LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 
 CAUFORN'A 
 SAN 0lE©O
 
 r
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER ESSAYS 
 
 WITH CHAPTERS REPRINTED 
 
 ON THE 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEOEL 
 
 /\, ' BY 
 
 •■f 
 \ 
 
 A. SETH PRINGLE-PATTISON, LL.D. 
 
 "^ FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS IN 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 M C M V 1 1
 
 TO 
 
 THE RIGHT HONOURABLE 
 
 RICHARD BURDON HALDANE 
 
 A. SLIGHT MEMORIAL 
 
 OP 
 
 EARLY COLLABORATION 
 
 AND 
 
 CONTINUED FRIENDSHIP
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The occasion of the four essays which form the first 
 part of the present volume was the publication of 
 certain notable books, such as Leslie Stephen's ' English 
 Utilitarians/ Herbert Spencer's 'Autobiography,' and 
 James Martineau's ' Life and Letters.' But the studies 
 they contain of important thinkers and schools are, I 
 hope, sufficiently careful to merit reproduction in a 
 more permanent form. Advantage has been taken of 
 this republication to re-insert a few passages which 
 had to yield to the exigencies of editorial space, and 
 the argument at these points will be found more 
 complete. 
 
 The title of the volume is that of the paper which 
 appeared first in order of time, but the choice is not 
 merely casual. Doctrines and tendencies discussed in 
 connection with the Philosophical Radicals reappear in 
 the papers which follow, and the prominence through- 
 out of the social and political aspects of philosophical 
 theory gives a certain unity to the collection.
 
 VUl PREFACE. 
 
 I have added to the Essays three book -reviews, 
 written at different times, which, from the nature of 
 the subjects and the scope of the discussion, seemed 
 important enough to interest philosophical students. 
 
 The Eeprints which constitute the last section of the 
 volume are from books which have been out of print 
 nearly twenty years. In 1881, as the result of studies 
 in Germany, I published a small volume on ' The De- 
 velopment from Kant to Hegel,' an outline of a vast 
 subject. Most of the ground covered in the first part 
 of the book has been worked over afresh in other con- 
 nections since, and on certain points my views have 
 changed. But in the second part, which traced the 
 development of the philosophy of religion in the hands of 
 Kant and Hegel, and was mainly expository in character, 
 there is little, if anything, which calls for alteration. 
 Eeligious thought has moved rapidly during the last 
 quarter of a century, and the significance of the his- 
 torical element in Christianity for religious faith is a 
 subject that has been widely discussed, and is under 
 discussion still. What Kant and Hegel have to say on 
 that question is as fresh and suggestive as ever, and a 
 concise account of their attitude may still be found 
 useful. 
 
 I have a special interest in the republication of the 
 last paper, on " Philosophy as Criticism of Categories," 
 owing to the circumstances of its first appearance and 
 the character of its early associates. It was the first 
 paper in a volume of ' Essays in Philosophical Criticism '
 
 PREFACE. IX 
 
 published in 1883, in somewhat belated connection 
 with the centenary of the ' Critique of Pure Eeason.' 
 The volume was dedicated to the memory of Thomas 
 Hill Green, who died in the previous year, and some 
 prefatory pages by Dr Edward Caird contained a fine 
 tribute to the spirit of Green's life and teaching. It 
 was edited by Mr (now The Right Honourable) R. B. 
 Haldane and myself ; and the second essay, on " The 
 Relation of Philosophy to Science," was the work of the 
 present Secretary of State for War, in collaboration with 
 his brother, Dr J. S. Haldane. The other contributors 
 were (to give them their later titles) Professor Bernard 
 Bosanquet, Professor W. R. Sorley, Professor W. P. Ker, 
 Professor Henry Jones, Dr James Bonar, Professor 
 T. B. Kilpatrick of Knox College, Toronto, and the 
 late Professor D. G. Ritchie of St Andrews. This, it 
 will be admitted, was a band of which the editors had 
 no reason to be ashamed. 
 
 The ideas of the book were then comparatively un- 
 familiar, and the writing of the youthful authors was 
 often, perhaps, unnecessarily difficult, but the critics 
 were at least unanimous in recognising the sincerity 
 and scientific purpose which animated the volume. My 
 individual contribution is reprinted, apart from a few 
 verbal emendations, in its original form. Naturally 
 there are things which one might wish to express 
 differently. The nature of the universal self, for 
 example, and the difficult question of its relation to 
 the individual selves of experience, obviously require
 
 X PEEFACE. 
 
 more adequate treatment. But the main argament of 
 the paper seems to me as sound now as it did twenty - 
 five years ago. 
 
 I have to thank the editors of ' The Quarterly 
 Review/ ' The Hibbert Journal/ ' The Contemporary 
 Ee^iew/ ' The Philosophical Eeview/ and ' Mind/ for 
 their kind permission to republish the various essays 
 and reviews. My sincere thanks are also due to my 
 friend, Mr E. P. Hardie, for the care with which he 
 has read the proofs, 
 
 Ukiveesitt of EoiSBrBGH, 
 May 1907.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS ..... 3 
 
 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION .... 47 
 
 MARTINEAIJ'S PHILOSOPHY ...... 78 
 
 HERBERT SPENCER : THE MAN AND HIS WORK . . . 108 
 
 REVIEWS — 
 
 JONES'S 'PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE ' (1893) . . . 147 
 
 DEWEY'S 'studies IN LOGICAL THEORY' (1904) . . 178 
 
 m'taggakt's 'some dogmas of religion' (1906). . 195 
 
 REPRINTS — 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL (1882) — 
 
 INTEODUCTORT ...... 215 
 
 I. THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION — 
 
 (i) THE FOUNDATION IN ETHICS . . . 220 
 
 (ii) THE 'religion WITHIN THE LIMITS OF MERE 
 
 reason' ...... 232 
 
 ii. criticism of the kantian standpoint and transition 
 
 TO HEGEL — 
 
 (i) THE DISTINCTION OF KANT FROM THE ' EN- 
 LIGHTENMENT ' ..... 256 
 (ii) CRITICISM OF KANT'S POSITION . . . 261 
 ni. OUTLINE OF THE HEGELIAN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION . 268 
 CONCLUDING REMARKS ..... 288 
 
 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES (1883) . 
 
 293
 
 ESSAYS
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 
 
 ONE reflection which will occur to most readers in tak- 
 ing up Mr Leslie Stephen's volumes on ' The English 
 Utilitarians,' ^ is the rapidity with which even the most 
 recent representatives of the school have passed into the 
 region of history. When Mr Leslie Stephen published his 
 ' History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century,' 
 in 1876, John Stuart Mill was only three years dead, 
 and the echoes had not yet died away of the famous 
 controversy in which he led the attack upon " Intuition- 
 ism," as represented by Dean Mansel and Sir William 
 Hamilton. And although the direct political influence 
 of the ' Philosophical Kadicals ' was even then a com- 
 paratively remote tradition, their social and political 
 theories still largely moulded the views of reform and 
 progress held by Liberal and Eadical thinkers of the day. 
 John Stuart Mill's parliamentary experience in the 
 previous decade was doubtless of little more than 
 academic interest, but in the closing years of his life he 
 was not only the most prominent English philosopher, 
 but was reverenced as the fountainhead of economic 
 and political wisdom by men like Henry Fawcett, Mr 
 Courtney, and Mr Morley, with whom the future of 
 
 ^ The following paper appeared in the ' Quarterly Review ' of July 1901, 
 shortly after the publication of ' The English Utilitarians. '
 
 4 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 
 
 advanced Liberalism seemed to lie. " The foremost 
 instructor of his time in wisdom and goodness," are Mr 
 Morley's words in the fine tribute penned immediately 
 after Mill's death. The elevation of Mill's character, 
 and the loftiness of his aims, are as heartily recognised 
 now as then, but in other respects the aspect of most 
 questions, whether philosophical, ethical, political, or 
 social, has changed so much during the last quarter of a 
 century that " the equable flow of didactic wisdom " in 
 Mill's pages appeals somewhat coldly to the present 
 generation. He must always remain one of the most 
 interesting figures of the nineteenth century in the 
 region of pure intellect, but the interest will be more 
 and more that of a transition figure, in whose incon- 
 sistencies we can trace the gradual break-up of the 
 robust and self-sufficient creed of his youth, and the 
 sympathetic anticipation of larger truths. The history 
 of the century is in truth the history of the emergence 
 and rapid growth of problems with which the rigid 
 formula; of the Philosophical Radicals were quite in- 
 adequate to deal. 
 
 Mr Stephen's volumes are in his best manner, and 
 are a valuable contribution to the history of English 
 thought. As he tells us in the preface, he was himself 
 a disciple of the school during its last period. This 
 account of the Utilitarians cannot, therefore, be con- 
 demned as written by an unsympathetic outsider; and 
 its clear recognition of the shortcomings of the school 
 possesses something of the inexorable justice of history. 
 For the rest, the subject is treated by Mr Stephen in a 
 way which displays his qualities to the best advantage. 
 
 " I have devoted," he says, " a much greater proportion of my 
 work to biography and to considerations of political and social 
 conditions than would be appropriate to the history of a philo-
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 5 
 
 sophy. ... I am primarily concerned with the history of a 
 school or sect, not with the history of the arguments by which it 
 justifies itself in the court of pure reason. ... I deal not with 
 philosophers meditating upon Being and not-Being, but with 
 men actively engaged in framing political platforms and carry- 
 ing on popular agitations." 
 
 Many of these bygone platform framers and " leaders of 
 revolts " are obscure enough to us now, and there are 
 quaint, even sordid, figures among them. Mr Leslie 
 Stephen's intimate knowledge of the byways of history 
 and biography gives life and circumstance to his narra- 
 tive, and his pages are lit up every now and again by 
 humorous detail or flashes of sarcastic wit. As he pro- 
 ceeds, however, he becomes more absorbed in the history 
 of the doctrines themselves, tracing them to their philo- 
 sophical presuppositions, inherited, as he points out, from 
 Hume, and most clearly expressed in James Mill's 
 ' Analysis of the Human Mind.' 
 
 The three volumes are labelled with the names of the 
 thinkers who represent the three generations of the school's 
 existence as an active force in philosophy and politics — 
 Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill. The 
 first was the founder and patriarch of the school; the 
 second was its most active propagandist, and the most 
 vigorous and typical example of its undiluted orthodoxy 
 and supreme self-confidence. John Stuart Mill has begim 
 to part with some of the most characteristic Benthamite 
 tenets ; his admissions and compromises mark, as has been 
 already observed, the gradual break-up of the school and 
 its submergence in a deeper tide of thought and feeling. 
 The three volumes thus coincide with the successive 
 stages of the sect — its rise and progress, its forceful 
 activity, its decline and fall. Each volume introduces, 
 besides the principal figure, a number of minor actors.
 
 6 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 
 
 In the first we have, at some length, an analysis of the 
 political, industrial, and social conditions of England in 
 the latter part of the eighteenth century, which constitute, 
 as it were, the soil and environment in which philosophical 
 radicalism grew up, and which largely explain its vitality 
 as a political force. In the second volume careful account 
 is taken of Malthus and Kicardo, whose doctrines were 
 incorporated as integral parts of Utilitarian theory and 
 bulked largely in popular attacks upon the school ; while 
 the third volume, besides chapters on J. S. Mill's con- 
 tributions to logic and philosophy, touches on the various 
 social and economic controversies which went to mould 
 or modify his political economy, and gives an account 
 of John Austin, Grote, and Buckle, who represented the 
 school in the departments of jurisprudence, history, and 
 philosophy of history respectively. 
 
 Utilitarianism can lay no claim to originality in its 
 philosophical principles. Hedonism is as old as ethical 
 speculation, and the genealogy of " the greatest-happiness 
 principle " may be traced back in England through Paley, 
 Hume, and Hutcheson to the chapters of Locke's ' Essay ' 
 which deal with morality. Hutcheson not only lays down 
 this principle unreservedly as a test of the moral quality 
 of actions, but contributes also the famous formula of 
 " the greatest happiness of the greatest number." Bentham 
 tells us that he came upon the phrase in Priestley, but 
 Priestley (whose statement, for the rest, is not so precise) 
 had it from Hutcheson, and to Hutcheson it was probably 
 suggested (as Mr Scott has recently pointed out in his 
 excellent Life of that philosopher) by his readings in 
 Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius — the 
 watchword of this hedonistic theory being thus traceable, 
 by the irony of history, to the Stoic " citizenship of the
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 7 
 
 world." In Hume the theory is already complete ; and 
 we do not wonder, therefore, when Bentham tells us that 
 on reading the third volume of Hume's ' Treatise on 
 Human Nature ' he " felt as if scales fell from his eyes." 
 From Hume to J. S. Mill, in fact, the doctrine received 
 no substantial alteration. 
 
 " The writings in which Bentham deals explicitly with the 
 general principles of Ethics would hardly entitle him," says 
 Mr Stephen, "to a higher position than that of a disciple of 
 Hume without Hume's subtlety, or of Paley without Paley's 
 singular gift of exposition." 
 
 Yet it was under Bentham that the Utilitarians first 
 became a school in any definite sense, and " Benthamism '"' 
 was for long the current designation of the doctrine. 
 Under his initiative the doctrine passed from being the 
 speculative tenet of this or that philosopher to be the 
 active creed of a band of men bent upon applying it to 
 political and social reform. With him, therefore, the 
 history of ' The English Utilitarians ' or ' Philosophical 
 Eadicals ' begins. The second title, by which the group 
 were long distinguished, sufficiently indicates the nature 
 of the new departure. 
 
 The circumstances of English political and social life 
 in the eighteenth century which formed the antecedents 
 of Philosophical Radicalism are interestingly sketched by 
 Mr Stephen in his first volume. He passes in review the 
 anomalies of Parliamentary representation which made 
 the House of Commons seem at times " little more than 
 an exchange for the traffic between the proprietors of 
 votes and the proprietors of offices and pensions " ; the 
 chaotic state of English law, accompanied by the absence 
 of any centralised administration ; the slothfulness and 
 ignorance of the Universities ; the secular and rationalistic
 
 8 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 
 
 spirit of the Church, which had become, in the main, 
 " simply a part of the ruKng class told off to perform 
 divine services, to maintain order and respectability and 
 the traditional morality." Everywhere the established 
 order of things rested upon tradition, and represented a 
 series of compromises, not the elaboration of a theory. 
 It was primarily against the irrationality and chaos of 
 the English legal system that Bentham directed his 
 attack, his radicalism growing, as he advanced, till it left 
 few points of " the matchless Constitution " unassailed. 
 Meanwhile the growth of manufactures and commerce 
 meant the rise of great industrial centres and of a new 
 social class ; but the great towns were as yet without 
 municipal institutions, and if the merchants were inclined 
 in the main to liberal principles, " it was less from adhesion 
 to any general doctrine than from the fact that the 
 existing restrictions and prejudices generally conflicted 
 with their plain interests." Mr Stephen notes thus early 
 the divergence of interest between the capitalists and the 
 labourers, which was so plainly visible in the later history 
 of Philosophical Eadicalism. Urgent social problems 
 were presented by the alarming growth of pauperism, 
 and by the disgraceful state of the prisons revealed by 
 Howard, while the agitation against the slave-trade was 
 a further proof of the growth of humane sentiment. 
 But towards the end of the century, under the influence 
 of the reaction caused by the excesses of the French 
 Eevolution, the demand for Parliamentary reform, which 
 had been growing in volume during the earlier part of 
 George III.'s reign, had entirely lost the support of the 
 nation ; and even a philanthropic agitation like that 
 against the slave - trade was looked upon with some 
 suspicion, and abolition was not finally carried till 
 1807.
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 9 
 
 This part of Mr Stephen's survey may be instructively 
 and agreeably supplemented by Mr Eoylance Kent's 
 well-informed and well- written history of ' The English 
 Eadicals.' Taking up his subject more exclusively from 
 the political point of view, and including in it all the 
 prominent phases of Eadical thought, Mr Kent gives 
 many additional details, often picturesque and suggestive, 
 and helps to elucidate the differences between the Utili- 
 tarians and other types of earlier and contemporary 
 Eadicalism. Mr Lecky places the birth of English 
 Eadicalism in the vear 1769, when the conflict between 
 Wilkes and the House of Commons was at its height, 
 and Mr Kent accepts this date as the starting-point of 
 his narrative. The first Eadical attack, it will be observed, 
 was directed, not against the Crown or the House of 
 Lords, but against the House of Commons, which, instead 
 of being regarded as the bulwark of popular liberty, 
 appeared to usurp the rights of the electors and to over- 
 ride their most clearly and repeatedly expressed wishes. 
 Wilkes had right on his side ; Diderot sent him his con- 
 gratulations, and Whitefield prayed for his success. The 
 effect of the agitation was to give a strong impulse to 
 political discussion and the practice of holding public 
 meetings. Political societies were founded in London 
 and throughout the country. Parliamentary reform was 
 not, however, a monopoly of the Eadicals, and public 
 opinion had so far ripened in 1783, when Pitt moved 
 his famous resolutions, that a few years would in all prob- 
 ability have seen the passing of a Eeform Act but for 
 the blow inflicted by the French Eevolution on all such 
 movements. But it would have been a different Act 
 from that passed in 1832. The democratic views of the 
 suffrage to which that measure gave partial expression 
 were then held only by a small band of Eadical theorists
 
 10 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 
 
 and agitators, the chief of whom were Cartwright and 
 Jebb, Joseph Priestley and Eichard Price.^ 
 
 The Ptevolution exercised a profound effect upon the 
 course of political history in England. When it began, 
 the cause of the reformers appeared full of promise, and 
 we all know how, for a time, the progress of the Revolu- 
 tion was hailed by the more generous spirits. But the 
 licence and cruelty which stained its further course 
 almost extinguished Liberalism in England for a genera- 
 tion. " Till I see," wrote Fox in 1801, " that the public 
 has some dislike (indignation I do not hope for) to 
 absolute power, I see no use in stating in the House of 
 Commons the principles of liberty and justice." While 
 this was the effect on the mass of the nation, the principles 
 of the Revolution were presented in their undiluted and 
 most obnoxious form by the small band of English 
 Jacobins, or, as they may be conveniently called, the 
 Jacobinical Radicals. Of this sect Paine's ' Rights of 
 Man ' was the popular gospel, and Godwin's ' Political 
 Justice' the more ponderous oracle. Mr Kent states 
 very clearly the transformation which English Radicalism 
 underwent in their writings. From being a scheme of 
 parliamentary reform, it became a virulent attack upon 
 the Constitution as a whole, and in particular upon 
 the Crown and the House of Lords. " Paine was perhaps 
 the first to make the point of expense a prime argument 
 against the retention of the monarchy." Another point 
 of difference was that of religious opinion and belief. 
 The earlier Radicals had " all professed some form of 
 Christianity, but Paine and Godwin were strong agnostics 
 
 ^ According to Bentham, it was a sentence in Priestley's ' Essay on the 
 First Principles of Government ' which first suggested to him his principle 
 of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," and it was a sermon of 
 Price's which called forth Burke's ' Reflections on the French Revolution.
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 11 
 
 and materialists," and Paine's ' Age of Keason ' completed 
 the association of Eadicalism and infidelity in the public 
 mind. As Coleridge said, " It was God's mercy to our 
 age that our Jacobins were infidels, and a scandal to all 
 sober Christians. Had they been like the old Puritans, 
 they would have trodden Church and King to dust — at 
 least for a time." The congratulatory addresses of the 
 new Eadicals to the French National Convention, and 
 similar performances smacking strongly of treason, roused 
 a storm of popular indignation against these " philosophis- 
 ing serpents," as Walpole called them. The people wanted 
 no French fraternity, said the first Sir Robert Peel to 
 Fox; "they preferred their religion and their legal freedom, 
 with the good roast beef of Old England, to the atheism, 
 the liberty and equality, and the broken breeches and 
 soup-meagre of France." The mob of Birmingham, shout- 
 ing " No philosophers," burned Priestley's house over his 
 head. Eepressive legislation and political prosecutions 
 were the natural outcome of the feelings aroused, and of 
 the general atmosphere of suspicion. At the close of the 
 century English Radicalism had for the time destroyed 
 itself, and even the old Whig party could scarcely muster 
 forty members in the House of Commons. This was the 
 juncture at which the teaching of Bentham became a 
 force in politics. Radicalism had to be reconstituted in 
 England between 1800 and 1832, and this was mainly 
 the work of the Philosophical Radicals. " The uprising 
 of the Philosophical Radicals," says Mr Kent, " was the 
 greatest force, of a purely speculative kind, that had ever 
 been felt in English politics, and nothing ever did so 
 much to democratise our institutions." 
 
 It is impossible to follow Mr Leslie Stephen in his 
 genial sketch of the bustling boyish patriarch in whom
 
 12 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 
 
 selfishness had somehow taken the form of benevolence. 
 Bentham was present at the trial of Wilkes, and his first 
 important work was published in the year of the American 
 Declaration of Independence ; he was " codifying like any 
 dragon " at the age of 82, and he died on 6th June 1832, 
 the very day before the passing of the Eeform Act to 
 which his teaching had so powerfully contributed. 
 Bentham began as a Tory, and his first bit of writing 
 was a pamphlet in defence of Lord Mansfield. The 
 'Fragment on Government,' published in 1776, attracted 
 the notice of Lord Shelburne, at whose house he met 
 many prominent politicians of the day, and also two men 
 who were to be of the greatest importance in the dissemina- 
 tion of his views — Dumont and Sir Samuel Eomilly. It 
 was the publication by Dumont in 1802 of the ' TraitciS 
 de Legislation de M. Jeremie Bentham ' which first gave 
 him his wider reputation and influence. Partly transla- 
 tion and partly a vigorous and lucid statement of the 
 pith of Bentham's doctrine in Dumont's own words, the 
 ' Traites ' carried his fame into all the countries of Europe. 
 As many copies were sold in St Petersburg as in London, 
 and a magnificent translation was ordered. Eussian 
 officials wrote comparing Bentham to Bacon, Newton, 
 and Adam Smith, as the founder of a new science. 
 " The grand Baintham," said the Spanish alcalde to 
 Borrow, showing him all the master's works upon his 
 shelves, " he who has invented laws for all the world. I 
 hope shortly to see them adopted in this unhappy country 
 of ours." Forty thousand copies of Dumont were sold in 
 Paris for the South American trade. Eussia, Spain, and 
 South America form an ironical conjunction. 
 
 At home Bentham's influence grew more slowly, but 
 had more permanent results. In 1808 he made the 
 acquaintance of James Mill, who was to be the most
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 13 
 
 powerful apostle of Benthamism, both in its philosophical 
 and its political aspects. By that time the Jacobin con- 
 troversies had receded into the background, and English 
 Kadicalism of the old reforming type was again beginning 
 to make itself heard. Sir Francis Burdett was returned 
 to Parliament in 1807, and his motion in favour of reform 
 in 1809 may be regarded as the first serious beginning 
 of the agitation which issued in the first Eeform Bill. 
 Bentham continued " scribbling on in his hermitage," as he 
 called it, and taking no direct part in the political struggle ; 
 but the politicians came to dine with him at Queen Square 
 Place, and he was thus in touch with most of the Parlia- 
 mentary reformers, including at a somewhat later date 
 such men as O'Connell and Lord Brougham. The letters 
 of the latter to his " dear grandpapa," and Bentham's notes 
 enclosing " some nice sweet pap of my own making," to 
 " my dear sweet little poppet," are sufhciently curious 
 documents. Bentham purveyed the philosophy of the 
 Eadical movement, wrote a ' Catechism of Parliamentary 
 Eeform,' and furnished Burdett with the series of resolu- 
 tions which he proposed in 1818, demanding universal 
 suffrage, annual parliaments, and vote by ballot. In 1824, 
 by which time the " Benthamites " formed a compact and 
 fairly numerous group, he supplied funds to start ' The 
 Westminster Eeview ' as an organ of thorough - going 
 Eadicalism. 
 
