acting as God does. Here is the true
difference between men ; the difference between a great
poet, an artist or philosopher, and the most untutored
labourer who does his work but rightly, is none ; it lies
only in appearance ; their acts are the same thing from a
different point of view. But between a man who acts
rightly and one who does wrong, the difference is wide as
the poles. Do we thank the silkworm or the bee ? Not so :
we take all they do as a matter of course, and thank God.
Just so should we deal with the men of genius. No thanks
are due to them ; they have simply done what it was their
nature to do. Take all that as of course, and thank God.
The difference between talent and genius is precisely
that between doing right for an object, as to obtain heaven
or escape hell, and doing right simply from love, or
because we must do it [that " must " always means love :
it is the fact of attraction].
What lives, is not that which is like what is being done
1 24 Philosophy and Religion.
at the time, but that which is unlike. That truly carries
out the tendency of the age which is the very opposite to
that which it has been doing and which is in fashion and
approved. That which is in the spirit of the age, and
meets at once with universal approbation, plays but a
subordinate part ; that which seems to go utterly against
it is the true function. It is true that afterwards this
function is seen to be a genuine expression of the age, and
to have had many foreshadowings ; but it did not appear
so at the time, and these foreshadowings probably had not
been noticed ot all.
Each man's (or woman's, or child's) special incapacity,
or dislike, is his specific resistance ; that which directs
his force, gives him his specific form or being, and is the
great source and secret of his value. There is no more
inestimable gift than a well-marked and powerful
" resistance."
In respect to defect as the source of our strength or at
any rate of what we contribute to the general wealth of
mankind I am aware how it is by not feeling the neces-
sity for practical action and results, by being able to be
content without them, that thought can be maintained
unbiassed and absolute, and the true relations demon-
strated and affirmed. And here one sees the mutual
excluding of negations by opposites ; together these results
embrace the work of those who cannot be content without
abstract truth, and those who cannot be content without
practical right and good ; and so the perfectness is given.
Must not each be content to say : " I must insist upon
this, you see to that ; and putting these together, let us
work altruistically " ? Is not this the true attitude for
thought ?
Mental Physiology. 125
This struck me in reading Lynch on Poetry : Are not
those who are ahle to dwell so beautifully and invigorat-
ingly on the goodness and beauty of the world and of
human nature, and who feel this so deeply and satisfyingly
gifted by defect? Are they not capable of being thus
satisfied, and therefore have the sensitiveness and appre-
ciation by the absence in them of the necessity for higher ?
And from this " defect " comes a positive good, help and
use for others ; for the world wants that sensitive appre-
ciation of, and bright light upon, wordly beauty and good ;
it is one of the elements it ought to contain, and in that
full prominence and relief which only such men can give
it. So there must be others, small enough to be content
with the abstract, to give that also to the world, which
wants and must contain that too. And since the world
wants also the practical phenomenal life in its perfectness,
must there not be those small enough to be content with
that?
Is there, then, here a key to the partialness of men, that
men must be small enough to be content with the part, in
order to give it perfection ? Is it not an evident fact that
men are parts ? Might we not as well say an eye was an
individual by itself, as a man ? Look not only at its
dependence, but its function ; the thing it can do implies
a body, a whole, for the sake of which it is done, and alone
is worth doing.
One sees how these not-perceiving men must even be
fools, relatively and for a time. They do not perceive by
their senses as other men do ; it is for this reason indeed
that they perceive the fact. Meanwhile, before this percep-
tion of the fact (which constitutes their discovery), neces-
sarily they do not perceive at all, neither by senses nor
intellect, and are really at a disadvantage, and the world
126 Philosophy and Religion.
is right when it calls them fools. May it not often be
that men who pass for fools all their lives, and never do
anything to redeem themselves, may truly he men of
genius ? Perhaps the possibility of the intellectual per-
ception was never given them ; perhaps not the requisite
data ; perhaps they never came to sufficient self-conscious-
ness, never turned attention to what they could do, and
so wasted their whole lives in attempting to do what they
could not. I see it is a happy accident that produces an
acknowledged man of genius ; there may be thousands
who merely fail.
This opens a good prospect ; most likely men of genius
may be indefinitely multiplied, and the world found full
of them, when we know how to act towards them. Is it
not certain that all " not-perceiving " men will be found
to have that faculty of genius, and if rightly guided will
prove capable of using it too ? The defect, if there be
true rationality, in them, necessarily involves the com-
pensating power. It should be encouraged ; such men are
snubbed, and really think themselves fools ; they should
be taught sensible phenomena, and encouraged to look
at them in their own way, or say boldly : " This must be
the fact of that" As it is now, genius needs to be extra-
ordinarily self-confident or it is altogether repressed. The
man of genius, if he be not strong also, is afraid to speak
his thoughts ; he meets only ridicule, which cowes him ;
so he denies his own nature, endeavours to imitate the
sense-perceivers, and, necessarily failing, he remains a
poor, useless, foolish-seeming person all his life. So it is
there seem to be so few men of genius in the world.
By the fact of the man of Genius doing better than he
can conceive, is shown the possibility of the accomplish-
ment by man of more than man can conceive. So the
Mental Physiology. 127
work of Genius is truly in one sense superhuman (taking
our sense of human, in which the self is put for the
man) ; in Genius man is seen ; the self cast out and gone.
Here is an image of the true being of man in the destruc-
tion of the self. It is so in the intellectual sphere.
So men of talent think Genius " cannot be under-
stood ;" they think that there must have been a conception
before the work. Just so we think of nature ; that there
must have been a " conception " of it beforehand ; so we
cannot understand it. It is " a work of Genius," and we
take the " talent " view of it. We think it like a work
of talent, full of " contrivances." Our studies of nature
are like the man of talent trying to understand the work
of Genius ; He can see a great deal ; admirable design,
results secured, &c., but cannot fathom it altogether ;
there is evidently something more, some organic unity,
some "necessity." Is not this partly the meaning of
that unity of plan which is seen, and which cannot be
comprehended in " Design ?"
I see the life in thinking, how each interpretation
makes a new nutrition by suppressing some existing
instinctive or "arbitrary" opinion or thought. After
more thought I bring back the fact which I had sup-
pressed, as one with the opposite which resulted from its
suppression ; and this giving me the truth of that,
repeats again the process of nutrition in respect to some
other subject, causes me to suppress some other view,
and so it goes on, ever ; there is no end to this process,
as there is none to the life of Nature. When this can be
clearly seen as the life of thought, how simple and satis-
factory thought may be ; we shall never be afraid to
suppress, to oppose ; always giving freely, yet in absolute
obedience to law. We shall introduce our hypotheses
128 Philosophy and Religion.
knowing them to be unknown symbols ; suppress our
instinctive views knowing that Being is only in self-
sacrifice, and that that which dies does so for a higher
life.
The most effectual and most decided opposition to
wrongness of all sorts is involved in the knowing and
showing it to be nutrition, that it exists for the sake of
the good, and in order that it may be put right or
corrected. This view, so far from rendering us less
earnest in correcting error, or rectifying wrong, renders
us necessarily more so. We see not only the evil to
correct but the good, else unattainable, to be gained by
correcting it. Yet also it makes us tolerant, calm, loving,
reasonable, patient, hopeful ; full of confidence, indeed,
and smiling through our bitterest tears. It gives us
double power, greater fortitude and earnestness in doing,
greater calmness, patience, love in the mode of doing.
Not tolerant of error or wrongness, but rejoicing in it as
a means to truth and good. In truth, embracing instead
of opposing. It teaches us to say to the doers of things
wrongly : " You too are good workers ; you express the
phenomenon ; but this is the fact : this we owe to you,
it is the fruit of your labours; receive and enjoy the
reward of your toil." Is not this better than saying to
them : " You are doing quite wrong ; leave off and be-
gone, or imitate me." Which is likely to have most effect
as a remedy for wrongness ? Nay, which man is likely
to work most consistently, trustfully and earnestly, and
therefore perseveringly, for the remedying of wrong-
ness ? In fact it is the same thing as in physics ;
wrongness is the result of force, and can only be averted
by turning the force to good ; physical evil and good are
theory and interpretation. We see the beauty of our
Mental Physiology. 1 2 9
instinct of putting wrong right, of opposing all evil and
falsehood. It is instinct in its truest sense, the tendency
to function; we overthrow the wrong to reproduce the
force, and obtain its function through the organisation.
We should revere our own thought, if it is genuinely
our thought. It is God's very deed. To yield to fashion,
to take another man's thought instead of our own, is
ugly, evil, everything that is bad. If we could get our
eye right we should see that it is disease, a passion not
conformable to our life. That operation of an extraneous
force is disease, the very essence of it. Disease is not so
terrible, because it is in itself a bad thing ; it is equally
good with the best, simply a part of the universal life ;
but because it is a passion in us not conformable with
our life, a passion imposed on us by extraneous force.
This is just like having a thought imposed on us ; it is
mental disease ; a little more of it were death. To make
another man's thought our own, to see and understand it,
become one substance with it, is another thing ; that is
to grow and develop. The passive submission to, and the
living appropriation of, another man's thought, are two
opposite things ; development and disease.
What is the use of saying, or trying to say, that which
we do not see ? For example, that we perceive things in
time and space, &c., because they really exist so ; or that
animals have a certain form because they have an inherent
tendency thereto ; or that matter has an inherent gravita-
tion. What comes of it ? What, in the name of common
sense, is really said after all ? Saying is seeing ; and if
the two be separated they are useless both especially
the saying. There is no perception contained in or
involved by such expressions, and thus in fact as nothing
130 Philosophy and Religion.
is perceived, so nothing is said ; the words are no more
than the rattling of a stick. God uses them, however,
and by their means reveals something to us which we can
perceive, and in saying which we say something. We
cannot say anything we do not understand; just as
(consciously) we understand nothing we cannot, do not,
say. These expressions, which are intended to convey
incomprehensible ideas, are really meaningless. We
know nothing but that which we comprehend, see fully
and completely all about, not only that it is but that
it must be ; it must be involved in our fact of thinking,
or we do not know it ; and what is the use of saying that
which we do not know the idea is an absurdity. And
yet surely these theories must be said ; like the cycles
and epicycles they are things unreal and impossible, yet
having a reality to us until they have revealed the real.
It is just so with matter, which is a theory, phenomenon,
or chimera, a thing not only unreal but impossible;
which cannot be said, because it cannot be known ; yet it
is real to us until it has revealed the reality. Thus
matter is a theory, an invention, like the epicycles;
necessary to the conception of the phenomena until they
have revealed the fact.
This is the way those theories came to pass, those
attemps to say what we do not see. We perceive or feel
that if they were so the facts or phenomena would be as
we perceive them ; then we come in the strangest way, I
suppose by familiarity, to regard that which we have
invented as the easiest way for us of accounting for or
conceiving the phenomena, to regard that as a fact, as
certain ; and we cling to it with the mopt wonderful
tenacity, forgetting that we do not see it. We think that
is the very thing we do see. People think that matter is
the very thing that they see. It is all the result of our
Mental Physiology. 131
intuitive conviction of cause ; it is our life ; if we do not
perceive a cause we invent it (and quite right too). This
is the assimilation. Thus we come to be trying to say
what we do not see, to express what we do not know a
ridiculous position certainly in one sense, yet not to be
laughed at, and one at which God does not laugh ; far,
far from Him is it to mock His children's life. And all
this ceases by falling by its own weight; the theory
yields to the interpretation. Instead of our supplying
unknown causes, the facts show us their cause, which
thus seeing we know, and then can say.
Our individual minds live and die, constituting the
whole, the great universal mind, the mental life of
humanity ; just as the individual elements of our bodies
live and die, constituting thus the body itself, the physical
life of the man. This relation of the individual mind to
the universal mind is the grand presentation of the
problem of continued identity, the transitory elements
and the permanent whole, individual minds and the
universal mind ; as cells are formed, grow, and decay in
the body, and by their decomposition produce functional
effects, of development or other.
This is the mental life in Science. The theory yields
to the interpretation, but the interpretation yields a new
phenomenon, i.e. a new theory and basis for a new
nutrition. Thus in astronomy the motions of the sun
and stars, interpreted, reveal the motion of the earth,
which is now the phenomenon, and forms the basis of a
new nutrition, i.e. a new theory. So in Science as a
whole. The phenomenon is interpreted as a subjective
passion, viz. as motion in least resistance ; but this
reveals the holy act of God which is now the phenomenon,
and forms the basis of a new nutrition, i.e. a new theory.
K 2
132 Philosophy and Religion.
The motion of the earth has been theoretically regarded
as an original motion deflected by gravity. So now that
Science presents the holy act of God as the phenomenon,
we shall have to treat that theoretically, to invent many
things respecting it which of course we cannot foresee ;
and to reveal new truth by interpretation, which can still
less be foreseen.
To understand how all is life, the great thing is to
have an unbounded faith. This is life, that all evil is
nutrition ; by faith essentially it is to be seen. By faith
indeed even the interpreter acts ; he sees that which is
invisible. Faith is the source of life; of mental, of
spiritual life. Physically even, the analogue of faith
must be the source of life. To believe and know that
everything shall have a higher end and issue than we can
see, this is to see life, to feel it in and around us.
The Art of Thinking. 1 33
IV.
THE AKT OF THINKING.
How to think rightly Truth is suppressed and comes back in higher
form All thought is necessary Opinions are like institutions
Necessity of surrendering good opinions Opinion is form only, and
must change to preserve its value We only know form ; to know
the fact is to love That which must be thought must be dis-
tinguished from that which is true Use of analogy Thought is
Nature, and therefore cannot be false All opinions are true under
their conditions The danger of fear in thought The value of
logic What are axioms ? Newton's work great by its incomplete-
ness Truth is the union of opposites The minus in thinking
Necessity of sacrifice in thought The nature of hypothesis All
advance in thought comes by right use of words No ends in
thinking Thinking is an especial work Parallel of thinking to
art Imagination the chief element in true thought The Art
element in true thought parallel to the G-entile element in
Christianity.
No other art is so easy as that of thinking; and the
reason it has been thought so hard, and is so backward,
is because people have not seen its easiness, and have
been trying to do something difficult ; to do, instead of
suffering to be done. For thinking is a passive thing, a
life that is lived within us.
A rule for thinking is, that when two things seeni
opposed, and both appear true, not to deny one for the
sake of the other, but ask : " If it be thus, how can
the other be? So going on to see both right; not
134 Philosophy and Religion.
by means of hypotheses, but as necessary, as each in-
volving the other. And this necessarily comes through
seeing what the nature of the phenomenon is, its
relativeness, and dependence on us. We must embrace,
not exclude.
Were it not well if the advance of thought up to this
point had been peaceful and mutually helpful, instead of
so much fighting and disputing ? Or, if that were neces-
sary (as doubtless it was), were it not well if for the
future it ceased to be so ? This may and must be by the
recognition of two laws : (1) the necessary falseness of
hypotheses or opinions formed in ignorance ; and this
even if they agree with the phenomena (as gravity, e.g.) ;
that only shows the hypothesis to be good, not to be true.
If it did not do that it would not be tolerable, even as
hypothesis ; it is the business of a hypothesis to agree
with the phenomena ; only so can it answer its purpose
at all. And (2) that the true must be suppressed for
restoration. To recognise these two laws heals all in-
tellectual strife.
Are not all controversies between men just this : one
saying to the other, "You have not fulfilled the con-
ditions " ? And if that were done consciously, what a
mental millenium it were ! There need not be doubt or
quarrel; not fulfilling conditions means not making all
agree.
There comes to be another rule in thinking, viz., that
we need never waste our labour on resuscitating any
opinion or view which the world has rejected (Idealism,
e.g.) unless at the same time we interpret, or perfect it ;
doing away the defect which caused it to be rejected.
This is, truly, to unite with the opposite ; incorporating
The Art of Thinking. 135
the added phenomenon or details. But also, is not all
interpretation, all putting right, a restoration (although
perfected) of a previous opinion ?
We suppress a truth in order to have it back again
more truly. With regard to this law of thinking, how-
ever, the suppression must always be necessary, not
arbitrary. We cannot say : " Now I will suppress this
and get it better." Not so, but seeing that which is
opposed to it, let us think boldly, truly on. We are so
embarrassed in our thinking now because we are afraid
to suppress that which we hold to be true, i.e. to hold
opposed views. When we come, in thinking, to that which
seems opposed to anything which we must hold to be
true, we stop, to avoid contradicting this truth. But let
us suppress anything whatever ; we can only suppress it
because it is arbitrary to our view, being assured that it
will infallibly repeat itself with fuller, deeper meaning,
and in absolute oneness with that which seems now
opposed to it. For this is what occurs now : un-religious
men think on and suppress religious truths ; then at
certain intervals it is shown that the religious truths are
quite compatible with these opposite doctrines, and in-
deed require them, are best seen by means of them. Now
this will ever be the case; but then, why need this
process be gone through liostilely ? Why should not
religious men do this work of advancing their own doc-
trines ? The life once seen, the thing is done. The
suppression of a true view is not a rejection of it, but
merely a vital process ; like burying a seed and letting it
die that it may bear fruit. We do not despise and reject
the grain that we put into the earth ; we put it there
that we may live by it. We do not repudiate the passion
we control or suppress ; on the contrary, we suppress it
1 36 Philosophy and Religion.
that we may exercise it hereafter in nobler form and to
better purpose.
This is the confusion : we have supposed that holding
an opinion opposite to any given view involved a denial
of the truth of such view. This is an entire mistake ; we
need only admit that we cannot see all truth at once.
Practically we have been counting ourselves omniscient.
What we do is to lay aside for a time, to suppress in its
relation to ourselves, a certain truth while we look at the
same truth in another form; and the more intense and
entire our belief in any truth, the more easily and
confidingly we shall be able to do this, and we do it
for the purpose of seeing that truth itself better and
more fully, as one with its opposite ; or rather, we do
it in order to think, to know, to live; because it is
right, and in faith.
A true thing is never new, because that which is true
is always first erroneously said.
The way to think, is to think anything, to hold nothing
certain or fixed. There is nothing to start from, except
a certain state of consciousness, something which makes
me conscious of self and perceptive ; there are these
phenomena. This is the only fact. What causes the
phenomenon to be such ? Nothing is to be held, and
refused to be given up ; anything is to be thought, no
matter what it denies. Indeed it is certain that all
which we naturally think is illusion. All opinions and
prejudices of men are for calm investigation; not to be
set aside as mere evil and folly, but to be seen as parts of
the redemption, and their necessity ; why and how this
must be ; the ignorance that is their source. They are
necessary. We must trace it by a physical passive neces-
The Art of Thinking. 1 3 7
sity, a necessity having relation to the mental, or states
of consciousness ; but the true necessity is their being
necessary for man's redemption, of which the scientific
passive necessity is but evidence and sign. Especially
apply this to men's ideas about life, and why they will
not allow it to be reduced to mere physical necessity,
why this feeling must be, whence the confusion that
makes them feel a physical affair to be so inseparable
from the spiritual.
The distinction between logic or laws of thought, and
intuition, is this : the laws of thought are " thought in
least resistance." But for this there must first be the
thought itself. Surely our putting logic up as all, is
just like, in physics, resting upon the laws of nature, as
if the laws were all. An opinion answers to an institu-
tion ; it is an embodiment and expression of some fact or
condition of us, some necessity in the life of man. An
opinion is only good while it is this, i.e. while it is
according to the other conditions of knowledge, which
makes it a true expression of the " fact " or life. Like
institutions, opinions must change in order to maintain
their value. Both alike are forms, which must change,
in order that the fact may be. In our hold of opinions,
as of institutions, we put form for fact, and continually
sacrifice the fact to the form. So we should be ready to
change opinions which have done so much good, proved
so valuable, so necessary, under which, and dependent on
which, so blessed a life has been diffused. The power is
in the fact, not in the form. That opinion is life-giving
which expresses life, love, self-sacrifice. Keep, not the
opinion, but the self-sacrifice. The evangelical doctrine
is powerful while appealing as a doctrine of self-sacrifice,
but soon loses this attitude and becomes one of self-
138 Philosophy and Religion.
seeking. Here is the key to its history ; the reason that
it can do so much and yet so fails.
That a thing is wrong, does not mean that it ought
never to have been done or thought ; but that it ought to
be left off. Its good and rightness and necessity are in
its being cured. So in respect to opinion : here is the
struggle. When a thing is proved wrong, people think
that it ought not to have been ; but this is a mistake ; it
ought to cease, that is all. It is " in time." All this
matter of opinion, all the physical, is form merely ; its
being wrong is merely appearing wrong. There is no
true wrongness ; such phenomenal wrongness is in the
fact of right and Being. It is necessary to think wrongly
before we can think right we starting ignorant. Noth-
ing should be more welcome, more natural and expected,
than to see our opinions wrong. We should know it
must be.
We cannot give up our opinions, because we derive
good through them, and are conscious of honesty and
zeal for God in holding them. So Paul says of the Jews,
they were " zealous for God." But we cannot believe
that the men who in former ages had to give up their
opinions derived good from them and were honest in
holding them. This has been the difficulty that the
form is held for the sake of the fact which it has em-
bodied. All that is, is from Good; these forms were
every one of them the result of good, and therefore held.
And therefore too so harmful; because when, by the
negation or defect in the good that formed them, there
was more good demanding a new form, the old form
struggled against it. Good produces the forms and
opinions ; but it is a good necessarily defective. More is
ever being added ; therefore the forms and opinions must
The Art of Thinking. 139
change. We must learn to see that those before us were
just as honest and as good as we ; and that life consists
in the honest and zealous giving up of opinions.
That we have made opinions the condition for salvation
is just an instance of how we put the " not " for the fact :
being inert, of course we supposed that truth was in-
tellectual. Opinion is form only, and cannot affect the
fact ; nay, under different conditions the fact demands a
different form. See how the change of form in Nature is
simply because the fact will not change, and in order
that it may not. So to retain the actual truth, it may
and indeed must be needful to change opinions. The
entire intellectual regard without any exception shall
alter, shall be of every form; and in truth, the intel-
lectual history of the world is the form changing that the
fact may not change. A part of Nature is in this also :
opinions necessarily change because the fact will not.
Here is a guide to intellectual culture, to thinking. Let
opinions, the mental forms, change indefinitely; they
roust, in order that the fact may be the same : with every
changing relation these intellectual forms must change ;
clinging to them is doing violence. It cannot alter the
fact indeed, but it produces tension. When an opinion
is held longer than it entirely corresponds to the fact, or
is the opinion which would naturally by laws of thought
be in such a man's mind if not for old association, there
is tension.
What constitutes the difficulty of receiving new opinions
is men's unwillingness to give up those opinions which
are best and wisest. It is so now as ever; in every
advance men have had to abandon opinions sanctified by
devoutest feelings, confirmed by vigorous inquiry, founded
140 Philosophy and Religion.
on the best evidence ; than which no other opinions were
possible. We may be taught to see this, and so be pre-
pared in the future. We may be taught that our opinions
may be right for us, and yet not absolute rightness.
There may be opinions which it may be quite right and
necessary for us to hold to-day, but which we ought not
to hold to-morrow. The demand ever is to us to give
up, not that which we may have thought doubtful or bad,
but that which has been best and dearest (always except-
ing that which we morally know). Because a new view
runs counter to the best-established and most valuable
views, it is not therefore to be rejected : but this may be
demanded that it be inclusive not exclusive. It must
not merely suppress, but show as necessary. All ad-
vances have been thus inclusive ; yet how they too have
been at first rejected. So Christ supersedes Judaism
because He includes it ; it could not otherwise have been
set aside. Think how great a shock to a Jew the
demands of Christianity must have been. It could only
be complied with by seeing that it is an addition ; that
it embraces all the fact, and shows the form necessary.
To embrace an interpretation is not to reject, but to
fulfil, a form. Only so could the Jew have been at
liberty to receive Christianity. So is actual in relation
to our sensational religion. Men cling to the old con-
ception; feel it is Divine. Only by seeing that the
actual fulfils it, not denies, contains all the fact and
shows the form necessary only so can they embrace it.
Will it not be to the orthodox as Christianity to the
Jews ? Only a few of them will receive it ; but the un-
believers may, even as the G-entiles accepted Christianity.
Is not faith essential to true knowledge, for the very
reason that knowledge (intellectual knowledge that is)
The Art of Thinking. 141
can only come through giving up conclusions, and utter
unfixing of convictions a course which only faith can
enable us to go through. Without faith we cannot in-
tellectually know, because we cannot and will not fulfil
the conditions of knowing; will not give up and alter,
and utterly distrust ourselves. Is not this dependence of
knowing upon trust, beautiful? Is not the fact dimly
expressed by some old sayings ? An absolute trust in
God i.e. in that which is independently of all things,
and especially of our being right, is essential to knowing,
because essential to learning : without it we infallibly
cleave to our ignorant impressions, and dare not let
them go.
All opinion is meant to change. The sole valuable
thing is our being made to love, which can be in most
varied opinions. That very opinion which produces love
at one period, may crush it at another. The opinion is
that which it is necessary for us to think, and is deter-
mined by two elements : one constant, viz. the fact
itself; the other variable, viz. man's condition or rela-
tion to it, i.e. his ignorance a positive and a negative.
The negative must be in opinion as such. It cannot
correspond truly with the fact because only the actual
can do so. Love is the fact ; we know or comprehend it
when we are, or love. This is the only true knowing ;
then only does the subjective truly answer to, i.e. become
identified with, the objective or fact, because the fact is
only this. Here is the meaning of " knowing " being the
"oneness of subject and object." To know is to be that
which is known. So opinions about Christ too must
alter ; why should they not ? The love, the life, will
remain; the fact be more truly, more widely compre-
hended, the phenomenon seen as necessary. How can we
Philosophy and Religion.
think we know enough to know aright the history and
nature of Christ's relation to us? Is it not necessary
that with the removal of ignorance that fact must appear
to us (as all other facts) in ever new ways ? Does not
the fact demand ever changing forms, by virtue of our
being intellectual ? My opinions are in ever fluctuating
" form," varying with ever-varying conditions, according
to the resistances ; they affect no fact ; fact remains ever
the same, it is not in relation with my intellect. I
distinguish broadly between that which I am obliged to
think (by least resistance), and that which is true. An
opinion, as such, is necessarily false. It should be ever
ready to change on the least good, or even probable,
reason shown ; never held fast ; it is a perpetual flux, a
life, a part of Nature ; and only so is good. Holding fast
to opinion is like introducing stagnation into Nature.
Thus we should think : in the first place, our opinions
must be according to our best means of judging ; but
they will certainly be not the truth, if only because
partial. Second, the truth is certainly better than our
opinions. Therefore we must be ready at any time to
conform them to whatever evidence may appear to demand
it, for to know more truly must be to know better ; re-
membering that the office of the intellect is not to
determine the belief. People hold as opinions what is
against the best evidence, because of feelings. This is a
total confusion. To see the relation of opinions is the
only way to be free from this bondage. To do this is to
cut oneself off from the chance of rising to know that
better truth, is against the axiom that the truth must be
better than our thought. We should be willing to give
up a most pleasing opinion for one most repugnant, if
evidence demands ; knowing that this is the road to the
The Art of Thinking. 143
best. Say, if you like, this cannot be true; but it is
according to the evidence ; therefore it is my opinion,
held as means of discovery and advance, but not my
belief. The doctrine of "anticipation" is a great help
here : it enables us to admit and embrace all. Where
there is not sufficient evidence, think as you like only
remember that you do so. Do not fancy you have
evidence where you have not. In science as well as
theology what power and what freedom this gives us.
As a man's knowledge increases, either his opinions
must change or Tie must change. So a man who retains
his opinions, either refuses to learn more or does alter
himself in order not to alter his opinions. This last
continually happens, especially in successive generations ;
the men who retain the opinions of preceding generations,
who uphold them, must be different men in order to do so.
It is quite clear that if they had been such men they
would not at that different time and different state of
knowledge have had those opinions. The men alter
themselves, they do violence to some feelings, they coerce
themselves ; that which was genuine expression of the
entire man, and therefore left the man free and whole, is
no longer so, and therefore distorts the man. There is
nothing for it but to see that opinions are forms only,
and do not touch the fact. Here is the essential and
radical failure of orthodoxy ; it makes faith include a
certain intellectual view. Is not what is wanted a plan
of thinking which should retain every old opinion as a
phenomenon in its own place ; never abandoning it abso-
lutely, but seeing that in a certain state of knowledge it
must appear, and ever retaining the moral elements that
give it vitality ? As in advancing life the lower form
ever retains its place as the form of life at that stage.
144 Philosophy and Religion.
And do not the lower forms persist as monuments of the
progress ?
Men distrust analogical arguments, because they do not
know how to use them. They are aware there is no force
in them as they themselves employ them, therefore they
have no confidence in them however used. They cannot
distinguish between good and bad, and so distrust all
alike. The difficulty about arguments from analogy
depends upon whether a man can see what constitutes
such arguments at all.
The embracing all that ever was thought would be a
beautiful position, and how fruitful ! It links itself with
other views as to the nature of the mental operations ; viz.
suggests the thought that all man's thought is in, and
comes out of, Nature. It is there : it cannot therefore be
false, it can only be not enough ; it is in man's mind only
by its being. One has a clue whence to trace thought ;
how to understand what it is, and whence it comes : it is
Nature.
All opinions are true, under their conditions; and no
opinion is true, otherwise. So nothing has ever been
thought of or said which is not right and necessary ; only
the conditions must be fulfilled this is the great work
of the world. A true and right instinct guides to all
assertions ; there is not one too many ; only they are de-
fective, and then there are different assertions, expressing
differents parts of man. These furnish the conditions
for each other the problem is to unite them. May one
say that all are right, not because there is anything in
man that is so, but because they come into man from
without, and are not from him ? Each of those opinions
The Art of Thinking. 145
expresses, not self, but Nature : it is the limitations, the
excludings, express the self.
Whatever has been an old notion we shall come to
again ; not being conscious of turning, but to our surprise
finding ourselves again at it. It is like going away from
a spot round the world ; we go straight on, but infallibly
return to it. But we return with the gathered fruits of
our experience ; like a man returning to the home he left
as a child : the place is the same, but he is different ; and
he sees it quite different too. So God put man in Eden,
and drove him out ; and he goes round the globe back to
it; but it will be a different Eden to him when he
returns.
Very interesting it is to note how errors are exactly
related to truth, and so how significant. Errors are so
many sign-posts saying : The truth lies out there !
The road to the heavenly city lay through the Slough
of Despond. It was not to be reached by turning back,
cowardly, and keeping on terra firma (as Christian philo-
sophers seek to teach us to do). A man walking across a
chasm on a narrow plank all seems to reel to him ; but
it is only that he is giddy. Go on steadily, and you are
safe ; the only danger is in fear.
The way in which some writers dispose of scepticism,
viz. by the instincts, is very well for certain purposes.
But the road to true knowledge lies through those doubts,
not skirting the edge of them. That slough must be fairly
crossed, or the journey's end will never be reached. It is
easy to put the questions off, but we remain wanderers
and guessers until we cease to do so, and solve them.
L
146 Philosophy and Religion.
Those who do not use rigid logic are as if they used a
flexible pole to push a boat ; they do not get on. They do
not see that the fact of logic being against their thought,
and its repudiation by a portion of mankind, mean that
there is something radically false in their conceptions.
This is an evil result of acquiescence in mysteries ; they
think there is no need we should have clear under-
standing. This is it : some, influenced by the under-
standing, accept moral mysteries ; others, influenced by
the heart, accept intellectual mysteries. The reconcilia-
tion here is evident : get better premisses, which, with
logic, will allow the now non-logical results.
It is evident there must be some premisses which
will allow any results; and since men agree that pre-
misses are not to be proved, nor ought to be provable by
reason, it would seem that fresh ones are ever open to us.
The obstacle to advance is evidently the clinging to
premisses.
And the beauty is, that these improved premisses will
ever give better results than the best obtained by force,
against logic.
We cut off our hands and then complain of want of
power ; we refuse to be guided by sound reason, and then
complain how little we know. Logic is of boundless
power if we would not mistrust it so. For example,
when it is demonstrated that, in believing " matter," we
clearly believe in that which is not and cannot be, we say :
" Ah, those things are beyond the scope of our reason ; we
must not subject them to such examination; must
acquiesce in the mystery and suppose that our faculties
are too limited." Let us rather accept the fact, and see
what comes of it. We are necessitated to believe in that
which is not ; why so ? Here is a great fact, a glorious
The Art of Thinking. 147
problem ; we shall learn something from it if we will not
be afraid and shut our eyes. (And in the name of religion
too ; fancying that anything can hurt it : faith in God is
truly faith in ourselves.) Why are we compelled to think
that which is " not " to be ? Because we, in being, are
not. There is infinite instruction here ; the fact of being
landed in a paradox is proof that we can understand that ;
for these things our reason does suffice.
The question of axioms wants more looking into. It
does not do to have certain things laid down as true
without proof, and all proving rest upon those assertions.
I think I find axioms to be mere definitions, to be true
because the words used express and embody certain rela-
tions, which the axioms only assert explicitly, but which
are truly in the words ; that they are true because of the
meaning of the words, and may be proved by a reference
to such meaning. For example, " the whole is greater
than its part." This is proved by reference to the
meaning of the words " whole " and " part." So " motion
takes least resistance." " A child is younger than its
father " is an axiom : it is provable by referring to the
meaning of the word father.
Axioms are not unprovable ; they are provable, just as
it is provable that a child is younger than his father.
There are no unprovable propositions ; all truth rests not
on unprovable propositions but on ideas. There is a great
difference ; of course ideas are not provable ; for proof is
not a thing appropriate to them. Here is a point to look
to to trace ideas from sensation. Then, having ideas,
all reasoning (the mental life) becomes simple.
Propositions respect the relations of ideas to each other ;
and all of these are provable. There is no failing of the
process of proof, no falling short, in the sphere to whicL
L 2
148 Philosophy and Religion.
it is applicable, viz. in relation to propositions. To prove
an idea of course is absurd ; but as soon as a relation of
ideas or a proposition exists, then proof is available.
Axioms are not unprovable in the sense usually meant.
Now farther : that which is the nature of the truth of
axioms, must surely be the nature of universal proof : i.e.
proof of all kinds must lie in the nature of the ideas
themselves, and all proof must be matter of definition.
An axiom is only a proposition proved in the same way as
all others but of -the simplest nature. All processes of
proof must be just bringing down the special proposition
to some simple ideas, the definition of which is seen to
involve the point to be proved.
I see how mistaken people are in their great diffidence
in theorising, not venturing an opinion upon any points
on which they have not special knowledge, and so on.
They do not see the point at issue, which is not any fact
in Nature, but only a relation of our ideas. A theory
fixes nothing external to us, but only says : of these ideas
or conceptions of ours this is the right relation : leaving
the question open as to the ideas, and therefore as to the
fact. We are bound to be bold and free in thus regarding
our ideas. This modesty has for its fruits idle fancies,
hypotheses, and retardation of all progress. We are bound
to put our ideas in the right relation, or we pay the
penalty ; and the guide to this is simplicity ; the simplest
relation is the right. By this means it is, and this alone,
that we discover the wrongness of the ideas themselves,
and so advance ; by doing this boldly. Not doing it hides
from us our ignorance.
True interpretation ever not only shows that the phe-
nomenon is not, but also that it must be the phenomenon
(e.g. the earth's motion and sun's, Christianity and
The Art of Thinking. 149
Judaism) ; so only can the hypothesis be destroyed ; by
being " fulfilled " ("filled with the fullness of God").
Interpretation is so the fulfilment of hypothesis. The
form is filled with the fact.
The grandeur of Newton, the interpretative character of
his work, is shown in the rugged and unconcealed incom-
pleteness of it, by the rough unravelled edges : the cen-
trifugal impulse altogether unaccounted for, merely
postulated, and gravity itself to his own mind quite
unconceived as to its manner and mode. He said : This
much is so ; but as for these other things I do not know
them ; they must wait. It is the true attitude of the
interpreter; he did not fear paradoxes. (But he never
meant his unknown elements to be left as they have been
since.) A man that " makes a theory " does not leave
things unfinished like this ; he shows how all may be from
beginning to end. The interpreter shows how a part must
be, and leaves the rest. But men cannot now raise them-
selves to the height of Newton's mind; they do not
appreciate his attitude ; they suppose the thing perfect,
and that nothing more is to be done, letting the
postulates remain uninvestigated.
A man that cannot face a paradox is no good. The
great requirement for good thinking surely is, not to be
afraid. But then this depends upon a man's senses
whether he can see or not ; a man who sees his way is not
afraid ; one who cannot is sure to be so. The greatest of
all aids to good thinking is an absolute faith in the moral
and spiritual ; such as gives a firm conviction that nothing
that can be thought can be attended with any danger to
it, a faith entirely above the reach of doubt derived from
things that are in time. This sets a man at liberty not
150 Philosophy and Religion.
to disbelieve in the spiritual, but to avoid fancying that
he has to guard religion against the assaults of Science.
It is essential to good thinking to be able to receive
and admit and cling fast to that which is true, though it
be only part ; and though perceiving that there is not only
another side, but much that is opposite. " Hold fast that
which is true," and wait ; being willing for the rest ; but
do not try to make up ; do not relax and smooth down and
accommodate. The opposite is exactly what you want ;
but before you can properly receive that you must perceive
in its full and perfect force that to which it is opposite.
Truth is not between opposites, but a union of opposites :
if you will not have one of them first, you will never get
the other. Be bold; the timidity may be added after-
wards to make up the prudence, but if you will not be
bold you will never be prudent ; there cannot be prudence
without the boldness in it. We must have the extremes.
We must get well familiar with the conception of the
" not." It is essential to our thought ; as much to us as
to mathematics, which indeed exists by it. Our analytical
thought must be by means of the " not." If you speak
to a mathematician of minus twenty, he does not laugh
and say it is " mere nothing ; " he knows it is an element
of calculation just as important as any other. So when we
speak of the " not-being" of anything, we must learn to
rise above the vulgar instinctive contempt, and recognise
in that as essential a conception for knowledge as any
affirmation can be. " Not-being " is a relative fact of the
very utmost consequence, as we know practically well
enough. There is nothing more real, more important to
us in daily life than " not ; " we must bring our intellect
into accordance with it.
The Art of Thinking. 151
Surely this is the relation of the intellect to the moral
or spiritual the intellect is compelled to suppress the
fact of the moral, just as it is all other facts, in order to
see them rightly, or as necessary. Hence if the function
of the intellect be misunderstood, a difficulty arises.
Perhaps indeed it is natural and necessary to man to
conceive of the intellect as determining belief, until by
the development of the intellect itself he has learnt better.
And therefore when the intellect comes to deal in 'its
universal manner with moral, actual facts, difficulty
and dispute arise : for these facts are vital to man ; he
cannot be without them. The intellect deals with them no
otherwise than it does with all others ; but our necessary
clinging to them raises an embarrassment directly; the
intellect is put in opposition to the very fact of humanity
on the one hand, and on the other it is checked and
distorted, not permitted to act freely, by those who try
to maintain those facts which it cannot help suppressing.
Here of course is the origin of all the talk about the
" inability of the intellect to deal with spiritual matters,"
the necessity of "acquiescing in mystery," and so on.
The intellect can deal as well with these matters as with
any other questions ; first suppressing the facts it will
show them necessary. But it must first suppress the
facts ; if we will not let it do that, we simply prolong a
strife which can have but one end ; we oppose life, which
is ever a futile attempt. The intellect will render an
infinite service to religion, but she must do it in her
own way, and we only need to understand her.
Consider how absolute that law of our mental life, of
our advance of knowledge, seems to be ; that we first
invent hypotheses which are afterwards proved to be
unnecessary, and which yet are essential to that
1 5 2 Philosophy and Religion.
knowledge which proves them unnecessary, as nutrition
is to function. It seems impossible to us that they
should not he true, inconceivable and ridiculous to
suppose them not to be, until the farther knowledge
comes. Consider, I say, how absolute this rule is ; the
hypothesis seems simply saying what we see, the only
way of stating it. See the bearing of this on the
hypothesis of real matter. This was truly necessary till
now, I grant ; yet not more so than every exploded hypo-
thesis has been in its day. It is the nature of a hypothesis,
a false, a phenomenal view, to .be thus necessary and
unavoidable. We cannot state a thing we have observed
save in the form of a hypothesis ; the theory is involved
in the saying it. We assimilate it, that is, and must do
so ; we must express it according to our previous know-
ledge and mode of thought ; i.e. according to our not :
our ignorance, or not-knowing. Every hypothesis must
be set aside ; by this means comes the function. Apply
this to the hypothesis of real matter. If it is not set
aside, producing so a function, it fails of its object ; it is
a nutrition, a life, wasted. We must not cling to them ;
at least only until they effect their function ; then let
them go all, all. They are evils, like the evils of society ;
they exist to be put an end to, effecting so a function,
not arbitrarily, but necessarily, or rightly. The evils of
society must be put an end to not arbitrarily, but because
it is right ; (this is the necessity here) from love ; this
is the function, the development. They must be not
merely suppressed, but put aside by introducing something
which was not there before. This is very important.
All error is defect, is a result of want. In thinking
of philosophical and other systems, to regard them aright
we should not look at the forms of the error, this misleads
The Art of Thinking. 153
us, takes us away from the essential point. We should
regard the negation, ignorance, or wanting fact, from
which it arises. The mischief in respect to thought is
this : we will not give up. Some self-sacrificing, earnest,
deeply religious man, starting from our false assumptions
false "because defective thinks. With all his heart and
soul he gives himself to this most needful of all human
works ; and it results in some doctrine, which, when
fairly stated and tried by our assumptions, seems like
atheism and blasphemy. This is the logical result of our
premisses; and what is it for? Why, to make us alter
them ; to show us our ignorance. But we, clinging to
our assumptions as if they were our life, say : " What a
wicked man ! " we raise an outcry against him, and banish
and proscribe his works. Why, there is more piety in
one half-hour of that earnest toil of his, than in all our
ceremonious, rigid, self-satisfied, self-seeking life. Why
has he arrived at such a bad conclusion, then ? Because
he reasoned rightly. You have made up something to suit
yourself; he has given up himself to find what is, and
takes it, when he seems to have it, be it what it may.
He believes in God and trusts Him ; you not an inch
farther than you think you can see Him. (Surely the
wonders faith works at this day are not less than those
it wrought of old.) These strange, intolerable results are
the necessary means of opening our eyes to our wretched
assumptions ; these show us how ignorant we are ; these
are the fruits, natural and necessary, of our view of
Nature and of God; the badness is not in them but
in their cause.
The point of hypothesis is, that it is the statement of
the fact, as if it were necessary, but without any
true necessity shown. Arbitrariness is put for neces-
154 Philosophy and Relig ion .
sity : e.g. the doctrine of " specific tendency " seems to
make the special forms of living things necessary, but
does not truly do so. It is as if necessity were inferred
instinctively from the fact of Being. The source of
hypothesis is the demand of man (or Nature) to have
every fact necessary. Again the spiritual is here ; for this
demand for necessity is a demand for law. It is because
all true Being is necessary ; i.e. it is action, one with law
i.e. is Love. Science can end nowhere but in the
recognition of Love as the only true or absolute Being.
Gravitation is exactly a hypothesis in this sense, a
fact supposed as its own cause. What we have to do is
to find out wliy bodies attract each other ; then we at once
exclude the " hypothesis " and see it necessary. So
chemical affinity, surely is just a hypothesis. But such
hypotheses are good in their way; for they mark the
perception of the fact ; though they are absurd when
supposed as causes of the facts. They necessarily arise
with the perception of any fact : we may say that no fact
is truly perceived save in and by means of such a hypo-
thesis. Is not this a law of our intellectual life ? So our
hypothesis of an external world is simply our way of per-
ceiving the fact of our passion. So, before the interpre-
tation, the hypothesis cannot be discarded ; to deny it is
to deny the fact. (E.g. we must believe in gravitation,
until we know why bodies approach ; in specific tendency,
until we know why all forms are; in chemical affinity,
and chemical elements and compounds, until we know the
" why " of the phenomena.) Is not this partly the inten-
tion of cause and effect ? The hypothesis stands to us for
a cause ; and of course, as nothing can be without a cause,
to deny this, which is to us the cause, is virtually to deny
the effect or fact. This is both why we suppose the
hypothesis and why we cannot give it up. Hypothesis
The Art of Thinking. 1 5 5
seems to supply a cause without truly doing so ; it seems
also to supply a law. It gives us something, or rather some
" not," which is so intangible and obscure that we may
fancy it (according as we are devout or undevout), either
existing by itself, or immediately dependent upon God.
It serves to hide the gap as it were ; it " conceals our
ignorance."
The philosopher could not think of the individual fact
(e.g. chemical union) as existing of itself ; nor the man of
piety as being directly caused by God ; but each of them
puts this fact as a hypothesis ; viz. supposes a " chemical
affinity ; " and then they can think of it, each one as suits
him best. So hypothesis lures us on, encourages us at
first, making us think we know something. Then, by
failing, it reveals to us the fact. I see better from this
again how all observation is truly subjective, is our own
sensations hypostatized.
There are no words expressing man's thought which do
not answer to something. Words live, do not come by
chance. It is ever a folly to deny anything that is
embodied in the words of a people. We should show what
fact the words mean, what the fact is by the non-recog-
nition of which the necessity for inventing hypotheses
has arisen ; show the negation. Something acted on men
to make them invent : what was it ?
All advance in knowledge is the art of using words
rightly ; " the difference of true and false is a question of
expression." Words are first applied to the phenomenon,
so they have a fixed and definite meaning ; then the art
of using them is that of applying words having such
phenomenal signification to the real : so it is in truth the
fixing of the correspondence of the two. Here is the life ;
156 Philosophy and Religion.
now one sees the bond, the organization ; and how words
lead us on, and necessitate our progress, prevent our
stopping, because so long as our view is incomplete words
are not rightly applied, and are felt not to be so. There is,
in the meaning of the words we use, that which requires
adjustment; the phenomenon does not receive its full
interpretation by such use of them. So the words are
necessarily truer than the thoughts, because larger ; they
assert, by the necessity of the case, more than we mean.
They connote more than we think of ; so if we use them
aright, we must have affirmed (and truly) more than
we meant. This is what I have seen when I said words
had a meaning of their own the very words by which
we try to define our first and primary positions, contain
assumptions. So I suppose a child rises from mere phe-
nomenalness at first, and so language ; though the words
refer truly to the actual. Historically (as Fichte would
say) they are accommodated from the material ; but phi-
losophically, it is the reverse the accommodation is to
the material. But though the world is at first merely the
phenomenon to the child, yet it is not natural to have all
our hypotheses. It is as in astronomy : to the child the
sun moves ; but the Copernican astronomy is immensely
more natural to it than the Ptolemaic. The greatest
violence is done to " natural conception " by these hypo-
theses introduced on the basis of the existence of the
phenomenon. They never would be but for our rooted
assumption.
Every word is tied, as it were, to a certain phenomenal
meaning, and with these words we test the spiritual. So
all metaphysics is necessarily the interpretation of the
phenomenon. Now it is true, words are, in time, sepa-
rated more or less from their first phenomenal meaning,
but this takes place only according to the laws of the case,
The Art of Thinking. 157
and virtually the union is ever maintained, for the pheno-
menal signification is embodied in the secondary meanings.
So each generation finds its predecessor's statements wrong
or imperfect ; for observe, our increasing knowledge of
the phenomenon itself, i.e. as phenomenon, and in its own
mutual relations, must give larger, deeper meanings to
the words. So metaphysics ever waits for Science, for the
meaning of its words to be unfolded. Metaphysics and
theology can be developed only through the medium of
Science.
All good thinkers, so far as they are good, are charac-
terized by indifference to results ; they do not care what
sacred doctrines they set aside.
As for the objects I set before myself in my thinking
I have none. Exactly this is what I have not : I refuse
all objects. I simply see, and have no wish, no desire, no
anticipation ; nothing I want to maintain or enforce. I wish
to see what is : this is all. I tend to no end ; Nature uses
me. I have faith : faith that that which is is better than
that which I could devise ; faith that if I say what I see,
that will most contribute to the knowing of that which
is, which is the only good in respect to knowing ; in truth
the only knowing.
I do not hold that I can construct a final system ; mine
is but a step not more truly right than that which has
rightly preceded ; only the present right. Dearest and
most welcome of all men to me is the man who shall super-
sede me. His further and clearer vision is to me even as
if it were my own. But it must be by a step forward that
I am to be overthrown. I am not so foolish as to imagine
that I, a mere channel for the surging tide of truth, can
158 Philosophy and Religion.
stop its ever advancing waves. It flows through me and
goes on. Thank God ! When I have done my work what
can it be to me but joy that others also should do theirs.
Thinking ought to be recognised as an especial work,
and an especial gift, attaining its real use only by assiduous
culture. What most (even cultivated) men should seek
and expect is the capacity not to do it but to enjoy
and appreciate it. In fact it not unfrequently happens
that what people set up as their reasons, for example, for
disbelieving a particular doctrine are, in truth, the very
reasons for accepting it. Thinking, indeed, includes both
the attractions of art and the positive results of Science.
This art of thinking must have its principles founded
on the nature of our faculties, and on the truth of Nature.
It must act on all these things, and fulfil all their
demands. It must embrace and express the facts of our
total condition and of our environment.
Surely the parallel of thinking to art especially to
painting will throw light upon both ; upon each through
the other. Shall we find a correspondence even in the
details of their course ? We have seen that thinking is
like music, and in comparison with music how undeveloped
and poor ! Now, from both these parallels will not light
and even guidance come ; guidance in thinking, the
hardest of the arts, from the easier and therefore sooner
developed ones ? There is a new value thus revealed in
them. Nay, may it be that by serving as guides and
servitors to thought the arts are to render their great
service of interpreting Nature ; by being the ministers of
the interpreter of Nature thought ? They are its minis-
ters, as well as the senses under the form of observation
and experiment. Bacon then erred, and our recent philo-
sophy has erred too, in using only one of its ministers to
The Art of Thinking. 159
serve it ; the consequence has heen dissension and sepa-
ration. The arts have erected themselves apart from
thought, and there has been even strife. In truth, all art
and all observation are one ; members of one body, built
into one Head Thought.
The chief element in thinking is really the imagination ;
imagination either as the power of seeing the unseen, or
of putting ourselves away from the centre, and taking a
view including ourselves, and not projected from us ; that
is, of truly using our impressions. Surely there is no
exercise of the imagination equal to that which is involved
in interpreting the vision of that unseen which presents
to us the phenomenal, interpreting Nature.
The imagination, then, being the true faculty which
works in thinking, how comes it that logic, being
simply a kind of skeleton in it, has been supposed the
thought faculty ? May we not say of logic that it is the
condition or mode under which imagination works in
thinking, as in other arts it works under other conditions ?
The imagination in thought has been suppressed for
perfecting. In Art there has been beauty, the ideal, as
opposed to thought which possessed truth rather ; each of
these confessedly being by the negation of the other.
True thought is the union of truth and beauty.
The art-feeling is the affirmation of joy. Joy dwells in
that region, is its idea, its principle ; but it is not so of
the phenomenal ; hence the separation. And. that which
shows the phenomenal as the true sphere of joy must be
union with the actual, taking away the middle wall of
partition.
What was added to the Gentile elements in Christianity
is parallel to that which is added to the art-elements in
1 60 Philosophy and Religion.
true thought. The Gentile culture bears the same rela-
tion to Judaism as Art now does to Science, Judaism
answering to the line of growth, to Science. As Christi-
anity was presented in two phenomena, so the actual
world is presented to us in two phenomena ; the physical
is the one, the ideal or spiritual is the other.
One may note here a reason for the observation that in
order for true knowledge of anything, it must be pre-
sented to us under two forms. For when this is the case
there is a possibility of the two uniting, by the exclusion
of the negation, and presenting a fact that appeals to
another kind, or mode, of knowing. (Two sensible appre-
hensions to one intellectual apprehension ; two intellectual
apprehensions to one spiritual knowledge.)
Eecognising the part of imagination in true thinking
we see another thing. Since logic in its development
suppresses imagination, is not this very fact proof that
they are two complementary lines ? Is not the exercise
of imagination which is thus suppressed the anticipation ?
Does not the suppression prove this, and prove that the
interpretation will be its perfecting ? Whenever one deve-
lopment of human tendencies especially suppresses any
other, this is to be perfected and restored in the fulness of
that other. Thus, those tendencies, those emotions of joy,
free-liking, &c., to which religion in its progress is opposed,
are emphatically the ones in which perfected religion
consists ; the opposition is the proof of it. (Even as the
exhibition and play of the vital force is the very substance
of life ; that for which all opposition to it, and failure of
it, in normal development, exists.) So the question is
answered why logic especially was put as thinking. It is
just as that which opposes and checks pleasure and
freedom, activity and enjoyment, has been put down as
religion. The intellectual process, referring all to general
The Art of Thinking. 1 6 1
laws, sinking all individualities in abstract statements,
must repel the imagination ; even as the developing
religion the strongly sensitive and joyful. And so the
imagination and the pleasure, thus suppressed, barred
and cut off, have been keeping up an isolated and in
part despised life of their own. Their true relations
have been misapprehended; they have to be grafted in
again. Then will there not be " life from the dead " ?
Will it not be a renovation when pleasure becomes one
with religion, and art with strictest thinking ?
As Christianity came through the Jews, but turned to
the Gentiles, and had its real kindred with them, with
their liberty and spontaneity, so does not the true
thinking, though coming indeed through the love of logic
(or reason or science) have its true kindred and affinity
with imagination, the line of liberty and joy ? Think
how image-making was forbidden to the Jews, and Art
(with the exception of music) banished ; and how Chris-
tianity has again recalled Art. So those devoted to
thought proper, or to Science, turn away from its true
significance. We have to appeal to the imagination-class,
and say : " What you ignorantly worship is here ; Nature
is this."
Is it not beautiful to see the whole department of
imaginative life as one of two imperfect lines coming by
a negation ? There is no more any mystery in it ; its
mystery is that it is not enough. Truth, true knowledge
and thought is such involves such seeing the unseen
that from it, by negation, poetry must emerge.
In this more perfect life of imagination in union with
logic is exhibited the perfect human joy that is in
sacrifice ; the perfect having that is in giving. In what
crushes down one person's spontaneity or imagination,
M
1 62 Philosophy and Religion.
that of another finds a more perfect freedom and satis-
fation ; hut in no one is this latter primary and imme-
diate; it is always a result of discipline and learning.
" Thy statutes have 'become my song." Law crushes all
men's spontaneity at first; hard fact crushes all men's
imagination ; hut they may he made one at length, and
the man may say : " These real and strict logical relations
are become the very world of my imagination."
Thought can achieve such wonders for us, can do and
give us so much ; can elevate our life to the region of the
actual ; surely the need for the attainment of its fruits is
immense. But this can only come in one way. We must
recognise thinking as a special art, and cultivate the
power of appreciating it, of criticism.
The Self and Consciousness. 1 63
V.
THE SELF AND CONSCIOUSNESS.
Individuals are states of humanity Individuals are separate because
physical Man as a parasite The self is negation Eternal life is
deliverance from the self Descartes perverted modern thought by
starting from the self The uutrustworthiness of consciousness
True consciousness is the opposite of self-consciousness Un-
satisfactory nature of the doctrine of immortality The desire for
immortality is not man's highest aspiration What absorption into
God means Love is not self-sacrifice We want martyrs To give
love is to create Men are sacrificed for man How happiness is
attained Only love can satisfy Happiness is a putting aside of
consciousness Pleasure comes from want Personality is not
highest God is not personal The Trinity God is Being No
mind without body God as light The fact is love and is shown
by Christ.
WHAT is that " I " that has consciousness ? After all
that question returns. Surely it is the same as : What
is that thing that has weight ? Take it away and leave
the consciousness, and it is not missed. Now may not
this individuality or personality be states ? Since this I
is in time it must be only a form, only a state ; just as
" things " are states. Now do I not get a clue to the
relation of persons, i.e. of the physical humanity, to the
actual ? There is a succession of persons ; they cease,
and must therefore be states. Persons are states of
humanity ; they are forms or states from the actual, by
a " not."
There cannot truly be a " not." We are forms, as I
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164 Philosophy and Religion.
have said; but then just as a thing cannot truly be
because it is only a form, so cannot a person. We are
forms of course ; the 2, the person, is a " state " of
humanity. In that very axiom that only forms can be
in time, it follows that persons are forms, or states.
States or forms of what? Why, of humanity. This
personal is the form of humanity from the " not." In
saying our body and mind are part of God's act which is
Nature, I have said all this before ; personality goes with
the mind.
Must we not look at this self, or consciousness (clearly
they are one), in connection with the unity of humanity ?
There are now many selfs, in humanity, because it
is fallen. It is as material that men are many or
separate. Even mentally one sees how they are one.
Without his material nature clearly man is one. First
destroy this separateness of men and make one humanity
again; t!:en the separateness of man and God is de-
stroyed : this is redemption. Yet what beauty and joy
there are from this separating humanity ; here is the
demand for love, self-sacrifice. See how the demand for
self-sacrifice, in respect to men, is only of the material
or sensational ; love is the doing away with the separate-
ness ; it is making our material powers another person's,
his will, his demands, act through me. Let this be only
perfected and man is no more many. The separate indi-
viduals are from the " not " in relation to man, as man is
from the " not " in relation to God.
Are we not parasites ? See how the parasite has not
the life of that living body on and in which it is ; it is
part and yet not part.
So we are part of the physical universe, and yet dis-
The Self and Consciousness. 165
tinct. We have an individual life which it does not
share ; yet all that is in us is from it ; and all our power,
all that by which we live, is its. Just so is the parasitic
animal to its nidus, as we are to physical Nature.
Now the parasite has individual life, in which its nidus
does not partake ; yet is that nidus living, only its life is
larger. From our point of view we might well see how
its nidus should be to the parasite distinguished from
itself as not living. The parasite might well seem a
living or organic thing in an unliving " world."
Is not the universe thus collectively living ; in relation
to us being as the tissues of an animal are to the parasite
in them.
This is the entire point of all I see ; the root, heart,
and being of my views that self is negation : all is in-
cluded in it.
But then, how can " negation " be conscious, intelligent,
and sensational ? This is just what proves it to be nega-
tion, this shows it in time. There must be a not; for
being conscious, &c., as implying time, means the " not ;"
for that which is in time is not. So, except as being
negation, there were not possibly self, or consciousness,
or intelligence. Think how in a limb, e.g. so long as it
is healthy there is no consciousness of it; when it is
diseased then consciousness begins. The negation is not
the consciousness, but the action of Being on the
negation produces consciousness and all that is thus
" personal." The " Being " is actual ; all that is neces-
sarily is actual.