 The development of Bentham's views is an instructive 
 piece of history. His ultimate political conclusions, as 
 embodied, for example, in his ' Constitutional Code,' are 
 practically identical with those of the Jacobins, as de- 
 duced from the rights of man. Yet he declared the 
 American version of these rights, in the Declaration of 
 Independence, to be a " hodge-podge of confusion and 
 absurdity," and he wrote a treatise on "Anarchic Fallacies"
 
 14 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 
 
 to expose the French Declaration of Eights. Natural 
 rights, he says, is simple nonsense ; natural and impre- 
 scriptible rights is " rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon 
 stilts." The whole abstract and deductive procedure is at 
 fault. As Mr Leslie Stephen summarises his contention : 
 
 " The ' rights of man ' doctrine confounds a primary logical 
 canon with a statement of fact. The maxim that all men were, 
 or ought to be, equal, asserts correctly that there must not be 
 arbitrary differences. Every inequality should have its justifi- 
 cation in a reasonable system. But when this undeniable logical 
 canon is taken to prove that men actually are equal, there is an 
 obvious begging of the question. In point of fact, the theorists 
 immediately proceeded to disfranchise half the race on account 
 of sex, and a third of the remainder on account of infancy." 
 
 All political arrangements must therefore be brought to 
 the test of experience ; they must be judged by their 
 " utility." Applying this test to existing inequalities, 
 Bentham believes himself to reach inductively the same 
 practical conclusions. The difference in method is char- 
 acteristic of the national temperament. Still more char- 
 acteristic is the way in which Bentham was led step by 
 step from an attempt to reform the penal law to a radical 
 reconstruction of political society. It was the tradition 
 of English reformers to start, not from abstract principles, 
 but from an assault upon particular abuses. Bentham 
 himself began life, as we have seen, with Tory sympathies. 
 His original interest (and to the end probably his ruling 
 interest) was codification ; he desired to reform the mon- 
 strous abuses of the existing penal law, and generally to 
 introduce order into the bewildering chaos of the English 
 legal system. But there was no rancour in his zeal. " I 
 was a great reformist," he says, " but never suspected that 
 the ' people in power ' were against reform. I supposed 
 they only wanted to know what was good in order to
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 15 
 
 embrace it." This devout imagination was first shaken 
 by the cool reception which the politicians he met at 
 Lord Lansdowne's gave to his scheme, and was finally 
 shattered by the failure of the Panopticon, the great 
 scheme of prison-reform which occupied him, more or less, 
 for twenty years. As might have been expected, he passed 
 with almost equal naivete to the opposite extreme. 
 Lawyers of all classes, he now insists, have a common 
 interest in multiplying suits and complicating procedure ; 
 and thus a tacit partnership (described as " Judge and Co.") 
 has grown up, which bars every attempt at reform. Hence 
 the unmeasured terms in which he denounces Eldon as 
 worse than Jeffreys, and expresses his behef that the most 
 hopeless of reforms would be to raise a " thorough-paced 
 English lawyer " to the moral level of an average man. 
 But the legal profession did not stand alone ; it was 
 in the closest relations with the whole privileged class. 
 Presently he discovered, as Mr Stephen puts it, 
 
 " that behind ' Judge & Co.' were George III. and the base 
 Sidmouth, and the whole band of obstructors entrenched within 
 the ' matchless constitution,' and thus his attack upon the 
 abuses of the penal law led him to attack the whole political 
 framework of the country." 
 
 Bentham's constitutional gospel follows with charming 
 simplicity from this new insight, when combined with his 
 foundation-principle of utility. The " right and proper 
 end " of government is " the greatest happiness of the 
 greatest number." But, according to the equally primary 
 principle of " self-preference," every man always desires his 
 own greatest happiness, and therefore in every government 
 the governors will legislate for their own advantage. 
 
 " Hence the whole problem is to produce a coincidence of the 
 two ends, by securing an identity of interest between governors
 
 16 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 
 
 and governed. To secure that, we have only to identify the two 
 classes, or to put the government in the hands of all. In a 
 monarchy, the ruler aims at the interest of one — himself ; in 
 a democracy, its end is the right one — the greatest happiness of 
 the greatest number." 
 
 Universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and vote by ballot 
 are easily deducible. Members of Parliament are to be 
 simply " deputies," not " representatives," and they are not 
 to be re-eligible till after an interval, every precaution 
 being thus taken against the possible rise of a class whose 
 interests might be divergent from those of the community 
 as a whole. For the rest, since " all government is in 
 itself one vast evil," let us " minimise confidence " ; let 
 all governors be directly responsible, and let us have 
 as little government as possible. Industry in particular 
 should say to government only what Diogenes said to 
 Alexander, " Stand out of my sunshine." 
 
 The abstract simplicity of the perfect State corresponds 
 to the abstract simplicity of the philosophical principles 
 from which it was deduced. Unadulterated selfishness as 
 the motive, universal benevolence as the end — these are 
 the two fixed poles of Bentham's thought. They pre- 
 sented themselves to him in the first instance as a solution 
 of his own specific problem, the creation of a science or 
 philosophy of law, as a basis for practical reform. Utility, 
 or the greatest-happiness principle, furnished him with a 
 universal test for the criticism of existing enactments, 
 and the introduction of order and system into the chaos 
 of English " judge-made " law. The other problem of 
 legislation is the encouragement of actions which pro- 
 mote the general happiness and the discouragement of 
 actions which have a contrary tendency. This is solved 
 by an appeal to the universal motive. " Nature has 
 placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 17 
 
 masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to 
 point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine 
 what we shall do." The legislator, therefore, must annex 
 pains or pleasures to those classes of actions which he 
 wishes to discourage or promote. Pains and pleasures, 
 so annexed to courses of action, are called " sanctions," 
 and they should be so manipulated by the legislator 
 that from dictates of self-interest alone a man shall 
 be impelled to conduct which promotes the general 
 happiness. 
 
 As has been already hinted, these philosophical prin- 
 ciples are in themselves neither very original nor very 
 profound. We have glanced at the source of the greatest- 
 happiness principle : the psychological hedonism with 
 which it was coupled was a commonplace of the schools, 
 and had been current in English philosophy since Locke. 
 The truth is, as Mr Stephen puts it, that Bentham 
 
 " founded not a doctrine but a method ; the doctrine, which came 
 to him simply as a general principle, was in his hands a potent 
 instrument applied with most fruitful results to questions of 
 immediate interest. . . . The characteristic of his teaching was 
 not the bare appeal to utility, but the attempt to follow the clue 
 of utility systematically or unflinchingly into every part of the 
 subject." 
 
 It is, in short, in the history of legislative theory rather 
 than in philosophy proper that Bentham holds a place. 
 Even his psychology, as seen in his " analysis of the 
 springs of action," is rough and ready. Not unnaturally 
 he extended the principles which he found sufficient to 
 solve his own practical problem, and used them as ulti- 
 mate principles of explanation in psychology, ethics, and 
 sociology. But working principles, sufficiently exact to 
 yield valuable results in their own sphere, cannot be 
 
 B
 
 18 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 
 
 made absolute in this way without revealing their in- 
 adequacy to the task thus thrust upon them. Later 
 criticism and the subsequent history of the Utilitarian 
 school itself have made this abundantly evident in the 
 case of Bentham's abstract scheme of man and society. 
 But this detracts little from his merit in his own sphere, 
 the sphere in which his real work was done, — a sphere 
 in which, as Mr Stephen somewhat cruelly puts it, he 
 " got on very well without philosophy." In the de- 
 partment of law, his success was so great that it has 
 tended perhaps to obscure his merits. With the disap- 
 pearance of the abuses against which his polemic was 
 directed, and with the general acceptance of the canon by 
 which he judged them, much of his writing is apt to 
 appear superfluous. He has been compared to Samson, 
 who perished in the ruins of the temple he destroyed. 
 
 The philosophical defects of Benthamism will be best 
 considered when we have the subsequent development of 
 the school before us. We shall proceed, therefore, briefly 
 to trace its fortunes under the leadership of the Mills, 
 father and son. The twenty years between 1820 and 
 1840 may be set down as the period during which the 
 Utilitarians exercised their most direct influence upon 
 English politics. They were during that time not only 
 a group of thinkers with common principles, in constant 
 communication with one another, but also a compact 
 political party with clearly defined aims, active both in 
 Parliament and in the press. Their organisation in this 
 twofold capacity was unquestionably due in the main to 
 the vigorous but repellent personality of James Mill. 
 Bentham himself exerted his influence almost entirely 
 through his writings, and even of them Sydney Smith 
 wittily said that, while learned economists have doubted
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 19 
 
 " whether it be necessary that there should be a middle- 
 man between the cultivator and the possessor of the soil, 
 neither gods, men, nor booksellers can doubt the necessity 
 of a middleman between Mr Bentham and the public." 
 Mill was much more than such a middleman ; he was at 
 once the systematiser and the prophet of the Benthamite 
 faith. And there is some truth in Hoffding's-^ descrip- 
 tion of him as " the intellectual father of the first par- 
 liamentary reform." The best account of Philosophical 
 Eadicalism in the days of its confident youth is still to 
 be found in his son's 'Autobiography.* 
 
 " The school," he says, " had no other existence than what was 
 constituted by the fact that my father's writings and conversa- 
 tion drew round him a certain number of young men who had 
 already imbibed, or who imbibed from him, a greater or smaller 
 portion of his very decided political and philosophical opinions. 
 . . . Bentham is a much greater name in history. But my 
 father exercised a far greater personal ascendancy. I have never 
 known any one who could do such ample justice to his best 
 thoughts in colloquial discussion." 
 
 This is confirmed by the accounts of Grote and Mrs Grote. 
 Mill goes on to indicate the chief articles of the creed 
 which they held in common. 
 
 " It was not mere Benthamism," he says, " but rather a com- 
 bination of Bentham's point of view with that of the modern 
 
 ^ In his ' History of Modern Philosophy ' HofFding gives a remarkably 
 fresh and well-written account of the Utilitarian thinkers. As a Dane, 
 Professor Hoffding perhaps takes a more cosmopolitan view of the progress 
 of European thought than is to be found in the otherwise admirable 
 histories of philosophy made in Germany. The seventy pages of the 
 English translation which deal with Bentham and the Mills, Carlyle and 
 Sir W. Hamilton, are a model of accurate statement, sympathetic appreci- 
 ation, and incisive criticism.
 
 20 THE PHILOSOPHICAL EADICALS. 
 
 political economy and with the Hartleian metaphysics. Mal- 
 thus's population-principle was quite as much a banner and 
 point of union among us as any opinion specially belonging 
 to Bentham. This great doctrine, originally brought forward 
 as an argument against the indefinite improvability of human 
 affairs, we took up with an ardent zeal in the contrary sense, 
 as indicating the sole means of realising that improvability." 
 
 The Hartleian metaphysics, as it is here called, was 
 James Mill's special contribution to the general body of 
 doctrine. Bentham, as has been seen, was not a trained 
 psychologist, nor was he interested in such questions. To 
 Mill, on the contrary, as a Scotchman — one of the Scotch 
 " feelosophers " so passionately denounced by Cobbett — 
 these investigations were part of his national inheritance. 
 If he had time, he said in 1817, he could write a book 
 which " would make the human mind as plain as the road 
 from Charing Cross to St Paul's." In the doctrine of 
 Association, as applied by Hobbes, Hume, and especially 
 by Hartley, he thought he had found the instrument 
 which effected this result ; and in his 'Analysis of the 
 Phenomena of the Human Mind,' published in 1829, he 
 supplied the world, as he conceived, with the book in 
 question. He furnished the school at any rate with an 
 official philosophy in which the very vigour and clearness 
 of the exposition force into relief the startling inadequacy 
 of its account of conscious experience. James Mill also 
 provided the school with a complete political theory in a 
 powerful series of articles written for the supplement of 
 the ' Encyclopsedia Britannica' between 1816 and 1823, 
 and printed as a volume in 1824. As regards political 
 economy, the Philosophical Ptadicals looked upon them- 
 selves throughout as the special champions of the science. 
 Macaulay, indeed, accused them of discrediting it by the 
 ostentatious way in which they took it under their pro-
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 21 
 
 tection. Ricardo became acquainted with Mill in 1811, 
 and was induced by him to publish his ' Principles of 
 Political Economy ' in 1817. Malthus's 'Essay on Popu- 
 lation ' had appeared in 1798, and in a second, amended, 
 edition in 1803. The controversies which gathered 
 round these two names are closely associated with the 
 history of the Philosophical Radicals. By their rigid 
 interpretation of the doctrines in question, and their 
 uncompromising application of them in the discussion of 
 practical questions, they were probably responsible for a 
 large measure of the odium which the doctrines aroused 
 in many quarters, and which in turn reacted unfavour- 
 ably upon the general political influence of the party. 
 The decline of Philosophical Radicalism was indeed, from 
 a variety of causes, as rapid as its rise. 
 
 But between 1810 and 1830 the party was still in 
 process of consolidation. Able recruits were yearly 
 gathering to its banners, and its members were full of 
 the most unbounded confidence in the sufficiency of 
 their own principles, and in the speedy triumph of 
 these principles over the mass of ignorance and pre- 
 judice which was all that their magisterial assumption 
 permitted them to see in the forces opposed to them. 
 Among the practical workers in the cause, the most 
 notable was perhaps Francis Place, the tailor, whose 
 shop at Charing Cross was the centre of Radical activity 
 in the Westminster constituency. Since the days of 
 Wilkes, Radicalism had migrated from the City to 
 Westminster, as it was later to move to Manchester 
 and Birmingham. Place carried two Radical candidates 
 for Westminster against the Whigs as early as 1807; 
 and one of these. Sir Francis Burdett, retained his seat 
 for thirty years. In the press, yeoman service was 
 done by John Black of ' The Morning Chronicle,' and
 
 22 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 
 
 later by Albany Fonblanque on ' The Examiner.' Among 
 members of Parliament, in addition to Sir Francis 
 Burdett and Sir John Hobhouse, members for West- 
 minster, there were Joseph Hume, a school-fellow of 
 James Mill's, who, after he entered Parliament in 1818, 
 made himself, as Mr Kent puts it, " the self-appointed 
 auditor of the national accounts," and Eoebuck, whose 
 parliamentary career, however, only began in 1832 and 
 eventually led him into other company. Sir William 
 Molesworth's activity, as member of Parliament and one 
 of the wealthy supporters of the cause, also belonged to 
 the years after 1832. The intellectual leaders of the 
 movement, besides James Mill and Kicardo, were Grote, 
 who was introduced to Mill by Eicardo in 1817, and 
 who, with Mrs Grote, represented to the end the strict- 
 est sect of Philosophical Eadicalism ; John Austin, the 
 philosophical jurist, and Charles Austin, his younger 
 brother, whose brilliant oratory in the Cambridge Union 
 introduced Benthamism to the younger members of that 
 University and brought several recruits to the standard. 
 Finally, there was John Stuart Mill, trained from his 
 earliest youth for the apostolic succession, and already 
 in 1823 or 1824 beginning to be a leader among the 
 younger men. In 1824 the foundation of 'The West- 
 minster Eeview ' and James Mill's formidable onslaught 
 in the first number upon ' The Edinburgh Eeview ' and 
 the Whig policy called general attention to the new 
 party. 
 
 "So formidable an attack on the Whig party and policy," says 
 J. S. Mill, " had never before been made, nor had so great a blow 
 been ever struck, in this country, for Radicalism. ... At a 
 time when the current was already setting strongly towards 
 reform, it is not strange that attention should have been aroused 
 by the regular appearance in controversy of what seemed a new
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 23 
 
 school of writers, claiming to be the legislators and theorists of 
 this new tendency. The air of strong conviction with which they 
 wrote, the boldness with which they tilted against the very front 
 of both the existing political parties, their uncompromising pro- 
 fession of opposition to many of the generally received opinions, 
 and the suspicion they lay under of holding others still more 
 heterodox than they professed ; the talent and verve of at least 
 my father's articles, and the appearance of a corps behind him 
 sufficient to carry on a Review, and, finally, the fact that the 
 Review was bought and read, made the so-called Bentham school 
 in philosophy and politics fill a greater place in the public mind 
 than it had held before, or has ever again held since other equally 
 earnest schools of thought have arisen in England." 
 
 Down to 1832, and later, the Utilitarians unquestion- 
 ably claimed, as Mill puts it, to be " the legislators and 
 theorists " of the new tendency. They attacked both the 
 great political parties with equal bitterness as represent- 
 ing the aristocratic principle in government ; but their 
 special bitterness, hatred, and contempt seemed reserved 
 for the Whigs, with whom they were compelled to co- 
 operate. The Whig creed was a " see-saw," and the 
 Whigs themselves were selfish " trimmers." This was the 
 gist of Mill's attacks in ' The Westminster Eeview,' and 
 the feeling grew more intense with the approach of a 
 successful termination of the agitation. The Radicals, 
 who, as Mr Stephen says, had some grounds for consider- 
 ing themselves to be the " steel of the lance," saw the 
 Whig politicians stepping forward to receive both the 
 reward and the credit of their labours. The Whig 
 legend of the Reform Bill is different. Macaulay, then 
 in the first flush of his Cambridge reputation, ridiculed 
 the claim of the Utilitarians to be the defenders of the 
 true political faith. He would draw a broad line between 
 judicious reformers and a " sect which, having derived all 
 its influence from the countenance which they have
 
 24 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 
 
 imprudently bestowed upon it, hates them with the 
 deadly hatred of ingratitude." He is afraid of " the dis- 
 credit of their alliance." No party was ever so un- 
 popular. " It had already disgusted people with political 
 economy, and would disgust them with parliamentary 
 reform if it could associate itself in public opinion 
 with the cause." 
 
 This is obviously unjust to the real influence of the 
 Utilitarians, in leavening political opinion and pushing 
 on the cause of reform, but it is a wholesome reminder 
 of the fate that awaits any extreme party in English 
 politics. The Philosophical Radicals had apparently ex- 
 pected that, after the first instalment of reform in 1832, 
 they would increasingly dominate the Liberal policy of 
 the future. Nothing could have been more unlike what 
 actually happened. As the crisis actually approached, 
 and the tide of feeling rose throughout the country, the 
 Utilitarians were more or less lost in the crowd. Several 
 of the party were returned to the first reformed Par- 
 liament. Besides Hume, Hobhouse, and Sir Francis 
 Burdett, there were Grote, Roebuck, Charles Buller, Sir 
 William Molesworth, and some others. The hopes of 
 Mill and his father ran high. But none of them made 
 any figure in the house. " On the whole," says Mill, 
 reviewing this period in his ' Autobiography,' " they did 
 very little to promote any opinions," and soon sank into 
 " a mere cdU gauche of the Whig party." " I laboured," 
 he adds, "from this time till 1839, both by personal 
 influence with some of them and by writings, to put 
 ideas into their heads and purposes into their hearts. 
 I did some good with Charles Buller and Sir William 
 Molesworth. On the whole, however, my attempt was 
 vain." With more irritation he describes them in a 
 contemporary letter, some as full of crotchets, others as
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL PtADICALS. 25 
 
 fastidious and overloaded with petty scrupulosity, and 
 all devoid of energy, except Roebuck and Buller, while 
 " Roebuck has no judgment, Buller no patient, persevering 
 industry." They gave, in fact, too much ground for the 
 English prejudice that " philosophical " means unpractical ; 
 while the centrifugal tendency, so curiously characteristic 
 of all bodies of " advanced " theorists, soon showed itself 
 in dissensions and mutual recriminations. " I tell you 
 what it is coming to," Charles Buller remarked one night 
 to Grote ; " in no very long time from this, you and I will 
 have to ' tell ' Molesworth." As Buller and Molesworth 
 both died prematurely, there was thus at least some 
 plausibility in Macaulay's witty description of the party 
 as consisting of " Grote and his wife." Sir Francis Burdett 
 became a Tory of the Tories, Sir John Hobhouse took 
 office with the Whigs, and Roebuck became a law unto 
 himself. Thus, by 1840, says Mr Stephen, the Philo- 
 sophical Radicals, who had expected to lead the van, were 
 almost disbanded. " Grote, the ablest of Mill's friends, 
 retired from Parliament to devote himself to the ' History 
 of Greece,' about the same time as Mill set to work upon 
 the completion of his ' Logic' " 
 
 In the ' Autobiography,' Mill finds a partial explanation 
 of this result in the fact that the years after 1832 were 
 essentially a period of reaction, the public mind desiring 
 rest after the Reform excitement, and being disinclined 
 to listen to schemes involving further change. He also 
 attributes it to the want of a leader : 
 
 " some man of philosophic attainments and popular talents who 
 could have used the House of Commons as a rostra or a teacher's 
 chair for instructing and impelling the public mind, and would 
 either have forced the Whigs to receive their measures from 
 him or have taken the lead of the Reform party out of their 
 hands."
 
 26 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 
 
 His father, he thinks, would have been such a leader had 
 he been in Parliament. But these considerations do not 
 reach to the root of the matter. No doubt the presence 
 of a man with the concentrated force of James Mill 
 might have given more unity and fighting spirit to the 
 band ; but the main cause of the decline of the Philo- 
 sophical Eadicals was the abstract and negative character 
 of their views, and the want of insight and sympathy 
 which they displayed in dealing with the concrete ques- 
 tions which now pressed for solution. The " condition-of- 
 England question," as Carlyle called it in his ' Chartism,' 
 had become clamant. The great industrial revolution 
 and the development of capitalism had broken up the old 
 organisation of society in many directions, bringing in its 
 train many crying evils which have only gradually been 
 rectified or mitigated. In the most different quarters 
 men were trying to diagnose the evils and proposing 
 remedies. Among the Conservatives, Southey and 
 Coleridge were feeling after a more adequate theory of 
 the State and its functions, and insisting on the import- 
 ance of the national Church as the organ of sound 
 religion and morality. Among the non - philosophical 
 Eadicals, Cobbett was raging against the degradation of 
 the peasantry, and denouncing the economists and all 
 their works. Owen and his followers, tracing distress to 
 the development of the manufacturing system, looked 
 towards Socialism for the remedy. Popular feeling was 
 inflamed by hideous stories of child -labour and white 
 slavery in factories and mines, and practical philanthropists 
 like Lord Shaftesbury were promoting the Factory Laws 
 to safeguard the human rights of women and children. 
 The workmen themselves were seeking to organise trade- 
 unions for the protection of their interests and the im- 
 provement of their position. But all these signs of the
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 27 
 
 times were lost upon the " paralytic Eadicals," as Carlyle 
 sarcastically called them. They either refused to admit 
 the existence of the evils, or pronounced them to be the 
 inevitable results of economic laws. " Laissez-faire " and 
 unlimited competition were bound, they held, to work out 
 the best results, if only the people would lay to heart the 
 teaching of Malthus, and restrain the increase of popula- 
 tion. Some of the Utilitarians, it is true, were better 
 than their creed, and supported the factory legislation, 
 but the school was opposed to it on principle. The 
 Utilitarians were, in fact, as we have seen, the chief 
 elaborators of the classical political economy, and they 
 accepted its doctrines, not as abstractions and laws of 
 tendency provisionally true in given circumstances, but 
 as an absolute theory of society. They preached these 
 doctrines as the one scheme of social salvation, in 
 opposition to " sentimentalists " of every colour. Small 
 wonder that the dumb instinct of the multitude turned 
 from men who were always preaching that nothing could 
 or should be done ; and that the guidance of popular 
 aspirations passed into other hands. 
 
 ",The Philosophical Radicals," says Mr Stephen, " represented 
 rather intellectual scorn for old prejudices and clumsy adminis- 
 tration than any keen sympathy with the sufferings of the 
 poor. The harsher side of the old Utilitarianism was there- 
 fore emphasised by them, and Mill's attempts to enlarge and 
 soften its teaching were regarded by his critics with a certain 
 suspicion. Their philosophy suited neither party. To the 
 class which still retained the leading position in politics they 
 appeared as destructives, and to the classes which were turning 
 towards Chartism they appeared as the most chilling critics of 
 popular aspiration." 
 
 One of the most striking features of the Philosophical 
 Kadical movement, indeed, was its complete failure ta
 
 28 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 
 
 enlist the support of the working classes. The effect of 
 the Reform Bill had been to throw political power into 
 the hands of the middle class ; and the working classes, 
 who had looked for far-reaching social changes as the 
 result of the agitation, and who now sat, as Carlyle puts 
 it, at a Barmecide feast, conceived a deep distrust of their 
 would-be representatives in Parliament. This was the 
 origin of the Chartist movement, and though the aims of 
 the Chartists were largely embraced in the Radical pro- 
 gramme, there was no solidarity between the two parties. 
 The Chartist agitation was a movement of the working 
 classes themselves, carried on in a lower social stratum 
 than that to which the Philosophical Radicals appealed. 
 The Utilitarians mostly belonged themselves to the 
 middle class — even to the prosperous ranks of that class 
 — and, philosophers as they were, were firmly convinced 
 of the superior wisdom and virtue of their own class. 
 This is almost naively expressed by James Mill in his 
 ' Essay on Government,' in which he deduces " from the 
 principles of human nature" that the lower orders hold 
 up the middle class as a model to be imitated by their 
 children, and " account it an honour " to adopt its opinion. 
 Consequently, however far the franchise were extended, 
 it is this class — which has produced the most distin- 
 guished ornaments of art, science, and even of legislation 
 
 which will ultimately decide upon political questions. 
 
 " The great majority of the people," he concludes, " never 
 cease to be guided by that rank." Twenty years later 
 J. S. Mill, in an article ^ deploring the failure of the 
 Ptadicals to secure the sympathy of the working classes, 
 still emphatically maintains that the motto of every 
 Radical should be government for the working classes by 
 means of the middle classes. The ideal of such govern- 
 
 1 'Westminster Keview,' April 1839.
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 29 
 
 ment would of course, in Mill's conception, be the redress 
 of practical grievances ; but unfortunately the working 
 classes and their Eadical pedagogues were not agreed 
 upon the remedies for the social and industrial ills 
 they complained of. " They could not," says Mr Leslie 
 Stephen, " see a philanthropy which was hidden behind 
 Malthus and Eicardo, and which proposed to improve 
 their position by removing privileges, indeed, but not 
 by diminishing competition," The Utilitarians, there- 
 fore, disappeared from public life as a distinct party, 
 although their economic doctrine survived in Cobden 
 and the Manchester school, and was successfully applied 
 by them to commercial legislation. But the Free-trade 
 movement was essentially a manufacturers' agitation, 
 and, apart from political economy, and a hatred of the 
 aristocratic or land-owning class, Cobden and his friends 
 had little in common with the Philosophical Radicals 
 who preceded them. 
 
 The year 1840 may be said to mark the end of 
 Utilitarian Radicalism, as preached by its founders with 
 logical consistency and with an intellectual intolerance 
 born of implicit confidence in the all-sufficiency of their 
 own social scheme. By that time J. S. Mill, opening 
 his mind to various contemporay influences, had freely 
 acknowledged the defects and one-sidedness of his in- 
 herited creed in the notable articles on " Bentham " and 
 " Coleridge " which appeared in ' The London and West- 
 minster Review ' for 1838 and 1840 respectively. So 
 early as 1829, he says in his 'Autobiography,' he found 
 the fabric of his old opinions giving way, and, as he 
 never allowed it to fall to pieces, he was " incessantly 
 occupied in weaving it anew." Macaulay's attack on the 
 ' Essay on Government ' convinced him that his father's 
 premises were " too narrow, and included but a small
 
 30 THE PHILOSOPHICAL KADICALS. 
 
 number of the general truths on which, in politics, the 
 important consequences depend." Through the writings 
 of Coleridge, and through the Coleridgians with whom he 
 was in personal intercourse, through Carlyle also and 
 others, he had become acquainted with the modern 
 philosophy of history, and accepted the position that 
 "all questions of political institutions are relative, not 
 absolute, and that different stages of human progress 
 not only will have, but ought to have, different institu- 
 tions." About this time, also, he came strongly under 
 the influence of the St Simonian school, and accepted 
 from them the theory of an alternation in the history 
 of human progress between " organic " and " critical " 
 periods. " Their criticisms on the common doctrines of 
 Liberalism seemed to me full of important truth ; and 
 it was partly by their writings that my eyes were 
 opened to the very limited and temporary value of 
 the old political economy." They gave him, in other 
 words, his first impulse in a socialistic direction. A 
 Utilitarian who can talk in this way of " the common 
 doctrines of Liberalism," who has " ceased to consider 
 representative democracy as an absolute principle," and 
 who looks even upon political economy as of " limited 
 and temporary value," has already left the landmarks 
 of his youth far behind him ; and a series of articles 
 on "The Spirit of the Age," written by Mill in 1831, 
 caused Carlyle, when he read them at Craigenputtock, 
 to say to himself, "Here is a new Mystic," and led 
 him, on coming up to London the same autumn, to 
 make inquiry for the author. But so long as his father 
 lived Mill felt himself under restraint. He felt it the 
 part both of prudence and piety to conceal, wherever 
 practicable, how far he had wandered from the paternal 
 creed. " My father," he says, " was not one with whom
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 31 
 
 calm and full explanations on fundamental points of 
 doctrine could be expected, at least with one whom 
 he might consider as in some sort a deserter from his 
 standard." As a dutiful son, therefore, John Mill made 
 the most of their general agreement on the political 
 questions of the day. But after his father's death in 
 1836 he proceeded to liberate his soul in the two 
 striking articles already referred to. These articles are 
 truly remarkable for the insight and sympathy they 
 display. It may almost be said that they already 
 embody the most important criticisms that have been 
 made upon Benthamism by succeeding thinkers, while 
 they contain acknowledgments of the truths contended 
 for by Bentham's opponents which could hardly be 
 better stated by these opponents themselves. 
 
 In short, if Mill, at the time when this expansion of 
 his ideas first began, had been an independent and soli- 
 tary thinker, instead of being, as he was, one of a band 
 of active propagandists, and pledged by all that he held 
 most sacred to carry on the leadership of the school, one 
 is tempted to think that the course of English philosophy 
 in the nineteenth century might have been widely different. 
 If he had been free from the jealous supervision of his 
 father and the stricter members of the sect, and had given 
 free scope to the train of reflection on which he had now 
 entered, the revision of his philosophical principles might 
 have been so thorough that he would have realised that 
 " higher unity " of Bentham and Coleridge to which he 
 pointed as the complete philosophy. But, as it was, his 
 method of incessantly weaving the new into the fabric of 
 the old, and thus maintaining a semblance of continuity 
 and consistency, made such a thorough revision impossible. 
 The old groundwork remained, and the new elements 
 appeared as incongruous patches. Instead of presenting
 
 32 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 
 
 a new synthesis, Mill introduces modifications and addi- 
 tions without perceiving their total inconsistency with 
 principles which he nevertheless refuses to abandon ; and 
 hence the bankruptcy of Associationism and the old 
 Utilitarianism was not declared till nearly half a century 
 later. This may be explained to a large extent by the 
 fact that the changes which his social theories underwent 
 never led him to reconsider the atomistic doctrine of 
 Sensationalism and Associationism which he had accepted 
 from his father as a theory of knowledge. It was late in 
 life — in connection with the Hamiltonian controversy — 
 that he returned to deal more systematically with these 
 matters ; and the polemical nature of the occasion pre- 
 cluded any reconsideration of fundamentals. He was the 
 English champion of one set of views, as Hamilton was of 
 the other ; and, although in the course of the discussion 
 his candour led him to make important admissions, it was 
 without any consciousness of their combined effect upon 
 the structure of his philosophic edifice. His father's 
 systematic training had, in fact, done its work more 
 thoroughly than he was aware of ; and accordingly his 
 subsequent works show him closer to his father's and 
 Bentham's point of view than might have been expected 
 from his critical attitude in the thirties. Those articles, 
 written while he was still in close intercourse with 
 Carlyle, Maurice, Sterling, and others, mark the point of 
 his closest approximation to other ways of thinking : at 
 bottom, however, they implied no breaking away from his 
 moorings, but only (as he himself says) an attempt " to 
 give a wider basis and a more free and genial character 
 to Eadical speculations." Later, he tells us that, except 
 as regards his gradual advance in the direction of Social- 
 ism, he "completely turned back from what there had 
 been of excess in his reaction against Benthamism."
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 33 
 
 Mill says of his father that " as Brutus was the last 
 of the Eomans, so was he the last of the eighteenth 
 century ; he continued its thought and sentiment into 
 the nineteenth (though not unmodified nor unimproved), 
 partaking neither in the good nor in the bad influences 
 of the reaction against the eighteenth century, which 
 was the great characteristic of the first half of the nine- 
 teenth." Similarly, in his account of the widening of his 
 own mental horizon, he treats Benthamism throughout 
 as synonymous with eighteenth-century thought. " The 
 French philosophes of the eighteenth century" were, he 
 says, the example which he and his youthful companions 
 sought to emulate in the salad days of 1824. This affilia- 
 tion is beyond dispute. James Mill reproduces the psycho- 
 logical metaphysics of Hume, while Bentham repeats the 
 selfish and hedonistic ethics of Helvetius. Without any 
 disparagement of that much maligned but indispensable 
 and meritorious period, it will be admitted that the 
 eighteenth century represents in philosophy the principle 
 of analysis ; that its analysis of man and society is con- 
 ducted in an abstract fashion without reference to the 
 teaching of history ; and that the philosophers are through- 
 out individualists, alike in their presuppositions and in 
 their resulting dogmatic teaching — individualists often of 
 so pronounced a type as to be more accurately described 
 as Atomists or Anarchists. Mill mentions " the Hartleian 
 metaphysics " as the philosophical groundwork of the 
 Utilitarian creed. But Hartley's doctrine is, in the main, 
 simply that of the association of ideas done into terms of 
 physiology ; the seminal mind of the eighteenth century, 
 in this as in so much else, is David Hume. James Mill's 
 'Analysis,' dropping Hartley's obsolete physiology, offers 
 us sensations phis associations as a complete explanation 
 of the mind and its operations, reproducing with almost 
 
 C
 
 34 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 
 
 Startling exactitude Hume's fundamental positions in the 
 ' Treatise.' The work is, indeed, as Hoffding says, the 
 most systematic attempt ever made to explain all mental 
 phenomena by the association of ideas — all associations, 
 moreover, being reduced to contiguity. Our experience, 
 according to Mill's analysis, consists of sensations and 
 ideas which are copies of sensations ; both may be spoken 
 of as feelings, a term which includes every phenomenon of 
 mind. Consciousness is a succession of such sensations 
 and ideas, which are conceived, both by Hume and by 
 Mill, as separable atoms. There is no logical connection 
 between ideas ; but, when two occur together, or in close 
 succession, an association tends to establish itself between 
 them, so that the one afterwards suggests the other. 
 
 The ideas, in Mill as in Hume, appear to be not only 
 separable atoms but to be self-subsistent entities, which 
 somehow cohere, and when aggregated into a cluster con- 
 stitute the mind. J. S. Mill remarks that his father's 
 theory of Predication (as " simply a contrivance for marking 
 this order of ideas ") omits all reference to belief. Now 
 to believe is actively to judge or to make some assertion 
 about reality ; but mental activity and reality are con- 
 ceptions for which Mill, like Hume, has no place. Belief 
 can be no more than lively suggestion of one idea by 
 another in the course of their rapid self-initiated transit. 
 In other words. Mill omits the active function of thought 
 altogether, and leaves us with a dance of passively appre- 
 hended images, which weave their mazes till they form in 
 time a " lively idea " of a mind or apprehending self, and 
 of a real world which that self apprehends. Like Hume, 
 he has, in the course of his analysis, got rid both of ob- 
 jective reality and of the mind itself ; the two, indeed, 
 stand or fall together. But it is hard, as Mr Stephen 
 says, in unconscious reminiscence of Eeid, " to conceive
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 35 
 
 of mere loose ' ideas ' going about in the universe at large 
 and sticking accidentally to others. After all, the 
 human being is in a true sense also an organised whole, 
 and his constitution must be taken into account in 
 discussing the laws of ' ideation.' " When J. S. Mill's 
 candour long afterwards impelled him to his famous 
 admission that the mind is more than a series of feelings, 
 it was felt instinctively that he had surrendered the key 
 of the position. The question of Judgment or Belief is, 
 indeed, as he partly saw in his comments on his father's 
 theory, the crucial question for such a philosophy. 
 
 As already indicated, James Mill would fain reduce all 
 association (and therefore all relation) to the principle 
 of contiguity or accidental collocation. Even resemblance, 
 which Hume had retained as one of the fundamental 
 laws of association, makes Mill uncomfortable, because 
 it is a relation which seems to depend on the intrinsic 
 nature of the ideas themselves. He suggests that resem- 
 blance is, after all, really a particular case of the law of 
 frequency. " I believe it will be found that we are 
 accustomed to see like things together. When we see 
 a tree, we generally see more trees than one ; a sheep, 
 more sheep than one ; a man, more men than one." His 
 loyal son and editor, in disavowing this extraordinary 
 suggestion, is driven to remark that we are also much 
 accustomed to see like things separate and to see unlike 
 things together. Clearly, as Mr Stephen wittily puts it, 
 sheep are not seen to be like because they often compose 
 a flock, but are considered a flock because they are seen 
 to be like. James Mill himself, it is fair to say, does 
 not insist on this reduction, but the attempt is signifi- 
 cant, for it helps to explain (or at least falls into line 
 with) what J. S. Mill tells us was his father's " funda- 
 mental doctrine " in psychology — " the formation of all
 
 36 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 
 
 human character by circumstances through the universal 
 Principle of Association, and the consequent unlimited 
 possibility of improving the moral and intellectual condi- 
 tion of mankind by education." If the individuals with 
 which we start have no character or nature of their own, 
 and if there are no connections between them discover- 
 able by reason, but only associations due to chance coin- 
 cidences, then undoubtedly (to vary Hume's famous 
 dictum) anything may be made out of anything. James 
 Mill, in his article on " Education," does, as a matter of 
 fact, go nearly the whole way with the doctrine of 
 Helvetius that all the differences between men are due to 
 education, including under that word " all the circum- 
 stances that act during the first months, perhaps the 
 first moments, of existence." This is substantially the 
 doctrine of the school from first to last. J. S. Mill 
 remarks on Bentham's complete neglect of national 
 character as a factor in moulding and explaining the 
 social arrangements of a people. " Bentham's idea of the 
 world," he says, " is that of a collection of persons pursu- 
 ing each his separate interest or pleasure, the prevention 
 of whom from jostling one another more than is unavoid- 
 able may be attempted by hopes and fears derived from 
 three sources — the law, religion, and public opinion." 
 That is to say, the material of the legislator consists 
 of abstract or colourless units — the " average man " 
 actuated by the universal motive. By a sufficiently 
 skilful manipulation of hopes and fears, and the conse- 
 quent weaving of proper associations, any result may be 
 attained. In this spirit, as Mr Stephen points out, 
 Bentham professed himself as ready to legislate for 
 Hindostan as for his own parish, and he was eager to 
 make codes not only for England, Spain, and Eussia, but 
 for Morocco. And J. S. Mill himself, in spite of his
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 37 
 
 censure of Bentham, speaks towards the close of his life 
 of " the irresistible proofs that by far the greater part 
 of the marked distinction of human character, whether 
 between individicals, races, or sexes, are such as not only 
 might but naturally would be produced by differences in 
 circumstances." ^ 
 
 Indissoluble or inseparable association comes in, finally, 
 to explain, as J. S. Mill says, " all the mental incompati- 
 bilities, the impossibilities of thought, of which so much is 
 made by a certain class of metaphysician." After explain- 
 ing in this way the supposed necessity of mathematical 
 axioms, J. S. Mill proposed to treat the principle of con- 
 tradiction itself as just " one of our first and most familiar 
 generalisations from experience." In other words, we 
 have found as a fact that " belief and disbelief are two 
 different mental states excluding each other," just as " we 
 also find that light and darkness, sound and silence, any 
 positive phenomenon whatever and its negative, are dis- 
 tinct phenomena, pointedly contrasted, and the one always 
 absent where the other is present." The law is, there- 
 fore, " a generalisation from all these facts." It is, in 
 short, an association arising out of frequently repeated 
 collocations of facts, and to that extent itself a mere 
 matter of fact, something that we find to be so, but which 
 embodies no insight of reason, no necessity of thought. 
 The antipathy to logical or rational necessity could go no 
 farther than this attempt to make the law of contradic- 
 tion itself an accident of experience. In the same way, 
 even resemblance as a perceived relation sticks in James 
 
 1 In fairness it ought to be added that this doctrine of the fluidity of all 
 distinctions, because due to external circumstances, and the consequent 
 indefinite modifiability of character, was the source of some of the best 
 features of the Utilitarians as well as of their limitations. It explains 
 their enthusiastic belief in education as an instrument of social progress, 
 and their optimistic view of the unlimited possibilities of future advance.
 
 38 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 
 
 Mill's throat. To feel two things to be alike, he argues, 
 is the same thing as to have the two feelings. Separate 
 units, accidentally combined, thus constitute, on the con- 
 joint testimony of father and son, absolutely the whole 
 stock-in-trade of the empirical philosophy. 
 
 Bentham's ethics are the counterpart of this psycho- 
 logical atomism. Just as the mind or self is pulverised 
 into separate and accidentally associated states, so each 
 man, considered ethically, is a purely self - regarding 
 creature, connected by no natural bonds of cohesion with 
 his fellows, but actuated solely by the desire to attain 
 selfish pleasure or escape selfish pain. Virtue being, 
 nevertheless, defined as the promotion of the greatest 
 happiness of the greatest number, the problem of ethics 
 becomes, in Carlyle's phrase, " Given a world of knaves, 
 to educe an Honesty from their united action," or, as 
 Mr Stephen puts it, to make universal cohesion out of 
 universal repulsion. This is achieved by means of 
 " sanctions," that is, pains and pleasures annexed to 
 actions, which make it a man's private interest to pro- 
 mote the public good. Bentham is entirely occupied 
 with this jurisprudential question of arranging " tutelary 
 motives," so that self-interest shall lead in the direction 
 of benevolence. Dealing only with the overt act, and 
 disregarding, as from the legal point of view he must, the 
 motives which led to it, it is apparently indifferent to him 
 whether a course of action be the outcome of selfish 
 calculation or disinterested benevolence ; and, as J. S. 
 Mill confesses, the training of the affections and the will 
 in the latter direction is a blank in his system. " Man 
 is never recognised by him," says Mill, " as a being 
 capable of pursuing spiritual perfection as an end, 
 of desiring for its own sake the conformity of his own 
 character to his standard of excellence, without hope of
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 39 
 
 good or fear of evil from other source than his own 
 inward consciousness." Such a view, it is hardly neces- 
 sary to add, amounts to a complete neglect of what 
 constitutes virtuous action as such, and consequently to 
 the disappearance of ethics as in any way distinguished 
 from law. 
 
 The actual emergence of disinterestedly benevolent 
 sentiments, and the logical justification of universal ben- 
 evolence on a basis of universal selfishness, become, there- 
 fore, the special problems of the Utilitarian school. To 
 Bentham himself the necessity of reconciling Benevolence 
 and Prudence, and so justifying his own ethical principle, 
 seems hardly to have presented itself as a difficulty. This 
 was due, no doubt, partly to his purely external view of 
 obhgation, partly to a vague belief in the actual harmony 
 of individual and social interests, properly understood — an 
 idea which he found prominently set forth in Helvetius, 
 and which, in the economic sphere, pervades the work of 
 Adam Smith. The more analytic mind of James Mill 
 perceived the necessity of some kind of logical justification, 
 and his answer is the theory of " mental chemistry " or 
 indissoluble association, by which actions, originally per- 
 formed from motives of self-interest, may come to be 
 performed for their own sake, as the miser comes to 
 love gold without any thought of converting it to use. 
 In his son's ' Utilitarianism ' the question is prominent. 
 As might have been expected from his criticism of 
 Bentham, J. S. Mill lays great stress on the necessity of 
 a disinterested love of virtue as a mark of the truly 
 virtuous man. He will not surrender the fundamental 
 tenet of the school that " actions and dispositions are only 
 virtuous because they promote another end than virtue," 
 but he not only recognises as a psychological fact the 
 possibility that virtue may become to the individual a
 
 40 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 
 
 good in itself ; he holds that " the mind is not in a right 
 state, not in a state conformable to Utility, not in the 
 state most conducive to the general happiness unless 
 it does love virtue in this manner." We have thus 
 a parallel to the general paradox of hedonism that 
 pleasure is only gained when it is not directly pursued. 
 The solution is sought by Mill very much on his father's 
 lines by bringing association into play. He lays stress 
 also upon the social feelings of mankind as affording 
 a natural basis of sentiment for Utilitarian morality. 
 " The social state," he says, " is at once so natural, so 
 necessary, and so habitual to man, that except in some 
 unusual circumstances, or by an effort of voluntary 
 abstraction, he never conceives himself otherwise than as 
 member of a body." Mill is thus, as usual, on the point 
 of discarding the picture of the abstract individual which 
 gives rise to the whole difficulty. But, as his manner 
 uniformly is, he refuses to take the final step which his 
 successive admissions have necessitated; and Nemesis 
 overtakes him a few pages farther on, when he endeav- 
 ours to pass from " egoistic " to " universalistic hedon- 
 ism " by the notorious " fallacy of composition " so often 
 commented on. " Each person's happiness is a good to 
 that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good 
 to the aggregate of all persons." The ' Utilitarianism,' 
 accordingly, like all Mill's works, only marks a stage in 
 the dissolution of the school, or if to be preferred, in the 
 transcendence by the school of its original opinions. It was 
 at least convincing as to the impossibility of justifying 
 the Utilitarian end on the basis of egoistic hedonism. 
 The closest reasoner of the school — if, indeed, so broad 
 and cautious a thinker as the late Professor Sidgwick 
 may be ranked among the adherents of any school — pro- 
 ceeded, therefore, to take the final step of dissociating the
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 41 
 
 two. By placing benevolence alongside of prudence, and 
 accepting it as " the most certain and comprehensive of 
 intuitions," he must be held, in spite of certain character- 
 istic reserves, to abandon definitively the ethical atomism 
 of the original doctrine. 
 
 To what extent can such a theory as that of Bentham 
 and the Philosophical Kadicals explain the structure and 
 functions of society ? Mr Leslie Stephen hardly improves 
 upon the answer which J. S. Mill gave in 1838 : — 
 
 "It can teach the means of organising and regulating the 
 merely business part of the social arrangements. ... It will 
 enable a society which has attained a certain state of spiritual 
 development, and the maintenance of which in that state is other- 
 wise provided for, to prescribe the rules by which it may protect 
 its material interests. It will do nothing (except sometimes as 
 an instrument in the hands of a higher doctrine) for the spiritual 
 interests of society, nor does it suffice of itself even for the 
 material interests. That which alone causes any material inter- 
 ests to exist, which alone enables any body of human beings to 
 exist as a society, is national character. A philosophy of laws 
 and institutions not founded on a philosophy of national char- 
 acter is an absurdity." 
 
 Bentham would probably have retorted that to talk in 
 this strain of national character is to lapse into " mysti- 
 cism " and " vague generalities " ; for does not his legiti- 
 mate disciple, Nassau Senior, tell us that " a State is 
 nothing more than the aggregate of individual men who 
 inhabit a certain country " ? Nevertheless Mill in this 
 passage lays his finger upon the point where the Bentham- 
 ite theory of society breaks down. Given a society and 
 a government of some sort, utility, in the hands of the 
 reforming critic, may furnish an important practical test 
 of any of its particular institutions and arrangements.
 