Being redeemed is being delivered from ourself not
therefore necessarily from consciousness, or perception,
of it, but from the illusion of thinking it the fact, or our
1 66 Philosophy and Religion.
true Being, i.e. from self-love or self-regard. We cannot
believe but that we are all right in our views. But if we
can give up ourselves, then we can see that perhaps we
are subserving some much greater end than any benefit
to ourselves; and may not feel so sure that we must
know all these essential points. So we shall comprehend
that God may permit us to be in error and darkness, to
redeem the world. We think God loves our self ; that
self is of very little regard to the universe, of very little
regard to God ; of which the proof is, that we are only
then right to the universe or one with God, when it is of
very little regard to us. God hates it, and so should we,
and never grow content with it. That is why God
abhors self-righteousness ; He hates self. He means to
destroy it ; that is His love. It is curious : our idea of
heaven is saving ouiself; God's idea is destroying it. He
will deliver us from it and utterly exclude it and do it
away, so that it shall plague us no more. Now here is a
contradiction : the self will be taken away from us. This
is the eternal ; therefore to the intellect it is a contradic-
tion. To be thus delivered from self is eternal life.
Looking at the physical human race, we think it dies
out and nothing comes of it; but this is not possible.
See how false opinions die out, necessarily ; but in this
is the removal of the ignorance ; they cannot possibly die
out but by that. So the human race ; it cannot possibly
die out save by the removal of the death of man, by virtue
of which it is.
To be without a self, to get rid of the self, is simply to
have all things to us exactly as they are. Things are so
to God ; that is, He is not a self ; an infinite self is not
self. As with space and time, infinity excludes them;
The Self and Consciousness. 167
space, time and self are correlative ; space as inertness or
limit, time as form.
Omniscience is this not being a self; even as omni-
presence is not being in space, and eternity not being in
time. The negation necessitates our affirming by nega-
tion. Self-sacrifice perfected is no more self-sacrifice.
He is in us, self is cast out ; there is no other deliverance
from self.
Who are we, what is the human race, that we should
be right, that we should not be subject to an illusion ?
This self of ours is to be destroyed, and man freed ;
therefore this illusion. God has sent us a strong delusion
that we should believe a lie ; we are damned through it,
as we know ; from which damnation only Christ revealing
the fact to us can save us. Is it not certain that this
authority of consciousness is maintained through fear.
And what good ever came of fear ? Our idea of God as a
"self" spoils the relation; we conceive Him as loving
Himself; this as the best and highest for Him, but not
for us ; we are to love Him chiefly, He Himself. So
perfect sympathy and oneness are impossible ; as we see
that in friendship the perfect sympathy is in loving each
other. But seeing God as Being, the absolute Being, all
is right. Now we see that our love and God's love are
one ;^alike in Him and us it is love of Being ; God's love
is not love of self, but answering to ours, love of Being,
love of us as Being is in us. It is thus the perfectness
of love ; love of self in love of others. God's self-love is
love of the creatures and no other, for the " Being " is
them. So in being alive or one with God, man's self-love
also is one with love of others, i.e. of all ; because it is
God in Him. Here is the being a new creature ; being
one with God, all things are made right to us.
1 68 Philosophy and Religion.
Has not Descartes given a perversion to modern thought
by making his position this heing of the self; though he
only expressed it, of course ? How utterly false a starting-
point, the assertion of the self as Being. It is true,
however, the " cogito " proves Being ; there can he none
of those predications without that. If it were, " I think,
therefore there is Being," that would be good. In truth,
is not the step direct from the " consciousness " to God ?
We may say of a shadow, " It is dark, therefore there is
Being." Do not all these passive affections (thinking,
among them) necessarily belong to the negation ?
All this work about the authority and trustworthiness
of consciousness means simply that man wants a fixed
standing point, and cannot be content with a life which
perpetually grows. It is unbelief, and it is fear. And
here is another connection; unbelief is one with fear.
But then love casts out fear ; therefore that unbelief is
not love. Love and faith so identify themselves, as in-
deed they must, being evidently one. If consciousness
deceives us, why, from the illusions of consciousness,
should we not learn true facts as we do in reference to
the physical, from the illusions of the sense? This
argument about consciousness is nothing different from
an argument by which it should be maintained that the
senses cannot deceive. We are striving, just so foolishly,
and in just such foolish fear.
Consciousness of self is the true opposite to conscious-
ness. Observe, in ordinary life, self-consciousness is ever
disease; the right and proper consciousness is that of
other things, of external objects. The right conscious-
ness indeed is perception, consciousness of other than
self; when we become seZ/'-conscious, then we are morbid
The Self and Consciousness. 169
at once. And see how Adam's change at the Fall is even
most prominently seen as se//-consciousness. So the true
consciousness is consciousness of Nature. With this idea
of a consciousness not of our own self, how beautifully
"benevolence and sympathy, and indeed all virtue, appears.
Is it not, as it were, a consciousness of others ? And
again : is not this universal consciousness, in truth, an
infinite, or rather the infinite, consciousness? There is
no possibility of ceasing, nor of loss ; it is the eternal.
To it there can be no evil ; change or loss is consciously
of form only. Here is the perfect happiness ; it is the
utter loss of self.
I conceive our present doctrine of immortality is very
unsatisfactory. Is it not like that of the matter and
force not ceasing, though " things " do (which indeed is
used as illustration and argument) ? I fancy there is
nothing more in the one case than in the other; it is
abstractions merely. The man ceases, even as the thing ;
it is the fact only that does not cease ; which, I take it,
is not the mind, as we talk. That which is in time
cannot be eternal ; we are deluding ourselves with a vain
fancy. And surely Socrates' argument applies only to
the actual if there be that in a man. If actualism seem
to deny personal immortality, it denies nothing that is
worth retaining.
Surely the desire of personal immortality is not truly
a noble or worthy attitude of humanity. At least it is
not the highest. Granted it was an advance in humanity
to attain to it, but may it not be a greater to give it up ?
Man rose to it from less, from indifference; he should
give it up for more, for self-sacrifice. We should lose
1 70 Philosophy and Religion.
this feeling of good and evil to ourselves apart from that
of others. And is not this an instance of a law ? Perhaps
the " self-consciousness " is a rise from unconsciousness,
but it is a greater rise to altruistic consciousness. From
ignorance first to error, then to knowledge. And is it
not the self ever first, self-desire, self-consciousness, self-
knowing, i.e. the not-Divine, and then the Divine, or
altruistic ? What I would have is to have no joy or
sorrow of my own apart from that of others, to escape
this isolation and limit, and to be like God, whose joy
and sorrow are in others ; who creates. Is this creation
to be in others ? So in our poor way we say of the
creator, the artist, that he is in his work. This I mean
by being Divine ; it is being infinite, unlimited.
The dispute respecting " absorption into God " may be
easily disposed of by the scriptural statement that we are
one with God, even as Christ is. The perplexity arises
altogether from our introducing physical, inert, or nega-
tive conceptions into our relations to God. There is
certainly no absorption, because there is Being and life.
It is not losing, but having ; not ceasing to be, but being.
We, having put the negation for fact, find the giving life
a destruction. We are one with God, now. These
physical relations, to which alone the idea of absorption
applies, these negations which put us in time, have no
bearing. Get to think rightly on the subject, and we
see that the question of " absorption in God " (regarded
as a ceasing to be or indeed in any way) has no mean-
ing. It is self, death, that we are delivered from ; will it
not content us to have God's Being ? Must we stipulate
for a sense of personal enjoyment ? Let us be consistent,
and bargain for perpetual youth, or that we may fare
sumptuously every day.
The Self and Consciousness. 171
Love in relation to consciousness, self, or time, is self-
sacrifice ; but this is an accident in our perception, not
love in itself. It is absurd to make love self-sacrifice ;
even as it would be to define a fact as the destruction of
its absence. Light is the destruction of darkness if there
be darkness ; but to define light as destruction of dark-
ness is absurd; where light perfectly is there is no
darkness ; where love is perfectly there is no self. Love
is positive ; we do not know what it is it is God, Being ;
but in respect to us, it is self-sacrifice. A Being with a
" self " cannot know Love as it is, cannot know God.
Love must be manifested in the flesh as self-sacrifice ; to
know God truly is to be in heaven, is to escape from this
self, to be freed from consciousness, emancipated from
time ; that is, to be eternal.
Is not this, indeed, an excellent definition of the self
the way we feel the absence of God ?
Men are not truly less prejudiced than they were ; nor
are the feelings which prompted persecution different ;
they are but of less intensity. The form is changed, not
the fact : we are glad for those to suffer, to have no
opportunity of influencing men, who seem to us to be
putting forth injurious doctrines. And in those days, if
there were martyr-making flames, there was also the
flame of martyrdom in the human heart ; and that was a
considerable counterpoise. People could see men carried
unflinchingly to the stake, and not be utterly puzzled to
imagine why; they might execrate the impiety of the
man, but they did not lift up their hands in pious amaze-
ment at his folly. It would not have been altogether out
of their comprehension how a man should possibly find
anything better than a large income. We want the spirit
1 72, Philosophy and Religion.
of martyrdom again, and nothing will kindle it but
martyrs.
If we were self-sacrificing, we should see that nature is
self-sacrifice ; it is because we are self-seeking that we
see God as such. It is ever so ; that which we see must
be that which we are. So we cannot be " saved " by
nature, because we see in nature our own death ; cannot
be saved by being like a God whom, because of our own
death, we see as self-seeking. We are shut out from the
possibility of salvation save as God manifests Himself
as self-sacrificing ; which can only be in the self-sacrifice
of a man, because it is only in a man that we can see
self-sacrifice to be such. He cannot show us His self-
sacrifice in Nature, because Nature is that very fact, and
we cannot see it.
We cannot get Being for ourselves ; we must have it
given us ; we must be created. Here is the necessity for
Christ, for God's self-sacrifice ; it gives us life. Giving
love is the true creating, not the making of substance.
We cannot create ourselves ; practically we know we
cannot make ourselves love.
We ought to look at humanity, and be content for its
sake. We find it so difficult to look beyond the I ; we
think if all men be not saved there is so much loss of
humanity; but it is for the sake of man that men
must be destroyed. So, too, we put the " not " for the
fact. God will destroy men, body and mind, that man
may be. Humanity is the Being, the object of love.
Is it not one humanity in many forms, in many indi-
viduals ; and this succession of individuals or forms goes
on until humanity is redeemed ? This redemption of
The Self and Consciousness. 173
humanity is the end, the function of the human race.
This series of men is the fact under various forms ; is not
this what Nature represents ? God saves man ; i.e. man
is ; for us to be saved it is only necessary that we should
be man, should be. God takes care of all that is ; only
the "not" He destroys. But to be man we must be
united to Christ ; for He is man, and all true humanity
is one with Him.
This only is to be happy, not to pursue it. Self-sacrifice
is eternal happiness. To give up the pursuit of physical
happiness, to seek for heaven as not physical, is, in that
very fact, to sacrifice self to love. It is to be in heaven.
The eternal cannot be pursued, it is. Therefore he who
is '* pursuing happiness " cannot be on the road to heaven.
And necessarily the pursuit of happiness must fail ; it is
exactly grasping at a shadow, a " not." Yes, our position
is precisely that, throughout, of taking a shadow for the
fact. To be happy means to love ; if we are to be happy
at all, it is now in this very present fact ; for this is the
eternal fact ; there is no other fact for us. If we cannot
be happy in sacrifice now, we never shall be ; for there
never will be ought else never it is the eternal.
He who pursues happiness must be miserable ; as he
who seeks comfort must be uncomfortable. And that we,
thus miserable, do not know it, think ourselves happy if
we can only succeed in our incessant pursuit ; what does
this show but that we do not know what it is to be
happy? See how a person born with skin disease is
content to pursue comfort, never having had it ; finds his
pleasure in this miserable temporary relief; does not
know (at least for a time) how wretched he is. So are
we ; so engaged in seeking relief for this disease that we
do not know, have no idea or imagination of what the
1 74 Philosophy and Religion.
true powers, capacities, happiness, of manhood are. We
do not believe that there is anything else better for man
than to scratch himself. (It is Plato's illustration, not
mine.) The only way to have happiness is to be freed
from this disease. And our self-indulgence, our getting,
does but aggravate that disease of not-happiness. There
is no attaining happiness so. We must be cured.
And see with what an eagerness of passion these things
are pursued ; we must do and enjoy such things ; we are
overpowered, are not ourselves. That not-happiness, that
discomfort, overpowers all things. All truly valuable and
great objects and pleasures are nothing to such a poor
man; he must scratch himself. So are we with our
imperious passions, our necessity for pursuing happiness,
in spite of all considerations.
And clearly there is but one relief for such a poor
wretch ; no philosophy, no talking, is of any avail. He
may abstain from scratching ; but if the desire continues
he is miserable. This is self-righteousness, asceticism.
But cure him, give him comfort, and he no longer pursues
comfort ; give us happiness and we no longer pursue it.
Yes, cure us, give us happiness, that is, make us love.
Take away that inertia. All this comes because we do
not love. Not-loving is our disease. Make us to love,
and we shall pursue happiness no more so madly; we
shall have it. Make sacrifice to be in us seZ/"-sacrifice,
give us the life we cannot give ourselves.
Man is miserable because he wants to love, must love,
and does not know. Man is seeking what he may love ;
and cannot find it. This is what these passions are ;
they are blind yearnings to love, wasted on the form,
hurrying us into loving vice, and every abuse. Better
so, than resting, contented with the form. Exhaust it,
The Self and Consciousness. 175
scorn it, cast it aside; behold the very fact of God
awaits us.
Consciousness, being a regard to and thought of self, is
certainly not love, not happiness. In fact, when we think
of ourselves, that is not loving, not being happy. Does it
not show a failure of happiness, if a person thinks : Now
I am happy? It strikes me as true, even now, that
perfect happiness means just a putting aside of conscious-
ness. All physical pleasure seems to aim at this; but
this is only transient, only in the passing from conscious-
ness to not-consciousness. I do not mean the absence of
consciousness as in sleep ; but the swallowing it up in
love. Surely pleasure is just the thinking of something
else than ourselves ; when we think of it lovingly so
much that we entirely forget all else, especially ourselves,
then we are, in that sense, perfectly happy. But to us
now such a state never lasts ; it passes away, and con-
sciousness returns ; we only remember that we were
happy. But conceive such a state prolonged indefinitely ;
then would be no consciousness, no time ; such is eternity.
There can surely be no time where there is no thought of
self, no not-love.
It has not been clear to me how all pleasures could
be from a want, or discomfort ; because at first they are
quite new and unconceived. But I see now ; the idea of
eating as pleasurable only from hunger, applies to all.
If we did not know about eating, hunger would be to
us only a state of discomfort, not foretelling to us the
pleasure of eating. So with all pleasures. That all are
preceded by a want is shown in the fact of the instinct
which leads to the procuring of them. It must have been
a musical hunger that first lead to inventing music, and
176 Philosophy and Religion.
so on. And that the arts have attained to so great
perfection and beauty is nothing more than the great
perfection of cookery ; it does not any more affect the
question of whether all pleasure be not from want. And
no doubt, before there was such wonderful advance, the
pleasure from these sources of enjoyment was not at all
less. Think, e.g., how much more is reported of the early
music than we find it capable of effecting now ?
The absence of appetite is disease ; defective wants
of all kinds are such. Physical being and well-being
consists in abundant wants. Also with regard to having
more or less physical good ; I think we mistake in
thinking that the less possession means the less en-
joyment. An infant is perfectly happy with the milk;
a man, with every conceivable luxury, has no more, nor
so much enjoyment; not to speak of the depravation
of appetite and health from luxury. Doubtless people
suffer from the wishing for things they have not got;
but this is quite different from the rich man enjoying
more than the poor. We know it is not so ; simplicity
is the greatest enjoyment. So that this development of
material good is not, and cannot be, for increase of en-
joyment as its end. This perpetually increasing want is
a means to quite other ends ; to the understanding and
interpreting of Nature ; that by investigating her as
material we may learn that the fact is actual ; and that
this perpetual getting, by its failure and the intolerable
evils which result from it, may redeem us from selfishness
and teach us to love. These two are correspondent ; the
latter is the actual, of which the former is the re-
presentation in the intellectual or formal.
Brinvilliers, when led to the rack, asked what that
great pail of water was for, and was told it was for her to
The Self and Consciousness. 177
drink. Is there not, in this, a light on our physical life ?
Is it not ty torture, as it were, that we have such intense
need and desire for what otherwise we should not desire
nor enjoy ? The things which give us pleasure, and the
withholding of which we cannot tolerate, are in no way to
be accounted for according to our normal life ; even as
the intense thirst produced by torture was not. Christ
says, " shall never thirst " ; He gives relief from torture.
Not so much that we, being physical, are surrounded by
physical suffering, as that the being physical is the
very receiving this unnatural pleasure ; implies the
" tortured " state, as making possible such enjoyment.
And so the feeling that the physical existence is a matter
of pleasure a " filling the heart with joy and gladness "
is included also. The feeling of gratitude in respect to
it has its place. The two opposite feelings are justified
and united so.
That all pleasure must be from pain, must mean relief,
seems certain. With respect to those cases when a
pleasure is enjoyed for the first time, comes unexpectedly
and unforeseen first hearing music, &c. such pleasure is
no pleasure unless there be susceptibility. And this
susceptibility surely means previous want ; for it ceases
with the enjoyment. The discomfort, or want, is not
conscious ; yet I think it clearly exists, and manifests
itself in the dissatisfied, wrong condition of a person who
has such susceptibilities which have never been' gratified.
This is like instinct, like genius ; the pleasure or relief is
not known nor consciously desired ; but the necessity
spoils the life, and when very strong works its own
gratification. All pleasures, all arts, must have arisen so.
The discontent and inability to rest or be comfortable of
a person with an ungratified susceptibility proves the
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1 78 Philosophy and Religion.
dependence of pleasure on pain ; and after being once
gratified, the want or discomfort becomes conscious
enough. So capacity for pleasure means want.
Does this unconscious want answer to the unconscious
love of God that our passions are ? Our consciousness is
illusion ; Christ reveals the fact of God and Man. What
distinguishes man but a capacity, unfilled, for better
things ? He knows not for what ; nothing satisfies it ;
he is restless, he must attain, give himself to, Being ; and
this he knows not. So our passions, this love for good
which knows not a true object, this capacity, this want,
are not evil, though they produce sin, dissatisfaction,
restlessness, and disappointment. See the susceptibility,
the/aftf to which they have relation. And see, too, the
gratification, the end ; how the satisfaction comes is
given, from without, and then the meaning of them is
revealed. How many have testified this ! We think we
want enjoyment, when in truth we want love ; we think
we want to get, when in truth we want to give, to Be.
As the unconscious want of music is satisfied by music
given as from heaven, revealed to the longing but
unknowing soul so this longing for God is satisfied
by God revealing Himself. Not from within but from
without comes the answer to these inarticulate demands.
Thus (as Maurice says), the Gospel says what all philo-
sophers, all the longings of humanity, meant, but did
not succeed in expressing or attaining. It does not
oppose or suppress, but fulfils ; and only by fulfilling
puts away. It embraces all in a kingdom, revealing the
kingdom in which all are. It affirms consciously as it
were what they unconsciously, reveals what the want, the
striving, meant; satisfies, as we know so many have
testified. (That it does not satisfy now, is it because we
have lost the fact which alone should satisfy ?) And all
The Self and Consciousness. 179
these strivings, all these passions which waste themselves
on that which satisfies not, all must predict and imply a
satisfaction ; all mean that man shall be redeemed. This
is the prophecy of the passions ; they are nutrition for
that ; they are God's love acting on man.
This confuses us : that as mind, consciousness, self-
action, in a word 'personality^ is the greatest thing to us,
we assume that it is truly the greatest. So we put it
into Nature and God, making ourselves the measures of
all things. Do those who maintain this mean to say that
God is truly such as we can think ? Or if they grant He
is above our thought, is it not clear that this is just
what appears so evil in my doctrine ; viz. that if God is
necessarily such to us, but is not truly so, then what
basis is there for our affections, is it not a mockery ? I
say this evil is not in the nature of the case, but in the
artificial and forced limit of our thoughts ; and if we will be
natural, and say : " Clearly God cannot be truly such ; how
is He truly and in Himself?" we can know better; can
attain a sure resting place, a satisfaction not failing either
our affections or our intellects; a God to love, more
perfectly, more profoundly, more naturally, more eleva-
tingly. This God is the infinite God, Love : the love of
whom is love of Being, is eternal life. The God who is
manifested in Christ, who dwells and works in us, who
works all things by His own will, in whom we live and
move and have our Being, who is our Father, who forgives
our iniquities, who makes us one with Himself. We can
see God thus, can know Him, if we will not be afraid.
The heart of man knows Him, and the intellect retires
from its idle toil confessing itself incompetent. We will
have a God whom our intellect can grasp. We think we
can know fact, Being, by the intellect, but we cannot any
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1 80 Philosophy and Religion.
more than by sense ; a higher faculty must " know " God.
We have to know here that the " fact " is not the in-
tellectual phenomenon, but the cause of our perceiving it.
So this is simple enough. I say we can know God, but
not intellectually, and that this personal God, who acts in
time, of which theologians tell us, is not possibly the true
God, but is phenomenal merely ; that it will not do. I
do not deny it is the right phenomenon, but I say we
not only can, we must, know the fact which is not this.
This personal God is a " state of consciousness " like
other hypotheses or phenomena. Here again we see the
phenomenon must not, may not, be given up until the
fact is known ; we want the negation excluded, not
another form of it. To know God is more than we have
made it ; we have reckoned it a means of obtaining
everlasting happiness, and it is eternal life.
There is a true beauty in this conception of the non-
personality of God ; in truth, there is more in the true
One than can be in one person. The true and absolute
God is so vast, so rich, that if He be brought into
personality, as for our apprehension He must be, there
must be three Persons, as it were, to contain Him ; the
Godhead cannot be in one person. Even as Humanity
demands the dignity of man, the tenderness of woman,
the trust and joy of infancy, and cannot be without all
three, so the Godhead demands the Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost, fully to contain and to express it. This elevates
our thoughts of God ; humanity is none the less, it loses
none of its moral value and dignity or of its spirituality,
or any attribute of delight and glory, because it needs
three persons to constitute it. So neither does God.
Those who take one person for their God instead of three,
simply lose so much.
The Self and Consciousness. 1 8 1
It is the necessity for three Persons in the one God
that we see in redemption ; and that is the necessity for
infinite love and self-sacrifice In the absolute one
God all this exists together; but if it is to exist in
the personal it demands three persons. Love is one, is
absolute, infinite ; but if it become personal, there must be
three persons. We see that it must be so ; this is in all
Nature. So if we are to understand, to know anything
about the true nature of that absolute infinite Love that
is God, we must see God as three Persons. And see here,
how in fact those that make their God one Person, do lose
the Love. Save in three persons, Love cannot represent
itself.
The God of theism is, in the strictest sense, the shadow
of ourselves. It is magnified, but the substance left out ;
and especially the heart.
We also take quite a wrong view respecting the
Trinity, as a revealed doctrine : we abuse it as if it gave
us some knowledge respecting the essential Being of God,
made us know the unknowable. We should be content ;
that is how God must be to our apprehension. This is
the true intent and meaning of it ; and so seen, how
simple, nay how impossible a subject it is for controversy
or dispute. God to man must be three personalities ; even
because man is three personalities ; it is part of the
axiom that God to man must be a man. Our error has
been fancying that we could know God intellectually ; not
recognising that the intellect necessarily introduces
elements not belonging to that which truly is apart from
it. We cannot truly know even a thing that is without
us as it truly is in itself ; we can only know the form ; so
we can only know God, by the intellect, formally. There
1 82 Philosophy and Religion.
is no Father without the Son and Spirit ; they are
correlative, each involves the other ; they are all the one
actual ; that which the actual becomes hy the " not."
So one sees there is no Being who created, or could have
created, the material world, there being none to create.
With regard to the necessity of God's being personal to
the heart, consider this also. Setting aside love towards
God (as the question sub judice), the very strongest of
man's non-religious natural passions, loves, have been and
are for that which is not personal, nay even for ab-
stractions. See man's love of truth, of justice, honor,
courage and loyalty. These are the strongest passions of
man, as has been often proved. But I do not put an
abstraction for God, proved though it be that an ab-
straction will do for the heart. My God is the farthest
possible from an abstraction : He is the Being, the only
true actual Being, and all of it. He is, so intensely, so
actually, that personality detracts from Him. That is
why He can be loved ; not temporally, not physically, but
eternally, and actually, with such an infinite and all-
absorbing intensity. Love of the Infinite, of Jehovah,
may be so infinite as to exclude all not-love, all conscious-
ness, which love of a person could scarcely do. Is it not
the triumph of the love of God above all other loves, that
it alone is perfect, and destroys consciousness even of
self? Is not this why even Christ shall deliver up the
kingdom, and God be all and in all ? No " person " shall
interpose between that love made perfect and its God.
Eeflect how " infinite " is a merely negative term. We
have come by familiarity to overlook this. It means
inconceivable, the denial of everything by which we
conceive. Saying God is not personal, not conscious, not
The Self and Consciousness. 183
moral, is simply carrying out into particulars this general
statement that he not-finite. We cannot conceive God
as He truly is ; yet if He were a person, or moral, or
conscious, we could conceive Him. It is strange the
reluctance there is to admit this ; we seem to feel that
by giving up as true in respect to God that which arises
from limitation or negation, we are giving up His Being.
God is none the less not these things that we are, because
He is not so by being more instead of less. To a man to
whom shadow is reality to say that there is no darkness,
is to deny. Thus is it with us ; when the darkness, the
self-ness, is denied of God, we tremble, as if our God were
being taken from us. But in truth, He cannot be God
that can be denied; God must be such, the denial of
whom is a contradiction in terms ; if we could rightly see
the case, we should see it so.
Think, in connection with this, of what is shown by
history ; that the first denial of idolatry or of a material
God has ever been felt as a denial, and not as an affirma-
tion, which it truly is. This shows us what takes place
in ourselves ; explains our feeling of losing God altogether
when consciousness, personality, moral Being are denied
of Him; we cannot feel that this is in truth only
the affirmation of a truer, fuller Being, the denial of
darkness or limitation. It is partly this, and partly
because our conceptions have been degraded altogether ;
for, think, does it not seem absurd to us, that when Paul
said we ought not to think that God can be bodily, the
proper inference is that therefore He is an abstraction
merely ? We feel how entirely it is the other way ; that
what is asserted is that God's Being is too intense and
perfect to be material ; just as an abstraction is less
Being than a stone. And so when we say we ought not
to think that God is personal and conscious, it is not less
1 84 Philosophy and Religion.
absurd to infer that therefore we make Him a mere
unconscious " thing." It is clear what is affirmed is an
intenser, more perfect Being than can be consciousness
or person. It is true we cannot conceive of it; we
mean the inconceivable and infinite. And let us remark,
too, that we cannot conceive an infinite mind, nor a
mind at all without a body, in any legitimate sense of
the word.
We have gone back to Judaism. If to deny body is to
assert more emphatic intense Being if we can see this
how much more to deny mind. Both alike are denying
that which is alone the only known being to us. But we
have faith. We see that our being involves negation,
and that to Him who truly is, such being as ours in any
form cannot be rightly attributed, whatever our weakness
may demand. We see that God must be personal to us,
only until we are better capable of understanding Him.
In truth, personality involves body. An irrational idea
is that of a mind without a body or even the good of
one. Without a body to act on, and be affected by, the
matter it " perceives," mind would be very forlorn. So
the instincts of men have always made ghosts poor
miserable creatures, much inferior to embodied men.
In truth, a mind without a body, or relation to the
material world, is not a cheering idea. There is an utter
dissonance in the ideas, and it is the sign of a profound
discordance ; that was a deep intuition. He that per-
ceives matter is necessarily material.
See the goodness and Tightness of our thought that we
cannot know in our present state, that our knowledge is
limited. Certainly we cannot know till we get rid of the
inertia. The ancients thought they could know in spite
The Self and Consciousness. 1 85
of the inertia ; we have found that under this inertia we
cannot. Instinct tells us that some things are un-
knowable, and that we must know the limits of our
powers ; that " essences," " substances," are not to be
known. Most true ; we cannot know that which is not.
We can never know what " substance," what " essence " is,
we can only know how we come to " suppose," them.
Can we know epicycles ? Of course not ; but we can
know all that is to be known about them that they are
not. We think it is the very being, essence, and fact of
things we cannot know ; because, of course, we put the
" not " for the fact. We cannot know while we think the
" not " is the fact ; but when we see that it is a " not,"
then we know, and feel that we know, all about it, and are
content. So respecting God : He is unknown so long as
we think He has a " substance," an inert Being ; but
when we know otherwise, then we feel that we do know
and see Him in Christ, and are content. Nothing shows
more strikingly how we put the " not " for the fact than
our being unable to conceive of God except as having a
" substance," as something besides Love. We lie under
this necessity by the " not " that is in our intellect ; or,
as I should say, that constitutes intellect. Of course we
must put the " not " for the fact, when only by virtue of
that " not " can we think or conceive at all.
God is light : what a new meaning is in this now. God
is one ; and yet a trinity. A trinity by the " not ; " a
trinity to our perception at first. The trinity is from the
unity, not the union made up by the trinity. Yes, God is
light, and He exists in His creatures as colors. As colors
are to light, so are all creatures to one Being ; various
" nots ; " yet all determined by one law, all love.
So from all this phenomenal or physical we get at the
1 86 Philosophy and Religion.
fact by excluding the " not " by adding. Yet then the
physical will not remain as such, any more than the color,
as such, in light. Take away the " not," and the physical is
gone. " Not that I would be unclothed, but clothed upon."
To be freed from the physical it only needs that more
Being should be given us.
For the existence of color a peculiar " not " is necessary ;
not less light, but a " not " of that which is essential to
the being of light. All the variety and relations of things
are in the conception of color. And see the good and
Tightness. Would we have all white light and no color ?
We are in such a relation to light that we can see the
" not " aright, can see how it is essential to the good.
What were light without color, without this interference,
this self-sacrifice, which produces color ? Light were no
longer light if there were no not-light. God would be
no longer God if there were no not-God, no creature. In
color nothing is but light ; it is all light : so the creatures
are nothing but God. Color is from light by interference,
by itself causing itself not to be. So the creature is from
God by His self-sacrifice ; and it is essential to the very
being of God that it should be so, even as color is essential
to light. From interference of the various coloured rays
come inexhaustible combinations and variety. So by
self-sacrifice of creatures other creatures are. Also dark-
ness, too, sometimes sin. All creatures are imperfect,
colored, have a " not " in them, in reference to the true
actual.
God is not said to be sound. Sound is not one, as light
is. Is not sound more a representation of the physical ?
It is one out of many ; light, color is many out of one.
A kind of inversion is here, the same fact seen oppositely.
Is not sound most parallel to the physical, light most
parallel to the spiritual? Is it thus indeed that, as
The Self and Consciousness. 187
physical, sound is most to us ? The ear is the most
perfect. Are the less developed senses still more related
to the spiritual ? We do not see the light, as we hear
sound ; we only see tilings by it. And only that which is
from the " not," only color, do we perceive, not light
itself. That is nothing to us, like darkness. When the
light is not present we cannot see ; but we do not perceive
the light itself. " Whom no man can see, yet in whom
we live." Is there something in the conditions under
which light forms colors, illustrating God and the
creature ? God who sees all as one, sees love alone ; the
evil is not in the universe, as the color is not in the
light.
We are selfish, but the Fact, which we have not and are
not, is Love. Looking at Christ we see that it is so ; He
shows us the infinite, the one, the only absolute. It is
this, and only this. With our eyes opened by Him we
can see that it is so. With that damnation taken from
our hearts the shadow of death is gone from the universe.
Loving, we can see that it is Love ; we know it, knowing
God.
I cannot admit that God must be personal to the heart.
To the intellect He must be ; and this probably misleads
us. We have not thought of Him as Love, as He is, but
only as personal. The heart delights in Love too great
and pure to be personal ; in eternal Love, which when
manifested to us in time is self-sacrifice.
" Mere reason " cannot be tolerated in religion, even as
it cannot in the sanctities of home. For religion is truly
the home-feeling of the universe. The Church is the
Home. Here comes feeble, weary, jaded humanity, to seek
its rest. Here, called back from the toil and glare and
1 88 Philosophy and Religion.
coldness of the outer life, it is gathered into a family.
Can mere cold reason intrude here, and not find itself on
a foreign shore, not be seen hateful ? A higher faculty,
a better and more human insight, even the insight of a
true sympathy, reign there, and give the whole tone to
the place.
The Bible. 189
VI.
THE BIBLE.
Nature interprets the Bible The work of the Bible is to give man life
What death means Inspiration No need for inspiration To
have life is to be inspired We must not be afraid of the Bible The
source of the Bible's power We put the divine element away from
the present The difference between physical and spiritual is one of
perception Redemption cannot be partial Religion must not
appeal to the selfish emotions The mistake of our Christianity
The supposition of a physical hell Hell cannot be remorse The
world accounted for by God's act and man's death Christ does not
save from the punishment of sin What God's hell is Heaven is
love Christ's work will cease " This is my body " shows the
spiritual nature of all existence Prayer changes, not the fact, but
the phenomenon Christianity is not a theology but a fact Our
Christianity is dead How Christianity may be surpassed.
I HAVE found that the nearer I have arrived to the
Bihle, the nearer I have been to the truth. But also I
note that it is not so much hy studying the Bible directly
as indirectly through Nature that I thus come into
unison with it. The Bible needs interpreting by Nature,
even as Nature by it. Having our minds filled with the
spirit of the Bible, and looking so at Nature, we see a
truth and significance in the Bible we should never other-
wise have discerned. We can in fact see and understand
nothing by itself; we must go beyond and away from
everything in order to grasp it properly ; we want a key
to it ; and with the Bible as with all other things.
1 90 Philosophy and Religion.
Looking at it alone, we cannot see it, we take phenomenal
views, and read passages over and over again which most
distinctly declare facts, without seeing them, or seeing
them as just the opposite. As the Bible is the interpreter
of Nature, so is Nature the interpreter of the Bible.
I believe few people's minds have ever been more filled
with the Bible than mine has been since I began to see
the deep truth of Nature. It brought me, unconsciously,
to the Bible and has held me to it ever since. Seeing
the truths of Nature, my eyes were opened to truths
plainly stated, yet hidden, in the Bible, and which I
believe I might have read the Bible endlessly without
seeing, had not my eyes been opened by Nature.
We entirely misconceive the Bible when we think it is
of so much consequence to understand it aright, or
wonder that it is so easy to misunderstand it ; alike for
essential points as we term them and unessential. The
essential point is that it should give us eternal life, make
us love God. This is its work ; if it does this, it does all
that is necessary it saves us. The understanding it is
a matter of development ; it takes place gradually in the
world's intellectual progress ; man's salvation does not
depend on that, but on his feeling that God sacrifices
Himself for him, and giving himself thereby to God,
which may be felt and done under very many different
forms of thought. We have oneness with God in Christ
by this mutual love. It is well to understand the Bible,
even as to understand Nature, but it cannot be done at
will ; it is a life, and it takes time and means : but the
drawing of life from the Bible is so plain that a fool
cannot err therein, it is in loving. The God whose heart
bleeds in our sorrow He gives us life, in Him we live.
But to a God who feels not, does not give Himself to us,
The Bible. 191
we could but say, " Turn away those calm, cold eyes ;
mock us not with that unmoved beneficence ; let us perish
without Thy pity." Not so, oh God; not so art Thou.
Alas, what would it avail that God should love us if He
will not make us love. That we do not love is our
misery ; that is the death from which we must be de-
livered. Who will give us life ? Who but a God that
gives to us His own ?
Consider how the word " die," though hardly ever used
for mere physical death, is constantly, and almost solely,
applied to the sacrifice of Christ. Adam died ; Christ
died ; we are dead in sins. But when the body dies we
do but cease to breathe. This is the idea of the death
of Christ ; it was that true death which subserves a new
life. Ever the word death seems to be used in that
sacred sense. It is a sacred word ; ought we to profane
it as we do, by making it a mere ceasing to breathe ?
We should learn from the Bible to speak of bodily dying
as sleeping, or giving up the breath ; and sanctify the
word " death " which has so profound, yea, at once so
glad and sorrowful a significance. We speak too lightly
of death ; there is no " death " worthy to be so called,
that does not stretch out its hand and grasp the skirts
of a higher life ; save indeed that utter death wherein he
lives who lives in pleasure.
With regard to inspiration, the wonder is, not that
these men knew the things they have said, but that all
men do not know them. Is humanity so utterly fallen
that our admiration of, and delight in, the true perception
of any man, must be turned into incredulity ? There are
no such believers in the fall of man as such philosophers.
They take a vain trouble to deny the fall in words who
1 92 Philosophy and Religion.
passively acquiesce in it as a fact, and try to teach men
so ; holding the fall as that whereby alone the dignity of
man can be maintained, I deny that he is so fallen as
they would make out. I deny that he is forbidden ever
to aspire to absolute knowledge, to truly loving, self-
sacrificing action. I hold him dead indeed, but capable
of life ; blind, but having eyes wherewith he is destined
yet to see. Dead I admit him to be ; yet I demur to the
burial which these men are in such haste to celebrate,
and to eat thereafter the funeral feast. Let the meats
wait, the viands be untasted yet a little longer, while
Love and Hope kiss the pale cheeks and unreturning lips.
I believe in the resurrection of the dead ; that this still
cold corpse of humanity shall live again.
Where is the need for inspiration when the Bible
doctrines are seen to be a simple statement of the facts,
the clear and certain facts, of our life ; and plainly written
in all Nature ? Is not inspiration, as every true miracle,
the act of humanity, and therefore divine ? Because of
this truth is it not that there are so many meanings and
applications of the language of the Bible, that it is found
to apply to so many things, and to be capable of so many
references ?
The true aspect of religion is not : " Things are bad,
take care " (this is the self-idea) ; but : " Things are
good understand and know ;" your not knowing makes
the evil ; things are better than they are to you.
And farther, respecting inspiration, I remember that
all such act of God is moral act, and results in moral
Being ; God's direct inspiration is not of the intellect,
but of the spirit, the love, the man. What God's direct
The Bible. 193
inspiration gives, is holiness ; and so we come back to the
beauty and delight, that it was holiness that was the
inspiration of the sacred writers. " Holy men of God
spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost ;" were
moved to holiness by the Holy Ghost, and so spake.
Yes, it was moral purity, the direct inspiration of God,
made these men see. Intellectual enlightenment is, by
the very fact of its being intellectual, necessarily among
those divine acts which are classed as indirect.
" Holy men (i.e. humanity) spake " ; i.e. God spake.
They were holy men, and saw the world as spiritual.
Were they not indeed the chief true mystics, who have
since sadly degenerated ? The Bible is the great inter-
pretative, i.e. mystical, book ; a book written truly by
man, with a true perception of the spiritual, excluding
the " not." And consider again with reference to these
men seeing the spiritual, that in those days men were not
so immersed in hypotheses by Science as we have become ;
were not so blinded by materialistic science as we are ;
and might have a clearer vision, of less extent perhaps,
but of greater exactitude and completeness. I do not see
why the truths of the Bible should not have been seen
by holy men all those ages ago ; because they are true,
and because of the absence of the hypotheses which
have so complicated all " actual " questions for us. So
many unknown and arbitrary symbols have been of late
introduced into our knowledge by the progress of observa-
tional or theoretical science, that we find it hard to
conceive how clear might have been the vision before.
We are not hereby undervaluing the introduction of these
unknown symbols, but seeing quite well that they are
the essential means by which alone a higher and more
perfect knowledge can be obtained.
o
1 94 Philosophy and Religion.
The difficulty about present inspiration comes from
putting the whole affair into a human mode ; inspiration
goes with the life ; it is part of it ; having life from
Christ we must be inspired. And our inspiration is of
course the same as that of the scriptural writers ; their
inspiration was that they were made alive; it was not
intellectual, nor is ours. How simple it would have been
if instead of beginning a long way off we had commenced
from the present. We are inspired ; but we know our
inspiration does not guard us from error ; i.e. is not in-
tellectual ; it is a fact of life in the actual Being ; it
belongs not to the physical or mental, but to the spi-
ritual. Thence we know what was that old inspiration ;
it guided into truth not correct opinions ; but actual
truth. Errors in matters of " opinion " or of physical
relation in the Bible teach us what true inspiration is,
and that it is not a matter of the relative but of the
actual.
It is curious the way in which our divines speak of the
" imperfect " theology of the early centuries. In the
second century the Christian writers had not a full
appreciation of the Pauline doctrine. Men speaking the
same language, partaking the same modes of thought,
men whose immediate predecessors had themselves con-
versed with him, these men did not apprehend the true
Pauline doctrine. And they confounded justification with
being made holy. Strange ; when we consider that the
word means being made holy. Is it rather possible that
we do not quite comprehend Paul ? Christianity was a
power then in the world. May not the reason be that
they knew what it was better than we ? Perhaps they
did confound justification with being made holy ; but
might it not be some compensation if they were really
The Bible. 195
made holy ? Perhaps they did not see Christ's death as
a price, an expiation, as we do ; but what if they were
made " conformable " to it ? Which is the important
thing the understanding or the being ?
The true key to the Bible is to read it quite simply
and naturally, without any particular regard or reverence,
but as common sense ; we pervert our view, trying to find
deep meanings. In two opposite ways are we perverted ;
we leave out all the actual meaning ; e.g. in those
passages respecting Christ as being man, and those which
say that God is in us ; and then we fancy deep and
obscure ideas in things which are so very simple. We
need have no discomfort in studying the Bible ; it is the
simplest, most transparent, most friendly and familiar
of all books.
We are so afraid of the Bible, handle it as if it was
full of traps and pitfalls, and if we were not most cautious
would let us into some great sin. Surely it is a friend ;
it came into the world not to condemn the world, but
that through it it should be saved. And why cannot we
be content not to understand it ; just as we are in respect
to Nature ? And how monstrous it is that we should
think ourselves bound to " justify " it all, and be able
to show it all worthy of God, &c. Even at the utmost
we should say that if we saw it rightly we should under-
stand ; as we say of Nature. In truth, the study of the Bible
and of Nature have been prevented very much alike by
this idea ; it interferes with all proper exercise of thought,
besides constraining us to insist on ascribing to God and
maintaining to be worthy of Him the most wretched
fancies of our own. It is making our intellect the
judge of God, instead of our hearts. This is the vicious
o 2
1 96 Philosophy and Religion.
root from which our opinion-religion springs. We should
study the Bible : its being the word of God just puts it
where Nature is ; and it should be studied in the same
way ; with the same freedom, pleasure, patience ; feeling
that any opinion may be erroneous : this is the true
reverence. An " opinion-religion " is a monstrous per-
version, yet it goes necessarily with a sensational-religion.
We may say to men : " Fear not ; God will not damn you
for anything you think or do respecting this book ; but
if you are damned you will dislike or despise this book :
thus there is a sort of test for you in it." The Bible
does not want any believing ; it may be seen to be true ;
like other things that are true, the idea of believing is
not to the point. " To believe in Christ " is another
thing ; that God sacrificed Himself in Him for man ; this
is to love God so as to have eternal life, to be saved.
The man who believes in Christ will certainly be saved.
I have noted the infinity of the Bible ; how it is like
Nature in that ; different from all other books, which have
a certain grasp and limit, and which one can wholly
master. Now, is not this the cause of it ; viz. that all
things are treated absolutely, in relation to the spiritual
or actual ; everything entirely in subordination to that
and as dependent upon it ? So it grasps the fact, and
all the form follows by mere necessity. Surely if one
can enter fully into the spirit of the biblical writings,
their virtue may imbue his writings too ; that marvellous
power which the scriptures have possessed be shared as
it were. All human books look at the forms as existing
in and for themselves more or less ; put the form for the
fact ; are limited therefore, and transient necessarily ; but
to lay hold of the fact, and show all forms as from and in
relation to it, is to rise to the level of the Bible. All
The Bible. 197
mystics have attempted this, but as yet has not only the
Bible succeeded ? It alone sees all the form to be mere
form ; truly draws the line of " being." The key to the
Bible is these two things, first it puts the " not " in us ;
second it is speaking of eternal things, not temporal,
i.e. not future ; in futurity the eternity is lost. The
eternal is that of which existence can be predicated, and
therefore it is not in time, in which is only form. The
eternal not only is but always was. It is the fact, the
actual ; it is that which brings us into relation and
oneness with the infinite fact. The things that are
unseen are eternal.
The Bible is a miracle, the miracle ; the type and
example of them. If we can learn how it was, then we
know all miracles. Nothing can be more miraculous
than that its writers said those things ; the raising from
the dead is less, it raises us from the dead. Here is the
problem of miracle submitted practically to ourselves ;
find out how the Bible came to be. It is of no use saying
nothing can transcend the laws of Nature, and so on
here is the fact ; find the law of it. The law of love it is,
this includes all alike. Shew that the fact of Nature is
love, and we have miracles in their right place at once.
We are of course obliged to deal with the Bible as we
do, ignoring all but those passages which agree with our
particular " views." It is not from any irreverence, but
the necessary result of confounding the actual and the
intellectual ; thinking that to religion certain opinions
are necessary. We cannot let the matter rest open ;
saying : This means more than I can see : my views on
these subjects may be quite wrong. We cling to that
which we think, which has been the best opinion we
1 98 Philosophy and Religion.
could arrive at, and there remain ; to let our opinion go
is to us letting religion go.
Here is the difference between the Bible and the world.
The world says, " We are as God made us " ; the Bible,
" You are not as God made you, but in a state in which
your true God-given Being is in abeyance." The world
says, " The world is good as it is to us, and we will make
it better." " It is not good," replies the Bible, " and you
must be delivered from it." The world says, " Man is a
great and glorious being ; it is a grand thing to be a man,
with his free-will and his virtue." The Bible says,
11 This being man, as you call it, is being merely dead and
corrupt ; there is no goodness in it or in him ; God must
be in him ; that is the sole possible good in relation to
him." This is the radical opposition between the two,
and our Christianity has in it the virtue of neither, and
spoils both. So we are perpetually, while professing
Christianity, apt to use the language of the world ; ever
prone to speak of man as the world speaks of him, because,
in truth, that way of regarding him is in our doctrines
and in our hearts.
We have done one thing with reference to the two ends
of the world, as it were : viz. put into them all the
Divine and eternal. We have put all creation into the
past, infinite ages ago ; all salvation and damnation into
the future. The present, we are determined, shall be a
blank ; there shall be nothing Divine while we live. But
in truth, in what does the present differ from all other,
but in respect to us ? The actual or eternal is as much
now as ever it can have been or can be. We think the
biblical writers were speaking of things a long way off,
whereas they spoke of the eternal, of which it is the
The Bible. 199
property to le. We think it far off because we do not
see it ; but this is not because it is so, but because we are
dead. So we invent hypotheses necessarily; the actual
is present in the Bible as in Nature, and we use them
both in one way.
It is said that the difference of the physical and spiritual
is one of time ; I say it is one of perception only. So it
cannot depend on bodily death, which is an affair of time,
but must depend on some change in us not material.
We being the same, must still be bodily ; death is only a
change, not a ceasing, of the material conditions; the
material can cease to us only by a change in us which is
not material. What a strange conception that by a
change merely material, we can be delivered from matter.
What a superstition that is about a person going to die,
and unprepared ! Transmigration, a material existence of
some sort after death, would seem to be involved here.
Think how there cannot be true and absolute Evil (and
therefore not absolute Good), because evil is no evil if
the subject be altered ; that which is pain and therefore
evil, may cease to be pain by alteration only in the sub-
ject ; so it cannot be in itself evil. In truth, Being, that
which is, cannot be either good or evil ; it is above them ; it
Is. So there is a wisdom in that " knowing good and evil."
This has a wide bearing. Think how God appearing to
Adam after the transgression the chief and greatest of
all goods was evil to him ; made him afraid and hide
himself; he tried to avoid God. Now here is simply
what we do ; in all these things we call evil, God comes
to us, and we are afraid. To us it is evil, and we try to
avoid Him. This is the explanation of all. When we
are made alive again we shall rejoice to meet God ; there
2OO Philosophy and Religion.
will be no evil, for observe how there can be no fact but
God coming to us. There is no other Being to come.
The fact of all our experience must be that ; all else is
negation merely.
Try it even with a child ; is it possible to make him
loving save by love ? If he even think that the fact which
surrounds him is not love, will he not certainly grow up
unloving ? Is not this now the basis of all wise educa-
tion make a child feel that it is loved ? So man was
growing up, not feeling that he was loved, in such a blind
state that he could not see that the entire fact of his
experience was indeed that ; and God had to show him
that he was loved to " save " him. This was the revela-
tion the world wanted; not duty, not immortality, not
retribution, not a personal God but redemption ; that
the fact of man's experience is that he is loved. Thinking
otherwise, man must of course strive after good for himself.
It is useless to talk against it ; so useless that it is not
even tried. Theologians even, and preachers, have em-
braced that very doctrine. What the world wants is
some revelation, some knowledge or fact, that should
make us not care about ourselves. Orthodoxy has this
element, in part, and it is its life. Its argument is, that
Christ's loving and saving us will make us love Him, and
so we shall not care about ourselves ; but this will not
do ; it must be saving the world, or the purpose is not
answered. No, not even the saving of a single soul can
be achieved, not one man can be saved, if humanity be not
redeemed. Even practically we see this.
I cannot even think a partial redemption. Man is
either redeemed or not redeemed ; for in truth each man
is what he is by virtue of all being what they are ; the
The Bible. 201
state of humanity determines that of each man. This is
our interest in humanity ; what is to man is everything
to us. Here is a profound truth : the true life and well-
being of man, of each man, is in that of humanity ; but it
seems not so to us. So in learning self-sacrifice for others,
we are in truth regarding only our own true good ; it is
only getting right to
It is said : Does not trust in God make men neglectful
in respect to business, &c. ? Here is the difference ; it is
as darkness and light. That is a trust on behalf of the
self, thinking God will take care of myself. It believes
in "special providences"; and this world's business is
trusted to accidents ; God is not seen in the laws of
Nature and of Life. It is in truth the profoundest mis-
trust, it is the essence of unbelief. True trust is trust in
God against the self; it is recognizing Him in all law
and necessity ; it is seeing eternal fact in these human
affairs. How miserable is this belief in God taking care
of the particular self ; instead of delivering from it and
destroying it. What a perversion of the idea of faith,
what a travestie of religion, and, above all, of that of
Christ ! Happily the feeling, the heart of the men who
say these things, is constantly quite different from their
words.
Eeligion cannot and ought not to compete with the
world in its appeal to the selfish passions. Men are right
in preferring this world to the next ; this is not wicked-
ness, but mere common sense and scripturalness. It is a
perversion to make out that the Bible seeks to make men
give the preference to the future over the present ; it
seeks to make them give preference to the eternal, the
actual, the fact which is necessarily present, over the form,
202 Philosophy and Religion.
which alone can be the future. This is the very spirit of
the Bible, to seek not the future but the present. Do
not get (future), but l>e (now). "Now is the . . . day of
salvation." This is its doctrine, this its precept, this its
suasion of love : attend to the present, do not sacrifice it
for the future ; live now, do not seek to get. Passion is
ever in reference not to that which is, but that which is
to be ; it is from want ; its eye is necessarily on the
future. Christ seeks to turn us from the future, which
can be only form, to the present. So men in refusing to
attend to the future and preferring the present (or that
which is nearest to it) carry out the spirit of the Bible.
And the world ever will and ought to carry the day until
it is put quite otherwise than thus.
It is interesting to see how theology has been misled
by accommodating itself to the phenomenon. The pheno-
menon is that men are led by self-interest ; so preachers
have thought that if they could convince men that it was
to their interest to be religious, they would be so. But
it is a great mistake ; it is not the fact that men are most
influenced by self-interest. That is not the power in the
world. Our passions, the pursuit of pleasure, are not
self-interest or self-regard ; they are giving self, finding
our satisfaction in the object. [Not to say that all that
truly moves mankind must have in it an element of
generosity ; even money-getting is for wife and children.]
Eeligion can only subdue and rule the passions by being
a giving of self also, a truer, fuller self-giving. It must
say: "Give yourself" as the passions do or they will
utterly overbear it. But " Give yourself to God ; not to
these mere forms which are illusions and deceits, but to
the very fact and reality of all. Eeligion is the fulfil-
ment, not the restraint, of the passions; it is liberty,
The Bible. 203
not enslavement ; it absorbs the humanity, not sets it
aside. It is that for which the heart cries out and longs ;
which the visions of youth prophecy, the weariness of
disappointed age implores.
Our Christianity making men think more of damnation,
necessarily makes us think so much of suffering ; it puts
that as the great fact before us, and so unmans us. Thus
we are vastly worse than the ancients, who gave freer
play to that most distinctively human of instincts, that
of despising pain, almost the first demand in a true,
strong, great character. First get over the fear of pain,
then some good may come to you this is the true philo-
sophy of human nature. But we say, " Be afraid of pain ;
so you may save your soul." It is a miserable state we
are in, between two fires. Truly to be redeemed is to be
redeemed from fear of pain; for fear of pain and self-
regard are one and the same thing. Fear of pain is the
source of all temptation. Nor is it any better to say that
it is the hope of happiness, rather ; for the two are one.
Desire of happiness (any other than utter self-sacrifice) is
only fear of pain. I say this doctrine of ours of salvation,
making us regard pain so much, makes . temptation so
strong ; this which is cultivated in us is the very strength
of sin. So life is such a toil and struggle for Christians ;
it must be hard for them to practice virtue, for they are
afraid of pain. Their very light is turned to darkness ;
the medicine that is given them takes away their
strength.
Men preach, how if we will do, believe, &c., all will be
well. How can I believe that which will only be if I
believe ? To be believed, a fact must first be, not after-
wards. It is not, " If you believe, you are redeemed,"
204 Philosophy and Religion.
but, " You are redeemed believe it and know the fact ! "
This is it : alike the wicked and the good, the dead and
the living, the self-regarding and the loving, the deluded
and the knowing, are channels ; they are sacrificed for
the good of the world. It only needs that I should know
this, and love or be willing, and at once I am perfectly
happy. What more could I wish ? We thought there
was something more to get, and now we are awake and
find that we have all things, and can only half believe it
for happiness and wonder. It is like an infant dreaming :
in its dream it seems in a desolate dark place, where its
mother is not, and it wants ; it strives to stretch out its
hands to seek, to get ; it seems to wander here and there,
and never finds. Until it wakes ; and then it sees and
knows again, and behold, its mother's bosom is its pillow,
and its little hands, groping in the darkness, have been
clasped in hers. It did not want anything ; only to be
waked.
It is strange, except that we learn by error, that ever
a real (physical) fire should have been supposed as hell.
Christ's words, "the fire is not quenched," seem expressly
designed to deny it. For it is the essence of the real to
cease. Christ says " hell, where there is fire," but not
physical ; a worm, corruption, but not physical. Is not
this the exact meaning of the passage, to guard us against
supposing it merely physical ? We are told by denying
its special characteristic that it is not physical. And
I believe this would be understood so by the hearers ; it
is a refinement of philosophers that matter and motion
do not cease. Again, a burning heart is the intensest
symbol of love, burning but not consumed ; a ceaseless
fire that burns without consuming, is the very type of
love. The sun, too, is burning, and the functions of the
The Bible. 205
body are a true burning ; Science calls them so. Function,
which is love, is ever burning.
This world differs from heaven and hell in one way ;
viz. that God's full presence is not made manifest, but
obscurely seen by physical images. The full manifesta-
tion constitutes at once heaven to the good, hell to the
wicked.
Do we want to know why violence and cruelty and
every vice exist ? It is to teach us yes, us that we
must love and not be selfish. These things come because
man is dead, and they bid him live. He would never
have known that he was dead without them. When we
so love that we treat all wrong with love instead of
punishment, as God does, then wrong will cease. Then
Christ will be seen; and His words spoken in such
darkness and so little heeded, so held up to ridicule by
those who know Him not, so cautiously explained and
limited by those who think they know Him, lest they
should impede His cause, will appear, as in truth they
are, the most striking proofs that He was indeed The
Man, i.e. was God.
Comte's idea of ignoring the absolute is like accepting
the Iliad simply as a fact, and not asking any questions
about either Homer or humanity. Which indeed would
have the justification that neither Homer as an arbitrary
fact, nor the development of humanity without Homer,
sufficiently accounts for it. So, neither the theological
nor the metaphysical view accounts for the world. But
surely God's act and man's death together do. The great
point is that of man's actual death ; it is the " not "
which "matter," or the hypothesis, reveals. This the
theological view does not recognise, and so makes death a
206 Philosophy and Religion.
special affair, and one of difficulty and embarrassment.
It has excluded it from its proper place as the cause of
the materiality, or inertia, of Nature, and of course finds
it a constant difficulty. This puts theology wrong in
relation to the Bible, which is based on that fact from
first to last. This is the key to the embarrassments of
theology ; it has to introduce man's death, as a fact, into
a system which truly rests upon that fact, and yet is
considered to be independent of it. Just as if, having
refused to admit Homer as author of the Iliad, men
should still be trying to bring him in as in some myste-
rious way connected with it, as having heaven knows
what deteriorated it, or something. Science on the
other hand looks at the " not " as being itself the fact,
and ignores the actual fact itself, altogether. The one-
ness of the two, in spite of their apparent hostility, is
evident.
Think of a man utterly selfish ; how is it possible that
anything worse should happen to him? How can we
want to punish him ; he is already the most miserable of
beings, suffering the greatest evil, enduring the greatest
loss. One may think pain may be added, and so a
punishment ; but certainly not remorse. Moral pain can-
not be added leaving the selfishness or death ; it is itself
a sign and means of life. To suppose Hell remorse, is to
suppose it a rise, a making alive, and not death. A man
who has been sunk in selfishness can only rise into re-
morse. This is our error, that we put pain and pleasure
above the moral, and think more of being miserable than
of being wicked. Pain is in its nature temporal; the
moral sense exists not for our punishment but to save us.
There is no dealing with the facts of the world save on
The Bible.