 42 THE PHILOSOPHICAL KADICALS. 
 
 But you cannot apply such a test to the existence of the 
 social organism itself. It was, no doubt, as Mr Stephen 
 suggests, a dim perception of this truth that prompted the 
 theory of the Social Contract, which it is difficult to believe 
 was ever regarded by its authors as embodying a historical 
 fact. We may perhaps understand them to mean by it 
 that the existence of society is, as Kant might have said, 
 the result of " an intelligible act," or, to put it more 
 simply, that it is the necessary presupposition of all 
 further thought on these subjects. The modern view of 
 the relation of the individual to society has obviated the 
 necessity of having recourse to such a fiction. Through 
 the influence of Hegel and of Comte, and partly through 
 the reaction of biological conceptions upon philosophy 
 and general thinking, the nineteenth century has seen 
 the definitive abandonment of the individualistic or 
 atomistic view of that relation. To Mr Leslie Stephen 
 himself belongs the credit of having, in his ' Science of 
 Ethics,' worked out with much impressiveness, from a 
 Utilitarian basis, the conception of the organic nature 
 of society, and the impossibility, therefore, of treating 
 the moral individual apart from the society whose 
 product he is, or apart from the race whose history 
 he inherits in the instincts and habits which make 
 him human. With equal emphasis, from another point 
 of view, T. H. Green (who holds, against hedonistic 
 theories of every shade, that the moral end must be 
 formulated in terms of self-reahsation) insists that the 
 self to be realised is social, and that the moral ideal 
 is therefore the idea of " a comm.on good." This is 
 "an ultimate fact of human history — a fact without 
 which there would not be such a history." Instead of 
 being the unit from which we must start, the individual, 
 it has been said, is a late product of evolution ; and it is
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 43 
 
 only, therefore, within certain spheres and with certain 
 limitations that we can, by a convenient abstraction, dis- 
 cuss his conduct and qualities apart from the " social 
 tissue " in which he is, as it were, embedded, or out of 
 which, rather, he is woven. If this be so, it is only with 
 such qualifications that we can speak of an opposition 
 between self-regarding and social qualities ; and we are 
 spared the impossible task of explaining how one of 
 these abstractions produces the other — how pure selfish- 
 ness gives rise to pure benevolence. We do not even 
 require to justify Benevolence at the bar of Prudence. 
 The cohesion of the race is secured by organic instincts 
 which reach deep down beneath any such antithesis. 
 
 " How wonderful it all is ! Built not by saints and angels, 
 but by the work of men's hands ; cemented with men's honest 
 blood and with a world of tears ; welded by the best brains of 
 centuries past ; not without the taint and reproach incidental to 
 all human work, but constructed on the whole with pure and 
 splendid purpose ; human, and not yet wholly human, for the 
 most heedless and the most cynical must see the finger of the 
 Divine." 
 
 These fine words, spoken by Lord Eosebery of the narrower 
 case of the British Empire, may still more fitly be applied 
 to the fabric of human civilisation itself, reared upon a 
 meagre basis of animal needs and impulses by the name- 
 less generations of the past. To this vast process of un- 
 conscious reason the Utilitarians were strangely blind. 
 Like most reformers, they saw in the past only the in- 
 corporated spirit of evil, the fountain of unnumbered 
 abuses. Every abuse they attacked appeared to them 
 due to some " sinister interest," which had called it into 
 being originally, and now opposed its removal. A little 
 historical sense might hav£ taught them that in many 
 cases, perhaps in most, what had become an abuse had
 
 44 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 
 
 begun by serving a useful purpose, while its persistence 
 after its usefulness had ceased was often due more to the 
 forces of inertia, and even to a mistaken but intelligible 
 sense of loyalty, than to any definitely sinister interest on 
 the part of individuals or classes. It might even have 
 occurred to them that the long or extensive prevalence of 
 any opinion is itself a presumption that it is not altogether 
 a fallacy. But Bentham and his followers contemptuously 
 dismissed, under the sweeping phrase of "vague general- 
 ities," whatever their foot-rule of provable utility did not 
 enable them to measure. " He did not heed," says J. S. 
 Mill in his critical essay, " or rather, the nature of his 
 mind prevented it from occurring to him, that these 
 generalities contained the whole unanalysed experience 
 of the human race." 
 
 Mill signalises his father's unbounded confidence in the 
 influence of reason over the minds of mankind, and in so 
 doing he touches both the strength and the weakness of 
 the Utilitarian position. Meagrely enough supported by 
 the records of its constructive application in political and 
 social history, this confidence in the power of conscious 
 reflection is none the less a noble and a necessary faith in 
 the ultimate power of clear intelligence. In a sense, this 
 faith can only be surrendered if we capitulate to the 
 powers of irrationality and chaos. It is the claim of the 
 free human spirit eternally to criticise its own procedure 
 and all the institutions in which it has embodied itself. 
 Only by this unceasing criticism can the fabric of human 
 institutions be kept sweet and clean, and be continuously 
 adapted, with some measure of success, to new times and 
 new needs. And in the hands of reformers, utility, as the 
 most practical test of rationality, may be applied with 
 potent and beneficent effect to laws and customs which, 
 useful in their day, have survived their usefulness and
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 45 
 
 become a useless anachronism, a harmful restriction, or a 
 crying injustice. There is no doubt that, in this sense. 
 Utilitarianism rendered services of the most important 
 kind to the true interests of mankind. T. H. Green does 
 not hesitate to call it the moral theory which has been of 
 most public service in modern Europe. " Whatever the 
 errors arising from its hedonistic psychology, no other 
 theory has been available, for the social and political 
 reformer, containing so much truth with such ready 
 applicability. No other has offered so commanding a 
 point of view from which to criticise the precepts and 
 institutions presented as authoritative." To this extent, 
 the Utilitarians undoubtedly represent the principle 
 of modern thought and the freedom of the human 
 mind. In their assaults upon indefensible privileges, 
 unreasoned prejudices, and blind appeals to tradition, 
 the truth has been with them, and they have prevailed. 
 Law has been simplified, commercial activity has been 
 freed from its fetters, privileges have been swept away, 
 and the political machine reconstructed in accordance 
 with Eadical ideals. And yet the Eadical Utopia has 
 not been realised ; the state of public opinion on funda- 
 mental points of social and national policy is as far 
 removed as can well be conceived from that contemplated 
 by Bentham and his followers. The Utilitarians had, in 
 a striking degree, the defects of their qualities. The 
 reason they invoked with so much confidence was abstract 
 and unhistorical, and, as a consequence, their insight 
 failed them when they had to deal in any way with the 
 unseen foundations of society or the hidden springs of 
 national life. In these cases their criticisms have re- 
 coiled, with fatal effect, upon themselves. Philosophical 
 Kadicalism was, in short, essentially a negative and 
 critical movement, and its strength departed from it just.
 
 46 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 
 
 in proportion as its critical attack was successful. When 
 effect was given to its legitimate criticisms, whatever hold 
 it had upon popular support was lost, for it had no con- 
 structive suggestions to offer in the work of social 
 organisation. Its impotence in this respect arose, as 
 has been seen, from the inadequacy of its philosophic 
 basis.
 
 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIYILISATION.^ 
 
 IN ' Social Evolution ' Mr Kidd stated some whole- 
 some truths in a fresh and vigorous manner, 
 which was none the less effective because the statement 
 was often paradoxical in form, and depended sometimes 
 on forced antithesis. Clothed in the all - conquering 
 phraseology of biological evolution, his views on the 
 nature and factors of social progress attracted an amount 
 of public attention which was fully justified, on the 
 whole, by the knowledge of social phenomena and the 
 power of comprehensive generalisation which the volume 
 displayed. It had an adventitious popularity in certain 
 circles because, by the connection it asserted between 
 religion and the very doctrine of natural selection on 
 which modern biology rests, it seemed to turn the tables 
 upon the anti- religious dogmatism which masquerades 
 as science. The " ultra-rational sanctions " of morality 
 and social progress on which the book insisted, proved 
 a palatable phrase to the defenders of supernatural 
 dogma. Provoking undue heat and animosity in those 
 of the opposite camp, the phrase led them, perhaps, to 
 do less than justice to what there was of solid truth in 
 Mr Kidd's interpretations of history and of the present 
 
 ^ The following discussion of Mr Kidd's historical generalisations 
 appeared in 'The Contemporary Review,' June 1902.
 
 48 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 
 
 trend of social movement. The book thus stimulated 
 discussion in many quarters ; and as it partook itself of 
 the nature of a brochure or manifesto, it naturally fore- 
 shadowed an attempt on the part of the author to work 
 out a system of social philosophy on the basis of the 
 ideas therein enunciated. This task Mr Kidd has now 
 essayed in his ' Principles of Western Civilisation,' 
 which purports to be only " the first volume of a system 
 of evolutionary philosophy," and thus inevitably challenges 
 comparison with Mr Spencer's undertaking. Unfor- 
 tunately, it cannot be said that in the eight years' 
 interval Mr Kidd's thought has gained in lucidity or 
 convincingness. In applying the ideas of his previous 
 book, he has invented a cumbrous and (as it seems to me) 
 singularly unfortunate terminology, in which he disguises 
 them almost beyond recognition, and which is repeated 
 on page after page almost as if he were reciting the 
 words of an inspired creed, and were fearful of deviating 
 in the smallest particular from the exact words of the 
 formula. Mr Kidd is, moreover, himself so impressed 
 with the importance of his message, and by accumulating 
 his adjectives labours so insistently to produce the same 
 impression upon his readers, that in the parts of the 
 volume dealing with his philosophical generalisations, the 
 style becomes turgid and inflated, sometimes to the verge 
 of meaninglessness, and only recovers sanity when it 
 touches earth, so to speak, in the later chapters dealing 
 with historical facts and present-day social conditions. 
 
 What, then, are the ideas, common to the two books, 
 in which Mr Kidd believes that he has found the key to 
 the history of mankind ? The main theses of ' Social 
 Evolution' were (1) that human society, like animal 
 life everywhere, progresses only through the stress of 
 competition — the ceaseless rivalry of race with race, of
 
 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 49 
 
 individual with individual — in virtue of which, according 
 to the operation of natural selection, the unfit are weeded 
 out, and only the fittest maintain themselves and survive 
 to propagate their kind ; (2) that this upward movement 
 is being carried on at the expense of the individual, and 
 of the present generation as a whole, in the interest of 
 the efficiency of the stock and of the generations that 
 are to follow, and is thus fiatly at variance with the 
 enlightened self-interest of the individuals of whom, at 
 any given moment, the social organism consists. Self- 
 interest would teach them to conserve their own material 
 interests by easing the stress of competition in every pos- 
 sible way, — notably, for example, by artificially restrict- 
 ing the growth of population and the consequent pressure 
 upon the means of subsistence. To these promptings of 
 self-interest Mr Kidd restricts the term " reason," which 
 he accordingly describes as " the most profoundly indi- 
 vidualistic, anti-social, and anti-evolutionary of all human 
 qualities." " Keason has nothing to do with any existence 
 but the present, which it insists it is our duty to our- 
 selves to make the most of," (3) It follows immediately 
 from this definition of terms that there is no rational 
 sanction for progress — that in submitting to the conditions 
 of the social and evolutionary process, man is swayed 
 entirely by the " ultra-rational " sanctions which religion 
 in its various forms, and Christianity pre-eminently, 
 supplies. Eeligion, therefore, instead of being a survival 
 from primitive savagery, to be gradually merged in 
 rational insight, appears as the eternal and necessary 
 counterpart or complement of reason, the cohesive force 
 in society which antagonises the disintegrative tendencies 
 of the individual reason and ensures the possibility of 
 progress. Thus, " we understand how an ultra-rational 
 sanction for the sacrifice of the interests of the in- 
 
 D
 
 50 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 
 
 dividuals to those of the social organism has been a 
 feature common to all religions ; we see also why the 
 conception of sacrifice has occupied such a central place 
 in nearly all beliefs, and why the tendency of religion 
 has been to surround this principle with the most im- 
 pressive and stupendous of sanctions." 
 
 Applying this scheme to the facts of Western Civilisa- 
 tion, Mr Kidd finds the characteristic feature of that 
 civilisation to be the altruism with which it was so 
 powerfully inoculated at the Christian era, and the 
 " development of a stupendous system of other-world- 
 liness," in which reason, as a faculty of independent 
 judgment, came near to extinction, and " the super- 
 rational sanction for conduct attained a strength and 
 universality unknown in the Eoman and Greek civil- 
 isations." Proceeding to contrast modern with ancient 
 civilisation, he points out that in the latter the tribe 
 or state was the unit, and the struggle for existence 
 operated mainly between these groups : the survival of 
 a group or society depended, therefore, on its efficiency 
 as a fighting organisation. In modern societies this 
 external competition of state with state no doubt con- 
 tinues to operate ; but a marked and growing feature of 
 modern societies is the relative independence possessed 
 by the individual, — an independence characteristic of 
 an industrial as distinguished from a military organisa- 
 tion. Mr Kidd, therefore, in dealing with them con- 
 centrates his attention on what has been called intra- 
 group competition — i.e., competition for economic goods 
 between individuals of the same society. Here his 
 position is peculiar and worthy of note. As might be 
 expected from the quasi-religious sanction with which he 
 invests the struggle for existence, as the divinely appointed 
 instrument of progress, he sees in this internal rivalry.
 
 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 51 
 
 which keeps all the powers of individuals at their utmost 
 tension, the most precious instrument of social efficiency 
 and the ultimate cause of progress. " So far from our 
 civilisation tending to produce an interruption of, or an 
 exception to, the cosmic process which has been in 
 progress from the beginning of life, its distinctive and 
 characteristic feature must be found in the exceptional 
 degree to which it has furthered it." The direction of 
 advance among the modern nations has been, he points 
 out, towards " the political and social enfranchisement of 
 the masses," so that " the fact of our time, which over- 
 shadows all others, is the arrival of Democracy." But 
 democracy means essentially " participation in the rivalry 
 of existence on equal terms." The democratic ideal is 
 " a condition of society in which the whole mass of 
 excluded people will be at last brought into the rivalry 
 of existence on a footing of equality of opportunity." 
 Thus " the significance of the entire order of social 
 change in progress among the Western peoples consists, 
 in short, in the single fact that this cosmic process 
 tends thereby to acquire amongst us the fullest, highest, 
 and completest expression it has ever reached in the 
 history of the race." Notwithstanding this laudation of 
 unlimited competition, it presently appears, however, that 
 this divinely appointed instrument cannot be trusted to 
 work alone, and religion is invoked on the opposite side 
 as a controlling and modifying force. It is significant 
 of the looseness with which the term religion is used 
 that, whereas it appeared, to begin with, as the consecra- 
 tion of the struggle, Mr Kidd now proceeds to argue, in 
 effect, that the process of Western Civilisation is the 
 story of the gradual success of Christian ideals in 
 tempering the ruthless action of natural selection. For 
 presumably "the power -holding classes" obtained their
 
 52 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 
 
 position through the operation of natural selection, by 
 reason of their greater social efficiency. There is nothing 
 in that cosmic principle which should induce them to 
 part with one jot or tittle of the power and privilege 
 they have acquired. The true moral of the situation is 
 drawn by Nietzsche, when he urges them to improve 
 their advantage to the utmost, and to cultivate the 
 " Uebermensch " on the labours of a subject population. 
 Yet, as Mr Kidd tells us, the course of Civilisation has 
 been marked by the breaking down of privileges one 
 after another ; and the tendency of recent legislation in 
 particular has been " to strengthen and equip at the 
 general expense the lower and weaker against the higher 
 and wealthier classes of the community." This is traced 
 by Mr Kidd, with much truth, to " the immense fund of 
 altruistic feeling with which our Western Societies have 
 been equipped," or, in simpler language, to the feeling 
 of human brotherhood which first found full expression 
 in the teaching of Christ. The presence of this element 
 he finds to be the characteristic feature of Western 
 Civilisation, and one that opens out possibilities of pro- 
 gress which were closed to states of the antique pattern. 
 
 These, then, are the ideas upon which Mr Kidd draws 
 in his present volume. He has not, so far as I can see, 
 added in any way to the stock ; but those on which he 
 here concentrates attention reappear under quasi-philoso- 
 phical titles which are intended to magnify their im- 
 portance, but which in reality, I cannot but think, tend 
 to obscure their real meaning. 
 
 He begins as before by connecting his work with the 
 theory of evolution, calling attention to the transforma- 
 tion which the doctrine of evolution by natural selection 
 has effected in all departments of knowledge, and 
 especially in those which deal with man in society. As
 
 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 53 
 
 we have seen, he calls his work expressly " a system of 
 evolutionary philosophy," and professes in it to draw 
 the ultimate consequences, hitherto unperceived, of the 
 scientific theory when applied to social phenomena. 
 These consequences, he contends almost on every page of 
 his book, are so " momentous," so " extraordinary," so 
 " vast," so " remarkable," so " gigantic," " enormous," and 
 " stupendous," that he appears to labour under a sense of 
 almost prophetic importance in being the first to enunciate 
 them. His first thesis is that the evolutionary process 
 works everywhere in the interests of the future, — that is 
 to say, in the interests of the species or type, not in 
 the interest of " existing individuals considered either 
 separately as individuals or collectively as members of 
 political society." The recognition of this fact involves, 
 he maintains, " a shifting of the centre of significance in 
 the evolutionary hypothesis." Social philosophy has been 
 governed hitherto by the idea of " the ascendancy of the 
 interest of the present " ; but in the evolutionary process 
 truly interpreted the evolutionary centre of the process 
 is seen to be in the future, and its meaning therefore can 
 never be grasped by " any theory of utilitarian politics in 
 the State." This is what he intends by the ever-repeated 
 phrase that the meaning of the process is " projected 
 beyond the limits of merely political consciousness." 
 And under the title of " The Principle of Projected 
 Efficiency " — a title surely singularly unfortunate and 
 ill - adapted to express the author's meaning — this 
 idea becomes the keynote of the book. It is next 
 identified with the principle of Western — i.e., modern 
 or Christian — as contrasted with ancient, civilisation ; 
 and thus the social evolution of mankind falls into 
 two great periods, ancient or pre - Christian civilisa- 
 tion, based entirely, according to Mr Kidd, on the
 
 54 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 
 
 ascendancy of the present, and Western or Christian 
 civilisation, based on the ascendancy of the future. 
 Political and social writers before Mr Kidd have not 
 recognised the significance of this remarkable antithesis, 
 and consequently their speculations continually tend to 
 revert to an antique standard. This declension of 
 thought from the governing principle of our civilisation 
 is also to be noted in the practical sphere in many 
 current ideas and tendencies. But in proportion as a 
 society or nation refuses, for considerations of immediate 
 interest or personal ease, to take upon itself the burden 
 of the world-process, to that extent it falls behind in the 
 selective struggle for the inheritance of the earth. This 
 is the ultimate principle of division between dead or 
 dying nations and those to which the future belongs. 
 The English-speaking peoples (with the possible addition 
 of the Germans) represent in this respect most truly the 
 underlying principle of Western civilisation. 
 
 Such is a brief and, I think, a fair outline of Mr Kidd's 
 argument. What meaning and value can we attach to 
 it as a theory of human history and progress ? In what 
 sense is it true, in the first place, that evolution works 
 for the future and not for the present ? And, secondly, 
 what connection is there between this fact, if it be a 
 fact, and the principles of the Christian religion ? 
 
 In regard to the first point, no one would think of 
 denying — it is indeed a commonplace — that natural selec- 
 tion works towards the improvement (or, to be quite strict, 
 towards the modification) of the species or type, and that 
 the individual or the present generation may be regarded, 
 in any given case, as simply a link between the past and 
 the future — a material, as it were, in which the develop- 
 ing principle is working out ends which do not yet 
 appear. It is surely quite without foundation to suppose.
 
 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 55 
 
 as Mr Kidd intimates, that Darwin and the earlier 
 Darwinians were blind to this fact : it is the very essence 
 of their doctrine. Of course Darwin constantly describes 
 natural selection as taking advantage of variations which 
 are beneficial to the creature itself. But how otherwise 
 could he express the fact ? It is because the variation 
 is beneficial to the individual that it is preserved and 
 accumulated for future generations. If it were not 
 beneficial to the individual in the first instance, natural 
 selection would have no material to work upon. It 
 does not follow from this statement of plain fact that 
 Darwin or any other evolutionist regarded the present 
 individual or the present generation as a terminus 
 ad quern : the procession of the generations is the 
 presupposition of all evolutional thought. And, in 
 truth, Mr Kidd's exclusive insistence on the aspect of 
 futurity involves a much more serious risk of distorting 
 the true significance of the theory. Pressing into his 
 service the striking essay in which Weismann treats the 
 death of the individual as a device in the interest of the 
 species — to prevent stagnation and provide for variation, 
 adaptation, and progress — and referring to such facts as 
 the growing burden of parenthood which accompanies 
 growing complexity of structure in the individual, Mr 
 Kidd discerns " a principle of inherent necessity in the 
 evolutionary process, compelKng ever towards the sacrifice 
 on a vast scale of the present and the individual in the 
 interests of the future and the universal." " It is the 
 burden of the generations to come which controls the 
 whole process." The meaning of the drama of life 
 " remains continually projected beyond the content of the 
 present." " The interests of the individual in those 
 adjustments ' profitable to itself ' . . . have actually no 
 place except in so far as they are included in, and have
 
 56 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 
 
 contributed to this larger end in the future." " The win- 
 ning qualities in the evolutionary process must of necessity 
 be those qualities by which the interests of the existing 
 individuals have been most effectively subordinated to 
 those of the generations yet to be born," And applying the 
 same idea to different types of social order, he says, " The 
 interests of all the visible world around us can have no place 
 except in so far as they are included in the larger interests 
 of a future to which they are entirely subordinated." 
 
 Now if it is an abstraction to speak of the individual or 
 the present as if it were an ultimate and independent and 
 self-explaining goal, it is equally an abstraction to treat it 
 in this way as merely the matrix of that which is to be. 
 The consequences of such a mode of presentation are in- 
 structively exemplified in Mr Kidd's own theory. For we 
 are embarked, in that case, upon what philosophers call the 
 infinite progress. The present generations are sacrificed (if 
 we are to speak of sacrifice) to the interests of those that 
 are to follow, but they cannot be said, any more than their 
 predecessors, to reap the fruit of those sacrifices. They are 
 the victims of the same stress and strain in the interest of 
 the hungry generations to come, whose feet are at the door, 
 but who will likewise be sent empty away from the 
 Barmecide feast of existence. Once embarked upon this 
 process, there is no possibility of stopping anywhere ; 
 and when the idea is realised, it reduces the cosmic 
 process to a manifest futility, making it the pursuit 
 of a goal which is nowhere reached, and to which in 
 strictness, owing to the conditions of the case, we never 
 make any nearer approach. But the illusion results 
 from the abstraction to which we originally committed 
 ourselves. The present, it must be repeated, is not a 
 termimcs ad quern ; but it is, at any given point, the term 
 in which existence is summed, the heir of the past as
 
 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 57 
 
 well as the womb of the future. Past and future are 
 alike projections from its reality. It is the heir in 
 possession. It lives its own life and realises its own 
 satisfaction. And it may not be amiss to remark that 
 the common way of speaking of the generations of the 
 past as sacrificed to produce the present stage of evolu- 
 tionary progress is largely misleading. We import thereby 
 a mistaken pathos into the situation. Every generation 
 realises all the satisfaction of which its nature and its 
 life-conditions render it capable. If in many respects 
 the life of a past generation appears poor and mean, 
 compared with the opportunities and capacities of which 
 we are conscious, we do well to remember that our life- 
 conditions would have appeared to the ancestors we com- 
 passionate vastly more " stale, flat, and unprofitable " than 
 theirs appear to us. Nor must we forget in such an esti- 
 mate those " joys in widest commonalty spread " — spread 
 as wide, indeed, as the bounds of animal life itself — the 
 joys of love and battle and the more passive pleasures of 
 elemental being. 
 
 "Is it so small a thing 
 To have enjoyed the sun, 
 To have lived light in the spring, 
 To have loved, to have thought, to have done. 
 To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes ? " 
 
 It is impossible, therefore, to separate the present and 
 the future as Mr Kidd does. His argument (though I 
 do not think he intends this) sometimes conveys the im- 
 pression that the efficiency of a stock in the future is 
 purchased at the price of its efficiency in the present. 
 This is, of course, in the teeth both of science and of logic. 
 It is only through its efficiency in the present that any 
 community or race can vindicate itself before the bar
 
 58 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 
 
 of natural selection and win the promise of the future. 
 Natural selection, that is to say, works equally for the 
 present and the future, according as we look at it, but 
 always primarily for the present, and for the future only 
 so far as its conditions are identical with those of the 
 present, or are being continuously modified in the direc- 
 tion hitherto observed. Should any fundamental change 
 of conditions ensue, natural selection would discriminate 
 in favour of the race which could most rapidly retrace its 
 steps along the course of development it had hitherto 
 followed. Natural selection, indeed, can never do any- 
 thing more than justify the " whatever is " of actual 
 fact. In a sense, therefore, it would be more correct 
 to say that natural selection never carries us a step 
 beyond the present : it deals with conditions as they 
 arise, but is in itself entirely blind, so far as any foresight 
 of the future is concerned. Looked at as a natural law 
 of causation, in short, the principle of natural selection is 
 always at work, and always at work in precisely the same 
 way. It is impossible, therefore, to use it as a principle 
 of division between periods of human history, and to divide 
 that history into two epochs, in the first of which natural 
 selection works for the efficiency of the existing political 
 or social organisation, in the second of which it works 
 for the efficiency of society in the future. Whatever 
 difference there may be between Ancient and Western 
 civilisation, Mr Kidd's mode of arriving at this dichotomy 
 in human history cannot be accepted as satisfactory. 
 
 But if natural selection possesses in itself no principle 
 of guidance — seeing that in one sense everything, just as 
 it is, may be traced to the operation of natural selection — 
 how does Mr Kidd come to assign to it the philosophical 
 importance he does ? What he really has in view seems 
 to be something quite different from natural selection
 
 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 59 
 
 strictly so called — to be, in fact, a teleological interpreta- 
 tion of the cosmic process. Natural selection, or the sur- 
 vival of the fittest, it cannot be too clearly understood, 
 supplies us with no standards of value — not merely no 
 standards of ethical comparison, but no basis for comparing 
 different stages of the process as better or worse in any 
 respect whatever, save that of adaptation to the immediate 
 environment. Such adaptation may mean retrogression 
 as well as development ; it may mean, that is to say,, 
 what we, with our inveterate habit of so judging, call 
 retrogression or development. But natural selection itself 
 gives us only a sequence of events, not in a strict sense an 
 evolution. Given, however, the last term of the series 
 (for our present purposes man as so far evolved), and 
 assuming the value (in ethical or other terms) of the 
 result, it is always possible for us to regard the sequence 
 of events which terminated thus, as travailing towards 
 this birth, or, in Bacon's large phrase, guided by a " divine 
 marshal " towards this issue. Such a teleological inter- 
 pretation may be entirely immanent in character, implying 
 no interference ab extra with the mechanical operation of 
 natural selection ; but it derives its warrant, not from 
 that scientific principle, but from a conviction of the 
 absolute worth of the end attained — a conviction strong 
 enough to determine us to interpret the whole process in 
 the light of its culmination. The sequence of events, so 
 viewed, becomes then, throughout, a chain of means and 
 ends. The forces which have been operative, either con- 
 tinuously or at critical junctures in human history, appear 
 as the main factors which have contributed to produce 
 the result. This is what is meant by a philosophy of 
 history. It is a philosophy of history in this sense, and 
 depending on these assimiptions, which Mr Kidd professes 
 to give us.
 
 60 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 
 
 When history is thus conceived as the working out of 
 an end, it at once becomes evident that the means em- 
 ployed in its realisation are such as often completely 
 transcend the short-sighted calculation of the human 
 actors through whom at any given epoch the purpose 
 is being accomplished, God, as the theologians say, 
 makes the wrath of man to serve Him, Or, to put it 
 more generally, the shaping spirit of the future uses 
 the blind instincts of men, their follies and obstinacies, 
 their light desires, to beat out the fabric of the years 
 to come. 
 
 " Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, 
 When our deep plots do pall : and that should teach us 
 There's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
 Kough-hew them how we will," 
 
 The blindness of human beings and of nations to the 
 true issues of their actions is a commonplace of the 
 moralist and historian. Sometimes it meets us in an 
 encouraging form. Saul, the son of Kish, who went out 
 to seek his father's asses, and found a kingdom, has been 
 often quoted ; and the handful of British traders who 
 laid the foundations of our Indian Empire is also not a 
 new comparison. On the other side, there is a passage 
 in J. A. Symonds's biography, in a letter to the late 
 Professor Sidgwick, in which he gives poignant expression 
 to the helplessness of the best-deduced political principles 
 to aid a people in the crisis of their fate. " We cannot 
 apply what we have learned, and the green tree of life 
 laughs at our gray theories. Nay, worse, the unexpected 
 evolutions of the organism force us to doubt what we 
 confidently thought we had learned. Surely England 
 has reached a crisis at which, if ever, principles ought 
 to suggest the way to right solution. And yet none are
 
 ME KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 61 
 
 applicable. Sternly, blindly, patiently, sufferingly, we 
 shall have to live it out, just like the meanest mollusc." 
 
 Mr Kidd concentrates on the contrast, so often em- 
 phasised by psychologists and moralists, between self- 
 preserving and race - preserving activities. The living 
 being is a mass of impulses and instincts, of whose 
 origin he can give no account, and whose purpose in 
 the scheme of things is hid from him. His nature 
 being what it is, the satisfaction of all his impulses 
 and instincts is necessarily, so far as it goes, a source 
 of pleasure ; and the unreflecting individual is thus 
 impelled by an inner force to the performance of the 
 one set of functions no less than the other. But the 
 accounts of egoism and altruism are far from easy to 
 balance, when the calculating reason appears upon the 
 scene. The Pessimists have expended perhaps a dis- 
 proportionate amount of time and labour in proving that 
 if the individual is taken in isolation from his kind, the 
 balance of pleasure and pain will in most cases come out 
 on the wrong side. The sexual and parental impulses 
 and instincts may be taken, without injustice, as the 
 central fact in animal life ; but it is due to the wiles of 
 the Unconscious, insatiately bent on its own ends (so runs 
 the argument), that the individual fails to perceive, or 
 perceives too late, that he has been duped in the interest 
 of the generations to come. No bountiful Venus, hominum 
 divomque voluptas, but an insatiate mother of longing and 
 woe, she blinds one generation after another to the clear- 
 est teachings of reason. The role of the Unconscious in 
 human affairs, and in the cosmic process generally, fur- 
 nished Von Hartmann some forty years ago (as it had 
 done Schopenhauer before him) with a system of philos- 
 ophy ; and though handled in a different interest, the 
 facts adduced, and the line of argument pursued, bear
 
 62 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 
 
 frequently an instructive resemblance to what we find in 
 Mr Kidd. There is the same contrast in both between 
 the selfish hedonistic reason and the ends of the cosmic 
 process, though these ends are viewed by Mr Kidd as the 
 perfection of wisdom and by pessimism as the perfection 
 of folly. And in both cases the argument turns upon 
 the power of reflection which conies with reason. Man 
 can say to himself, in a sense in which no animal can, 
 " Pleasure, be thou my good." For with the gift of re- 
 flection which makes him man, he acquires the power of 
 self-control, the power of guiding his instincts and im- 
 pulses ; and while this power is the source of all upward 
 progress towards the human virtues and graces, it also 
 implies the capacity of manipulating his instincts in the 
 interests of selfish indulgence, and, so applied, it may sink 
 him lower than the brutes from which he springs. 
 
 Without following the process of the selfish reason to 
 the lower depths of moral degradation, Mr Kidd, both in 
 this book and in ' Social Evolution,' returns repeatedly to 
 the population question. Taking, as he does, a pro- 
 nouncedly optimistic view of the world-process and the 
 ends to which it moves — seeing also, as a practical 
 politician, the way in which the natural increase of 
 population has worked in the past to secure the future 
 of the English-speaking races — the tendency towards 
 artificial restriction of the birth-rate presents itself to 
 him as a dereliction, so to speak, from cosmic duty. It 
 means at all events the deliberate resolve, on the part 
 of an individual or community, to limit its horizon to 
 considerations of its own comfort and wellbeing. And 
 to that extent it may be fairly taken as a symptom of 
 the degeneracy of the race in which it appears. Such 
 a race must have an ever-dwindling share in the future 
 of mankind ; and Mr Kidd is at least right in insisting
 
 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 63 
 
 that society has never been founded, and will never be 
 maintained, on a basis of individual self-interest or 
 pleasure. This furnishes him with a text from which he 
 preaches, in a way which is bound to be useful, against 
 two apparently opposite, but at bottom closely related, 
 tendencies of modern thought and practice. 
 
 In designating his first chapter " The Close of an Era," 
 Mr Kidd expressly indicates that it is the Utilitarian 
 theory of society and of the State, as expounded by the 
 Philosophical Radicals, and as preached and practised 
 by the Manchester School of economists and politicians, 
 which he regards as having reached its term. These 
 doctrines of political enfranchisement, combined with un- 
 limited economic competition and social laissez-faire, may 
 not always have been expressed with precision or held 
 with consistency ; but they have formed, as he points 
 out, the common creed of the older Liberalism and 
 Eadicalism. On the political side it is no exaggeration 
 to say, as he does, that " the political party in England 
 which has been most closely identified with the cause of 
 progress in the past inherited . . . the greatest tradition 
 in politics which our civilisation has produced " ; and its 
 principles may claim in this respect to have conquered 
 the world. But, as he says again, " the great Utilitarian 
 movement of the nineteenth century has run its course " ; 
 " the basis of the old Eadicalism has gone." " There has 
 been no system of ideas that has ever held the mind of 
 the world, from which the intellectual basis has been so 
 completely struck away." To students of philosophy and 
 to philosophical students of history and society, this con- 
 clusion can hardly be called novel. The doctrines of 
 individual freedom and human equality which made 
 modern Liberalism a power conquering and to conquer 
 were, in their origin, ethical ideas, embodying fundamental
 
 64 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 
 
 principles of our civilisation ; but it was their fate to be 
 interpreted and formulated in terms of abstract individ- 
 ualism, by men who had been bred on the philosophy 
 of pure sensationalism which dominated the eighteenth 
 century, and found its classical expression in Hume. 
 Eeducing experience to isolated impressions and ideas, 
 adhering to one another in consequence of casual colloca- 
 tion, this philosophy treats society as an aggregate of 
 mutually exclusive units, each pursuing as sole end his 
 own individual pleasure. The problem of Utilitarian 
 ethics and politics thus takes the form of evolving social 
 and benevolent action from the play of individual 
 selfishness, or, as Carlyle puts it, " given a world of 
 knaves to educe an Honesty from their united action." 
 Mr Leslie Stephen has recently, in his volumes on 
 ' English Utilitarianism,' ably exposed the bankruptcy of 
 this system of thought as applied to social affairs. 
 Utility, he says in effect, may be a valuable practical 
 test of many political arrangements or social institutions, 
 but you cannot apply such a test to the existence of the 
 social organism itself. The origin and maintenance of 
 society depend on cohesive forces which cannot be weighed 
 in such a balance. Mr Stephen laid stress chiefly on the 
 defects of this system of thought as a social philosophy ; 
 but its social consequences depend on the fundamental 
 defects of its theory of knowledge, and these the pro- 
 longed criticism of modern Idealism may claim to have 
 effectively exposed long before Mr Stephen wrote. The 
 influence of such criticism is slow and cumulative in its 
 effects, but perhaps Mr Kidd's relegation of this whole 
 system of ideas to the past may be taken as a sign that 
 this lesson has at last gone home to the general con- 
 sciousness. And it is no small advantage, it may be 
 added, to have this conclusion so vigorously enforced in
 
 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 65 
 
 a book which is bound to be widely read by many whose 
 contact with philosophical ideas is mainly at second-hand. 
 But in bracketing with the Manchester School the 
 apparently opposite ideals of Marxian Socialism and 
 Social Democracy, Mr Kidd performs, perhaps, a more 
 timely service ; and in condemning them upon the same 
 grounds, he shows the philosophical power of detecting a 
 single underlying principle in its diverse manifestations. 
 The point of resemblance is their exclusive preoccupation 
 with the conditions of material wellbeing. Political 
 Economy was central, as is well known, in the thought 
 of the Utilitarian Eadicals, and formed the gospel of the 
 Manchester School. It is the same economic interpreta- 
 tion of history which dominates modern Socialism. The 
 process of human development is regarded as determined 
 entirely by economic conditions, and assumes the aspect 
 of a war of interests between existing members of society. 
 The conflict of labour and capital sums up for Marx the 
 significance of the human record ; and his sole ideal is 
 the adjustment of the conflict by the extinction of the 
 antithesis and the cessation of the personal struggle for 
 existence. The ideal is thus concerned purely with the 
 distribution of material goods, or, as Mr Kidd likes to 
 put it, with the material interests of the present. While, 
 as we shall see, entirely in sympathy with many so-called 
 socialistic proposals, Mr Kidd censures this profoundly 
 materialistic conception of human good on which the 
 systems of aggressive Socialism are founded, and which 
 is so frankly expressed in the anti - religious ideals of 
 Social Democracy in Germany and elsewhere. He finds 
 there systematised and formulated the spirit of practical 
 materialism which is fostered by many influences and in 
 many quarters at the present time, and in which he 
 recognises, not without reason, the great and growing 
 
 E
 
 66 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 
 
 danger of our civilisation. As regards the socialistic con- 
 tention, he had already pointed out in ' Social Evolution ' 
 that if the economic factor were indeed the only operative 
 factor, the forces at work would long since have reached 
 the equilibrium demanded by their inherent tendencies. 
 " If we are to have nothing but materialistic selfishness 
 on the one side, leagiied against equally materialistic 
 selfishness on the other, then the power-holding classes, 
 being still immeasurably the stronger, would be quite 
 capable of taking care of themselves, and would indeed 
 be very foolish if they did not do so." The very exist- 
 ence of the socialistic propaganda would be inconceivable 
 but for the presence of humanitarian factors quite other 
 than the economic. In spite of the avowed materialism 
 of what may be called its official principles. Socialism, as 
 an active force in practical reform, really rests upon 
 ethical, or, as Mr Kidd prefers to call them, religious 
 principles, which set limits in human affairs to the 
 ruthless operation of natural selection, as it is seen at 
 work in the animal world. The more equal distribution 
 of material goods is claimed as the indispensable sub- 
 structure of a more truly human life. In this at least 
 consists the appeal of socialistic ideas to the conscience 
 of the modern world. 
 
 All this is excellent. It is when Mr Kidd proceeds 
 to connect these valuable criticisms with his twofold 
 division of human history, founded on his distinction 
 between the ascendancy of the present and the ascendancy 
 of the future, that we begin to feel that we have left 
 solid ground behind us. In one sense, we have seen, in 
 considering the action of natural selection, that the 
 ascendancy of the present represents nothing objectionable 
 — is indeed the inevitable condition of all human effort. 
 On the other hand, if the ascendancy of the present
 
 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 67 
 
 means the recognition of none but material ends, and 
 the acknowledgment of no principle of action but in- 
 dividual self-interest, then surely few generalisations 
 could be more rash than to seek to affix this label either 
 to pre-Christian civilisation as a whole, or to Greek and 
 Ptoman civilisation in particular. Yet the ground on 
 which Utilitarianism and official Socialism are condemned 
 is repeatedly stated as being that they represent the 
 principles of the older civilisation, and have not become 
 conscious of the forces operative in our own. Splendid 
 patriotism and devoted affection — not to mention more 
 homely virtues — were assuredly as little absent from 
 the ancient world as were ideals of truth and good- 
 ness, far transcending the conditions of material well- 
 being. The pagan ideal undoubtedly differed in many 
 ways from the Christian, but all himian virtue must 
 have a common basis, and the old phrase " anima 
 naturaliter Christiana " is perhaps nearer the truth than 
 Mr Kidd's laboured antithesis. The old civilisation no 
 doubt ended in practical materialism and a recrudescence 
 of the grossest superstition, but these were the causes 
 of its death, not the forces which made it great. 
 
 If we press the parallel between the social atomism 
 of the Utilitarian theory and the principles of ancient 
 civilisation, the want of coherence springs at once to 
 light ; for in antiquity the State rather than the indi- 
 vidual is the unit. That is to say, the cohesive forces 
 of society are so strong that, within the ancient State, 
 the individual does not attain the full measure of 
 development of which he is capable. The individual in 
 this sense is a modern product. This is, of course, 
 one of the commonplaces of philosophical history, and 
 Mr Kidd is far from being unaware of it. Indeed he 
 uses this very fact of the overshadowing influence of the
 
 68 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 
 
 State as one of the points in his contrast between ancient 
 and Western civilisation. Both impeachments, it would 
 seem, can hardly be true ; but Mr Kidd passes from one 
 to the other through the assumption which he apparently 
 makes that the ends of a State are necessarily material 
 in their character. In so doing he falls back upon the 
 idea, already criticised, of the materialistic basis of 
 ancient civilisation. But here, again, the antithesis will 
 not bear analysis. The State, as such, certainly deals to 
 a large extent with externals ; and, in the conflict of 
 State with State for sovereignty and predominance, the 
 materialistic aspect of its functions must necessarily fill 
 the eye. But it is the ethical virtues, nurtured by the 
 State in its citizens, which in the long-run (as Mr Kidd 
 himself is not slow to argue) decide such conflicts. And 
 there must be something wrong with an antithesis 
 which would compel us to rank the Athens of Pericles 
 or the Eome of Hannibal's day as representative of 
 materialism, and (let us say) Chicago or the Eand as the 
 exponent of Western idealism. The patriotism of Sparta 
 and Eome or the ethical outlook of Sophocles cannot be 
 put on one side as qualities which refer to a limited 
 present, while modern communities live under " the 
 shadow of the infinite future." 
 
 The difference between ancient and modern civilisation 
 is not the difference between selfishness and altruism, 
 nor yet that between action for the present and action 
 for the future. Profound differences there obviously 
 are, and Mr Kidd is right in connecting them with the 
 influence of Christian sentiment ; but the nature of that 
 influence may surely be much more simply and un- 
 ambiguously expressed. It seems almost a deliberate 
 perversity to represent the message of Christianity as 
 a call to self-sacrifice for the future of the race. The
 
 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 69 
 
 early Christians did not believe in any future for the 
 race; they looked for the speedy conclusion of this 
 mundane drama. The future in which they did believe 
 was a future for the individual in another world. The 
 interests of this future were certainly of such tran- 
 scendent importance in their eyes, that they quite over- 
 shadowed the passing concerns of the present life. This 
 is the primary (though not, I admit, the deepest) meaning 
 of the Christian antithesis between the things that are 
 unseen and eternal and the things that are seen and 
 temporal. To Christian sentiment the interests of future 
 generations are no more a satisfying object of devotion 
 than the interests of the present generation : both belong 
 to the same plane of existence — the world that now is. 
 The destiny to be realised is outside the world-process 
 altogether. Mr Kidd's statements of the central principle 
 of Christianity are so highly generalised — one might 
 almost say, so studiously vague — that they might cover 
 either interpretation of the future. " We have present," 
 he says, " in that religion, underlying all its phases, how- 
 ever varied, however obscure, one central phenomenon 
 which constitutes not only the essential fact of its inner 
 life, but the distinctive principle to which its evolutionary 
 significance is related. It is the opening in the indi- 
 vidual mind of the terms of a profound antithesis, of 
 which the characteristic feature always remains the 
 same — namely, that it is incapable of being bridged or 
 closed by any principle operating merely within the 
 limits of present consciousness." Statements like this 
 are hardly calculated to convey a very definite idea of 
 Christian teaching ; but knowing what we know of 
 historical Christianity, it would be just possible to 
 interpret the " profound antithesis " referred to in the 
 Christian sense. Mr Kidd, however, so far as one can
 
 70 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 
 
 see, has no interest in that interpretation. Present and 
 future, all through his volume, mean present and future 
 in the mundane history of the race ; and to that sense he 
 seems to pass through the ambiguous middle term of 
 the " infinite." The eternal world of Christian faith is 
 often described as the infinite in contrast with the 
 finite ; and the procession of future generations may also 
 be spoken of as infinite (in another sense), seeing that 
 it never comes to an end. When Mr Kidd speaks of 
 the Christian era as " the epoch in which the present 
 and the finite begin to pass under the control of the 
 future and the infinite," the two meanings seem to 
 become interchangeable in his mind; and it is certain 
 that the whole of the rest of his argument depends 
 upon a supposed antithesis to which the most typically 
 religious minds of Christendom would have been pro- 
 foundly indifferent. It is almost incredible that Mr 
 Kidd should leave the matter thus ambiguous ; but it is 
 upon this ambiguity, mainly, that the identification of 
 the supposed principle of Prcjected Efficiency with the 
 central phenomenon of the Christian religion depends 
 for its plausibility. 
 
 What are, let us ask ourselves, the Christian ideas 
 which have worked like a slow leaven in modern 
 civilisation ? If we try to answer this question very 
 generally, but at the same time as simply as possible, 
 should we not say that the most fundamental idea, in 
 a social regard, was the idea of a perfectly universal 
 human brotherhood based on the doctrine of a common 
 divine sonship ? This was the principle that burst the 
 bonds of the antique state. To those who learned the 
 lesson of Jesus there was " neither Greek nor Jew, 
 circumcision nor uncircumcision. Barbarian, Scythian, 
 bond nor free." Though not enunciated for the first
 
 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 71 
 
 time by Jesus, no one will deny that through his life 
 and teaching this idea first became a vital force in 
 world-history. The brotherhood of all was intimately 
 associated with — might indeed be said to be based upon 
 — the new and infinite worth recognised in each. In 
 Christianity the individual steps out of the limitations 
 of a merely civic or national existence, not in the 
 negative sense of Epicureanism or Stoicism, but as one 
 who while in the world is raised above it, as one whose 
 fellowship is with God, and who is the heir of eternal 
 life. As the compassion of Christ went out towards 
 universal man, so the same thought is perpetuated in 
 the mystical dogmas in which the Church enshrined 
 his teaching. The doctrine of the Incarnation invests 
 with sacredness for evermore the human flesh in which 
 God himself had deigned to dwell. When Gregory the 
 First urged upon the conscience of Christendom the 
 manumission of slaves, it was, in his own noble words, 
 because " redemptor noster, totius conditor naturae, 
 humanum carnem voluerit assumere." Similarly, oppres- 
 sion and cruelty become sin, because they are an offence 
 against those for whom Christ died. And the mystical 
 unity of all men with Christ becomes their unity with 
 one another : " Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of 
 these little ones, ye did it unto me." On the one hand, 
 there is thus a raising of the whole scale of values. 
 Human life is invested with a new significance. In view 
 of his eternal destiny and infinite capacities, man is 
 removed from the category of natural things which are 
 born and live their season, and perish, so to speak, in 
 the using. A single human soul outweighs to the 
 Christian thinker the whole material system. And, on 
 the other hand, this intensification of the value of each 
 individual is extended to every member of the human
 
 72 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 
 
 family. The slave takes his place beside the free man ; 
 the new-born infant, the weakling, the deformed, the aged 
 and hopelessly diseased, are all alike invested with the 
 sacredness of a divine humanity. Practices, therefore, 
 such as infanticide, which the harsher pagan world had 
 sanctioned without remorse, became at once impossible to 
 the Christian conscience. And though the pagan hard- 
 ness long perpetuated itself in institutions and laws, and 
 is far from being yet extinct, Mr Kidd is right in con- 
 necting with Christian sentiment the gradual amelioration 
 in modern times of the general human lot, and in 
 particular the striking increase of genuine concern for 
 the lot of the suffering and the oppressed. But in the 
 new " philanthropy " there is no thought of any antithesis 
 between present and future generations. It is simply 
 man as man who has become invested with claims to 
 consideration which the sentiment of the ancient world 
 restricted to the citizen. The way had been prepared 
 for such a revolution in feeling by the ideas of the 
 later Stoics and by the world-wide extension of Eoman 
 citizenship ; but Christianity alone impressed it upon the 
 world, and gave the feeling its warmth and its absolute 
 universality. 
 