207
the view that the sensational is nothing. This is not
hard-hearted, it is the only way in which the heart can
face the facts of the world ; a true deep sympathy necessi-
tates it, or drives mad. We require to get back (in a
higher form) that old doctrine that the material is below
the man and unworthy of regard ; our habit of regarding
it so much and tracing in it so especially God's glory,
has perverted our hearts.
Our idea of this as man's probation especially when
we force the Bible into it ; or rather force ourselves to
graft the Bible upon it leads us to a view of the world
that is utter mystery and darkness. Nothing can be
clearer than that it was quite otherwise with those who
wrote the New Testament. They had a view, a revela-
tion, that made all light to them ; they saw the earth
" full of the glory of God ;" they had something to pro-
claim, which, if people only knew it, would make them
full of happiness and perfect in rejoicing. They had, in
fact, redemption to proclaim.
Men will and must maintain a vicarious punishment, a
forensic proceeding such as is the essential tenet of
orthodoxy, while they think they are not punished in
this world. Make them see that this is the punishment,
the eternal damnation from which Christ saves them ;
that it is not postponed, and not possibly remitted alto-
gether, and then this substitution theory falls. And
then as for the punishment of men's evil deeds and
feelings, that for which we have consciousness of ill-
desert, these, as temporal or physical, have also their
punishment. This too is inflicted, and to the full;
sinning does work misery. Christ does not relieve men
from this punishment of sin ; a man who sows evil reaps
208 Philosophy and Religion.
evil just as much the best Christian as any other man.
It is the eternal, the actual punishment, the damnation,
from which Christ saves us, from which we must be saved
or are utterly undone. The other sensational physical
punishment we can nay, must bear ; by that (in part)
our salvation is made possible.
This is God's hell the very means and fact of redemp-
tion; bright with beauty, thrilling with delight, the
image of that Love which is His Being, which is all
Being, the want of which is death. This is God's hell
this glorious phenomenon, this marvellous life within us
and without : so tenderly inviting, so sternly warning, so
inevitably avenging that wakens us to fervour, moves
us to tears, fills us with remorse and agony and shame ;
that will not let us rest nor have peace, until self be
made hateful to us and utterly abandoned, and God's own
life be in us. This, that by suffering draws to love ; by
pain and pleasure, by temptation and failure, teaches us
to give and not to get. I say this is God's hell : what of
our hell ?
Our notion of damnation makes it the very worst sort
of punishment, that which all jurists deprecate very
severe and very uncertain. We darken the whole earth
with it, and yet are afraid to pronounce it upon any
individual. It is a mockery, this " eternal misery ;" it
prevents our saying of any one boldly, " He is damned ;"
and of course no one believes he will be damned. In-
finitely better, even on lowest grounds, is the other view.
Think of this : how can we foresee what God will do
for us? Suppose a child should stipulate about what
sort of happiness he should enjoy as a man, would he ever
The Bible. 209
have invented love? Would he not have insisted upon
all sorts of pleasures and enjoyments, on having things
given to him, on being made comfortable? Would he
ever have thought of utterly abandoning himself in abso-
lute devotion to another ? Could he have imagined that
new extatic life ? Alas ! we are worse than children, and
more foolish. How soon children learn the idea of love ;
how easily and naturally it comes to them ; how soon
they understand the subject when they see lovers ; what
an instinct draws them to the unknown life. But we
we see heavenly lovers, yet our hearts do not respond ;
we see men who count all pleasures vanity, all sufferings
a joy, because they love and give themselves, but our
hearts do not beat with prophetic throbs ; and when our
childish thoughts stretch out to imagine for ourselves the
coming bliss, we cleave to our toys and sweets, and say :
"But when I am a man I shall have plenty of nice
things." No, thank God we shall not ; but we shall love.
There shall be no pleasure for us in heaven, save in
infinite abandonment ; no gain but in utter loss ; no
possession save in giving.
The joy of heaven is the joy of love. The key to it is
in Christ, who for the joy that was set before Him
endured all. Christ's was the joy of self-sacrifice, of loving,
of saving, of giving up His life for another's. But this
is no joy save to those who love. Heaven is not a
happiness save as we love ; only to those who have eternal
life can there be happiness. We cannot attain love by
seeking for joy ; so men are not to be converted by hold-
ing out to them the joy of heaven; that cannot make
them love, any more than the fear of hell. We can only
love for love's own sake, in sacrificing self. Love is the
actual, it is Being: in loving, man is. It is true that
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2 1 o Philosophy and Religion.
much of this is said (truth always is) ; it is said that
heaven would be no heaven to a wicked man. But then,
to be consistent, what of those intellectual pleasures, and
of the rest, and no more sorrow and sighing are not
these an attraction to the unholy? It is here we are
wrong ; in not seeing that the joy of love is all, and that
it is enough.
God's love is not exhausted in Christ, only brought
down to us. It is just so much as we can see ; not a great
effort, as it were, the highest achievement of Divine
goodness, just done once. It is love, appearing so small
that we may see that it is love ; as a father condescends
to do little things for his child that he may see that he
loves him. The father's love is constantly active in
vastly greater spheres, which the child cannot appreciate
or know of, but in that loving and dying we understand
that it is love. So even Christ's work is to cease ; the
Mediator to be no more ; God is to be all in all.
As our power of loving, and therefore of knowing love,
increases, we shall come to see the love of God swallowing
up our special connection of it with the sacrifice of
Christ. " He shall deliver up the kingdom to His
Father." And think again, how the world could not have
seen the love of God in Christ until it had been educated
by all the previous time.
Man only needs to know that the fact of these things
that he loves is God, and he is redeemed. These passions
have for their object, God, the fact. We seek for God,
else we should be contented by what we get. It is be-
cause we love God, and do not know, do not see the fact,
that we go to such excess, run so into sin. We go ever
on and on, and must, till we find what we seek. Man's
The Bible. 2 1 1
soul thirsts for God. All his passions are the heaving of
his soul beneath that Infinite Beauty; he cannot be
content until he has found Him.
This goodness and love of God in making creatures
happy, which we dwell upon, is not true love were it ever
so perfect, which it is not. If we want truly to see the
love of God we must see it where Christ sought it ; in
sorrow, in sin, in agony ; in the lowest, the vilest, the
wretchedest. It is not in lovely landscapes, in splendid
palaces, in forms of beauty, in the heaping up of delights :
that is mans love God's love is seen in sacrifice. So
too we see better why Christ was crucified; for our
blindness' sake, that we might not be able to close our
eyes to the Divine self-sacrifice. Not that that was so
much in itself, but it was needful for our dull material
sense to learn : such as that is all Nature. And so seeing,
we come to perceive that the true death, the true self-
sacrifice of God for man, infinitely outshining any
martyr's torture, was the life of Christ; His becoming
the dead man ; not dying as man, to rise the living God.
The meaning of " This is my body " is very large. God
giving us food is giving Himself to us. The fact of
eating food is that ; because it is in such form does not
affect it. It is entirely an abuse, our making it such a
special ordinance ; not that it is not such, but that all
are such. All life is sacred when we become quite
spiritual, and see all as actual; but why not therefore
now? It is the very means of our becoming spiritual.
How powerful a means of redemption it would be as
often as we used food to do it in remembrance of Christ ;
to see the spiritual fact beneath the form ; to remember
that Christ has shown us what the fact is, and so not be
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2 1 2 Philosophy and Religion.
deceived by the form, thinking that the mere pleasure of
getting can be the fact; writing " non sibi" upon all.
And indeed, who can say "non sibi" and not think of
Christ ?
So here we see the meaning and feel the appropriate-
ness of the Lord's Supper. It is because our relation to
God is so intimate that no other expression for it is
adequate or truthful. The use of it proves the case so.
For what other relationship would '-eating flesh and
drinking blood " be fit language, or that sacrament a fit
emblem ? That relationship, not to be described like
others, demands that expression. As bread and wine are
the very life and body of the man as he is not, except
by them so is it that God is us, makes us, is our life
and Being; we cannot be separated, we must live by
Him. It is not that we live separately and by ourselves,
and then come into relation with a Being apart from us,
as we do with others ; but we only live or be at all by
Him ; the relation to Him is not a result, but the source
of the life.
With regard to prayer. True, God does not change ;
the fact, His act, changes not, but the phenomenon of it
may change. That is change, not in God, but in man.
" If that be all, why then pray for it ? " Observe, is it
not real to us ? Is it not what we want ? We must
allow that prayer will not change what is, but it may
change what is in time.
Although the phenomenal only is subject to the power
of prayer, yet is not that all that it should be ? Is it
not to that our feelings cling, and about which our hopes,
fears, and desires twine ? Is it not the " actual " to us ?
and is not that all we would wish or desire to alter?
The Bible. 213
Would we alter the fact of the universe, alter what God
does and wills ? This is the scope and place of prayer.
We may own and reverence, and heartily consent to,
prayer; but we must nevertheless protest against its
being brought in as a kind of salve to make tolerable a
theory of things that ought to be intolerable, and left in
its naked hideousness in order that it might be felt so :
viz. the idea that God has arranged a system in which
evils, and bad and inexcusable things in themselves, may
befall, by His abstinence, as it were, and permission. We
must not call in prayer and Divine interference, to help
us to swallow this camel; straining meanwhile at the
gnat of him who says : "I see that God rules all, and I
do not see how to pray." Of course, a seeing person
cannot see how to pray, when prayer has been obscured,
nay blotted out, by such representations.
Christianity is not a theology but a fact. We see men
are fallen, are wicked, and are redeemed by Christ;
words are vain, and nothing to the point ; say it how we
like, here it is. Wicked men, dead men, do receive life
from Christ ; are redeemed, are made holy ; it matters
not to talk. And there is " none other Name " no other
religion does it, attempts it, tends towards it.
Seeing the world perfectly right and good is the true
basis of all earnest and energetic action; for it is as a
means it is right, because of what is to be by it. A man
who sees and approves a means as such, does not rest in
it ; he acts and uses it. Seeing the world thus right and
good, necessarily we throw ourselves heart and soul into
the great life ; God's (Nature's) action absorbs and carries
us away too. If He works in us, there is a necessarily
2 1 4 Philosophy and Religion.
unfailing source of activity and zeal that casts the self
out of us, and makes us one with the course of Nature.
All other action must he laborious and lifeless in com-
parison. So we see the meaning of the apostles' content-
ment with the world ; their finding it full of God's glory ;
and at the same time their earnest, intense zeal to alter
it. It is as God finds it, as He sees the world. His
seeing the evil right and good, and not heing a thing he
cannot tolerate (or however we may like to say it) does
not paralyse His activity, does not prevent His curing
the evil.
Men will cling to the form, let what will come of the
fact. We will have the helieving in Christ, though there
he nothing in it, it must he that form though it be non-
entity. The fact, the life, or what is nearest to it, may
be elsewhere ; but this we utterly abjure, if there be not
the Christian form. It is thus : once there was connected
with Christ the very fact of man's Being ; He gave life to
men ; now we have forgotten all about the life, and use
Him more or less worthily merely as a means for getting
something. And yet now more than ever we will have
Him accepted and sworn by, though there be no longer
any life connected with Him : this is our orthodoxy.
But this is not the end ; the stream does not flow through
the channels where His Name is named; but it flows
still, and none the less from Him. Christ is the sole life
of this our modern world, the sole though unacknowledged
source and spring of its love and self-sacrifice. In those
ages when the Church was darkest, where were the
saved ? Why, out of the Church ; among those who
denied that Christ. Men are bound to deny our Christ,
but that does not make them less Christians. If God be
in them, and they true men, Christ is in them ; they live
The Bible. 2 1 5
by Him. It is monstrous to make believing in Christ
the accepting of a name. We retain the name but have
given up the fact. Never shall the world have true life
until men see the fact of Christ again.
Surely it may be that there is a sense in which even
Christianity is to be surpassed. Not, certainly, in the
revelation of God to the heart and sight; not in the
doctrine which shows Him as the giver of Life. In this,
all thought apart from it has fallen infinitely short ; nor
can any advance do more than restore it, and place it in
its true light. But in this sense such an advance may be
destined : in the leaving behind the miraculous element
" greater works than these shall ye do " which shall
come through the perception of the spirituality of all our
experience, truly, through Science. This is simply a
corollary from the idea that miracle is by a negative.
That Zess, that revelation by a minus, was needed then.
The time may come when it will be thus understood, and
no longer needed. Science faintly whispers about it now
in the doctrine of (rod revealed in " law." Let us only
see that this "law" is one with the revelation of self-
sacrifice in Christ, and then, surely, this higher point is
attained.
2 1 6 Philosophy and Religion.
VII.
HOLINESS.
Nature is self-control The moral life is parallel to the mental To be
moral is to act Ago ergo ego Misery only removed by removing
selfishness No action but right action There is no true arbitrary
action or free-will Arbitrary action is sin Freedom because
necessity Man cannot fail because he is a part of Nature The
only mystery is man's death The moral lesson of Science Our
moral life is passion controlled The phenomenal nature of evil
Sin as inaction The analogy of disease to sin Evil to the
individual is good to the race Life comes only from death We
are redeemed, not tempter), by matter Creation is self-control
God has no physical power " Creation out of nothing " The
creature is one with the Creator Self-sacrifice is not loss A
selfish world is the necessary phenomenon of an altruistic world
No nutrition without a final function The resurrection of the dead
comes by Man.
NATURE is self-control, yet no restraint. It is perfect
liberty ; absolute, self-enjoying freedom. Oh wild luxu-
riance of beauty ! forms of perfect loveliness in infinite
diversity, wandering at your own sweet will, creeping
over earth or towering to heaven, making space resonant
with gentle laughter and radiant with smiles. Ye speak
to my heart of passion wisely ruled, of affections directed
to the right. Due self-control, ye testify ever to re-
luctant man, is life, is joy, is liberty. What gentle
entreaties, what earnest admonitions, what solemn testi-
mony, "God does thus," have ye uttered all the ages
past, are ye uttering still. Ever ye say to man, " Be
Holiness. 2 1 7
free like us ; make not thyself a slave." I do believe
that if I can show that this moral meaning is the true
meaning of Nature ; if I can connect these thoughts with
natural objects, not as an arbitrary, ideal association, but
as the reality of them ; it will be a means in the hand
of God of making men better.
In everything it seems to be one of the last achieve-
ments of Science and sound understanding, to let Nature
alone. But in morals we cannot let Nature alone ; it is for
us, there, to create Nature, by introducing the resistance.
We by control have to make the moral region natural and
living which else by our default is unnatural and deathful.
Here again is a curious relation, parallel somewhat to
the mental life : the moral control or suppression of our
passion constitutes our own life : the suppression of the
not-me, as it were, produces the me. Is not this as the
suppression of the phenomenal or subjective, in Science,
gives us the true? The ignorant man who lives in
appearances is a type of the sinful man who yields to
passion ; as the phenomenon is to the reality, so is our
" passion " to spiritual act. In truth both are one ; the
intellectual phenomenon, and the emotional phenomenon ;
the former called Nature, the latter passion ; the former
the subject of mental life, the latter of moral life : the
" sense of right " operates in both.
We, as spirits, are placed among other spirits, and
deriving from their passion, as it were, our own. Even
as we see in respect to motion, that it is transmitted from
particle to particle ; each of which has its own vibratile
passion, receives force, undergoes divergent passion, and
approximation after, and then its passion ceases. It has
had its life. Thus is passion transmitted to our spirits,
2 1 8 Philosophy and Religion.
forming our bodily and mental life. But and here is
our prerogative as spirits this passion we may make
our own, our spiritual moral life. We take for our own,
permanently, our eternal life, the life thus wrought
within us by self-control. This is our privilege, our
power, our duty to make the life of Nature our life.
When we see a man doing wrong, we should think :
" This is inertia where there should be life. All this
mischief is because he does not act, but is acted through
merely, like an animal ; the evil is, not that he does these
things, but that he is not a man."
I see now how much there was in the emendation of
Descartes' maxim, to ago ergo ego, for see what it comes
to ; the very statement of the not-being of humanity ; I
do not act, therefore not I. The thinking, the passion
does not make the I : it is the not-acting which reveals
the not I.
Kefinement, progress, civilization, virtue even as it is
called all that leaves the selfishness, leaves all that is
evil ; makes not a single step towards holiness, towards
life. The misery, horror, and degradation that are in the
world are for the nutrition, for the life. Suppose there
were this selfishness of man and no misery: what a
hopeless state were that !
This misery from our passions is simply the ruin arising
from the operation of Being (love) on the not-being (the
absence of love) of man. This is not the evil ; this is the
remedy for it ; it makes the nutrition, the life ; without
it there were no remedy for human death and ruin. The
failure and suppression of humanity is necessary for its
development as part of the infinite life. This curse is
also a blessing, as all Grod's curses are. And so all plans
Holiness. 2 1 9
for getting rid of suffering, misery and degradation, save
by getting rid of not-being, destroying the selfishness by
true spiritual redemption, must fail. It cannot be sup-
pressed ; it is the result of action. Destroy the not-being,
give the love; only so is any progress made. If there
were not misery where there is selfishness, there could
be no action around, no love, no God. So surely as God
is, there must be misery from selfishness, ruin and woe
where there is sin; the passion ensures, must ensure,
wretchedness. The proof (and necessary consequence)
that God is, and that He is Love, is that inertia, or not-
love, inevitably produces misery and discordance with
Nature. If it were not so, the Infinity must be a mere
blank void. It is the love of God inflicts our misery.
This is Being giving itself to not-being.
So those who can truly see, see only the selfishness of
man as death. The misery and wretchedness, the evil of
all kinds that is not selfishness, they see as life, nutrition,
redemption, a means of blessed function. And think : it
is not the suffering, the miserable, who are truly to be
pitied : " Messed are they that mourn " ; but those that are
selfish ; those are the truly miserable ones, those for
whom we should weep. "Weep not for me," said He
who hung in death's extremity upon the cross ; " weep for
yourselves." So may you say, oh sons of penury, earth's
most outcast and perishing sons and daughters " weep
not for us but for yourselves." Truly it is not to those
whom God loves most, not to His favourites, that He gives
peace, prosperity, affluence with cold hard hearts.
Now does not our entire conception of a free will want
rectifying? I think we must have been in error
here. Surely we have been considering as belonging to
our constitution, as moral Beings, that which is in truth
22O Philosophy and Religion.
only the result and sign of our sinfulness ; viz. this power
of arbitrary action. We think we have the power of doing
as we choose. I see that this is altogether a false issue.
It is not the point ; nor is it true. What we have is the
power of acting, i.e. of acting right ; but when we act we
must act right ; the rightness consists in that fact of
acting. If we have not acted right we have not acted.
The question of moral freedom has been wholly misun-
derstood ; the wonder is that it stands so well on such
false ground.
There is and can be no such thing as arbitrary action ;
all true action is love, self-sacrifice ; it is the only fact of
law. There is no arbitrariness in all the universe, least of
all in God ; only love, which of all is most its opposite.
Love, or be not ; this is the only alternative.
See here a oneness of the actual and physical. Does
not arbitrariness in this point of view answer to a state
of absolute rest, which is not nor can be ? Man thinks
himself arbitrary, even as he thinks the earth is absolutely
at rest. Not only is not the earth at rest, but nothing
is or can be. Absolute rest were absolute inaction. Every-
thing is necessarily moving, is in action, is giving itself.
Even equilibrium is equivalent to motion, it is a giving
self. The whole must be in equilibrium, mutual self-
giving, or love ; the parts in motion. Arbitrariness is
supposed by man, as absolute mere self-rest is supposed
of the earth ; these are the parallels, and both alike
impossible. Being can only be in self-giving, in action,
not to act is not to be. We do not truly see Nature as
inert in seeing her under law, that is a step out of inertia ;
the arbitrariness which we first put into her is the true
inertia, the most absolute form of it. Law is only from
love, and in introducing law we make a step towards love,
Holiness. 2 2 1
towards freedom. Freedom is the true opposite to free-
will.
It is beautiful tliat in all that is not directly moral, or
actual, man is strictly a part of Nature ; in all man's arbi-
trary doings that are not wrong it is Nature that works ;
it is all a part of the great physical and psychical passive
necessity. This is beautiful, making man's works truly
instincts, in mind as well as body ; all mutually de-
termined, each just such as all others demand, consti-
tuting a living organization ; by means of nutrition
effecting functions. So each man and each working of
each man is an organ of the whole, subserving the
universal life : and all an image of the great spiritual or
actual organisation.
We act arbitrarily only when we sin. In all un-moral
things we act necessarily, viz. by our physical necessity.
In right action we also act necessarily, viz., by a moral
necessity, the true actual necessity. This is our freedom,
our power of action, our Being, our personalty. When we
sin or do not act rightly, then only are we arbitrary ; we
are not. Arbitrariness is not-being. Here again logic,
though appearing for a time 'to be opposed to religion, is
yet found altogether on her side, with its proof that man
has not free or arbitrary will, and that all he does is
necessary. It is most true ; logic is on the side of reli-
gion, now and for evermore. Man is free, is moral,
because he acts necessarily ; even as God.
We are made to enjoy, and therefore to have passion,
in order that we may have life. This is the meaning of
our love, our longing and passion for happiness. Had we
not this, there would be no life, for life is passion con-
trolled. Is it not beautiful ; this passion or tendency,
222 Philosophy and Religion.
which is desire or love given to them to obtain life,
eternal life ? The passion in spirits is that force which
will be life in them, if they will, by God acting in
them ; if they will not, then are they dead.
Thus I see, temptation is not so strictly to sin : Nature
does not tempt us to sin, but it produces in us passion,
which, if we rightly control it, is our life ; if we do not,
it is death. Nature is ever holy. Sin is not in the thing
done, but in the refusal to control our passion ; the
refusal of God, in fact.
We are parts of Nature and share her perfection. To
a man who thus acts with Nature, failure is not nor can
be. He does not succeed in life; his life is success.
Even as Nature is not moral, because it is morality.
Success cannot have success, even as morality cannot
have a moral. Success is yoked to his steps and cannot
leave him ; nothing can bring to him other than constant
good. Nothing should disturb such a man's equanimity ;
for all wrongness and loss are nutritive, the means of
higher ends. Whatever happens, my Life has been and
is ; Nature has accomplished her ends, God has accom-
plished his ; and therein I mine. My will is done because
and while it is one with The Will. This is success, to
find, in all events, my Life. It lies not in the result but
in the deed. Life ever succeeds and must succeed. It
laughs to scorn opposition, failure, loss, for these are not
her contraries, but her very being ; they are the means of
her progress, the willing instruments of her achieve-
ments. But that this may be true for us, we need to
have life ; and sin is death. To sin is to sacrifice and
cast away this joy, this triumph. Sin has no part in life,
nor he that sinneth. It is the right deed only that
succeeds ; wrong is death, despair, and horror, in itself,
Holiness. 223
not in its results. " What shall it profit a man if he gain
the whole world and lose his own spirit ? " Granted that
the world is his : but if lie be not ? There is no earthly
event that should have power to make a man unhappy.
But this is not said of sin. He who sins is not above
grief but below it, and should thank God that he may rise
through grief again to holiness.
We must learn to see ourselves as part of a great life,
to which we are absolutely subordinated ; even as the
elements of our bodies are to us. Human life is nothing
more than any other form of passion to Nature. Cease to
regard the bearing on ourselves of facts in Nature as of
any real importance in relation to the things themselves ;
e.g. consider diseases as essential and absolutely good
parts of the universal life, and cure by utilizing the force
which causes. This is the practical lesson, that as we are
parts of a living whole, we must be living, i.e. holy, accept
our part, control our passion, do as God does ; being part
of Nature, be natural.
We must do right, to make our moral life ; here is the
fact ; it is no matter how it is defined, let it be any way in
theory ; do the right : that is what remains when meta-
physics is laid aside. Let thought be function of the
brain, let moral right be operation of physical laws, or
form of motion ; it will all do. But do the right ; Live :
that is the lesson of the physical world ; and this neces-
sity returns upon us just the same after all our specula-
tions : live. If it be physical, live ; if it be spiritual, live.
What matters it ?
We should see in our inclinations as it were chemical
attractions : a source of life if controlled, but death, decay
224 Philosophy and Religion.
and loathsomeness if uncontrolled ; death to us, but still
forming part of the great life of the universe. We do
not call chemical attraction evil ; the results are bad only
in relation to the particular organisation ; it is the result
of that special relation only. This is the idea of evil being
not real but only phenomenal, or from our relation. We
should learn to understand that our tendencies, our natural
inclinations, are not really evil (even when they produce
unholiness or death in us), but only phenomenally, i.e. in
their special relation to us.
There is but one mystery in all God's universe, and
that lies in us. Not in gleaming suns or circling planets,
not in the myriad forms and varied capacities of living
things, nor in the mighty achievements of the intellect.
Life is no mystery ; it is an axiom ; it all lies in a defi-
nition. The mystery is, not life, but death not that
Nature lives, but that man refuses to live. The mystery
is the mystery of sin ; not indeed as it affects God's
universe ; it casts no shadow there ; . but as it affects our-
selves, the sinners. The dark cloud lies in our own
breasts ; the heavens and the earth afford no solution, as
no parallel. All there is life. The death within us seeks
in vain a fellow, save in hell. Our conscience testifies the
fact ; if a reason can be given our consciousness must give
it. Let us search our own bosoms and say why sin is ;
answering at last the marvelling universe that calls to us
in God's own loving words : Why will ye die ? Let us
give the reason now, dragging it forth from our deepest
hearts. Let us say, Therefore we sin. That Nature may
cease to be amazed, and life no longer shudder at the
touch of death. Oh shame and sorrow infinite ! we dare
not tell it, not even to the gentle earth and placid stars ;
we dare not whisper it to the flowers, nor breathe it
Holiness. 225
sighing to the sighing trees. Least of all to these, that
love us with the trustful love of innocence ; that smile
upon us day hy day, and stretch out gentle hands to greet
us, bidding us welcome to their beauty, as if our hearts
were pure and full of love like theirs. Not to these can
we breathe the fell secret that haunts our memories, they
would shrink from us in horror, and never again should
we behold them free and unconstrained as now. Would
to God we could hide it for ever ! And yet, not so that
were indeed the worm that dieth not. Into God's ear will
we pour it ; He will listen and forgive ; although for
utter selfishness we have spurned His just authority and
trampled on His law of perfect love ; although we have
disregarded conscience and been deaf to the voice of
duty ; though we have known the right and chosen the
wrong, He will forgive.
There is no atom, no particle, no mass, no element
throughout the physical and psychical universe, that does
not willingly yield to the control which constitutes nutri-
tion. We alone refuse. Let us be natural ; let us take
up the universal burden, and look on the attractive sins ;
feeling their strong temptation, and say : These are the
elements of my life ; the forces that shall nourish me, and
give me vital power. For the resistance or control of
passion constitutes the nutrition of the spiritual life.
The holy acts we thus gain power to do are its functions.
Much tried, much enduring man, who with firm heart
withstandest the assaults of strong temptation and with
resolute will controllest passion, blessed art thou ! True
image of the Deity, like Him creating life; sharer by
thine own act, in the universal life. Thine own act
indeed, for only so thy life ; yet an act wrought in thee
by God's free grace alone ; taking for thy portion the life
that flows eternally from God and making it thine own ;
Q
226 Philosophy and Religion.
life that is thus at once God's act and ours ; God's holiness
shared in by us.
We are so full of the wonder of the phenomenon of life,
of its greatness, its glory, the skill of God in it, &c., that
we will not let it go ; we will not give up the shadow for
the substance. "We have to see that all that is imaginary,
before we can see the true wonder. We need not fear ; if
there were not something great and grand in the fact, we
should never have an image so glorious. Did our fore-
fathers lose anything by giving up the phenomenon in
their day ? They were bolder, wiser, than we ; they had
no experience of their fathers to encourage them ; cannot
we take heart from theirs ? Never fear to let go ; it is
the only means of getting better things ; let go let go ;
we are sure to have again. Thus how Science teaches the
lesson of morals, which is ever give up give up ; deny
yourself; not this everlasting getting; deny yourself
and give, and infinitely more shall be yours ; but give,
not bargaining ; give from love, because you must. And
if the question will intrude : " What shall I have if I
give up this ? " relegate that question to faith, and
answer : I shall have God : yes, God gives Himself
to me ; my giving is my acceptance of God's act, God's
act in me, which is myself. I live, I act, I create in
giving. In my giving, in my love, God, who is love,
gives Himself to me. Thus Science teaches the moral
lesson of self-denial, self-control, and love.
The material is lowest ; it is lost to the giver in being
given. The intellectual is given, and not lost to the
giver : the true or moral is not only not lost in giving,
but is only in the giving. That this material is most to
us, is just our death.
Holiness. 227
The phenomenon is ugly to us, as fireworks frighten
children, while their parents go to gaze on them for
their beauty. Sinai was the sunrise of one of the
world's great days a sun which set in hlood when
Jerusalem fell before the Komans. Fearful to us ; but
is it not heavenly beauty when seen aright ? Was not
the scene at Calvary the brighter dawn of a more glorious
day, the loveliest sunrise within God's universe? Yet
what was the phenomenon, but murderous malice and
dying innocence ?
If we do right, the passion so controlled becomes our
spiritual, our real life ; if not, it becomes the life of the
universe. It is the same to God. The evil is but
phenomenal evil ; it is nutrition of the universal life.