 This Christian doctrine of the " rights of man " has 
 undoubtedly worked in our civilisation towards political 
 enfranchisement and social betterment. Democracy may 
 be something of a catchword, but in a large sense Mr 
 Kidd is fully justified in connecting the general move- 
 ment of modern political thought with the ethical and 
 religious conceptions in which our civilisation is rooted. 
 And there is one part of his argument, in the chapters 
 on " The Position in Modern Thought " and " Western 
 Liberalism," which is full of suggestion and warning. 
 Quoting Sir Henry Maine, he points out that the modern
 
 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 73 
 
 doctrines of popular government are essentially of English 
 origin, and may be said to have been evolved in the 
 political struggles of the seventeenth century. These 
 doctrines may all be conveniently resolved into " the 
 claim of the native equality of all men." But " by the 
 men with whom the assertion of ' natural right ' originated 
 in England, the doctrine of the native equality of men 
 was most certainly not accepted as a first principle. It 
 had no meaning apart by itself. We see that it was 
 accepted at the time, as it was accepted later in Locke's 
 writings, only as a corollary to a conception of the rela- 
 tionship in which men were held to stand to a meaning 
 in their lives which transcended the meaning of the 
 interests included within the limits of political conscious- 
 ness." Later, however, in the French thinkers who 
 heralded the Eevolution, in Bentham, in the social 
 philosophy of J. S. Mill, and in the current theories of 
 Social Democracy, the doctrine of equality has become 
 detached from the ethical considerations which originally 
 gave it force. It is presented as a first principle or self- 
 evident truth on which these writers base their theory of 
 the State. And as they do not start from ethical con- 
 ceptions, their theory tends to contemplate the State ex- 
 clusively in its economic or material aspect ; their chief 
 topic and problem is the conflict of rival interests and 
 their reconciliation on the basis of self-interest. This 
 may not be entirely true of a writer like Mill, but in the 
 theories of social democracy which start from Marx the 
 logical outcome of the matter is seen in the frank accept- 
 ance of a purely " materialistic interpretation of history." 
 But when humanity is emptied in this fashion of 
 ethical content, and the claim to equality is advanced as an 
 abstract doctrine on behalf of the self-seeking individual, 
 what cogency does it possess ? Does it not justly pro-
 
 74 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 
 
 voke the furious scorn which Nietzsche heaped upon it ? 
 For a right is an ethical idea, and can be vindicated only 
 by an ethical view of human capacity and destiny. If 
 history is reduced to a mere struggle for power and gain, 
 then strength is the only law, and heati possidentes the 
 only creed. Mr Kidd has done good service, I think, in 
 calling attention to the process of degradation which the 
 principles of modern Liberalism have undergone in being 
 separated from their ethico-religious presuppositions, and 
 to their inherent inability, when thus separated, to cope 
 with a materialistic gospel of force, or with the many 
 dangers which threaten our modern society from the un- 
 scrupulous pursuit of wealth, the immense accumulations 
 of capital, and the hardening effects of selfish luxury. I 
 have already commented on the injustice of Mr Kidd's 
 attempt to identify the materialistic interpretation of 
 history with " a return to the standpoint of the ancient 
 world." It would be more correct to describe it as a 
 reappearance among the Western peoples of the same 
 canker which blighted the ancient civilisation. But 
 apart from this misrepresentation, Mr Kidd utters a 
 well-timed warning. His book is a reminder of ideals 
 which have moulded and directed our civilisation in the 
 past, and which he rightly maintains to be essential to 
 its continued existence. 
 
 In the same spirit he criticises the opposition of the 
 older Utilitarians and the Manchester School to the 
 humanitarian legislation of their day as a declension from 
 the social consciousness of Christendom. He praises 
 them for their " profound instinct that the future of the 
 world belongs to the principle of free competition " ; but 
 despite his former criticisms of official Socialism, he recog- 
 nises in socialistic theories an expression of " the equally
 
 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 75 
 
 profound instinct that the conditions of laissez-faire are 
 nothing more or less than conditions of barbarism." 
 They are conditions, moreover, which defeat their own 
 object ; for competition, if left to itself and allowed to 
 go on to the bitter end, leads to the monopoly of the 
 strongest, and so abrogates the conditions of free com- 
 petition on which social health depends. He cites as 
 examples the gigantic Trusts which have sprung up in the 
 United States, and which threaten in the near future to 
 become matters of national, and even international, con- 
 cern. It is impossible for any civilised State to permit 
 the conscienceless use of such tremendous resources for 
 the exploitation of the community in the selfish interest 
 of a capitalistic ring. This leads Mr Kidd naturally to 
 a definition of his own standpoint in practical politics. 
 He is prepared to see the attitude of laissez-faire aban- 
 doned in many directions, and he sympathises to that 
 extent, as we have seen, with much that the survivors 
 of the old Eadicalism condemn as socialistic. But the 
 interference must be prompted throughout by ethical con- 
 siderations, and must never be such as to kill the prin- 
 ciple of free competition, in which he recognises from 
 first to last the salvation of society. His programme, 
 in short, is not strikingly original, but possesses the 
 English virtues of moderation and good sense — though 
 in his ideal of competitive stress and strain he seems to 
 reflect the nervous tension of American life rather than 
 the temperament of the parent stock. So insistent is 
 his emphasis in the later chapters on the " free conflict 
 of forces " as the guarantee of political, intellectual, and 
 religious wellbeing, that at times he seems to preach 
 competition for competition's sake, just as, in his idea of 
 the relation of the present to the future, he seemed to
 
 76 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 
 
 fall into the idea of sacrifice for sacrifice's sake. Apply- 
 ing the idea of a competitive struggle for survival to 
 intellectual beliefs and moral conceptions as well as to 
 more material spheres, he envisages the ideal social state 
 as that of " a fair, open, and free rivalry of all the forces 
 within the social consciousness — a rivalry in which the 
 best organisations, the best methods, the best skill, the 
 best government, and the best standards of action and 
 belief shall have the right of universal opportunity." In 
 some of his statements the ideal appears to cut at the 
 very notion of truth as something which claims universal 
 allegiance. But it would be more just to Mr Kidd to 
 say that it is his confidence in the omnipotence of truth 
 which inspires his optimistic forecast of the ultimate issue 
 of such a conflict. Does he, after all, say more than 
 Kant said, when he spoke of the age on which we had 
 entered as the age of criticism, in which every doctrine, 
 practice, or belief must establish its right to continued 
 existence ? Both simply draw the last consequences of 
 the principle of Protestantism and of modern scientific 
 thought. Mr Kidd's ideal of universal toleration as the 
 ultimate safeguard of truth itself compares advantageously 
 with the mediaeval authority with which Comte seemed 
 anxious to invest his scientific and spiritual hierarchy. 
 In his contention that the principle of toleration is itself, 
 like the doctrine of human equality, the product of 
 ethical and religious conviction rather than an abstract 
 truth of reason, Mr Kidd returns to the fundamental 
 idea of his book that the fabric of human society rests 
 ultimately on ethical conceptions, and that the history of 
 mankind is essentially the development of man's ethical 
 ideals. It is the forcible and often fresh presentation of 
 this perennial truth, rather than any new philosophical
 
 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION. 77 
 
 construction of history, which gives the book its vitality. 
 For the main formula which Mr Kidd seeks to establish 
 as a philosophical law of human development seems both 
 ambiguous and misleading. But so many have apparently 
 made up their minds of late that man does live by bread 
 alone, that even the paradoxes of the book may have 
 their use in stirring the turbid waters of popular thought.
 
 MAETINEAU'S PHILOSOPHY/ 
 
 IN attempting any estimate of Martineau's work, it is 
 particularly desirable to bear in mind the long 
 period over which his intellectual activity extended. 
 The dates of his life almost coincided with those of the 
 nineteenth century. He was born the year after Kant 
 died, and two years before Hegel published his first 
 volume. When he left college, in 1827, Hegel was still 
 teaching in BerHn and Goethe was still alive at Weimar ; 
 in France, Cousin was at the height of his reputation as 
 a philosophical lecturer, and Comte had not yet pub- 
 lished the first volume of the ' Philosophic Positive ' ; 
 while, at home, James Mill was leading the Philosophical 
 Ptadicals to victory in ' The Westminster Keview,' and his 
 son had just discovered the future designation of the 
 school in a novel of Gait's. The elder Mill's 'Analysis 
 of the Human Mind,' and Sir Wilham Hamilton's cele- 
 brated article on the Philosophy of the Unconditioned, 
 landmarks in the history of two different schools, did not 
 
 1 This paper appeared in ' The Hibbert Journal ' of April 1903. I am 
 indebted throughout to Professor Upton's luminous account of Martineau's 
 Philosophy in the second volume of the ' Life. ' Professor Upton not only 
 furnishes all the material for a critical estimate of Martineau's place in 
 English thought, but himself touches with discriminating hand the weak 
 no less than the strong points of his master's system.
 
 MARTINEAU'S PHILOSOPHY. 79 
 
 appear till two years later. During the twenties, as 
 Professor Upton says, what philosophical interest existed 
 in the British Isles " was divided between the Hartleyan 
 empirical school and the Scotch school of so-called ' com- 
 mon-sense ' " ; and young Martineau was brought up by 
 his college preceptors on Belsham's ' Elements of Mental 
 and Moral Philosophy,' which popularised the associa- 
 tionist and necessarian tradition of Hartley and Priestley. 
 In the philosophical classes which the young minister 
 gathered round hun in Liverpool in the thirties, the text- 
 books were James Mill's ' Analysis ' and Dr Thomas 
 Brown's ' Essay on Cause and Effect.' In his first 
 article in 1833, devoted to Priestley, he talks of " the 
 piercing analysis of Brown or James Mill, before whose 
 gaze the most intricate and delicate of human emotions 
 and the most evanescent trains of human ratiocination 
 are arrested, questioned, and made to marshal themselves 
 in their true places amid the nimble evolutions of the 
 mind." Before he was appointed professor, however, 
 in 1840, he had already fought his way, under the 
 imperative pressure of conscience, to the clearly defined 
 ethical position which he ever afterwards occupied. 
 And as the change of view in ethics was necessarily 
 accompanied by a revision of the doctrine of causation, 
 Professor Upton goes the length of saying that " his 
 philosophical teaching remained for the rest of his 
 long life substantially unaltered. The modifications 
 which it underwent were all the outcome of, and in 
 harmony with, the basal principles which he adopted 
 in 1839." 
 
 The date carries us back to a time when Hamilton 
 had only been three years in his Edinburgh Chair 
 and John Stuart Mill was still at work upon his 
 ' Logic' It is not without significance, therefore, that
 
 80 MARTINEAU'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 although Martineau's ' Study of ReHgion ' was published 
 in 1887, we are told in the first sentence that the 
 word Religion will be used throughout " in the sense 
 which it invariably bore half a century ago." The fact 
 is not without significance, I mean, if we are to form 
 a true judgment of the value of Martineau's work. His 
 philosophical hooks all appeared towards the close of the 
 century, but the ideas they contained had been formu- 
 lated forty or fifty years before, and had indeed been 
 operative in English thought for a generation, through 
 the author's college teaching and numerous important 
 articles and addresses. This would be true even if we 
 date his complete philosophical equipment from the 
 fifteen months he spent in Germany in 1848-49, the 
 effects of which he so eloquently describes in the Preface 
 to the ' Types of Ethical Theory,' speaking of it as " a 
 kind of second education," and " a new intellectual 
 birth." In 1848, it is important to remember, the 
 ' Origin of Species ' was still eleven years ahead, and, so 
 far as Great Britain was concerned, the serious study of 
 Kant and Hegel had yet to begin. In Germany it was, 
 on the whole, ebb-tide in philosophy. The great ideal- 
 istic movement in the beginning of the century had tem- 
 porarily spent its force, and was discredited in the land 
 of its birth by the extravagances of some of its adherents. 
 Martineau did not come under its influence, and thus his 
 thought was formed and matured independently of the 
 two great influences which have transformed English 
 thought within the last forty years. 
 
 His most productive period was during the fifties and 
 sixties. During these decades he contributed to the 
 ' Prospective ' and ' National Review ' what Professor 
 Upton justly describes as " a splendid series of articles, 
 as finished in expression as they are powerful in thought,
 
 MARTINEAU'S PHILOSOPHY. 81 
 
 dealing with the chief philosophical thinkers and move- 
 ments of the time." He appears impartially as the critic 
 of Hamilton and Mill, of Comte and Newman, of the 
 agnosticism of Spencer and Mansel. In these articles, 
 and in the still more celebrated criticisms of modern 
 materialism called forth by Tyndall's Belfast address in 
 the seventies, we may probably recognise his most direct 
 influence on contemporary thought, before the cumulative 
 effect produced by the publication, in advanced age, of his 
 two systematic treatises and the garnered harvest of his 
 ' Essays, Eeviews, and Addresses.' There are imperish- 
 able principles that persist through every change of 
 philosophical dialect or fashion, but on other parts of a 
 philosopher's work the time - spirit has his will. The 
 famous battle of the Intuitionalists and Sensationalists 
 round Hamilton's body in the sixties no longer tempts 
 us to break a lance on either side. Its very echoes have 
 grown strangely faint. Professor Upton comments aptly 
 on the sudden transformation of philosophical issues 
 which followed these heated encounters. " Just at the 
 time when the followers of Hamilton and those of Mill 
 and Bain were thus vehemently contending with each 
 other, and Dr Martineau was holding his own indepen- 
 dently of both, two fresh and quite unexpected claimants 
 for philosophical supremacy appeared upon the scene. Of 
 these one sprang into birth on British soil, the other was 
 of German extraction. The motto of the former was 
 " Evolution and Heredity " ; that of the latter the "Abso- 
 lute Keality of Thought " ; but each of them vigorously 
 attacked the fundamental principles both of the Edin- 
 burgh Intuitionalists and of the London Sensationalists ; 
 and it is one of the most dramatic events in the history 
 of philosophical thought that, in less than twenty years, 
 these newcomers had between them managed to dethrone 
 
 F
 
 82 MARTINEAU'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and dispossess both of the pretenders to philosophic rule 
 with whom Dr Martineau had, in previous years, such 
 brilliant encounters. From this circumstance it comes 
 about that Dr Martineau's earlier polemics, powerful as 
 they were, have now not much more than a literary and 
 historical interest." ^ 
 
 The services of Martineau to spiritual philosophy in 
 England during the nineteenth century cannot easily, I 
 think, be over - estimated. These services seem to me, 
 however, to be to a large extent independent of the 
 specific form which the fundamental doctrines of such 
 a philosophy assume in his own theory. His peculiar 
 theory of conscience has grave defects, and I question 
 whether any one maintains it at the present day. But 
 his splendid insistence on the moral life and its implica- 
 tions, as furnishing the key to human existence and 
 man's relation to the divine — the massive resistance 
 which he offered to every attempt to explain ethical 
 experience by other than ethical categories, whether 
 baldly physical or of the metaphysical kind that are but 
 physical in disguise, — these are in the spirit of Butler 
 and of Kant, and greatly helped to raise English thought 
 from its inherited hedonism and necessarianism. Even 
 should his doctrine of Freedom itself be found to require 
 modification, it was ethically true as against the neces- 
 sarianism from which it emancipated Martineau himself 
 and all who have listened to his searching and persuasive 
 pleading. So, again, his own doctrine of Cause may be 
 open to serious philosophical criticism, but his distinction 
 between ordered sequence and real agency, and his 
 demonstration of the impossibility of reducing the latter 
 to the former, enabled him to dissect the sophisms which 
 are apt to gather round the term " law." His exposure 
 
 ^ ' Life and Letters,' ii. 358.
 
 MARTINEAU'S PHILOSOPHY. 83 
 
 of the fundamental absurdity of a mindless universe, his 
 timely reminder of the true scope and meaning of evolu- 
 tion, and his impassioned vindication of moral right as 
 " no local essence," but allegiance " due to one eternal 
 Perfection which penetrates the moral structure of all 
 worlds," made his addresses on ' Modern Materialism ' 
 more effective than any other utterances in stemming the 
 dangerous tide of turbid materialistic speculation to 
 which the Darwinian doctrine at first gave rise. The 
 clearness and beauty of Martineau's style, the rhetorical 
 force of his pleading, the ethical passion and spiritual 
 dignity of the man, combined to make him an ideal cham- 
 pion of the spiritual view of the world in a time of 
 transition and intellectual insecurity. For myself, I 
 cannot but think that it is on such imperishable services 
 to the common cause of Idealism, rather than on the 
 peculiar features which differentiate his own treatment 
 from other systems, that Martineau's place in the history 
 of English thought will ultimately depend. So that 
 when Professor Upton speaks of " the systems of Hegel, 
 of Lotze, and of James Martineau " as the three philo- 
 sophical systems which are most likely by their contribu- 
 tions to mould the philosophy of religion of the twentieth 
 century, I feel as if the word system were almost out of 
 place in connection with Martineau's influence, and as if 
 this juxtaposition of the three thinkers suggested claims 
 which it might be difficult to establish. For we find 
 Professor Upton himself acknowledging on important 
 points the defects of his master's " formulated philos- 
 ophy," the " intellectual framework " of which, he con- 
 siders, did not do justice to important aspects of truth 
 which, in less systematic moments, find expression in 
 " some of his divinest utterances." But it is by the 
 adequacy of his " intellectual framework " that the phil-
 
 84 MARTINEAU'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 osopher, qua philosopher, takes a distinctive place in 
 the historic series. It was some perception of this 
 which led E. H. Hutton, another old pupil, to write 
 in his memorial article in ' The Spectator ' : " We doubt 
 whether the historian of the English thought of our time 
 will credit Martineau with any distinct modification of 
 the theological or philosophical opinions of this age. It 
 was something that went below opinion ; it was a revela- 
 tion of spiritual character and power." The turn of 
 expression hardly does justice to Martineau's clear-cut 
 thought and great intellectual force ; yet in the end this 
 estimate may perhaps be found nearer the mark than any 
 more far-reaching claim. 
 
 It is as the vindicator and, one may almost say, as 
 the prophet of Theism that Martineau is widely honoured. 
 Thus Professor J. E. Carpenter, in an eloquent tribute at 
 the unveiling of a memorial in Little Portland Street 
 Chapel, described his philosophical achievement as essen- 
 tially a revolt against " the interpretation of the universe 
 by a mechanical Deism." " He discovered a new philo- 
 sophy and a new religion which brought the human spirit 
 into immediate communion with the living God, placed 
 His authority within the soul, and transformed the 
 infinite spaces of the universe from lonely immensities 
 into the presence - chamber of the everlasting Mind." 
 Martineau's own characterisation of Deism, in the ' Study 
 of Keligion,' as an imperfect Theism which scarcely passes 
 into a religion, may be accepted as justifying this esti- 
 mate of his philosophical intention. And, indeed, as 
 regards the external universe, what Martineau did was 
 substantially to substitute Berkeley's conception for 
 Locke's, reducing its ordered sequences of events to the 
 organised expression of continuously active Divine Will, 
 while in the sphere of ethics and religion he insisted on
 
 MARTINEAUS PHILOSOPHY. 85 
 
 the immediate presence of the Divine to the human soul. 
 But although the intention of his philosophy doubtless is 
 to provide us with a doctrine of Theism which shall rise 
 above the externalities of Deism, and conserve all that 
 is true in the counter-error of Pantheism, it is only in his 
 deepest religious utterances that he completely emanci- 
 pates himself from deistic presuppositions. His intellect- 
 ual scheme of the world was much more under the 
 influence of his individualistic and deistic training than 
 he was himself aware of ; and the defects of his " formu- 
 lated philosophy " — its frequent rigidity and externality 
 and its exaggerated anthropomorphism — are nearly all 
 traceable to this source. 
 
 As we have already seen, Professor Upton considers that 
 his main positions had been reached as early as 1839, and 
 that his teaching remained substantially unaltered after 
 that date. The terms in which Martineau himself speaks 
 of his "Annus Mirabilis " in Germany ten years later do 
 not seem to me inconsistent with this statement. There 
 is no evidence that he experienced " a new intellectual 
 birth " in the sense of a revolution in his own philoso- 
 phical convictions. He made a careful study of Kant, 
 and also read Plato and Hegel side by side. Ancient and 
 modern philosophy shed light upon each other, and of 
 Greek philosophy especially he got quite a new impression. 
 " I seemed to pierce through what had been words before, 
 into contact with living thought, and the bleak gram- 
 matical text was aglow with luminous philosophy. It 
 was essentially the gift of fresh conceptions, . . , and, 
 once gained, was more or less available throughout the 
 history of philosophy, and lifted the darkness from the 
 pages of Kant and even Hegel. It was impossible to resist 
 or distrust this gradual widening of apprehension : it 
 was as much a fact as the sight of the Alps I had never
 
 86 martinead's philosophy. 
 
 visited before. . . . The metaphysic of the world had 
 come home to me." He returned, therefore, with a mind 
 indefinitely richer for this companionship with the masters 
 of them that know, and with his own philosophical powers 
 strengthened by the long wrestle with their meaning. He 
 could not have spoken as he afterwards did, with the 
 same largeness of utterance and the same confidence or 
 knowledge, had he not been lifted by contact with " the 
 metaphysic of the world " above the parochialism of con- 
 temporary English thought. But still the result was com- 
 parable, after all, to the enlarging effect of foreign travel. 
 It must be remembered that he was already forty-three 
 years of age ; and his fifteen months of study, though 
 they enabled him to base his philosophy more broadly, 
 did not alter the lines on which it was already laid down. 
 Neither from Kant nor Hegel can he be shown to have 
 assimilated any formative ideas. Trendelenburg was not 
 the best guide to what was really vital in Kant's analysis 
 of knowledge ; and Martineau appears in his books to 
 adopt the psychological interpretation of the Kantian 
 theory which makes it substantially a variety of Intuition- 
 alism. He is mainly concerned to refute the subjectivism 
 and relativism of the theory, and this is done largely in 
 the spirit of Natural Eealism. As for Hegel, he must be 
 said to have remained entirely outside the system, so far 
 as sympathy was concerned and the more intimate under- 
 standing that is born of sympathy. In that respect he 
 was unfortunate in the date of his visit. The reaction 
 against Hegel had set in, and though Martineau studied 
 him conscientiously, he may easily have been led to 
 regard him as a spent force. It was a quarter of a 
 century later before Hegelianism began to be a power in 
 English thought, and by that time Martineau was close 
 upon his seventieth year. " Strange to say," Professor
 
 MARTINEAU'S PHILOSOPHY. 87 
 
 Upton tells us " he never fully realised the powerful 
 attraction which Absolute Idealism has for many minds, 
 nor at all anticipated the lengthened influence it was 
 destined to exert on both sides of the Atlantic." This 
 want of sympathy is to some extent an indication of 
 defective speculative insight, and is only explicable by 
 the pronounced individualism of Martineau's own view, 
 which resulted from the exclusively ethical cast of his 
 mind and the relics of an imperfectly transformed deistic 
 theory. He was at least much nearer the deistic than 
 the pantheistic extreme, and had all his life long quite 
 an exaggerated apprehension of anything that could be 
 considered to savour of Pantheism. Even Professor 
 Upton's modest criticisms and amendments on his own 
 theory he considered " sometimes came dangerously near 
 to Pantheism." Now however valuable Martineau's 
 " Ethical Individualism " may be as a protest against cer- 
 tain tendencies within the Hegelian school, " the historic 
 pabulum " in Hegel (to use Dr Stirling's apt phrase) is so 
 rich that to remain entirely outside his " way of ideas " is 
 a voluntary impoverishment of thought, which cannot be 
 made good from any other source. 
 
 In issuing his ' Study of Eeligion ' in 1887, Martineau 
 remarked with a touch of sadness, in the closing words of 
 his Preface, that he was well aware that the volumes 
 were in conflict with the prevailing opinions and ten- 
 dencies of the time. The same note is heard occasionally 
 in his correspondence. The isolation which he felt was 
 not altogether imaginary, and it arose mainly from the 
 circumstance that the two greatest intellectual influences 
 of the century had left his scheme of thought practically 
 unaffected. Professor Carpenter comments on the signifi- 
 cance of the fact that " his essential work as a thinker 
 was done before the production of the ' Origin of Species,' "
 
 88 MARTINEAU'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and we have just seen his attitude to Hegel and modern 
 Idealism. The result was that when he abandoned the 
 associationism and necessarianism of his youth, the theory 
 he adopted was, in essentials, akin to the Intuitionalism 
 of the Scottish philosophers. In Ethics, it is explicitly 
 to " the writers of the Scottish school and their editors, 
 critics and disciples in Paris," that he refers as being, 
 with Butler, the only faithful adherents of what he calls 
 the " idio-psychological " method. They alone " have de- 
 clined to betray their science to the physiologist on the 
 one hand and the ontologist on the other." (' Types 
 of Ethical Theory,' i. 19.) Ethics to him, as to them, 
 is the science which collects and vindicates " our ethical 
 intuitions," or " the particular averments of the moral 
 consciousness." " Our moral verdicts," he says, " are 
 the enunciation of what is given us ready-made and 
 has only to pass through us into speech. . . . We have 
 nothing to seek by logical process, but only to give forth 
 what we find." (' Study,' ii. 6.) Martineau's pages, like 
 Hamilton's, abound with appeals to " the veracity of 
 consciousness," — though at a pinch both Martineau and 
 Hamilton are found interpreting the responses of the 
 oracle in a sense which might astonish the ordinary man. 
 In regard to the external world, the doctrine of Natural 
 Eealism is maintained, quite in Hamilton's manner, on 
 the faith of " the intuitive witness borne by consciousness 
 to the presence of a world beyond the contents of that 
 consciousness." (' Study,' i. 133.) Martineau, while sym- 
 pathising with Professor Laurie's supposed " return to 
 Dualism," finds fault with him because he does not 
 " accept the non-ego, as, like the ego, immediately known 
 in the act of perception." (i. 191.) " Our reference 
 of a perception to an object in independent space and 
 time " is " an intuitive apprehension of what is," and to 
 doubt it is a " surrender of the reliance which we inevi-
 
 MARTINEAU'S PHILOSOPHY. 89 
 
 tably place on the veracity of our own faculties." (i. 77.) 
 In short, " the idealist's superior airs towards the natural 
 postulates and the direct working of the honest under- 
 standing are seldom unattended by intellectual error and 
 moral wrong." (i. 80.) 
 