If we restrain the passion, that resisted tendency is our
life ; if we do not, the unrestrained passion is still
resistance to tendency, is still life. It is our life, if we
will take it ; but if not, there is no loss.
The universe is necessarily as it is, because God is
holy, and His act cannot be arbitrary. This physical
and psychical necessity is, in reality, God's holiness.
The necessity of the universe does not contravene, but
reveals the holiness of God. Physical necessity is a
phenomenon of which the reality is spiritual holiness ; a
theory of which the interpretation is moral rectitude.
Evil is life, and therefore we dare to look on it.
" Ocean of life, whose waters of deep woe," says Shelley.
The waters of life are woe ; we need not be ashamed or
afraid to own it. The perception of Nature as a spiritual
reality, re-creates for us the world, and all that it con-
tains ; makes all new and of a higher order. Yet truly
seen they are one. Kectitude, love, holiness, are expressed
by, constitute, all these physical laws. We must learn
to see holiness in them, and when we trace the working
Q 2
228 Philosophy and Religion.
of material laws, or the results of physical passion, know
and feel that the reality thus presented is one of infinitely
vaster import, even the eternal rectitude of God.
To see that the phenomenal evil is not really evil, but
only an effect on us produced by good, has this great
advantage, that it enables us to face boldly the fact of the
evil, and removes the disposition to regard the pheno-
menon as other than it is. Knowing that evil too, as
evil, is really good, we are no longer afraid to do full
justice to its proportions as evil, and to admit that, as
seen, it is absolute evil, unredeemed by the least trace of
good. With this faith of the absolute good (and it
applies equally to beauty and ugliness) we can face the
facts. It is just as in Science ; men could not really see
Nature, they could not bring themselves to look at her.
so long as they thought she was really partly false.
The experimental, inductive (phenomenal) Science arose
necessarily from the faith (for it was strictly a faith),
from the conviction as a self-evident fact, that Nature
was absolutely and perfectly true. So will the same
thing arise from the faith that she is really, absolutely,
and entirely beautiful and good. A phenomenal art and
philosophy will be the necessary fruits.
Knowing that the evil phenomenon is a real good, we
can now, and now only, truly investigate the phenomenon
itself. For investigation is, and means, comprehension,
finding out the truth ; but this means finding out the
beauty and the good. So long as it is believed that any
phenomenon is really ugly or evil, it can no more be
investigated than if it be believed to be really false.
There cannot be a phenomenal art or philosophy except
upon the basis that all phenomena are really beautiful
and good. This is clear enough of art. The phenomenon,
as a whole, cannot be brought within its domain, save on
Holiness. 229
the assumption that it is (or will reveal) beauty. In
philosophy this is less apparent, but equally true. Nothing
comes within the domain of philosophy, except on the
assumption that it is (or will reveal) good; to give a
reason for anything is to show how and in what sense it
is good : save sin, the only account of which is that a
being or spirit will not act, chooses death. Sin is not a
fact or reality, but a negation ; and, as such, needs only
a negative account of it.
I love this idea of sin as not an act (or reality), but as
inaction ; a refusal to share in life. The mystery of the
existence of moral evil is thus solved. Placing my eye
right, I see something of the infinite wisdom with which
this system of things is formed ; the deep reality from
which it flows. God has shown it to me. There is no
blot on His creation that needs to be washed out, or com-
pensated for. The idea has arisen from confounding the
phenomenal with the real, thinking evil was really evil.
So excellent is life, that not to live, is that foul and
fearful fact of sin. What does the hatefulness of death
prove to us, but the loveliness of life ? It is so simple :
first to see that Nature is God's act ; that all God's act
is absolutely good : this shows it all. It removes quite
away that black pall that overlies the universe. It is
God's hand wiping away our tears. The universe is a
scene of absolute life and beauty and good ; nothing is
there that is not so. Only this sad fact which stains not
its glory, that some spirits refuse to share in it, is the
great mystery of sin.
This suggests to me, that we misinterpret what the
Bible tells us of heaven. It says indeed that God will
wipe away all tears, that sorrow and sighing shall flee
away, even that there shall be no death ; but it does not
230 Philosophy and Religion.
tell us that there shall be no phenomenal evil. That is
quite another thing. Still shall there be life, yea, more
life ; still therefore evil. But not sorrow and sighing,
not tears : everlasting joy and undiminished gladness,
gladness for life, for evil seen to be good. We fancy if
there be evil there must be sorrow, and sighing, and
tears. But it is not so. To cure us of our grief, it needs
not to take away the evil, but to show it us. Shall we
grieve at the evil when we see it as God does ? Let me
only see the evil as it is, oh God, and my eyes shall weep
no more, nor my heart know another pang.
The motion of the sun was a source of error to the men
of former times ; now God has removed for us that error ;
but He has not altered the phenomenon ; still falsely, as
falsely as when first Adam witnessed the illusion, rolls
the sun around the earth. But God has shown it to us.
The illusion remains, but the error is gone. So shall evil
remain, but the grief shall be gone. The illusion shall
not cease, but sorrow and sighing shall flee away. Not
in the least jot will God alter His deed ; it is eternal.
In heaven there shall be all the evil there ever was on
earth ; nor shall we say it is too much. None shall gaze
upon the life of heaven and say, " I will not live." So
there shall be no sin there, no death.
The analogy of disease to sin is full of instruction. [I see
this is the way to speak of analogy between the physical
and the spiritual ; not the spiritual analogous to the
physical, but the physical to the spiritual.] The idea of
the remedy for the moral disease by the annihilation of
aught that truly is, is just on a par with the false thera-
peutics that seeks to cure disease by destroying something ;
considering inflammation to be excessive action, instead
Holiness. 23 1
of the want of the right vital action. There is not too
much action, hut too little ; all the force that is operative
must and should he there ; necessarily must he there, or
there would not he the heing at all, the organization, the
possibility of life ; hut there ought to be there also
another force, more action, a control, a life, that is want-
ing. To cure disease is to give life ; to produce action is
to destroy disease. Thus Christ gives life, and destroys
not-life ; the two are one. We have been deceived by
the phenomena of sin, just as by those of disease ; have
alike considered that to be an action which is a mere want
of action. Both we have to interpret; and to see the
moral by the physical ; for this end the physical exists
indeed. But as disease if life be not restored destroys the
body, the individuality, so surely sin does if life be not
given by Christ.
The very things which are evil in individuals, are right
and good and necessary in regard to the race. So that
beings who should look on man as a whole would see no
evil ; nothing amiss, nothing wrong ; a perfect, unmarred,
and unboundedly lovely " instinctive " life ; just as we
see in Nature, of which man is part. And so in this
perfect, this lovely Nature, as it is to us, so different from
ourselves, may be this very self-ness which is in us ; and
sin and failure, and wrong, death and redemption ; and
yet we not see it at all.
That individual evil is right and good in respect to
man, we see remarkably in Bacon. He regarded the
material, and he moved men to do the same ; and so Science
is in one sense emphatically evil ; it has deteriorated the
world terribly. But in relation to man it is wholly good ;
it is simply that he gives up his ideal and takes God's; it
232 Philosophy and Religion.
is one of the most beautiful facts in his history. We
may see it again in respect to religious thought. Our
" spiritual " altogether being an invention from our not
knowing the fact of the world, it is as necessary it should
be denied as affirmed. So " matter " must be both
affirmed and denied. This is necessary in respect to man,
just as for right thinking it is necessary to hold both
Being and negation. The sin of men works the purposes
of God ; it is necessary ; it is involved in the true good,
and to Man is only good.
Looking on the universal humanity thus, it must appear
to other beings (of such a grade as to see it as one living
thing) as a diseased body does to us. The elements which
constitute it, partly or wholly dead ; the body diseased by
want of vital state of some of its elements. Christ heals
humanity by restoring life to the individual spirits, the
men that compose it. This is the only true cure of
disease. To this we must attain before we are worthy
of the name of physicians. To restore life to the
elements that are dead, or dying in excess. Christ heals
humanity by restoring holiness or life to the individual
men ; we attempt to heal the diseased body only by
alleviating particular effects of the disease ; checking the
increased action, &c. What we must aim at is to restore
the vital resistance, the due self-control. By virtue of
Christ's healing of the diseased humanity, is achieved a
result of a glory surpassing what would otherwise or could
have been. Thus disease and nutrition come to be one :
nutrition, in respect to the organization effected ; disease,
in respect to the elements themselves which constitute it.
For what is disease but a living frame not attaining its
ideal, not perfectly fulfilling its tendency ? But this is
life ; there is a wonderful unification here. Disease is
Holiness. 233
ever life life ever disease (i.e. using life for nutrition).
Thus God uses sin, as it were ; but does this cast sin on God?
I think not. A spirit lives or not, as it chooses ; but all
the evil which it produces by refusing to live all the
disease is not real evil, but nutrition or life. Thus, I think,
we have attained the point from which the mystery of moral
evil ceases ; and we find it to be nothing but the simplest
and most natural way of regarding the facts, that the
true explanation is contained entire in the commonest
physical phenomena. It is simply life, one instance of
the relation of continuous and transitive vibration.
The decay of a human body is just so much nutrition
to the physical universe, God counts it no less ; we find it
evil because of our relation to it. So, if a human spirit
die, infinite is its loss (that is real death ; spirit being
reality) ; but it is no loss to the real or spiritual universe :
God counts it no loss. But His love leads Him to redeem ;
not for His sake but for ours. And the very existence of
medicine, the science of healing, among ourselves is proof
and justification of redemption, makes it one with Nature.
If the healing of disease be natural, so is redemption.
Healing of disease, in fact, exists but as a type of redemp-
tion; that is the reality of it, as the reality of death
is sin.
When we inflict pain upon each other we know it is not
the part which feels, nor even the body at all though it
looks like it, but the man whose body it is. So there
would be nothing unreasonable in conceiving that when
we inflict pain upon an animal, it is not the animal that
feels it (though it looks like it), nor even the entire
animal organization, but the being (the spirit) whose
body that organization forms. And further, should we
not conceive that all that we do in opposition to Nature
234 Philosophy and Religion.
inflicts pain upon the spirit whose organization Nature
is ; that hy injury to any part of the external world we
cause suffering to a spirit ? I believe it. I have long
had an instinctive feeling that all Nature was sensitive ;
and this is the truth of it. It is all sensitive, as our
bodies are, viz. as being the organization of a spirit.
The apparent sensation of animals, as animals, is designed
to reveal that to us. Thus, the reason against cruelty
to animals is not rendered less strong, but more so, and
is extended.
Further ; our sin, being disease in that organization of
which we constitute elements, also occasions pain to
that higher spirit whose organization or passion it is.
Humanity is sick ; and the spirit that " inhabits " it
suffers. Sin produces pain (besides to ourselves and to
our fellow creatures) also to a higher being the
"universal man," if we may name him so. But this
disease and evil also are nutrition, forming yet a higher
organization, of which these inclusive organizations are
the elements.
There is a wonderful truth in those words, " without
shedding of blood there is no remission of sins." With-
out death is no restoration of life, nor can be ; for remis-
sion of sins must mean imparting again the lost spiritual
life ; death must yield the vital force.
Life comes only from death ; the force only from the
approximating passion. Nutrition is ever the result of
function. Christ's death to give life to the world seems
but a simple expression and instance of this universal
fact, or more truly these phenomenal relations flow from
the spiritual verities.
Christ's death restores the lost life ; and, in restoring,
effects an object higher than could otherwise have been.
Holiness. 235
The wrongness has been a nutrition, and redemption is
its function. In Christ's sufferings there was more than
the death of the body ; a real spiritual life flows from His
spiritual passion ; He bore our iniquities, our death ; from
Him we thus derive new life.
It is a pitiful thought that we are sinful because we
are in matter ; that we are associated with the physical
in order that we may be tempted as it were. It is not
so ; we are in a material world in order that we may be
redeemed. A sinful spirit must be in a physical world in
order to be redeemed ; in a world of time where the deed
once done may be undone again ; where the eternal is
diffused, as it were, into the temporal ; where penitence
may find scope, and repentance may avail ; and where
there are so many, not hindrances, but aids ; where all
things that live and rejoice say to us, " Live, control
passion, and be happy ! " and death, in its perpetual
recurrence, warns us not to die ; saying in tones that will
not be denied : " Sin is destruction ; he that soweth to
the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption : he that liveth
in pleasure is dead while he liveth." Therefore it is we
are in a world of things ; that we may learn to live. The
image of redemption, of being from not-being is around
us, that we may be prevailed upon to accept our own.
To be is to be Divine. There can be nothing more than
God. Creation is not an adding to Him, but rather (as
we conceive it, introducing Time into that which is
eternal), it is a making less, a taking from ; God's self-
suppression. The creative act of God is the very fact of self-
control, of Holiness, of limit morally imposed upon Himself.
My heart is overflowed with awe and glad amazement ;
the very fact and conception of holiness, even our holiness,
236 Philosophy and Religion.
stands thus as one with God's creative act. Divine self-
control is creation, is life. Well does Nature present to
us the one fact of self-control ; well does that constitute
our one action. It is the act, the act that constitutes the
universe, the act of God. God's self-control is creation ;
and in this creation all that is consists.
We entirely think wrong when we attribute physical
power to God, as if He could do physical things, move the
earth, &c. The idea is not appropriate ; of course He not
only can do, but does it all ; but not physically ; it is by
moral action that physical things are done in that higher,
truer sense. How could the motion of the sun be
stopped ? In two ways : either by stopping the earth,
or altering man. We see the sun's motion cannot be
stopped, as such, there is nothing to stop; it is an image.
Just so of physical things ; God can alter them or may
be conceived as altering them only in one of two ways :
altering His own moral act, of which they are the image,
or altering us who perceive His act so, by virtue of our
being and relation to Him. God has not physical power
in our sense; that is wholly phenomenal, belongs to
matter ; only that which has motion can produce or stop
motion in that sense of physical force.
The view which assigns the doing of certain physical
things to God, imparting original properties, moving
planets, &c., is no more to be tolerated than any other
mode of making God physical. The essence of idolatry
is in it, which is a limitation of God ; a denying Him to
be Being. Doubtless idolators made images, and thought
of God as bodily, for the very same reason as we think of
Him as doing physical, material things ; to realise Him
better, that He might not be so far off. We have the
Holiness. 237
strongest proof that the denying the materiality of God
was felt by the nations of old as equivalent to atheism.
They could not receive omni-presence any more than we
can receive onmi-action ; and observe the identity of
reason ; if God be omni-present, He is present no where
as bodily ; so if God be omni-active, omni-agent, He does
nothing as physical. We must give up this as our
fathers, the idolators, gave up the other ; in short we
must give up the material as true Being, and see that all
that truly is, or is actually done, is spiritual.
I make full admission of the moral excellence and
rightness of these views during our ignorance ; I reverence
them and the men who have clung to them. Speaking of
the moral history of man I would do them full justice,
but now I speak of truth and reason, which is quite
another matter. And also, doing justice to those views, I
should claim justice for idolatry also. I doubt not men
have loved and worshipped God under idolatry, who
would not (and could not with the knowledge they had)
have done it any other way ; the denial of idols to them
would have been atheism. As we find respecting our
materially-acting God. Is it not strange that we should
make such a distinction between material-being and
material-acting ? We have to learn that Being and acting
are one. There is nothing at all that God does not do, in
every sense of the word. I grant there is much we
cannot so consider, but this is the point and good of the
argument. All that appears to us, and must be considered
as not strictly done by God (i.e. all that is in cause and
effect), is the result of our not-seeing, our ignorance. It
is not done by God because it is not the actual fact, but
the fact in it is that which is done by God.
There is profoundness in that thought of " creation out
238 Philosophy and Religion.
of nothing ; " it is wrong, with an exquisite Tightness.
We must deny .the " nothing," from which the creation is
supposed, and hold the infiniteness of Being : but we can
see the excellence of the idea the relation is right. If
the " nothing " cannot be, then of course that which is
created out of it cannot be. The necessity which has
driven men to this expression is beautiful ; from the
truth, and man's intellectual relation, how clearly it is
necessitated ! Material things " are," in the same sense
as "nothing" can be. "Nothing" can be to us-, it can
be perceived as being. Here, then, is evidently the
nature of the things so created.
This " mere motion " is what Life, Being, the divine
and eternal, becomes to us, by us. By our negation Life is
emptied, and made mere change in relation to space ; we
do not see it, nor what there is in it. So one understands
the value of that strong feeling of the sacred mystery of
life ; this guarding it from any mere physical explanations.
I do not go against that. I do not deny the sacred
mystery ; but I say that all this which we treat so lightly
partakes of that sacredness. There is no more in life
than in motion, only because in motion is all that is
in life.
Is not all included in that doctrine of love, of creation
as God's self-sacrifice ; that is, that the creature is one
with the Creator ? Only so do we know God, because we
are God. When God would show us Himself, He shows
us what but ourself, man ? We recognise God in Christ,
because we recognise humanity. God does in Christ what
we would do, what alone would constitute us men. He
cannot be God if He be not man ; nor the Creator if He
be not one with the creature. Are we not " children of
Holiness. 239
God " only as one with Christ, as bearing the same
relation to the Father as Christ does ? This gives a new
conception of our sonship to God ; and throws a light on
Christ's sonship too. If we are sons as He is, then surely
is He the Son even as we are ; He one with God as we
are. See how we can interpret these mysteries from
simple and familiar things that Christ is at once God
and man ; the Son of God and one with God ; a distinct
Person, and yet He in the Father, and the Father in Him,
and all one God. All this is no mystery, but the fact of
our own Being ; we too are in the Father and He in us.
We may say : " The works I do, I do not of myself, but
the Father who dwelleth in me." Again, our bodies are
" the temples of the Holy Ghost." Interpreted thus
from within, starting from the known, these divine
mysteries become plain and happy truths.
" God sacrifices Himself utterly," even to become the
creature it is so that we are. And does He not em-
phatically sacrifice Himself in all this misery and sin
and evil, that as we say He permits, so calmly as we
think ; all for His own glory, that He may get thereby !
Does not its agony, its hideousness, go to His heart
infinitely more than to ours? How could this great
"not" be, that is sin and sorrow, save by His self-
sacrifice ? That there is sin and woe is not a contradic-
tion to God's love, it is the very fact of it ; because He
loves and sacrifices Himself, it must be. It is thou, oh
God, who art the martyred one, the anguished, the
oppressed. It is Thou that bearest all this sin and
agony, that there may be living, loving man, to share thy
joy ! So that passage : " Heaven and earth are full of
Thy Glory," stands out in full and simple majesty. The
glory of God being .the fact of His love, of His self-
sacrifice, earth too, in all its sin and sadness, is full of
240 Philosophy and Religion.
God's glory. It needs not that God's glory be educed
from sin; in the fact of it His glory is made perfect,
even as it is in the Cross of His Son. The mystery of sin
is blotted out; all must be that great fact of self-
sacrifice.
What a delusion this passion is, this desire for having
or acquiring, as if happiness were in that. This desire
is given to us in order that from it we may make our life,
by controlling it ; that we may have the happiness of
giving. It is the source of our moral life, the force
which becomes the vital force. It is just as the pheno-
menon (or impression) is in the mental life a delusion ;
but because so, the source of our mental life. It is given
us to be assimilated by sense of right and made to consti-
tute our life.
Give up and you shall have ; cast out self and all is
yours, even God ; we are heirs of God. The universe is
the very best for you ; give up that self-will and you will
find it so. It is as good to you as to God ; because the
world is redeemed. So all men's good is in the destruction
of the evil. The casting out of self not-God from us,
is our life. Genius proves that men have their true life,
their Being, in being one with Nature. In men of genius
Nature, God speaks. Yet are they the typical " men."
So in inspiration. Are not the inspired men the true
men ? Are not they the truly individual, the personal ?
We need not fear to be divine.
How interesting it will be, with these views of the
physical as the image of the spiritual, to trace the mean-
ing of the incarnation, and other events in Christian
Holiness. 241
history. They cannot lose anything of their value; a
phenomenon cannot be made less. Because the body is
an image of a spiritual fact it is not therefore less a body ;
it is a body because it is such an image. That is the
meaning of the word body. Consider, too, the symbols of
the Old Testament ; just so is the universe a symbol ;
and as the great fact of all the Scriptural symbols is that
of sacrifice, so is the great fact of the symbol-universe,
of Nature, sacrifice.
Spiritual self-sacrifice is not (like the phenomenal) a
ceasing to be, a less ; it is the very being ; it is the act
that constitutes the being and the lite. In giving
ourselves, emphatically we have ourselves, we are : so
Christ's self-sacrifice for us; so God's self-sacrifice in
creation. It is no loss. The self-sacrificer the Creator,
the Eedeemer is in the creature, in the redeemed; is
and lives in, and by virtue of, His self-sacrifice. Even
we say : " I live in that which I love ; " that to which I
have given my being, my soul.
Wonderful is this world ; every one having as it were
to seek his own good at another's loss ; this " competition,"
each one taking for himself instead of another having.
It is evidently the necessary phenomenon to the self of an
altruistic world. It is only the converse of that con-
stitution of the world, a necessary opposite view of it.
Being constructed on the truly good plan that of sacri-
fice, the self given up to others necessarily from the
self- view, according to the self-action, it is this opposite
of the self-getting at the expense of others. This latter
is involved phenomenally in the former ; that best good
implies it. It is we trying to reverse it, reading it back-
wards ; but if it had not this backward construction
the truth could not be so good. This is what comes
242 Philosophy and Religion.
when the self is in an altruistic world. And so the
world is good, if we put our standard high enough, and
include the sacrifice of the self ; but from this of course
comes the effort to reverse it on the part of the self. But
observe, this does not succeed, that is the point ; if it did
it would be bad. The self is sacrificed in spite of all its
efforts; the world is altruistic, even when most of the
self seems to succeed ; it still fails utterly, perhaps then
most utterly. Is here the truth in the representation of
future punishment in the sense of suffering, phenomenal
evil, or evil to the self succeeding selfish enjoyment ; so
that the most successful self-attempt fails in the long run
even from the self-point of view ? But then there is a
great perversion here. People do not see that it is the
self cannot succeed at all, and so comes the notion of
making the best of both worlds, which perhaps is exactly
the greatest mistake the self ever made : though it has
done nothing else from the first. This sacrifice of self is
martyrdom, is the destiny of man, whether he will or not,
and the glory is that he is to will it. There is beauty even
in Calvinism here ; it represents the destiny of the lost
strictly as a martyrdom ; they suffer for (rod's glory, for
the good of the universe. It is this gives it its power,
and is its charm. It is true : man can accept that only
each ought first to accept it for himself.
God does not let the smallest atom be placed in
opposition to its affinities or tendencies but to effect a
higher function ; not one is allowed to suffer but for a
vastly higher end. And so with man. Not one pang is
inflicted upon him, not one felicity withheld, one tendency
restrained, but for the purpose of nutrition and sub-
servience to a function. We must liberate ourselves from
the thraldom of thinking that we are the object of
Holiness. 243
creation. We are part of it ; elements forming part of
the universal life ; we must be content to bear our share
of nutrition, and offer up ourselves willing instruments in
the production of the function ; yield gladly our bodies to
suffering, our hearts to sorrow, our desires to disappoint-
ment; bear our part in the great life, ennobling and
exalting it by willing subservience.
In life there is no particle that has not at last its
tendencies and affinities fully gratified, carried com-
pletely out. But by the violence done to them, the
restraint imposed upon them, it is made to form part of
an organism ; and by obeying its affinities, by carrying
out its tendencies, it effects the function. So, surely, in
respect to the nutrition effected by violence done to
human affections, restraint on human tendencies, all shall
come right at last.
Let us rejoice that God uses us and our troubles and
resentment and intolerance of the evil, to bring about the
good. Also He does the best for us, for each one ; our
trials are the only best for us. What a wonder it is :
the best for the world, the best for each one also. And
yet not a wonder, for only by being best for each one
could it be best for the whole. We think individual
welfare is sacrificed for the welfare of the whole : it is a
mean mistaken thought. The good of the whole com-
prises and consists in the good of each part. We think
God does like us, who are obliged to manage, and contrive,
and choose, and sacrifice some objects for others : God
attains the perfect good of the universe by, and with, and
not without my perfect good.
We admire this nutrition and development by limit and
excess and resistance in nature ; we sympathise not with
B 2
244 Philosophy and Religion.
her toil and long-suffering and patient endurance. But
when it comes to ourselves and we have to live also, bear
the wrongness, resist the passion, then we complain sadly,
and even doubt if God can be good ; or we think He has
much to do in the future to make it up. This doctrine
of the future has utterly perverted our faith ; at least it
has made a great nutrition, and we will have a glorious
function from it by and by. It is the poor sacrificed
working people we should feel for ; they are the martyrs
sacrificed for earth's good. It is too much glory to share
with them the work of developing the earth's life. For
that is what this suffering and wrong is doing. I extend
the idea of martyrdom, of suffering for the progress of
the right and good, to all innocent suffering. When I
say the noble army of martyrs, I think of more than
martyrs at the stake and holy confessors. I think of the
pale downcast operative, the degraded outcast, the tor-
tured slave. All these are martyrs, sacrificed for the
world.
Is there not something beautiful in the thought that
sin pertains to the individual and exclusively so not to
man ? Only so deep as the isolated individuality extends
can sin extend. And thus it is that sin can be " washed
away ; " because it is superficial ; because into the actual
fact of man's being it does not enter. The sin has stained
the self, not the man.
And an entirely new thought of the world comes with
this. Amid all this sin is the sinless Man ; and we who
are sinful are to be brought into one with Him. " By
Man came also the resurrection of the dead."
Ethics.
245
VIII.
ETHICS.
The"practical problem is to unite work for man with the devotion con-
nected with work for God How to keep up the enthusiasm of
religion Not imagination but faith Stoicism and actualism
The world is altruistic Man's business is with the present The
practical as existing for the sake of the reflective The evil of
exalting individual over general regards The self as the devil
Genius is a sufferer, not a doer Our Christianity cannot give the
enthusiasm which only can raise men above selfishness Self-
sacrifice is extended politeness Poverty does not involve loss of
refinement A return to Nature Good manners in the sphere of
morals The child state of humanity The value of good manners
as showing the pattern for life The world goes best by being let
alone Mill's argument for liberty What martyrdom is The
eternal necessity of martyrdom Sociology Social evil is nutrition
The life of society Trade should be made a profession The
world was never worse than now The evil of our modem life of
refinement Good is determined by its relations Woman, like
religion, needs to be liberated Egoism is not the true basis of
mail's life To be heroic we must advance Future times will owe
to this age the culture of the heart.
THIS is the problem : to unite, with working for our
fellow-men, the zeal, absorption and devotion which went
with, and naturally go with, the idea of working directly
for God. And how clearly, too, it is this which the
actual view of life, and the world, solves. Is not the
ethical doctrine exactly expressed thus : " Act for man,
as men of old acted (superstitiously) for God " ? Here is
the proposition, implicitly, of martyrdom for the Christian
246 Philosophy and Religion.
life ; of taking the lowest place. All the feelings, all the
practice, which that " serving God " excited, are re-
awakened and restored, and engaged in the service of
man. See how that devotion and intensity are necessarily
suppressed in the changing direction of men's thoughts
and deeds ; necessarily suppressed while they are in
ignorance of what man's state is, and what life is for ;
and yet, from larger experience and knowledge, that
change of direction necessarily comes. It must have
been ; the old God-serving, apart from serving man, could
not have stood (it involved, too, a radical misconception
of the relation of God and the creature). And so, too,
how naturally and necessarily (how vitally, as by an
organic life), that practical law arises from the " actual "
doctrine. It must come ; it is simply its flower and
expression. It gives free scope again, in human channels,
to that devotion and surrender, that entire using and
spending and surrender of oneself, that man ever, and of
necessity, aspires to pay to God. Wonderful (and yet
necessary), that in directing this stream towards man,
its strength and intensity should have been so weakened ;
and infinitely beautiful too, that in receiving this direc-
tion, the condition is fulfilled for its rising to its highest
intensity, and developing its greatest strength. Stronger
and more intense than ever it is to be ; uniting thus all
our nature.
All daily life and human intercourse is by this know-
ledge of what it is raised up to that level on which the
old " worshipper " stood ; and it rises, not by thought or
effort, but naturally, up to the same level of heroism.
Nay, above it ; it is universalized by being perfected. In
fact, it is that part of the old life taken and made the
whole of life.
And so again one sees how asceticism the devoted
Ethics. 247
isolated life was an " anticipation " in another form ; it
was an attempt to make the whole life what it is !
Eight was the thought and desire to have the whole
world on the actual level ; but this is to be a work of
seeing, not of doing. So it is grand to see this in the
ascetic life ; a prophecy that all life is to be known as,
and practically made, a religious devotion.
The practical problem in religion is to attain a means
of keeping the enthusiasm and vigour of the religious
feelings. Many doctrines, many means, excite it for a
time, but how is it to be made permanent, and this not
in a favoured few but in all ? The ascetic life, the life
of constant meditation, the exclusive devotion to religious
works, has been tried for this ; sometimes successfully,
though often worse than failing ; but, besides its other
obvious objections, it is inapplicable to all. What then ?