 But to present the task of philosophy in this way is 
 surely to demonstrate unwittingly its perfect useiessness ; 
 for if we have only to " trust in the bona fides of our 
 intuitive witnesses " to find ourselves in possession of 
 truth, why should we trouble further ? The service of 
 metaphysics, Dr Chalmers once wrote,^ is " not to supply 
 a new but only to certify and authenticate an old instru- 
 ment of observation, given ready-made to all men by the 
 hand of nature, and which all men could have confidently 
 and successfully made use of without the necessity of 
 being told so by a right metaphysics, had not a wrong 
 metaphysics cast obscuration on the dictates and dis- 
 turbed the confidence of nature." " The child sees an 
 apple on the table and affirms an apple to be there. A 
 Berkeleian philosopher labours to disprove the assertion. 
 A second metaphysician arises and repels the sophistry of 
 the first." And so the child keeps his apple. It is not 
 often that the position is stated with such naivete, but 
 Martineau comes near saying the same thing when, in the 
 Preface to his ' Study of Eeligion,' he speaks of the meta- 
 physical investigation as winning at last " only the very 
 position which common-sense had assumed at first," and 
 when he describes metaphysics — his own, be it observed, 
 not any species of what Chalmers calls " wrong meta- 
 physics " — as " but medicine for sickly minds, which the 
 healthy may well fling away as they would ' apples of 
 Sodom.' " " I believe," he adds, " in the permanent neces- 
 sity of the philosophic schools which torment the wits 
 of mankind." The critical process, however, " gives no 
 
 1 'North British Review,' vi. 275-279.
 
 90 MARTINEAU'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 new revelation, but reinstates us where we intuitively stood, 
 only with certainty secured that the ground is not hollow 
 beneath us." ('Life,' ii. 217.) 
 
 There is, of course, an important truth in the view 
 that, as Tucker put it, philosophy may be likened to 
 Achilles' spear which healed the wounds it had itself 
 inflicted. One great function of good metaphysics is to 
 oust bad metaphysics and disprove its pretensions. In 
 a sense, it is even true that a true philosophy will be 
 found to justify the principles of common-sense — that is 
 to say, the beliefs upon which we all act in practical life. 
 But it vindicates their " veracity " for the purposes of 
 that life, and not as oracles of ultimate truth. The 
 philosophical problem — the question, that is, how we 
 may most truly express the ultimate nature of reality — 
 cannot even be stated, till we have left the hard and 
 fast distinctions of common-sense far behind us. If 
 the question is to be solved at all, it must be, not by 
 accepting these categories and distinctions as final, but 
 by allowing the free play of reflection upon them to 
 disclose their inadequacy and to show us the way to a 
 higher truth. In the particular case of Ethics a similar 
 criticism holds. " To interpret, to vindicate and sys- 
 tematise the moral sentiments," says Martineau, "con- 
 stitutes the business of this department of thought" 
 (' Types,' i. 1). If to vindicate the moral sentiments meant 
 to vindicate our ethical experience as a foundation of 
 inference as to the nature of reality ; if to " systematise " 
 meant to investigate, like Sidgwick, what common-sense 
 really believes about morality ; and if to " interpret " 
 meant to bring to self-consciousness the principles which 
 have unconsciously guided its formation and progress, 
 and to relate the ethical life to other aspects of reality, — 
 then, indeed, the definition would be as comprehensive
 
 MARTINEAU'S PHILOSOPHY. 91 
 
 and as unexceptionable as could be desired. But the 
 Intuitional Method, it is obvious, understands by vindica- 
 tion the acceptance of " the particular averments of the 
 moral consciousness " as immediate oracles ; and, in that 
 case, the task of systematisation and interpretation seems 
 to become comparatively unimportant, if not superfluous. 
 It is certain, at least, that Intuitional moralists as a rule 
 devote little attention to this part of their work. 
 
 To this Intuitionalism, and to what I have called the 
 survivals of Deism in his thought, the main defects of 
 Martineau's ethical theory are traceable. His volumes 
 abound in passages of keen psychological analysis, of rare 
 moral insight and spiritual beauty ; but his specific 
 theory of Conscience, as in every case intuitively deciding 
 between two conflicting motives, never, I think, made 
 any converts, and is not really maintainable, either on 
 psychological or on philosophical grounds. What is true 
 and suggestive in it is that the moral choice is not so 
 much between an absolutely good and an absolutely bad, 
 as between a better and a worse ; though the choice of 
 the better is, in the particular circumstances, the absolutely 
 right for me, and the choice of the worse would be the ab- 
 solutely bad. We may also, perhaps, arrange the " springs 
 of action," as Martineau does, in an ethical order of merit 
 as " higher " and " lower " ; the appetites, for example, 
 coming near the bottom of the scale, the love of power 
 or ambition a good deal higher, the primary affections 
 higher still, and compassion and reverence at the top of 
 the list. Martineau supplies such a list in considerable 
 detail ; and his theory is that, whenever any of the pro- 
 pensions, passions, affections or sentiments thus classified 
 comes into conflict with one higher in the scale, right 
 volition consists in choosing the " higher " in preference 
 to the " lower." But Sidgwick conclusively argues that,.
 
 92 MARTINEAU'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 although this will probably be true as a general rule, and 
 the scale of motives may therefore be useful as serving 
 to " indicate in a rough and general way the kind of 
 desires which it is usually best to encourage and indulge, 
 in comparison with other kinds which are ordinarily likely 
 to compete and collide with them," still it cannot be 
 maintained that any such " universal relation of higher 
 or lower subsists between any pair of impulses as is here 
 affirmed." Common - sense would rather hold " that, in 
 all or most cases, a natural impulse has its proper sphere, 
 within which it should be normally operative, and that 
 the question whether a motive commonly judged higher 
 should yield to a lower, is one that cannot be answered 
 decisively in the general way in which Martineau answers 
 it." " Love of ease and pleasure," for example, comes 
 nearly lowest in Martineau's list, and " love of gain " and 
 " love of culture " much higher ; but we often find men 
 prompted by the latter motives to shorten unduly their 
 hours of recreation. The answer must depend in every 
 case on the particular conditions and circumstances of the 
 conflict. And hence it is impossible to evade Sidgwick's 
 general conclusion that the comparison ultimately decisive 
 is " not a comparison between the motives primarily con- 
 flicting, but between the effects of the different lines of 
 conduct to which they respectively prompt, considered in 
 relation to whatever we regard as the ultimate end of 
 reasonable action." ^ But if we accept this conclusion, it 
 also disposes of the notion of a special faculty issuing 
 immediate decisions on the moral question at issue. The 
 apprehension of the superior worth of a principle is, 
 according to Martineau, " no mediate discovery of which 
 we can give an account, but is immediately inherent in 
 
 ' 'The Ethics of Green, Spencer, and Martineau,' pp. 359-361. Thia 
 ■conclusion is accepted by Professor Upton, ' Life and Letters,' ii. 395.
 
 MARTINEAUS PHILOSOPHY. 93 
 
 the very experience of the principles themselves, — a 
 revelation inseparable from their appearance side by side. 
 By simply entering the stage together and catching the 
 inner eye, they disclose their respective worth and 
 credentials." Or, as he puts it elsewhere, " there is no 
 analysis or research required ; the claims are decided by 
 a glance at their face." To this the reply is, that if 
 by Conscience is understood what it usually means in 
 ordinary speech, the response of the trained moral nature 
 in view of any ethical alternative, then every one will 
 admit that conscience acts with much of the swiftness- 
 and certainty of an instinct, and furnishes in most cases 
 an infallible touchstone of the nature described. But 
 apart from experience of the effects of action — as regards 
 the individual, apart from moral training and the ethical 
 heritage of humanity — I am totally unable to conceive 
 the existence of such a power of immediate or abstract 
 judgment as Martineau's theory seems to imply. 
 
 Martineau's extreme Intuitionalism here was, in one 
 sense, a natural consequence of the individualism which 
 so strongly marks his ethical theory. " Ethical Individ- 
 ualism " is the term which Professor Upton uses more 
 than once as giving " the keynote of his moral philo- 
 sophy." It springs from his intense realisation of the 
 personal character of the moral life, and is one great 
 source of his power as a moral teacher. But in the 
 region of theory it leaves him committed to untenable 
 abstractions. The idea of conscience as an infallible 
 faculty in each individual is closely connected with the 
 view of mankind as a collection of isolated or self- 
 sufficient individuals. Martineau does scant justice to the 
 social aspect of morality — the extent, that is, to which 
 our actual conscience is the creature of authority, moulded 
 by inherited institutions and customs, the product, in a
 
 94 MARTINEAU'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 word, of the age-long " education of the human race." 
 This view may be presented so baldly as to reduce 
 morality to an affair of external sanctions, a sense of 
 punishability — which would mean the elimination of the 
 moral element from conduct altogether — and, in his 
 reaction from this false form of statement, Martineau is 
 carried to the extreme of treating the individual as 
 sufficient unto himself. But it is not really open to 
 doubt that we are men and moral beings at all, only as 
 we share in the corporate and inherited life of humanity. 
 We are quite literally members one of another, and the 
 subjective conscience is, in its main contents, the organ 
 of the objective ethos which has shaped itself in human 
 history and lies around us from our infancy. It would 
 be unfair to say that Martineau nowhere recognises this 
 unity of mankind. He could not have been the great 
 religious teacher he was, had he not recognised it. 
 There is a passage in the second volume of his ' Types 
 of Ethical Theory ' which expresses the true view so finely 
 that I will venture to quote it, even at the risk of seeming 
 to cut the ground from under the foregoing criticisms. 
 He is describing the transformation of conscience " into 
 social consensus and religion." 
 
 " This process so implicates together the agent and his fellows 
 that we can scarce divide the casual factors into individual and 
 social, inner and outer : bodily, no doubt, he stands there by 
 himself, while his family are grouped separately round him ; but 
 spiritually, he is not himself without them ; and this reveals 
 itself by a kind of moral amputation, if death should snatch them 
 away, and put his selfdom to the test of loneliness. It is the 
 same with the larger groups which enclose him in their sympa- 
 thetic embrace. His country is not external to him : he is woven 
 into it by sensitive fibres that answer to all its good or ill : its 
 life-blood courses through his veins, inseparably mingled with
 
 MARTINEAU'S PHILOSOPHY. 95 
 
 his own. The social union is most inadequately represented as 
 a compact or tacit bargain subsisting among separate units, 
 agreeing to combine for specific purposes and for limited times, 
 and then disbanding again to their several isolations. It is no 
 such forensic abstraction, devised as a cement for mechanically 
 conceived components ; but a concrete though spiritual form of 
 life, penetrating and partly constituting all persons belonging to 
 it, so that only as fractions of it do they become human integers 
 themselves."— ('Types of Ethical Theory,' ii. 373.) 
 
 But it is to be noted that this eloquent acknowledg- 
 ment only appears as an afterword, in the act of passing 
 beyond ethics to a religious standpoint, and though 
 doubtless coexisting with it in the author's mind, is not 
 really harmonised with the exclusive individualism of the 
 formulated ethical theory. Moreover, it can be shown 
 that although he rises above it in the utterances of 
 personal religious feeling, his individualism invades his 
 theory of religion itself. His ethical individualism leads 
 him to an ethical Deism which treats God consistently 
 as " another person." There is no part of Martineau's 
 theory which is more characteristic, or on which he lays 
 more stress, than his doctrine of Obligation. It is probably 
 his chief contribution to the theistic argument ; for in 
 Obligation he sees, as it were, the meeting-place of the 
 human and the Divine. " In morals, it is God and self that 
 stand face to face." But the explanation he offers of the 
 feeling of Obligation is that " the Moral Law is imposed 
 hy an authority foreign to our personality, and is open, not 
 to be canvassed, but only to be obeyed or disobeyed." ^ 
 Professor Caldecott justly remarks on this as " an expres- 
 sion so forbidding that, were it not for the fact that it is 
 italicised, one would have ignored it as a lapsus." ^ But 
 it is impossible to ignore it, for to Martineau it is just 
 
 1 ' Study,' ii. 7. ^ 'Philosophy of Religion,' p. 346.
 
 96 MARTINEAU'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 this feature of the ethical consciousness which carries us 
 on to religion, and gives us an immediate certainty of the 
 Divine existence. It forms the pivot of his argument, 
 against Sidgwick and Green, that the law cannot be self- 
 imposed. " It takes two," he says, " to establish an obliga- 
 tion. To whom, then, is the alleged obligation upon the 
 agent ? You will say, perhaps, it is to himself that the 
 obligation lies to choose the more fruitful lot. By the 
 hypothesis, however, he is the person that hears the obli- 
 gation, and cannot also be the person whose presence m- 
 -poses it : it is impossible to be at once the upper and the 
 nether millstone. Personality is unitary, and in occupy- 
 ing one side of a given relation is unable to be also in 
 the other." ^ He concludes, therefore, that " if the sense 
 of authority means anything, it means the discernment 
 of something higher than we, having claims on our self, 
 therefore no mere part of it. ... If I rightly interpret 
 this sentiment, I cannot therefore stop within my own 
 limits, but am irresistibly carried on to the recognition 
 of another than I, . . . another Person, greater and higher 
 and of deeper insight." ^ 
 
 This position is in the sharpest contrast to the Kantian 
 doctrine of the autonomy of the will, which is surely one 
 of Kant's most valuable contributions to modern thought. 
 A man can be bound only by the enactment of his own 
 self-legislative will. So long as the law comes to me 
 from without, I can demand its warrant and evade its 
 claims ; but I cannot escape from my own law — from 
 the law which is the expression of my necessary will. 
 Martineau himself follows this more excellent way in the 
 Introduction to his ' Study of Eeligion,' where he is dis- 
 cussing the relation of Ethics to Eeligion. " Without an 
 internal enactment in the soul, to which the external 
 
 1 'Types,' ii. 100. ^ n^i^^^ ^ 97,
 
 MARTINEAUS PHILOSOPHY. 97 
 
 mandate brings its appeal," he says, " the consciousness 
 of Eight is impossible, and the human world is suscept- 
 ible of government only as a menagerie." And it is 
 undeniable, he further admits, that " conscience may act 
 as human before it is discovered to be divine. . . . Ethics, 
 therefore, have practical existence and operation prior to 
 any explicit religious belief : the law of right is inwoven 
 with the very tissue of our nature, and throbs in the 
 movements of our experience, and cannot be escaped by 
 any one till he can fly from himself." ^ But if that is so, 
 then the bindingness of moral rules cannot depend 
 essentially on the fact that they emanate from " another 
 Person," and consequently Martineau's theological version 
 of the ethical consciousness cannot be true as it stands. 
 He is, of course, absolutely right in insisting on the 
 objective nature of the moral law, and in rejecting the 
 notion that the law is in any way constituted, or made 
 authoritative, by the subjective act of recognition. Duty 
 may, therefore, not unfitly be spoken of as the law of God 
 revealed in the consciousness of the individual who 
 recognises it. But the difficulties of Martineau's theory 
 all arise from the sheer separation which he appears to 
 make between the self of the moral being and its divine 
 source, conceived in this connection as an objectively 
 legislating Will. This appears from the hypothetical 
 examples to which he has recourse to justify his position. 
 He supposes " the case of one lone man in an atheistic 
 universe," ^ and asks whether there could " really exist 
 any authority of higher over lower within the enclosure 
 of his detached personality " ; and he not unreasonably 
 concludes that " an insulated nature," ^ " an absolutely 
 solitary individual," cannot be conceived as the seat of 
 
 1 ' Study,' i. 21. 22. 
 2 ' Types,' ii. 97. ^ Ibid., ii. 96, 99. 
 
 G
 
 98 MARTINEAU'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 authority at all. But such an individual is a non-ens, 
 the creature of a theory, and is certainly improperly 
 spoken of as a self or a person. If any being were shut 
 up, in Martineau's phrase, " within the enclosure of his 
 detached personality," he would be a self-contained uni- 
 verse to himself, or rather he would be one bare point of 
 mere existence. If intelligences were simply mutually 
 exclusive points of subjectivity, then indeed they could 
 not be the seats and depositaries of an objective law ; they 
 could not be the subjects of law at all. Consciousness of 
 imperfection, the capacity for progress, and the pursuit 
 of perfection, are alike possible to man only through the 
 universal life of thought and goodness in which he shares, 
 and which, at once an indwelling presence and an un- 
 attainable ideal, draws him " on and always on." Person- 
 ality is not " unitary " in Martineau's sense, as occupying 
 one side of a relation and unable to be also on the other. 
 The very capacity of knowledge and morality implies 
 that the person is not so confined, but is capable of re- 
 garding himself and all other beings from what Martineau 
 well names " the station of the Father of Spirits." ^ 
 
 It is only, therefore, after discarding the intuitionalism, 
 and the abstract individualism and deism of the theory, 
 that it can be accepted as a true account of the ethical 
 consciousness and its implications. These may be the 
 features most distinctive of Martineau, the technical 
 philosopher, but they were not the inspiration of the 
 religious thinker and seer who habitually spoke of God 
 as " the Soul of all souls." Professor Upton has very 
 clearly pointed out the coexistence in Martineau's writ- 
 ings of " two modes of conceiving God, one of which is 
 deistic or Hebraic, while the other is distinctly and in- 
 tensely Christian." ^ The first • mode represents God as 
 
 1 ' Types,' ii. 98. ^ < Ljfe . jj^ 475^
 
 MARTINEAU'S PHILOSOPHY. 99 
 
 " another and higher person " ; the second represents Him 
 as " the Soul of souls." The former conception rests upon 
 an inferential knowledge of God, derived either from the 
 experience of God's resistance to our will through the 
 forces of Nature, or from God's felt restraint upon us in 
 the voice of Conscience. In both cases, the Supreme 
 Being is regarded as completely separated from the 
 human soul, and His existence and character are appre- 
 hended and demonstrated by a process of reasoning. 
 This rationalistic or deistic view Professor Upton ac- 
 knowledges to be mainly in the foreground in the 
 formulated philosophy, but he strongly contends that 
 in the other view — " in the apprehension of God as 
 the Infinite, including all finite existences, as the im- 
 manent Absolute who progressively manifests his char- 
 acter in the Ideals of Truth, Beauty, Kighteousness, and 
 Love, we have the inmost essence of Dr Martineau's 
 religious philosophy," ^ and that without this " both his 
 philosophy and his sermons would lose much of their 
 characteristic depth and beauty."" I most readily be- 
 lieve this, and only regret that this " mystical," or, 
 as I should prefer to call it, speculative, insight found 
 such inadequate expression in his formal theory. Pro- 
 fessor Upton suggests by way of explanation that, 
 although in 1841 Martineau explicitly treats the moral 
 and spiritual affections as " constituting a participation 
 in the divine nature," he soon afterwards became alarmed 
 by the danger to which such a doctrine is exposed of 
 gliding easily into Pantheism. Certain it is that, dur- 
 ing the greater part of his life, he seemed dominated 
 by an almost morbid dread of this particular form of 
 error, and, in his professorial and critical rdle, exhibited an 
 almost striking insensibility to the great speculative 
 1 ' Life,' ii. 479. 2 jbi^.^ n. 477.
 
 100 MARTINEAU'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 truth it embodies. His ' Study of Spinoza,' for example, 
 contains an admirable " Life," and much acute and in- 
 cisive criticism of technical doctrine, but the criticism is 
 entirely from the outside. The failure to appreciate the 
 inner motives of Spinoza's thought and the secret of his 
 power over some of our greatest thinkers and poets is 
 complete. One cannot help recalling a significant sen- 
 tence of Hegel's in which he represents the philosophy 
 of Spinoza as the test of speculative initiation. " When 
 one begins to philosophise one must first be a Spinozist ; 
 the soul must bathe in this aether of the one Substance 
 in which everything that had been held as true has dis- 
 appeared." It does not appear as if Martineau, so far as 
 his intellect was concerned, had ever submitted to this 
 immersion. 
 
 I am afraid that a somewhat similar line of criticism 
 is forced upon us in regard to his Libertarian interpreta- 
 tion of moral freedom. He is right, in my view, in say- 
 ing that " the language of ethics when translated into 
 necessarian formulas parts with all conceptions distinctly 
 moral, and becomes simply description of phenomena 
 in natural history. It tells us what has been, what is, 
 what probably will be ; but not (unless in an altered 
 sense) what ought to he" ^ So far as he insisted on the 
 inadequacy of such a version of moral action, Martineau 
 rendered a service to English thought. Kant has shown 
 once for all that moral action is inseparable from the 
 idea of freedom. Freedom is the category of morality. 
 But he has also indicated, in his obscurely expressed 
 distinction between the empirical and the intelligible 
 character, that the recognition of this has nothing to do 
 with the question of causality, as that is investigated by 
 science. The simple truth is that that question is not 
 1 'Study,' ii. 318, quoted in ' Life,' ii. 467.
 
 MARTIN EAU'S PHILOSOPHY. 101 
 
 raised hy the ethical consciousness at all. For the moral 
 agent to entangle himself in questions of this sort would 
 be, ipso facto, to lapse from the moral point of view ; and 
 as a matter of fact he does not do so. Kant stated 
 the truth in a paradox, when he described the moral 
 act as essentially timeless. The moral agent is, as it 
 were, timelessly face to face with his law or ideal, and 
 the moral consciousness considers only the relation of 
 the will to the law. The fact that the law can present 
 itself to him is sufficient proof that he possesses the 
 capacity to realise its demands : it could not other- 
 wise be a motive for him at all. As ethical being, 
 there reside in him all the capacities of his race. What 
 he ought to be, that he might be, and he judges his act 
 accordingly, both while it is in process of contemplation 
 and when he looks back, it may be remorsefully, upon 
 his choice. Should he really seek to excuse himself in 
 the sequel, by trying to show that it was impossible for 
 a man with his particular antecedents to act otherwise 
 than he did, he is regarding the action entirely from an 
 external and non-moral (which for him in the circum- 
 stances is an immoral) point of view. 
 
 I do not find, therefore, that the unsophisticated con- 
 science, when face to face with a moral alternative, looks 
 either behind, to assert necessity, or before, to assert 
 contingency. It does not seem to me to make any 
 report as to perfectly " open alternatives," if by alterna- 
 tives we mean events one of which is going to happen. 
 In order to do this, it would be necessary for the agent 
 to give up the personal problem in whose solution he is 
 engaged, and to begin to contemplate himself, db extra, 
 as a finite object or sum of forces. This is the position 
 which the ordinary necessarian theoriser takes up, and 
 it is the position which science must assume in dealing
 
 102 MARTINEAU'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 with the empirical individual as a calculable factor in 
 the production of events. Science, looking at the moral 
 action merely as an event in time, limits itself to the 
 question of its relation to its antecedents. The moral 
 quality of the action is no longer under consideration. 
 And to the scientific question only one answer — that of 
 Determinism — is possible. The initial error of Liber- 
 tarianism is that it accepts battle on the necessarian 
 terms, and then seeks to evade the consequences by a 
 distinction between the character and " the self which 
 has the character," attributing to the latter a power " at 
 will " to " determine himself to either branch of an 
 alternative." ^ But a characterless self is an abstraction 
 of which it is impossible to predicate agency ; to regard 
 it as issuing its fiat for the one branch or for the other is 
 to throw us back on the liberty of indifference. A self 
 over and above the concrete self of character is no more 
 a reality than a thing apart from all its qualities ; or, 
 to put it otherwise, it is the abstraction of form with- 
 out matter, and can do no work in the real world. It is 
 impossible to load the scales in this way ; and by treating 
 the self as abstract will, Libertarianism, no less than 
 Determinism, though in a different way, deprives the 
 act of its moral quality. May we not say that the 
 moral consciousness escapes the dilemma of ordinary 
 Libertarianism and Determinism just because it does not, 
 like them, regard the self as an " insulated " or merely 
 finite being with a definite equipment, whose equation 
 may be found in terms of character and environment, 
 and who may therefore be treated as a measurable and 
 definitely calculable force interacting with other forces ? 
 Such a conception belongs entirely to the plane of 
 mechanics, and has all the abstractness of that science. 
 