Is not the exact thing we want this very result, which
comes from seeing the present as the phenomenon of the
eternal ; viz. that of making our constant occupation
consciously a religious occupation ? This is to make the
ordinary life of all the very same as the life of the
devotee, and perfected too ; it is a simple union of two
opposites, the two imperfect halves, the two phenomena
of the true religious life (each a + and a ), related as
physical and spiritual. And see, this is an instance of
that law of partial opposites and why there must have
been both. The necessity is to have our thought con-
tinually exercised on that which is religious, then let all
ordinary things be religious ; and let religion be rein-
forced by all that comes before us, so that the flame of
Divine affection is continually re-illumed. All that the
devotee seeks by shutting out the world, all that, and all
he fails of, are gained from the world. Thus one sees
248 Philosophy and Religion.
how the spiritual and the physical have heen two
opposing things ; each opposing the other, and alter-
nately, and in different individuals, triumphing ; but
neither gaining permanent victory.
By what imagination, then, shall we make common life
romantic and heroic ? By no imagination ; hut by faith.
" This is the victory that overcometh the world " ; the
realization of the not-seen. So here surely is the inter-
pretation of that seeking the romantic ; its truth is
universal ; the error is in not recognizing the fact, and
so seeking it in partial and unreal forms. Just as in
respect to " good " : men seek good so vainly and wrongly,
not seeing the actual goodness that is. So here is a
meaning in the expressions, " lift Thou up the light of
Thy countenance," " in Thy light we shall see light."
May not this be a thought well ever to associate with
them that of making us see ? When we perceive how
good it is to " see," how much that is, may we not find
this thought worthy of the terms ?
So far from coinciding, stoicism and the actualist ethics
are at the extremes of oppositeness ; they are to each
other as plus and minus. Paul expresses it perfectly :
Not that I would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that
mortality might be swallowed up of life." Stoicism is
the not regarding these things, finding them little and
of no account. Actualism is the regarding them more,
finding them great and full of an infinite value and
worth. The one is crushing, the other is expanding ;
emptying, and filling to overflowing ; despairing, and
being overwhelmed with wonder and delight. The
" actual " doctrine fills us so with joy, makes us see such
an infinite glory and worth in the pettiest, paltriest
Ethics. 249
things, that it does away with selfish feelings ; makes us
feel these earthly passions no more, or feel them but to
despise and loathe ; it raises us above ourselves. Stoicism,
fixing its gaze upon itself, wraps itself in contemptuous
disregard. It is the difference between ice and fire.
Think of the apostles and martyrs.
Is not here a parallel : as, in respect to science, the
perfect seeing of its religiousness, the recognition of
the spiritual in all (i.e. of the phenomenal character
of the physical) gives the most perfect freedom in dealing
with it, the most complete and unbiassed control of all
phenomena and of all our own thoughts : as it is in this
so is it not in respect to practical life ? Is not the
perfect and entire spirituality that which gives freedom
from the shackles of a false and partial one ?
The world is altruistically good : in cases innumerable
we may see it. Our loss or suffering is the good of
others (the phenomenal good) ; and this besides the re-
vealed, actual, altruistic good of the redemption of man,
which is in all. What we want is, to introduce this as
our conscious element of happiness, think of it, be happy
in it. It is just as if a person were in a position to hear
the best and most perfect music at will, a person too with
the most exquisite ear, but not cultivated; and he did
not care to go and hear it, ignored it ; thought it was, or
would be, or could be, nothing. Now we should say to
him : " Here is a continual source of most exquisite
gratification, and exactly adapted to you : attend to it
cultivate your ear you will have pleasures that now you
cannot conceive." Every now and then we taste an
altruistic pleasure ; but the pleasure in altruistic action
is to be known, like all true pleasures, only in enjoying
250 Philosophy and Religion .
it; it cannot be described ; we must avail ourselves of it.
Here it is : we are sacrificed for others. The sweetest of
all harmony is continually performed for us ; nothing is
wanted but that we should attend, and grow into the full
appreciation a joy-giving appreciation excelling all
tasted or conceivable before. Here, in this natural capacity
and disposition (like a sensitive but uncultivated ear) for
altruistic pleasure, lies the truth that those see who
insist that there is the germ of a Divine life in man,
that the Divine image is not wholly effaced. May we not
thus attain a more perfect sympathy with the beauty of
this life ?
Men who suffer reap small consolation from the good
to others, even though to very many this is so familiar as
to be even a proverb, and it is no blame to them. Then
see here how wrong we are in our very constitution.
This " no-blame," this naturalness of that feeling, is the
very telling point ; it is no blame to us that we feel so ;
then see how radical is the flaw. Those evils and
wrongnesses for which we are not " to blame " are the
deepest.
It is no objection to a thing that it will not work the
wrong way. If the world is good for giving in, it is good
for the best purpose. Every one knows that giving is
better than getting ; all this is perfectly simple. The
mystery and difficulty is from there being something in
us which perverts our feeling; and if not remembered
and watched against, perverts our thinking and acting
too. But then to be on our guard against it is perfectly
simple and easy when once we know. There is something
wanting in us. It is as if intellect were wanting, and
that we did not feel that two and two must make four,
Ethics. 25 1
but only learnt it, and had to remember that it was so,
although we had a feeling the other way. That is just
what we have to do in religion ; to learn and remember
something true although we have a feeling the other way.
But there is a deeper feeling that way also ; the false
feeling after all is superficial ; and here is an interesting
thought that the " self "-ness in man truly is but
superficial.
I hold that it is knowledge regulates action. I do not
deny that the soul, the life, is the spring of good, or the
entirely subordinate place of intellect ; yet I affirm it
necessary. It is a condition ; it is as weeding and
ploughing to a field ; not the cause of the growth of corn,
by any means, but it may be the thing that is wanted at
a particular time. The other elements may be ready,
and wanting that. Now this I take to be the present
state of Christendom : there is power and life enough for
the growth of a truly good, practical life ; the condition
now wanting is a truer knowledge ploughing and weed-
ing. Men do not know what the world is, nor what the
Gospel, nor what is right. They are rather uninformed
than unwilling. Was it not so in Luther's time ? Was
it not the thought that was altered then ? It is a per-
mission of the goodness rather than its producing, that
is wanted ; and error prevents. Let us have men as good
as they are ready and willing to be ; that would be enough.
It is true ; noble things are done now ; but what we
want is to have these things not the exceptions ; to have
all our life made so, to have this the fundamental prin-
ciple. It would work. And for this we want to know,
to understand. There is the willingness : that is proved
by these exceptions.
252 Philosophy and Religion .
Men cannot get perpetual motion, because motion is
perpetual, but it is altruistic. Is not this analogous to
our trying to get, and not being able to get, happiness
or good ? Is it not because it is, but altruistic ? It is
our relation, our mode of feeling, deceives us ; and we
try to get that which is, because it is not to us. Observe,
too, how much better even our purposes are answered
truly by the altruistic perpetual motion than if we could
get what we wanted. Is it not so also in respect to the
other good ? And as in respect to the former, so also to
the latter, is it not our part to enlarge our knowledge
and conform our action to the truth ? As practically
there is not perpetual motion, and yet practically there
is, so is it in respect to good. See how the oppositeness
in us is shown perfectly by Science also. Practically
motion ceases, practically it does not ; yet is the truth
only one, and human life is itself only in knowing and
acting so. We are related to nature (the phenomenal)
in a false way. There cannot be that perpetual motion
" to us " ; it is against the nature of motion, altogether
against itself ; so there cannot be that " good " to us ; it
were against the nature of good.
Man is truly one ; therefore the true objects refer to
man as one ; i.e. the world exists for universal objects ;
in using it we must regard universal objects, or we use it
as it is not. Is not this the same as that the world exists
for spiritual objects, is spiritual ? Is not the universal
truly spiritual, the physical individual ? There is not
oneness in the physical ; this feeling of oneness is
in truth of the not-physical. There is no physical
" man " ; " men " are physical ; man, spiritual. Our
feeling in respect to the individual objects is a wrong
feeling; when we are right we shall be freed from it.
Ethics. 253
So the individual, and its end, are not good or valuable,
and so are sacrificed. Mans ends only are regarded,
and these are spiritual ; we must learn to regard these
only.
The only sufficient consolation in sorrow must be that
it is salvation ; that it makes man love, and sacrifice
himself. Not a balancing of less happiness against
greater, but of an illusion against a fact ; of sorrow, not
against enjoyment, but Love. Future enjoyment cannot
repay present sorrow ; we know it cannot. Convince a
man that vice is against enjoyment in the long run, and
you are as far as ever from making him virtuous. The
present asserts its rightful supremacy in spite of all such
barriers. Man's business, man's life, is in the present,
because it is in the eternal, of which the present is to
him the only representative. And that men have pre-
ferred, and do prefer, the future to the present that
martyrs, for the sake of the world to come, have endured
and will endure again this is not to the point. If it be
supposed that there was a balance of present against
future suffering or joy, it is a great mistake : that may
well account for our seeing so little like martyrs now.
It was for present love that they endured. And that
future enjoyment cannot console for present suffering,
we see it is a clear fact of all our daily life. Do we not
firmly believe in a future and everlasting happiness, un-
utterable and overwhelming ? Yet does it console us for
our sorrows ? Do we not know, that in darkest ages,
amidst least believing natures, there never was a time
or place when sorrow was so ill-borne, and suffering so
feared ? It is right that it is so ; it helps us, or should
and will help us, to a truer consolation. Enjoyment
is not the consolation for sorrow least of all future
254 Philosophy and Religion .
enjoyment but Love which waits no lapse of time, which
flies no wretchedness, which alights with its soft pinions
there first where anguish has worn the deepest scars.
This is what the heart requires to know : what end
does our life answer ? Can there be all this mass of hope,
and aspiration, and toil, and strife, and misery, and
nothing done ? And if once we come to this question, is
it not evident what is done ? We must look fairly and
see truly what is evil in the world ; how the worst results
come necessarily, come by the truest, best designed, sin-
cerest efforts of men for right and good. See those old
1 rials for witchcraft. Is it not the same with many of
the evils now, which perhaps are quite as horrible as any
past, only felt not so because we are familiar with them :
are not they too unavoidable ; coming out of our very
efforts to do our best ?
People think the reflective exists for the sake of the
physical or "practical." "What is the good of moral
reflections, unless they be carried out in act?" Now
they may be mistaken here : it may be that the physical
exists for the reflective; the end may be not the attaining
of such material results, but the experience, the sub-
jective state, which flows out of them. Now if so, it does
not follow that the practical may be neglected, that the
reflective should not be carried out into act. It is a
wonderful instinct, a glorious illusion, that the use of the
reflective is to be carried out in act. Only by that carry-
ing out into act (which seems to us the end or object) can
be attained the basis and materials for a higher, truer,
larger reflection. This is the good of the practical; it
carries on and develops that subjective for which it
exists ; this imperfect subjective only attains its perfec-
Ethics. 255
tion, its advance, by the being carried into action ; each
end produces a new means. Here is the right relation.
Be practical ; but be so in the right way ; attend to these
physical things, but understand for what reason and
purpose ; they are not an end, they are not of value in
themselves, but are essential to the attainment of that
which is. There is more in them than we have thought.
For of course they lose no value that they have, by being
seen to have an altogether new and higher value before
unseen. Would he be thought to deny the reality of a
pound, to be unpractical or visionary, who should say to
an ignorant man : " Do not use that sovereign merely for
your amusement, it has uses, 'meaning,' value much
beyond any that are apparent in itself; it is not a mere
piece of metal, it is a pound " ? " As seeing that which
is invisible" how exactly that applies to a man who
should speak so of a pound ; he sees an invisible fact
respecting it. Would he urge inattention to sovereigns,
because he should say : " The value of it is not this mere
pleasure it affords you; do not regard it so; see its
relation to the great facts of life " ? And observe how he
would say : " Do not hold it and keep it ; give it up ; use
it. This thing held by you is nothing part with it, and
see what you have instead." So is this physical : it is
our money used by us as if it were mere metal, to please
ourselves with till we are tired of it.
All that is evil to us is for remedy of something which
is bad and needs remedying, and how therefore can that
be truly evil ? If we say that that which the evil exists
to remedy must be truly evil, the same thing is true of
that also that is an evil to us, existing to remedy some
other evil, therefore how can it be evil ? We are here in
an endless chain ; we cannot get at that primary evil ; it
256 Philosophy and Religion.
is not, it rises and rises, until it shows itself the love of
God, the creation of man. Kedemption resolves itself into
creation at last. Here what we call real and imaginary
sufferings become one. For imaginary sufferings are not
less truly sufferings, not less evil to us. " But there is
no reality in them;" true, and so of these physical
sufferings ; they are truly evil to us ; but there is no
reality in them ; the sufferings we call imaginary are
real to us until we know ; the sufferings we call real are
real to us only until we know. The world dreams : I
would it might awake out of this weary dream to know.
All is suffering which is painful to us ; and this is all the
evil the relation to us which therefore is necessarily
one. All has that element in it, which, when we recognise
it, makes us call it imaginary ; we only need to recognise
the fact, to be aroused from our dream, to see that all we
call real suffering is truly such as we term imaginary.
The reality to us (while ignorant) of imaginary sufferings
or evil, is most instructive. I suffer; but there is no
evil, only an imaginary evil, because I do not know what
is ; a nightmare, in which one struggles and struggles to
be free, and cannot get so. Why are our struggles vain ?
because we are directing our efforts to the phenomena.
We cannot regain comfort so ; there is no fact there to
deal with ; we only escape from the sufferings of a night-
mare by waking up and directing our efforts according to
the fact of the case. It is just so with reference to these
evils of life ; we cannot escape them, struggle as we may,
because we direct our efforts to the phenomena. The
only remedy is to wake up and act according to the fact
of the case.
Is there not even something good in ignoring the dis-
tinction between virtue and vice ? That idea of " virtue "
Ethics. 257
goes with the thought and feeling of self: " I am good."
There should he no " I," no goodness ; hut just this :
God shall act, not the self; here shall he man, man's true
Being and action and life, not " I " at all. The only
deliverance from self must be by feeling that we have all ;
that there is nothing to get, that God's love is perfect,
and is wholly ours ; that man is redeemed. This is how
Christianity can make the world holy, free from self;
because it reveals to men that they have all, that all is
good ; winning love by love.
People without strong " affections " and " sympathies "
are not worse than other people : we want a virtue that
shall appeal to and embrace both sorts. See how these
strong lovings are compatible with the worst lives and
qualities, and vice versa. There are many men who
scarcely have these, who yet rejoice in the utmost sacrifice
for the purest most unselfish ends, who would lay down
their lives, endure all agony, for the world's bettering.
And these are often the " bad people ;" they are sullen,
restless, unsocial, even depraved. We want a truer
calendar of virtue.
It is quite the established doctrine to exalt the indi-
vidual personal attachments and sympathies over general
(what are called " cosmopolitan ") regards. Now it is
just the question whether this is right. I say it is not.
Doubtless the personal affection is incomparably better
than mere selfishness. It is better than indifference also,
which is what perhaps goes under the name of " cosmo-
politanism." And it must be, I conceive, from having
only these to compare with it, that the personal regard
has come to be so lauded. But I say let us look calmly
at this, and see if these personal affections and devotions
s
258 Philosophy and Religion.
be not rather the forms and pretences of virtue than the
fact, if the very essence of selfishness be not in them, if
what we want be not a true self devotion ; not personal,
not for individuals ; a devotion such as Christ's, to the
world ; a devotion having reference to the fact and not to
the phenomenon, the eternal and not the temporal, the
actual and not the physical. What can come of these
acute personal devotions, but self-regard ? A little wider
indeed, but just as hostile to the universal good as the
mere individual. The same principle is in them. Devo-
tion to my wife, my child, what is it truly better than
devotion to myself ? It is formally, phenomenally, better,
I -admit infinitely so, and a necessary step out of that
intensest death. This is the use of the personal affections
(people say it indeed) ; not to be final, or an end and
perfect result themselves; but to be a means and help
towards a true all-embracing Divine Love. Then let it
be a means ; let the end come ; a means is good if it be
used as a means ; made an end, nothing is worse. As we
see, nothing can be worse than that domestic love (so
called) in England this day. Is this the universal imper-
fection which brings suppression, a necessary suppression,
owing to the imperfection of the other, which was surely
from its not including a seeing the invisible ?
In those narratives of the casting out of devils, we see
self as the devil and how it is cast out, and must be, if
any life is to be in us. Also, the evil spirit goes back to
the man from whom it is cast out, when the house re-
mains empty. Is it not so, when by self-righteousness,
self-effort, the self is cast out ? This is no deliverance
from the self; the house left empty will but be filled
with self again, worse than before. God must cast it
out, and live in us, and fill us ; else is our last state
Ethics. 259
worse than the first. Think of this passage : " When the
evil spirit goeth out of the man ;" as if it were quite
simple and certain that there is one in man, and either
he must be cast out, and another spirit enter into his
place, or he will retain his hold. What can it mean, but
the self? And that God must take its place ? I have
thought long that when we came to know better we
should see that these accounts of demoniacs were quite
right, and only wrong to us by our ignorance. The self
cannot cast out the self ; love cannot be from the self ; it
is a contradiction in terms. Love must corne from with-
out, be given, poured into us. It cannot but be, if we
believe, and .regard what G-od is doing. Of this we may
be sure ; if the world is in any sense wrong to us, it must
be because we regard it wrongly ; we regard it from the
self ; only so indeed can it possibly be evil.
I think we shall never get right until we do truly feel
about the self as a personal enemy, trying to draw us
into slavery and destroy us ; and that all that is man in
us is against it. So that we should ever recognise the
voice of self as that of an enemy, as the temptation to
death ; all yielding to self as abnegation and denial of
humanity. In every case we should feel : Now humanity
shall be, man's life and Being shall be in me ; no devil
shall destroy it. " This self is a devil :" when we find
that out, with what glad, yet awful amazement it strikes
us fearful indeed, and terrible, but yet replete with joy.
What a sense of deliverance, of hope and relief, it brings
with it. It is indeed glad tidings ; it makes the world,
and all our thoughts, hopes, desires, prospects, our very
Being new ; we see so differently ; our whole conceptions
of good and evil are altered ; we are right to the universe ;
we are to it as God is.
s 2
2 6o Philosophy and Religion.
How are we to be happy under vexations? Not by
trying and resolving. We want something in our
thoughts that shall take away the disposition to grief;
we want to remember the redemption. But in order for
this we must associate it with all things ; it must be the
thing we regard in all, or else we shall not think of it
till too late (even as to behave well on special occasions,
we must on all). The only art of associating the re-
demption of the world with our particular little troubles
when we want it, is to associate it with all things ; in
order to which we must only believe it. Just so for
glorifying God; we shall be sure to omit to think of
doing it at the right time, unless we are thinking of it,
doing it, in all things ; for which end we must know that
God's glory is in all things.
Our right relation to things, in respect to joy and
sorrow, appears somewhat here in the fact that only
forms change. Surely we ought to be equally glad in the
fact under any form. But these changing forms involve
such losses to us, such evils ; we cannot be equally glad
in the one fact. But now, what do we want for our
perfected joy ? That the forms should be petrified and
not change ? Surely not ; but that their changing should
not affect us as it does. We want to be made to have
one joy in and regard to the fact ; and then the promise
of the eternal, where no change or sorrow comes, is at
once fulfilled. And that is open to us now. Let our joy
be in the spiritual, in redemption ; that remains the same
under all forms. Only our feeling of forms as realities is
the secret of our grief.
Talent is doing, genius is suffering. This puts suffering
in its right light. For see : it is genius does the work
of the world ; talent exists only for it, it is of no use save
Ethics. 261
as laying a basis for the work of genius. So man's work
is done, not by doing but by suffering. It is by what we
bear the world is redeemed ; our doing is very unim-
portant, in itself of no value. It is in our suffering God's
work is fulfilled ; for suffering the world exists ; then we
are used ; God's work is done in us ; in our suffering is
the Being of the universe. Christ was a sufferer, not a
doer. What He did was of little moment comparatively,
and of little efficacy ; its use was not for itself but to
reveal the true meaning and value of His suffering.
Only enthusiasm can truly raise a man above enslave-
ment to himself, and his wants and pleasures ; can free
him. And our Christianity, the individual saving from
punishment and hope of felicity, will not, does not, can-
not, give us enthusiasm lastingly ; it may for a time, but
it dies away. We want another salvation to set us truly
free. This is in the absolute salvation ; it is an un-
ending, unfailing source of enthusiasm, worthier, larger,
more inspiring, and ever new, ever growing, ever afresh
revealed. Think what interest it must give to life, to all
events great and small, pleasant and painful, near or
remote, to see in them all God redeeming man. Every-
thing imparts to us a new and burning zeal and joy.
Enthusiasm cannot cool. The world is full of God's
glory, and how can we be dull and unconcerned ? The
wonderful fact so grows upon our perception, we cannot
but be overwhelmed with emotion. How could we have
such dull meetings, with nothing to talk about, or only
these paltry interests, or some things to lament and
groan over ? It could not be. We have no interest in
life, and how should we ? What an emphatic condemna-
tion of our piety are our hymns of praise all about how
happy we ought to be.
262 Philosophy and Religion .
Yet there is no reason, I think, why, even without
being different or better, there should not be a much
better practical life ; a seeking of others' pleasure rather
than of our own, which all experience proves to be the best
and greatest happiness. To argue the contrary from
man's present ways, is like arguing that children who
are greedy can never become polite. Why should not
man be polite in great things as well as little ones ? If
the sacrifice is greater so also is the reward. Self-sacrifice
is but politeness in reference to great interests. (How
often that goes with absence of politeness in little things
and vice versa). Phenomenal people, who cannot under-
stand, and who blame sacrificing material interests for
moral or social ends, are like people who, not being able
to see anything beyond the mere sensual, should be
astonished and confounded at a polite man, should charge
him with neglect, and often not of himself only, but of
his own family. The case simply being that the polite man
has perceptions which the vulgar greedy man has not ; he
acts in reference to other objects ; he has more life, more
Being ; he comes nearer to manhood. (The vulgar man
is not necessarily the worse man of the two ; he may be
the better.) Between a polite and a vulgar man the case
cannot be argued ; the only thing is : Can you give the
latter the new perceptions ?
Would it not be better merely for men to know intel-
lectually that the true object is not their enjoyment, their
edification, but the redemption of man ? Would it not
make them wiser, truer, in their practical life ? Are they
not wiser for knowing that the bodily appetites are not
for their mere pleasure, but for nutrition and preserva-
tion of the life ? Do they not act more wisely than if they
did not know it ? Their appetites remain the same, and
Ethics. 263
much abuse remains, but not such mere abuse as if they
did not know, not such mere abuse as exists now in
respect to other self-indulgence grasping at wealth and
means of enjoyment or power. Men treat these just as
they would eating if they thought it was solely for enjoy-
ment, and did not know that on wisely regulating it
depended health ; as if they merely ate and ate and ate,
for the pleasure of it, regardless of digestion and having
a stomach-ache, ate again. Merely knowing the fact does
improve practice somewhat.
One chief practical error is the idea that poverty
(especially when voluntarily encountered) by truly re-
fined people, would involve loss of refinement. This it
would not do ; nay surely it would elevate and perfect it ;
is indeed needed for its perfecting. The unrefined want
wealth to refine them (or that which is now only to be
obtained by wealth) ; the refined do not need to retain it ;
nay, perhaps rather need to get rid of it, in order not to
sink. The mistake then is holding to wealth after it
has done its work.
People do sacrifice themselves when they see it clearly
right, and especially when they see it a religious duty
(as in martyrdom for doctrines, &c.) Then is not what
we want to extend the sphere of this perception ? That
we shall see it right to sacrifice ourselves where now we
do not see it? And observe, how these views extend
especially the religious element ; they make duties that
seem irreligious to be emphatically religious make all
so, in truth. And this also they accomplish : they bring
that special religious feeling, which now attaches itself
so exclusively to dogmatical things, into all the common
affairs of life. Here we see again an instance of a law :
a true thing misapplied, and therefore suppressed (in
264 Philosophy and Religion.
part). This very feeling of religious duty, misapplied to
doctrinal things exclusively, is set aside by another class
of men altogether. But this is for its perfect restoration,
in application to all life.
And with this look at another thing : is not our civili-
zation perfected for a return to Nature ? Is it not a lower
thing, introduced by suppressing a superior, imperfect
and failing? And it also by failure leading to restoration
of the former, but now renewed ? This links itself with
the choice of poverty by those who have wealth, the going
back to simplest life and common pleasures, but now
truly and aright. This is the end of civilization.
Is not here a key to life : that these " real interests "
of life are truly matters within the sphere of politeness
of good manners ? These are its true sphere ; not what
we call manners only. Made perfect so, and so uni-
versalized (for thus only can good manners be univer-
salized ; the mass will never deal one way in trifles, and
another in important things), there would be no more
inconsistency and insincerity. And if it is right to be
polite about a trifle, can it be right to be unpolite, greedy,
about an important thing ? The more important the
thing, the more necessary it must be to use politeness
about it. This may seem absurd to us ; but how does
giving up a good place at a dinner seem to a boor ? The
question is simply of what we value most. May we not
attain to the treating the whole of this life as a polite
man treats a day or an hour ?
There is something worth considering in the French
Novels of the 18th century : the representation of a
heroic nature, carrying the maxims of polished society
Ethics. 265
into serious life ; and the sway of women. Surely there
is the nature of a real anticipation in this dream, some-
thing of a prophecy. Would it not at least be beautiful,
and a vast progress intellectually, to be able to see real
meaning, and roots going deep into human nature and
society, in such facts as these ? Is there not the most
complete contrast between the way in which the facts of
social life are treated, and the facts of external nature ?
See how the latter are used by Science : now it is such a
hold, surely, we want to get of the former ; such a clue
to them, and habit of treating them.
The getting and keeping to ourselves is the child state
of humanity ; it is as the child is with reference to its
little enjoyments. Men rise above that ; politeness is
the giving up of those; it is manhood in reference to
trifles. Would not the true manhood, the true life of
humanity, be the same thing carried out in reference to
the greatest physical things; a perfect politeness in
reference to all the interests of man ; a giving up, and
putting others before us, in reference to all ? And even
so, this would be done only with reference to phenomena,
only with reference to things which are truly trifles. Is
not this the fact ; that the giving up and sacrificing is of
phenomena only, that we do truly have and keep all the
true, the good?
Is not this a reconcilement ; a fulfilling through sup-
pression of that feeling that we ought to attain and
have ? We do so in giving up phenomena. That which
is phenomenally sacrificing is truly getting.
A polite man sees this in reference to trifles; that
giving them up for others' sake is not truly sacrificing
but gaining. He sees this through seeing more in life ;
he regards things in a different relation, and sees that
266 Philosophy and Religion.
his natural feeling about them is a wrong one. [He
suppresses the child-feeling, yet has it interpreted and
restored.] Observe, too, how well it works ; how those very
trifles and comforts are so most obtained, most enjoyed.
And then again, how beautiful it is to see why good
manners exist, and what they have taught us ; they are
the type and pattern for our life. And especially they
have proved this : that the plan is safe, and will work ;
the comfort of life is nowhere and by no means so secured
and perfected, as where all act on the principle of giving
up. Grood manners have proved to us that the plan will
answer ; for this end they existed. Lie as they are, they
have their root in a truth, and bear a truth as their fruit.
So that which might seem the destruction of the well-
being of life is in truth its very basis. One might say :
" If we regard these things as trifles, will they not be
neglected and ruined ? " Not so ; then, and then only,
will they go right and well. But observe : to have a
politeness extending to the real (physical) interests, de-
mands quite a different motive from one affecting only
manners. The difference is between a true and a false, a
spiritual and a phenomenal.
We train up children as if it were true that " honesty
is the best policy " ; and then wonder because it is a
failure. It is a case of palpable and most matter-of-fact
misapprehension ; the fact is not as our action implies.
Of course few turn out truly honest, as the facts of busi-
ness and daily life attest. We have not given children
the habit, the only truly available habit for life, of doing
duty against interest.
And surely in this too the socialist is right ; in affirm-
ing that there is a generous faculty in man to draw upon.
Ethics. 267
How constantly it is the case ; the youth is full of enthu-
siasm for the world, longing even for a martyrdom.
Would not this continue, and grow into a vigorous prac-
tical reality, if the child were taught that life is this
longed-for martyrdom ? But as it is, taught that he
must live a life of self-interest, what wonder that he
plunges into all extremes ?
To give up interest for duty is the alphabet of morals,
and it should be learnt when a child ; or, like the other
alphabet, the chances are it will not be learnt at all.
And here is an illustration of that beauty which is in
truth in all the rest of Nature. See the compensation,
the opposites united. Duty against pleasure is to be
taught to children. How ? Why, by letting them have
pleasures, even to repletion. So God gives the thing
He means us to give up. He gives men enjoyments and
pleasures ; lets them have them even at the expense of
right but for what ? Surely that they may learn to
give them up. It is a " condition " of the giving up.
Men believe that all they bear is G-od's will, is neces-
sary for His work to be accomplished. But that is not
Christianity ; philosophy gets so far ; but it is not
enough. It does not save to know only so vaguely ; does
not content or make happy ; we do not know that that
will is anything that we should be glad at, or could be ;
feeling the phenomenon as fact, and feeling it evil.
Christ shows what it is. This is the very point of
Christianity ; revealing what God is, and His work. That
makes us truly willing to bear annoyances saves us
makes us happy and truly content in knowing God.
There is a radical defect in every religion that will not
do this.
268 Philosophy and Religion.
The feeling that we ought to secure certain objects
inevitably depraves all things. We only can be right by
treating all things as the phenomenon of a good fact.
The lesson which all the experience of the world teaches
is to do right in spite of all things, to suffer any evil or
mischief to come but to do right. But men do not read
it so ; they fix their eye on the particulars ; they learn
to understand that it will not answer to seek certain
results by violation of principle ; but do not see the true
teaching that it will not do to seek any results so.
When a new case comes they go the same old way again,
they try to avoid the evil. But we learn at last to seek
no results, but only do right.
What if the world be so arranged by God that it goes
best by being let alone ; not being continually interfered
with by us, to make it as we like it [as we find this the
tendency of politics, certainly, and medicine] ? May this
be the truth : that man, having his interest devoted
mainly to the spiritual, and suffering the phenomenal to
go with less devotion of thought and labour, would find
j it go better by that very letting alone ? One great part
of our mischief is, that we continually alter (or try to)
all phenomena to please ourselves, and so spoil things ;
our whole interest and thought is to them, and it is the
wrong attitude of man to them ; they go wrong by that
very activity ; and the remedy for this evil is the devotion
of our thoughts to the spiritual, the phenomenal therefore
going better. May not this be in part the meaning of
" Seek ye first the kingdom of God," &c. ? Do not pay
so much heed to make these things go as you like them,
and they will go the better ; for it spoils even the
phenomenon to make it as man likes it to be.
Mill's argument respecting liberty is simply an argu-
Ethics. 269
ment for not-doing. (It is as in medicine ; ever the real
advance is not to do something. True, something else is
substituted ; hut this is only better in so far as it is
simpler. The true gain is the abstaining from doing.)
But his position is very interesting. He says, do not
control for any good to the individual, only for self-pro-
tection. Will not the next step be n#t to control others,
even for self-protection ? Mill assumes that injury to
self is a reason for such control ; but it is not. Shall we
not come to see this ? And on Mill's own principles, is
not this feeling about self, at its basis, a liking merely,
one of those things against the authority of which he so
emphatically contends ? In the intellectual and moral
he contends against the authority of feelings, and seeks
to substitute only belief grounded on reason.
How essential to the martyrs must have been faith,
true trust in God, that it was not necessary for them to
do any good. Is not the want of that in us a chief reason
why we are so conscious we could hardly be martyrs, and
why we cannot take up the martyrdom that is even now
waiting us ? It is not that we are not good enough, but
that we have not faith enough. We take the responsi-
bility of the world so much upon ourselves ; see how this
is displayed in that excellent characteristic of modern
times the missionary work.
The nature of martyrdom is, that goodness opposes
goodness. The martyr is not necessarily good ; but he
sees. He has the sense of sight, the persecutor the sense
of duty ; so it is implacable war the one cannot alter his
sight, the other cannot give up his sense of duty. So it
is the sense of duty to oppose new sight. Is not this
universal ? Observe, too, how this sense of duty of the
persecutor is very likely to have more of what is called
270 Philosophy and Religion.
" goodness " in it than the " sight " of the martyr. Yet
is it a sort of self-goodness ; a feeling of what I must do ;
whereas the " sight " is altruistic.
Men say, we are not now called on to be martyrs.
Never was there a greater mistake. Men never were
called on to be anything else ; nay, they never had, or
shall have, the chance of being anything else. For God
will save them, will be in them, and that is martyrdom.
God has shown us what His glory is, what He will give
us. Nay, this thought lurks even in the very idea of Hell
the martyrdom of the universe. Shall we not find that
it is the sublime redeeming elements in the thought of
Hell, and kindred thoughts, that has made it possible
to man, and has kept it alive so long. Is not the world
so wonderfully made, with such an essential and inherent
grandeur and good, so obstinate a rightness, that there
is and can be nothing, not even in man's imagination,
which has not, amid its vileness, also its awfulness of
grandeur or of beauty.
Does it not thrill our hearts to think of it ? God's
glory, the glory of martyrdom, the glory that shines
feebly in the martyr's flame that is what He will give
to us. That is the promise ; and if we think, " How shall
that draw men ? " this is the glory of the promise beyond :
He will make us so that it shall be happiness to us. This
it is to be infinite, to be eternal, to have life. And think
of this as the history and consummation of the world, as
the work God will do.
That the very pleasant and amiable and successful, the
most " complete," should be those who find it hardest to
see the ethics of self-sacrifice, is right enough. May it
not be probable that those who do best, are best organized
Ethics. 271
to the present system, may be even least fitted for the
new ? And especially were not this good ? For now it
is only the few who thus succeed ; in the other way were
it not the many ? Might not the many be then as the
few are now ?
May we not say that our natural tendency indicates
the thing that is to be done (or thought), but that there
is necessary first a fulfilling of conditions ; and that this
is an opposite, a giving up of that desired ? The instinct
to pursue happiness is a right one, but we must fulfil
the condition ; it must be altruistic ; and for this it must
be first a giving up of the self-happiness. This is em-
bodied in the saying : " Love, and then do what you
like " : love, but altruistically ; not, " love yourself."
Again : in the case of children, the instinct is to make
them obey ; true ; but fulfil the conditions, which involves
the giving up this. The end is to be their obedience ; the
instinct guides to the end.
We first take a self- way, and have to acquire an altru-
istic ; which involves, therefore, the giving up, the sup-
pression, of the former ; and, in ignorance of this law, of
course the means seems like giving up the end.
So in metaphysics : giving up the intuitive certainty
seems like giving up certainty; it is giving up pheno-
menal or apparent certainty for altruistic, or true.
What we want in life is some motive, some power,
which shall grow stronger as temptation comes ; not
weaker, and disappear. And is there not such a power
in these motives ? Should not the true motives be such
as are to be intensified and brought out into strength by
the very existence and stress of their opposites ? For is
not our weakness just in this, that in temptation the
motives which would help us, which we own and desire to
272 Philosophy and Religion.
obey, grow weak and are blotted out. But is not the
world's redemption and our martyr's privilege then most
potent and present when the temptation is strongest and
most overwhelming ? It is not a thing apart from that
temptation (as even love to Christ is) but is in it, lives
in and grows with it, feeds upon it, overtops and slays it
and makes its life its own.
Vicarious suffering is the Law of God's world. He saves
us so, but makes us also its instruments ; from our own
suffering he saves us, but gives us that of others to bear.
" Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of
Christ." And how beautiful it is : bearing our own suffer-
ings is misery and loss and ruin ; bearing those of others
is life and joy and happiness. See here the interpretation
of suffering; it is the self- form only that is bad; let
it be altruistic and it becomes at once glorious and
Divine.
The real is of no consequence ; therefore the moral, the
doing properly, being virtuous, is a small matter. Cir-
cumstances determine that. A man brought up in certain
circumstances is sure to become thus depraved ; this is not
the fact, the actual. Thinking of these things, how clearly
it is that this is a state of redeeming ; that man is saved.
Indeed God designs, the world being dead, that it shall
not be good and moral, and well-conducted. Here one
sees the instinct of referring religion to the future,
representing it as having to do primarily with the world
to come ; a perverted instinct from our putting the
eternal into the future. It is beautiful -to see how man
cannot be crushed down to a religion of morals. Observe ;
man cannot ; some men are ; but others will not be. So
of all things ; some take one view, but if it be deficient,
Ethics.
2 73
others are sure to assert the contrary. It is a mechanical
process ; press on one part of water, and another part
rises. There is a vibration in these opposite opinions ;
one denies by logic, but necessarily another affirms. The
form may vary ; the fact cannot change.
The accomplishment of human good is delayed and re-
sisted in order that it may form part of an organization,
and, when it comes, may produce a function, do something
beyond itself. Nature would have been ashamed to make
even an insect to do nothing more than it could design and
conceive ; shall she not use man also for higher purposes
than his own ? The social evils of the age are a nutri-
tion, and exist for a function. Not only these evils to be
put right, but a function inconceivable by us is to flow
from them. We think the good of man in its highest
sense is the great good, the end, but it is not ; we cannot
foresee the function.
The accumulation of facts about social life is a nutrition
essential to a true theory ; but now when this is just
beginning, is not the theory of life discovered, that the
nutrition of Sociology may be on a higher level ? Before
we knew what life was, we could have made no sound
progress in an induction respecting Sociology. Just as it
was impossible to have a science even to observe the
facts of sidereal astronomy until the true theory of the
solar system had been ascertained. Knowing that the
social state is a life, and with the true theory of life in
our hands, we can enter upon sociologic science with the
certainty of a successful issue.
The solar system is among the stars as a man in
society ; and the social life of the heavens cannot be
even attempted until the life of the solar system is un-
derstood ; so neither can the social life of man be until
T
2 74 Philosophy and Religion.
the life (physiological and mental) of the individual man
is understood. And may it not be that Sociology will
present somewhat the same relation to physiology in its
largest sense, as sidereal astronomy does to solar ? We
may discover therein not only facts accordant with those
which have been traced in the smaller science (as the
mutual revolutions of the double stars) but also some
quite different and apparently irreconcileable, as the
spiral forms of the galaxies. Facts not indeed really
irreconcileable, but necessitating a larger view of physi-
ology to reconcile them, than, from the study of physiology
alone, we should have attained.
The impossibility of constructing a satisfactory Socio-
logy has arisen hitherto from the want of a knowledge
that it is a life, that evils are nutrition, that like other
life it consists of nutrition and function, and developes.
Isolated facts and connections have been traced, but no
general adequate conception. It will reveal itself in due
proportions as a life. Two errors arise from not knowing
this : (1) The disposition to acquiesce in evils as neces-
sary. (2) The disposition to regard them as merely evil.
Again, the tendency of philanthropic effort is merely to
remove and prevent evils, not seeing that they constitute
the nutrition for the function. Society, of course, lives,
and its life developes without our understanding ; but
the science can be only on such understanding : and the
science ever becomes necessary in process of time. The
scientific life becomes linked with and essential to all
other forms of life in course of development ; and the
true science is produced when required, for passion in
least resistance truly is action in direction of most want.
Everything comes in its time.
Evils can be prevented only by turning the force which
produced them to good. Make the force produce a good ;
Ethics. 275
not put down anything, but embrace. All evils are nutri-
tions ; even probably in relation to society, moral evils.
But moral evil is not natural evil ; it is not to be included
as nutrition ; it is want of the natural control, and is
death. It is ever an exception and unnatural.
It is a radical error to attempt to represent the pheno-
mena as not evil. Their evil as phenomena must be seen,
or their good cannot be seen : it is only as real that they
are good. Their goodness consists in their being evil, that
is nutrition ; and as phenomena they must be asserted to
be evil in the most unqualified terms. Who does not see
the evil cannot see the good. The evil is good, not
although it is evil, but because it is evil.
The competitive commercial system is a theory (pheno-
menal), the co-operative an interpretation (true). But then
the co-operative is the function which can result only
from the nutrition of the competitive. This wrong is the
necessary condition of that right. The putting right of
the wrongnesses of the competitive will reveal the co-
operative; the latter will interpret, show the truth of,
the former. It cannot been seen before, obtained by
effort or design. The facts must show it ; it must deve-
lope. Previous attempts to achieve co-operation have
failed, like a priori science. They have been like
Berkeley's theory, perhaps even like Comte ; attempts to
attain function without nutrition, inorganic instead of
organic. Such as Berkeley's perhaps have been the
religious co-operative efforts ; such as Comte's the social-
istic. Surely social life has many stages yet to run. It
is not yet in the stage of our present art, the ideal ; but
in that primary phenomenal stage which precedes even
that.
" England exhausts every form of error before she
arrives at the truth." That is, England lives, goes
T 2
276 Philosophy and Religion .
through the nutrition, attains the organization, and thus
effects the function. Those immediate plans of arriving
at the right result that other nations try, are like inor-
ganic food; like Berkeley's science. This is England's
strength ; she goes through the natural course and lives,
accepts and undergoes the evil, is willing to postpone the
good ; in a word, her Sociology is phenomenal. England
is full of hope, the living portion of humanity. Her
phenomenal naturalistic Sociology shall have its interpre-
tation soon, shall produce its function ; a function not less
glorious than that of Science ; a Sociology that shall
truly interpret or " re-present " Nature.
It is England's living task, her function, to solve this
problem of the position of the labouring class, the relation
of employers and employed, the distribution of the products
of industry. It is not hard ; it only needs to be seen. We
shall wonder at its simplicity when it is revealed. For
this function she has now the nutrition, now a theory
preparatory to an interpretation, and it is hopeful ; it has
been truly passion in least resistance, a real organization
produced, 'a real functional power, of which many hopeful
signs. And this is the glory ; the more evil the nutrition,
the more terrible the wrongness, the more excellent the
function. The function shall justify the nutrition. This
is our joy, our faith in God, and in His act, which is life.
The competitive system is theory, an arrangement of
the elements of society by force, according to our ideas.
We think (as ever of theories before the interpretation) that
it must be so, that it is so in nature. True the pheno-
menon is so. But this competitive system has to reveal a
true, based on holiness, or passion really in least resist-
ance, and duly controlled. This revelation will come,
when the former has grown intolerable ; by letting the
elements arrange themselves in the simplest common
Ethics. 277
sense and natural manner. We must not use force to
make it.
The idea that that only which is bad needs to be
reformed, superseded, or done away with, is perhaps the
greatest hindrance to our progress in every respect. We
must learn to see that everything, the good and necessary
just as much as any other, requires to be reformed and
superseded by the opposite, when it has had its day ; that
in truth, everything that is is good and needs to be re-
placed by the opposite, because it is good, and has
therefore prepared for the opposite; that progress is
spiral and all things are unipolar and demand their
opposite. To recognize this thoroughly and wisely would
put a complete end, it appears to me, to all the intellec-
tual errors that oppose progress. Nor should we say that
as we have advanced blindly hitherto without knowing
what or why, so we can go on. We have arrived at a
higher stage, at which an intelligent progress is to take
the place of a blind instinctive one. Do we not see this
in animal life, in man, as compared with other parts of
nature ?
How shall the means of remedying social evils be
found? By seeing the life of society. Does not society
progress thus : the instinct is for self ; this is suppressed
more or less ; thus nutrition. Then it is seen that this
self-sacrifice is the very best means of attaining the good
desired by self. This is a development.
Yes, love is the remedy, the only remedy, for the
world's evils, not contrivance in any form. Love is God's
remedy. To save the world He gives Himself, and so
must we. Nor, in truth, does God's remedy fail; it
seems indeed to do so ; but this is seeming only. God
saves the world by love, as we shall see when time no
278 Philosophy and Religion.
longer makes us blind, or rather when, being no longer
blind, we no longer see time. God saves the world
eternally ; it is for us to save it temporally ; but there is
only one way, the way God has shown us love. How
long it seems to be before it comes. Yet it is not truly
wanting. It is absolute, eternal, infinite ; only we cannot
see it because we have it not.
The fact of Nature is non-sibi, and so must be the fact
of humanity. This is the only way to make trade honest.
Trade must be carried on not primarily for personal
advantage, but for the good of others, for the good of
society ; this is the only possible purification of it. And
surely this is possible to our humanity. How beautiful
a science is trade, thus considered ; how natural to man
to work thus as a true merchant, desiring his own ad-
vantage subordinately. Surely tradesmen should study
sociology, and practise trade as a profession. Thus it
would come to be above the medical or the legal profes-
sions, as being of a wider scope, and involving broader
interests. This is the renovation of trade ; and all trades
or speculations which are not socially useful should be
held dishonourable. This is only carrying out and
affirming the universal instinct. It should be dishonour-
able, unnatural (as it emphatically is), to act for ourself.
The phases and processes of the social life are large,
and take a long time ; but they must be, essentially, the
same as the physical. So that the physical may be seen,
as it were, set out for our observation. We shall learn
organic life from the social. It is as astronomy is on the
other hand ; from astronomy and sociology we shall learn
organic life.
See how the world has starved or murdered its men of
Ethics. 2,79
genius. Why ? In order that that evil, that not, in men,
which made them do this, should be removed. It is for
this they have suffered ; and less than their sufferings
could not suffice. Whether men of genius be starved or
not is of no consequence ; they would say so were they
asked ; but that man should be redeemed from starving
them, that is something ; for that, the loss of innumerable
thousands were a small price.
All attempts to put a stop to crime (which is hypo-
thesis, result of ignorance, or not-love) by punishment,
to suppress it, without giving the love, are u anticipa-
tions." They will not do. Thank God, we cannot
succeed ; no crime and yet no love we cannot have : that
were sad indeed. All this failure is nutrition ; the inter-
pretation, the function, will be curing crime by love.
It is the evil in the world that is the working, useful,
part of it. The evil is the good of the world ; it is the
idea of it ; not enjoyment, which is, in truth, but a delu-
sion, a feeling good that which is not good, a little
momentary relief. What can be stranger than the idea
of men damned and in hell thinking that the idea of the
place is enjoying themselves, and admiring !
Was the world ever worse than now ? Were the evils
we shudder at in former days worse than those of the
present, or more affecting human life ? Nay, is not now
the worst of all, the devil's best, because his time is
short ? When the devil has his way, the world will not
be miserable, but lad. See what there is now : commerce,
the most selfish of all the forms of human activity and
pursuit ; and, with it, a self-religion. Christianity per-
verted to self and commerce what should they give us,
but what they do ? Gin palaces at every corner, and
280 Philosophy and Religion.
miserable drunken women and worse men, and children
reared and steeped in vice, and streets crowded with
harlots : and, on the other hand, beautiful, refined, luxu-
rious households because these also must be, to make
up the full blackness of the picture. If there were not
these, the other were not so bad ; these are the dark
background on which the lurid colours of sin and
wretchedness may be shown. It is not that there is any
good in them ; they intensify the badness of the other.
A world all that were not bad ; it is this with it makes it
so. And yet, if the one is not truly good, so is the other
not truly bad ; the one is the remedy for the other. But
how inverted is our view ; we look on the comfortable
and refined as the healthy part of man, and think if we
could make the miserable and degraded all like that, then
the world would be well. Not so ; this comfort and
content is the disease ; the misery and vice the remedy.
It is interesting to think of the feeling there has been
continually in man's mind even not knowing the martyr-
dom of the real evil of human pleasure ; shown in asceti-
cism and puritanism. This instinct has ever protested
that there is a higher nature in man, and that his life is
larger than he would have been content with.
Is it not true that what men call pleasure the best
and wisest self-happiness, the well-ordered home, the
temperate luxury, the refinement is it not true that all
this is, to the true good, only as the pleasure of drunken-
ness is to the best and wisest phenomenal pleasure ? We
cannot know it is not so ; all we know is that we like it,
and the nature of our liking is the very point. See the
instinct of asceticism, that has ever broken forth among
men, and now is ready to do so again ; the feeling is, that
the right thing for man in this world is not pleasure, but
Ethics. 281
its absence, or even pain. But the ascetic did not know
why ; he did not see the martyrdom ; and could not, not
seeing the redemption.
Good men now expect that God will solve the problems
of the world for them ; will bring it to some end, or
sudden change, not of their doing. I doubt it ; I expect
Christian men will find the work of putting the world to
rights theirs, and that they will do it ; and that the pro-
phecies of what God will do mean what He will make
them do ; implying a different sort of Christianity in
them.
Seen by itself, a beautiful house is beautiful ; seen in
its relations with poverty, it is not beautiful. Beauty
depends on harmony.
We want, in fact, an extension of the sphere of what
are called morals. A thief does but regard a physically
good thing as good apart from its relations. It is good
to the sense ; the question is, how is it to the soul ? We
do not sufficiently ask this question ; the condition of our
fellow men has a bearing upon it. If this seems un-
natural and forced to us, that is no evidence that it is
not true. Honesty is not to all men, or to all nations,
a beautiful thing; to steal seems not beautiful only to
those who have reached a certain stage of civilization ;
and so for us not to feel tne bearing of the condition of
others might only prove what our condition as men is.
Surely it is evident that men's feeling on this point
of securing their own comfort although the masses are
so ill off, rests only on not considering. Every one at
once would admit there is a line here which it were
utterly bad to pass ; that there is a relation of others'
state to our right of enjoyment. Now the only question
is, where is that line ? Observe : we could not suffer
282 Philosophy and Religion.
others to die from want this we see at once. But how
then can we suffer them to lead a life which is worse ?
Surely we see, respecting the condition of women, that
what they want is to have their hearts liberated. In our
society they have no fair chance ; they cannot show what
they are ; they are bound up like men of genius so often
are ; the entire bearing of society is hostile to them : this
getting, negative, selfish state. Women are crushed and
appear necessarily to disadvantage ; they must appear
lower than man while the physical is reckoned the
highest. But their day is coming.
Not so much in social disabilities is woman ruined, but
in this : that she is so petted ; so made, against all her
nature, to be a getter. We can hardly see the woman at
all. She cannot shew herself as religion cannot be-
neath this established theory and practice of selfishness.
Love is lost and bewildered ; it thinks it must be wrong
and mistaken ; it puts on the garb of its enemy, and falls
into a weak imitator, and of course, inferior. As a getter,
religion cannot compete with the world ; the mistake is
that it ever tried. So woman cannot compete with man.
She, too, must appear in her true colours, as the giver ;
so shall she be glorious and all-powerful.
Keligion and woman are in like case ; this is their
suppression for a glorious function. The spirit of the
world is profoundly opposite to both ; necessarily so, and
rightly, doubtless. They represent the coerced force.
They have both, as it were, tried to throw themselves
into the spirit of the world, and therefore have failed,
and seemed so weak. Woman cannot compete with man
in the physical, the selfish ; even as religion cannot
compete with the physical, in its appeals to the selfish
feelings. Engaging in that contest both must suffer
Ethics. 283
ignominious defeat. Woman has had a great nutrition-
state of coercion, subordination, suppression, all these
ages ; and there is a glorious promise in it. And see
how her unhappiness and discontent prove it.
In order to get rid of war we must make peace heroic.
By not seeing the nature and significance of our common
life, it is sordid ; and with that there exist heroic forms
of activity (war, &c.) which are mischievous. How
evidently these are two halves, which need union ; let
the heroism be in the common life, and the mischievous
forms of it will cease. The union here is in common life
being noble ; which it must be when it is seen what it is,
and what it allows scope for, and demands.
How strangely men overlook the bearings of things on
others. E.g., a man rejoices (legitimately, as he thinks)
in having sold certain shares before they went down to a
degree which would have ruined him had he held them
never thinking who was ruined by buying them. Is not this
alone enough to explain the/atfore of life ? What ignoring
of the relations of things ; how can they be right or suc-
cessful so ? There must be ceaseless deception and dis-
appointment. Try this principle in reference to material
things. Suppose a man laying hold of a rope or plank to
save himself from drowning, and being satisfied with
laying hold, with merely having it in his hands, regardless
of its other connections ; whether it were not broken off
just above, however much he might be satisfied with
feeling it in his hands, it would not prevent him from
sinking. This absurd disregard of the relations of things
is like a drowning man catching at a straw ; it not only
does not save, but often prevents his being saved.
See how we pity a really refined and beautiful nature
284 Philosophy and Religion.
in a child wearing the gauds and trinkets of the stage,
and especially if proud of them. Now why may it not be
that the real jewels and splendour men value are such as
this, degrading, and most to those who do not feel them
so ? And then, are not those natures which, however
darkly, revolt at them, and feel it better to be without
them, truly like the higher nature revolting in such a
child, though perhaps little able to feel what a truer,
better life would be, never having known or seen it ? She
might throw them off, and sulk. Is not this asceticism ?
" Every man of common understanding will endeavour
to employ whatever stock he can command, in procuring
either present enjoyment or future profit . . a man must
be crazy who does not." (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations.)
And yet how well it may be argued, not only by the
nature of life and of man, but from facts and from expe-
rience, that a human life founded upon the altruistic
element, and throughout regulated by it, is that which is
to be. For see how much stronger that altruistic power
is ; how it has been proved to be so. To take the other
for a basis is to take the weaker. The self-element is not
strong enough ; it is seen not to be, in the presence of
the other. That has made men, in all times and places,
perform and bear what the other could not make them,
and certainly never has approached.
And even in this alone, how beautiful it is to see how
man truly is made ; what his actual nature is, however
it may seem other. The native metal shines out here
and there, spite of the rust. And this suggests a simile
for political economy ; it is as if a chemist, taking up a
piece of precious metal, or a precious stone, rusted, or
encrusted with a foreign substance, should insist on that
as the thing, and speak of the other as subordinate. And
Ethics. 285
in truth, that is what would come first ; would be what
appeared.
And here is another proof that this strongest element
in man is the rightful basis and orderer of the whole life
viz., that while it is capable of being made perfectly
and consistently so, the other cannot be. It never does
gave now and then, to the horror of the race furnish the
entire basis and rule even of an individual life. It is
never proposed, save as something needing to be modified,
added to, restrained. Harmony and unity, on that basis,
are impossible. See, too, the weakness of the self-element
in this ; that it fails in doing even what its exponents
claim for it, preserve and establish peace. Commercial
relations do not prevent war.
Again, what seems an argument against the belief that
the altruistic elements in man are the destined basis and
ruler of his life viz., that the power of the altruistic
part has hitherto been exhibited only by some of the race
really becomes a proof on the other side, when the law
of man's life is known. For it is a law that that which
is to be universal shows itself first in imperfect forms,
which are, and can only be, partial. This exhibition of
altruistic life is the very proof that it is, made higher and
more perfect, to be universal.
Might not political economy by recognizing the self-
element in man to be by negation, even gain additional
scope and definiteness, and fuller sway ? Would not the
relative place of the " self " and " human " elements in
man then be capable of exact definition ? So that we
might say, of certain departments of life : " These should
be regulated by the self-element."
This suggested itself after reading about the puritans.
The good in their life was their earnestness, their devotion ;
286 Philosophy and Religion.
and what we want is to bring back that. But this cannot
be, on their level of goodness ; for the very reason that
society has advanced ; for surely our life is, easily (in ex-
ternals, or in the kind of living aimed at), what theirs
was heroically. And so, if the external aim continues the
same, the only true good, the heroism, is left out.
Thus the advance of society affords scope for new ad-
vances. [Is not this, indeed, its best result ?] We must
not let the admiration we justly feel for those men, and
such as they, limit us; make us fancy that to do the
same things, apply the same motives as they did, will be
good for us. And this, too, throws a light on the whole
of history. Abraham lived heroically a life which would
be a very poor life for us. Now we have to outgrow the
puritans as we have outgrown Abraham. And it is so
clear ; the only good is the heroism the mere external
actions are nothing. There may be one same level of true
goodness through the whole course of that advance. As
the world advances, therefore, in external moralities, we
must go on ; the good must go on, so as to be kept at a
constant heroism; this being the sole good. And this
constant going on alone can do it ; the law lies in human
nature.
Future times, looking back on this as the morally dark
age, will see that it is great, will see that they owe to it
a debt as real as to any other, the culture of the heart. And
they will feel, too, what was suffered and sacrificed for
that work. It will appear as a sublime sacrifice. And this
justifies and sanctifies it. Because sacrifice is the life ;
that makes this age, with all its evil, glorious. And the
future will see, too, that the men of this age have not so
much been morally bad, as crushed and hampered and
unable to apply their moral instincts; even as in the
Ethics. 287
scientifically dark age men were not really wanting or
weak intellectually. And this agrees with what has been
widely felt in regard to this age, that people are really
quite good enough to live immensely better lives, that
practice falls far short of willingness, that not only our
habits, but our opinions, forbid us from worthy action.
The work of the present age is the preparation of the
moral sense for its future place ; just as the " dark ages "
prepared intellect for its work in science, and as the
Greeks developed the senses. The special work of each
age has to be seen ; and will not the whole constitute a
chain like the zoological ? And it suggests itself here
that the two lines of growth and development go on
separately in zoology though contemporaneously, as in
reptiles and birds. Is it so in the mental life? For
example, is there not organization, intension, in respect
to the moral sense, and a corresponding growth, expan-
sion, in science ? Both are needed for the future. The
growth of one, the organization of the other, progressing
together, apparently most diverse, are yet subservient to,
and to be swallowed up in, a third.
Think, in respect to this as the morally dark age, of
the story of Lady Godiva. Whether true or merely
legendary, it shows how different that age was. Could
we imagine such a thing done by a lady now ? Not on
account of the greater delicacy of modern feeling (which,
indeed, is not proved), but that any lady should for a
moment think such a sacrifice might be made. There
must have been a totally different thought of life then.
And how profoundly, consenting to that which is as a
moral degradation, her act was like Christ's. She did that
which scarcely the most degraded woman would do ; for
always the highest good seems only possible in that
which might also be utter evil.
288 Philosophy and Religion.
And look at it another way. See how the " good "
now do what, if seen differently, only the most utterly
and profoundly selfish could do. They do it, really and
truly though not with equal clearness of apprehension, as
Godiva did what only a shameless woman otherwise could
do. Is not the parallel clear ?
These people do not act thus with their eyes open.
They are used for that purpose; and with the good
meaning do the thing that were else utterly bad. And
our indignation is right, remember ; as his would have
been who should have witnessed Godiva, not under-
standing.
Is it not sublime to see this ? The thing needed is
done ; sometimes consciously by us, sometimes not ; but
God takes care it is done.
And how glorious is the thought of this age subjecting
us involuntarily to moral degradation ; not sinfully, but
by loss imposed upon us. It exactly parallels our life to
Christ's.
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