 1 ' Study,' ii. 309.
 
 MARTINEAUS PHILOSOPHY. 103 
 
 Just because he is not a punctual or self - contained 
 unity, but, in virtue of his reason, a sharer in a universal 
 life, the potentialities of an ethical being are infinite. 
 All things are possible to him — not as a finite in- 
 dividual at any given moment of time (the ethical con- 
 sciousness guarantees no miracles), but eternally possible 
 to every son of man. The absolute claim of the moral 
 ideal, and its infinitely regenerative power in breaking the 
 yoke of the past, seem to me the real facts to which the 
 moral consciousness testifies. Both Libertarianism and De- 
 terminism misrepresent them by insisting on applying to 
 them the categories of mechanism and temporal succession. 
 I have left myself no space to deal with Martineau's 
 doctrine of Cause and his theory of the material world. 
 But that is perhaps the less to be regretted, seeing that 
 Professor Upton acknowledges that this part of Mar- 
 tineau's system does not " exert the same convincing 
 force" as his more specifically religious utterances. I 
 will confine myself, therefore, to reminding the reader 
 that the theory is based on the assertion of our own 
 noumenal causality, as revealed in the consciousness of 
 effort, and the acknowledgment in the same act of a 
 counter cause, opposed to and controlling our activity. 
 This is Martineau's Natural Dualism, which, however, he 
 at once proceeds to interpret in a Berkeleian sense. The 
 Cause revealed to me in nature can only be a Will, for no 
 other real cause is known to me ; phenomenal causation, 
 so called, is relation of events but not agency. There 
 are no second causes except created spirits like myself ; 
 in nature we have simply the continual forthputting 
 of the divine causality, according to certain laws laid 
 down by God once for all. The theory is thus, in all 
 essentials, Berkeley's short and easy method with the 
 materialists and sceptics of his day — the argimient
 
 104 MARTINEAU'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 that God is immediately present to us in the phenomena 
 of sense, as their efficient and regulating cause. Now 
 there is certainly a perennial attractiveness about 
 Berkeley's theory, from the way in which it seems 
 to bring God near to us, and to make the doctrine of 
 his immanence a reality. It seems very simple to unify 
 the forces of nature in this way, and regard them all as 
 the expression of a noumenal Will behind them. But 
 further reflection shows that to represent the divine 
 causality as the direct forthputting of a force, of which 
 we become aware in the experience of " resistance to our 
 will," is to conceive God on the level of mechanical 
 science merely as a cause of motion — the very error for 
 which Socrates blamed Anaxagoras. We cannot, in 
 truth, without the grossest anthropomorphism, relate 
 physical phenomena directly to God by the category of 
 cause, as that is used in dynamics, or conceive God and 
 man as two forces pushing against one another. We 
 must not fly off at once, as Bacon warned us, to the 
 highest generalities. The complete inappropriateness of 
 such a conception in an ultimate metaphysical reference 
 is further seen by the difficulties which Martineau 
 encounters in connection with space. The divine agency, 
 it turns out, requires a datum. " I think of a cause," he 
 says, " as needing something else in order to work — i.e., 
 some condition present with it ; as constituting one term 
 of a relation, and as being a cause only by reason of its 
 so standing." He accordingly accepts such a " coexisting 
 datum " in the form of " space, ready to have forces 
 thrown into any of its points " ; ^ and in his college 
 lectures he treats space and time as " the infinite, un- 
 created, eternal data which constitute the negative con- 
 ditions of all beings and all phenomena." ^ But the 
 
 ^ 'Study,' i. 406. 2 «Life,' ii. 284.
 
 MARTINEAU'S PHILOSOPHY. 105 
 
 conception of God as a Being projecting causal energy 
 into space, and as " committing " himself once for all to 
 certain general laws of operation, the unfortunate indi- 
 vidual results of which he is thenceforward powerless 
 to obviate, is, I fear, too deistic and anthropomorphic to 
 carry conviction or consolation to the present age. And 
 it is not surprising that Professor Upton finds the doc- 
 trine of space in particular " a perplexing feature in 
 Dr Martineau's cosmical philosophy." 
 
 It seems strangely inconsistent with much of the fore- 
 going criticism to find Martineau himself protesting, 
 " If there is one modern tendency more than another 
 against which I have striven through life with the 
 united earnestness of natural instinct and deliberate 
 conviction, it is the extreme individualism which turns 
 our foremost politics, philosophy, religion into a humiliat- 
 ing caricature." ^ For it has been chiefly the relics of 
 individualism and deism in his theory that have been 
 commented on. But that merely shows how far the 
 intellectual framework of a man's beliefs may come short 
 of embodying the animating principle of his thought, and 
 how subtly pervasive is the influence of inherited concep- 
 tions which we imagine ourselves to have outgrown and 
 even to be combating. In one of his essays,^ Martineau 
 distinguishes between the Religion of Causation, the 
 Eeligion of Conscience, and the Eeligion of the Spirit as 
 three aspects or stages, of which the third alone presents 
 God and man in their true relations. Man, from this 
 final point of view, is no longer " a spiritual island 
 planted out in the natural deep of things," but lives in a 
 communion where every moral ideal or spiritual affection 
 appears as a movement of " the all-quickening Spirit " — 
 a revelation of " the common essence of God and man, 
 
 1 'Life,' i. 373. '^ 'Essays, Reviews, and Addresses,' iv. 578-580.
 
 106 MARTINEAU'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the divine element that spreads its margin into us." 
 Unfortunately, in his formal philosophy, Martineau 
 remains almost entirely on the level of the first and 
 second stages, adopting the defective terminology of con- 
 temporary Intuitionism and the Philosophy of Common- 
 sense. Hence the critic of his " system " feels himself 
 in the ungrateful position, described in an apt phrase by 
 Martineau himself, of " saying Amen to the faith but 
 picking holes in the dialectic." The deepest expression of 
 his thought is really to be found in his religious writings, 
 and in those passages of his philosophical books which 
 are written under the same inspiration. He was of the 
 lineage of the prophets and the saints rather than that of 
 the great speculative thinkers. Yet it is easy to under- 
 value his specifically philosophical work, and I should 
 much regret if the criticisms into which I have been led 
 tended to encourage such a view. On a previous page 
 of this article, I have already recorded my sense of his 
 imperishable services to the common cause of Idealism. 
 As a thinker, his defects were to a large extent the 
 defects of his qualities. His insistence on the supreme 
 place of the ethical life was like a trumpet - call to 
 rally men from a naturalistic absorption in the world of 
 things and events that happen. His jealous reservation 
 of the personal sphere in man, even from the influx of the 
 divine, though it may have obscured his own speculative 
 outlook, was a wholesome corrective of panlogistic and 
 purely pantheistic tendencies within the Hegelian school. 
 In a more general reference, his exposure of the futility 
 of " ideals " which are not faiths in " the everlasting 
 Real," his noble confidence in Eeason, and his unclouded 
 assurance of the immortal destiny of the spirit, made 
 him a beacon of hope to multitudes in a troubled
 
 MARTINEAUS PHILOSOPHY. 107 
 
 century. " The true," he writes, " is always the divine ; 
 depend upon it, the facts of the universe will not prove 
 profane." And in 1898, at the extreme verge of human 
 life, he writes to a correspondent : " I only know that 
 duty and love look more divine, and the spiritual life 
 more surely immortal, than when I spoke of them with 
 less experience." With what better words can one lay 
 down one's pen ?
 
 HERBERT SPENCER : THE MAN AND HIS WORK.^ 
 
 IT was eminently in accordance with the fitness of 
 things that the philosopher of evolution should end 
 by writing the evolution of himself, and in spite of its 
 ponderous length and other palpable faults, the result is 
 a very interesting human document. If Spinoza said 
 that he would treat of God and the mind exactly as if he 
 were concerned with lines, planes, and solids, Spencer 
 analyses himself in these pages much as he might dissect 
 a natural history specimen. If we add to the outspoken 
 candour of its self-analysis the unconscious revelations of 
 mind and character of which it is full, and the details 
 which it furnishes of his early upbringing and the history 
 of his ideas, it is manifest that the two volumes give us 
 a much more intimate knowledge than we have hitherto 
 possessed, both of the antecedents of the man and the 
 milieu in which his work was produced. Consequently 
 they must be an important aid to a better estimate of 
 that work, both in its strength and its limitations. The 
 history of an idea or a set of ideas is often the best 
 criticism that can be offered. Of the 'Autobiography' 
 itself, as a literary product, it would be easy to speak too 
 harshly. Some allowance must be made for the circum- 
 
 ^ The following estimate of Spencer and his work appeared in the 
 'Quarterly Review' of July 1904, shortly after the publication of the 
 ' Autobiography.'
 
 HERBERT SPENCER : THE MAN AND HIS WORK. 109 
 
 stances of its composition. Dictated as a rough outline 
 of facts as early as 1875, it was taken up again in 1886 
 after the last and most serious breakdown in Spencer's 
 health, when more serious mental work was impossible. 
 A little time was spent daily in putting the memoranda 
 into shape ; but even this was not done in chronological 
 order. Haunted, as he was apt to be, by the thought 
 that he might not survive to complete the record, he 
 decided to take up first the sections which he deemed of 
 most importance, passing thus freely backward and for- 
 ward from one period of his life to another, and gradually 
 filling up the gaps of the narrative as destiny proved 
 kinder than his fears. 
 
 Such a desultory mode of composition explains many 
 redundancies and repetitions ; and the ebb-tide of mental 
 energy dviring which much of it took shape may also 
 explain the frequent slackness of style and the prolixity 
 of non-significant detail through which the reader has 
 often to plough his way. There is a lack of proportion 
 in the narrative, especially as it advances in the second 
 volume. Sometimes it is as if the writer were at the 
 mercy of his memoranda, and we have a chronicle of 
 itineraries and incidents which have no interest beyond 
 the fact that they happened at a certain date, and help 
 Spencer to block out the blank spaces of his memory. 
 At other points, an association of ideas betrays him into 
 general reflections, and he airs for a page or two some of 
 his favourite " nonconformities," with which readers of 
 his works are already sufficiently familiar. It is at times, 
 an unkind reader might say in the author's style, as if 
 the centres of inhibition had temporarily abdicated their 
 function. Shall we say that such causes as these help to 
 explain the 1098 pages to which the volumes run, or 
 must this damning fact be ascribed to an egotism so
 
 110 HERBERT SPENCER! 
 
 massive and unconscious that it loses all the pettiness 
 of ordinary vanity ? Spencer makes an excuse for the 
 egotistic suggestion which the autobiographical form 
 necessarily involves, but it does not seem to have occurred 
 to him that the scale of his posthumous monument would 
 be taken as the true measure of his self-absorption. 
 
 But after all these grave deductions have been made, 
 the 'Autobiography' somehow succeeds in holding the 
 reader's interest, and even engaging his sympathy. It 
 lies in the nature of the man who is its subject, that we 
 find in it neither the beautiful simplicity of character 
 which charms us in Darwin, nor the vivid personality 
 which gives light and animation to Huxley's ' Life.' 
 Spencer's story owes its attraction chiefly to its frankness, 
 to the transparent honesty of the narrator, and the 
 absence of all affectation or pose. Paradoxical as the 
 statement may seem in view of Spencer's achievement, 
 the mind here portrayed, save for the command of 
 scientific facts and the wonderful faculty of generalisation, 
 is commonplace in the range of its ideas ; neither intel- 
 lectually nor morally is the nature touched to the finest 
 issues. Almost uneducated, except for a fair acquaint- 
 ance with mathematics and the scientific knowledge 
 which his own tastes led him to acquire, with the pre- 
 judices and limitations of middle-class English Noncon- 
 formity, but untouched by its religion, Spencer appears in 
 the early part of his life as a somewhat ordinary young 
 man. His ideals and habits did not differ perceptibly 
 from those of hundreds of intelligent and straight-living 
 Englishmen of his class. And to the end, in spite of his 
 cosmic outlook, there remains this strong admixture of 
 the British Philistine, giving a touch almost of banality 
 to some of his sayings and doings. But just because the 
 picture is so faithfully drawn, giving us the man in his 
 habit as he lived, with all his limitations and prejudices
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK. Ill 
 
 (and his consciousness of these limitations, expressed 
 sometimes with a passing regret, but oftener with a 
 childish pride in them), with all his irritating pedantries 
 and the shallowness of his emotional nature — we can 
 balance against these defects his high integrity and un- 
 flinching moral courage, his boundless faith in know- 
 ledge and his power of conceiving a great ideal and 
 carrying it through countless difficulties to ultimate 
 realisation, and a certain boyish simplicity of character 
 as well as other gentler human traits, such as his fond- 
 ness for children, his dependence upon the society of 
 his kind, and his capacity to form and maintain some 
 life-long friendships. A kindly feeling for the narrator 
 grows as we proceed, and most unprejudiced readers will 
 close the book with a genuine respect and esteem for the 
 philosopher in his human aspect. 
 
 For the student of Spencer's personality and ideas, the 
 opening chapters of his ' natural history,' in which he 
 depicts the stock of which he came and the social sur- 
 roundings in which his early years were passed, are 
 probably the most valuable. This account of his ancestry 
 — in particular, the picture of his father and of the 
 uncle who superintended his education — gives us already, 
 " in large letters," some of the most striking intellectual 
 and moral features which we associate with the philo- 
 sopher. Spencer sums up the outstanding characteristics 
 of the race as " independence, self -asserting judgment, the 
 tendency to nonconformity, and the unrestrained display 
 of their sentiments and opinions, more especially in 
 respect of political, social, and ethical matters." " A 
 general absence of reticence " and " a tendency to dis- 
 agree " are, perhaps, simpler and more illuminative phrases. 
 Wesleyanism was traditional in the family, but " they dis- 
 sented more or less from that form of dissent." In the 
 case of Spencer's father, "his repugnance to all living
 
 112 HERBERT SPENCER : 
 
 authority " led him to the Quakers' meeting-house — not, 
 according to his son, because he had adopted any of their 
 special tenets, " but the system was congruous to his 
 nature, in respect of its complete individualism and 
 absence of ecclesiastical government." Among negative 
 traits of the family, accompanying those mentioned above, 
 Spencer instances 
 
 "a comparatively small interest in gossip. Their conversation 
 ever tended towards the impersonal. . . . There was no consider- 
 able leaning towards literature. Their discussions never referred 
 to poetry or fiction or the drama. Nor was the reading of history 
 carried to any extent by them. And though in early life they 
 were all musical, the aesthetic in general had no great attractions. 
 It was rather the scientific interpretations and moral aspects of 
 things which occupied their thoughts." 
 
 Ethical and political discussion were the very breath of 
 their nostrils, and they were all reformers of a radical 
 type. 
 
 The notes we get of Spencer's desultory and fragmentary 
 education are also instructive. He had a boy's taste for 
 natural history ; and through helping his father to prepare 
 experiments for his pupils, he gained some acquaintance 
 with physics and chemistry, and interest sufficient to 
 carry him through a popular manual of the latter subject. 
 In a skipping way, he read a good deal in the medical 
 and scientific periodicals lying about the house, besides 
 books of travel and history from the various libraries of 
 the town. During the years of his more systematic 
 education under his uncle, the chief feature of the boy 
 was his repugnance to language - study and his leaky 
 memory in that direction. To mathematics he took more 
 kindly. The sum of his acquirements when he returned 
 home at the age of sixteen was meagre enough.
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK. 113 
 
 " A fair amount of mathematics had been acquired, and the 
 accompanying discipline had strengthened the reasoning powers. 
 In the acquisition of languages but trifling success had been 
 achieved ; in French nothing beyond the early part of the grammar 
 and a few pages of a phrase-book ; in Greek a little grammar, I 
 suppose, and such knowledge as resulted from rendering into 
 English a few chapters of the New Testament ; and in Latin 
 some small ability to translate the easy books given to beginners 
 — always, however, with more or less blundering. Education at 
 Hinton was not wide in its range. No history was read ; there 
 was no culture in general literature ; nor had the concrete sciences 
 any place in our course. Poetry and fiction were left out entirely." 
 
 For the three and a half years following this, up till his 
 twenty-first birthday, he was learning his profession as 
 an engineer, and actively engaged on the London and 
 Birmingham and other railways then in course of con- 
 struction. During these important years his mental 
 development continued in the same course. His mathe- 
 matical studies were carried farther, and his letters to 
 his father at this time were filled with geometrical 
 problems and solutions. He did not, however, proceed 
 to the higher developments of the subject, for at a later 
 period we hear of his succumbing to his " constitutional 
 idleness " in an attempt to master the differential calculus. 
 The letters also discuss mechanical problems, and con- 
 tain speculations on various questions in physics. Some 
 lectures on chemistry in the town where he was placed 
 prompted a resumption of that study ; and the collection 
 of the fossils disclosed by the railway cuttings through 
 the blue lias clay led to some study of geology and to the 
 purchase of Lyell's ' Principles,' then recently published. 
 But beyond these scientific and practical interests there 
 is no record of those stirrings of the higher life of the 
 imagination, or those impulses towards the deeper problems 
 
 H
 
 114 HERBERT SPENCER: 
 
 of philosophy and religion which commonly visit thought- 
 ful youth in these years. Spencer, indeed, makes at this 
 time the impression of a matter-of-fact young English- 
 man of an inventive turn of mind and with a distinct 
 bent towards reflection on physical problems, but without 
 much emotional depth of nature or delicacy of feeling, 
 and with an almost singular absence in his composition 
 of what Carlyle used to call the " mystical " element — 
 that is to say, the specifically religious and metaphysical 
 impulse. The religious beliefs in which he had been 
 brought up were slowly losing their hold upon him with- 
 out any sense of mental crisis, obviously because they had 
 never been held with any emotional tenacity, — had never, 
 indeed, satisfied in his case any personal need. The creed 
 of Christendom, he says in a passage which, by the 
 shallowness of its analysis, sufficiently exemplifies his 
 own defective endowment, was 
 
 " evidently alien to my nature, both emotional and intellectual. 
 To many, and apparently to most, religious worship yields a species 
 of pleasure. To me it never did so ; unless, indeed, I count as 
 such the emotion produced by sacred music. . . . But the ex- 
 pressions of adoration of a personal being, the utterance of lauda- 
 tions and the humble professions of obedience, never found in 
 me any echoes." 
 
 At the age of twenty-one he gave up his engineering 
 appointment, in order to devote himself to working out 
 the idea of an electro-magnetic engine which his father 
 had conceived. But within a month it became apparent 
 that the idea could not be practically applied. The next 
 seven years of his life were of an unsettled and desultory 
 character. More than once he was glad to accept tem- 
 porary engineering engagements, but with the exception 
 of about eighteen months thus occupied, the time was
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK. 115 
 
 passed in " speculating and experimenting, leading to no 
 practical results." The idea underlying his restless intel- 
 lectual activity was the hope of making some discovery 
 or perfecting some mechanical device which might yield a 
 commercial return. But though some of the ideas looked 
 promising enough, and one contrivance was actually 
 patented, the labour was in vain so far as its immediate 
 purpose was concerned. The range of these speculations 
 and experiments, however, gives a vivid impression of 
 the mental " discursiveness " on which Spencer dwells 
 with some complacence as a characteristic trait.'^ In 
 addition to these scientific interests, there also persisted 
 in the young man the family bias towards social and pol- 
 itical reflection ; and his first appearance as an author in 
 1842 was in the department of political ethics. A visit 
 to Hinton in that year, and a renewal of political con- 
 versations with his uncle, suggested a series of letters to 
 ' The Nonconformist ' newspaper embodying their common 
 views. His uncle gave him a letter of introduction to 
 Mr Edward Miall, under whose editorship the paper had 
 recently been established as an organ of the advanced 
 dissenters, and a series of twelve ' Letters on the Proper 
 Sphere of Government ' appeared in the same year. 
 
 ^ "The products of mental action are seen to range from a doctrine of 
 State-functions to a levelling-staff ; from the genesis of religious ideas to a 
 watch-escapement ; from the circulation in plants to an invalid bed ; from 
 the law of organic symmetry to planing machinery ; from principles of 
 ethics to a velocimeter ; from a metaphysical doctrine to a binding-pin ; 
 from a classification of the sciences to an improved fishing-rod joint ; from 
 the general Law of Evolution to a better mode of dressing artificial flies " 
 (' Autobiography,' ii. 435). At the point we have reached most of these 
 larger speculations were still in the future, but in addition to the appliances 
 mentioned, we hear of plans for an improvement of the printing-press, for 
 an improved method of typefounding, a rationalised system of letters for 
 printing, a scheme for a universal language on a monosyllabic basis, and 
 the outline of a duodecimal system of notation.
 
 116 HERBERT SPENCER: 
 
 These 'Letters,' republished as a pamphlet in 1843, 
 are not to be taken, perhaps, as expressing more than 
 what he calls " the mental attitude of the Spencers." 
 The principles expounded were those which he drew in 
 with the air he breathed; in the language of his own 
 philosophy, they might almost be styled connate. The 
 ' Letters ' elaborate the definition of the State which he 
 had volunteered to a friend the year before — " a national 
 institution for preventing one man from infringing upon 
 the rights of another " ; and they apply the theory of 
 individualism with the rigour and vigour of two-and- 
 twenty. Even war is excluded from the sphere of 
 government interference, and is to be conducted as a 
 private enterprise on joint-stock principles. Spencer is 
 fain to confess, in the light of later reflection, that here 
 he has gone too far, though, as he characteristically adds, 
 he might have cited in support of his argument " the 
 case of the Iroquois league " ! But although modified in 
 particulars, the ' Letters ' give us in their first form 
 ideas which controlled the whole course of Spencer's 
 political philosophy ; and to the writing of them he 
 traces himself, in a natural development, the successive 
 stages of his subsequent authorship. 
 
 " Had they never been written, ' Social Statics,' which originated 
 in them, would not even have been thought of. Had there been 
 no 'Social Statics,' those lines of inquiry which led to the ' Prin- 
 ciples of Psychology' would have remained unexplored. And 
 without that study of life in general, initiated by the writing of 
 these works, leading, presently, to the study of the relations 
 between its phenomena and those of the inorganic world, there 
 would have been no 'System of Synthetic Philosophy' " (i. 212). 
 
 The train of thought initiated in the ' Letters ' was 
 followed out at intervals during the years that followed,
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK. 117 
 
 and latterly became Spencer's chief intellectual interest. 
 Thus in 1843 he writes : " I have been reading Bentham's 
 works, and mean to attack his principles shortly " — a 
 purpose executed in 1850 in the opening pages of ' Social 
 Statics.' As he explains the matter himself, he had be- 
 come dissatisfied with the ' Letters,' — 
 
 " not so much with the conclusions set forth as with the founda- 
 tions on which they stood. The analytical tendency had begun 
 to show itself. What was the common principle involved in 
 these conclusions 1 Whence was derived their ultimate justifica- 
 tion ? Answers to these questions had become clear to me ; and 
 it was the desire to publish them which moved me to write " 
 (i. 305). 
 
 Accordingly, in the early months of 1846 we find him 
 beginning a course of reading with a view to his pro- 
 jected book. Characteristically, however, he " paid little 
 attention to what had been written either upon ethics or 
 politics. The books I did read were those which promised 
 to furnish illustrative material." By April 1847 he had 
 collected a large mass of matter for his ' Moral Philo- 
 sophy,' and it was " beginning to ferment violently." By 
 September of the same year he was able to send 
 thirty pages of the Introduction to his father; and 
 during 1848, while his future hung in suspense, he was 
 thinking out other chapters as he rambled through the 
 fields round Derby, — his thinking being done then, as 
 always, he tells us, mainly while walking. So uncertain 
 did the future seem in the beginning of 1848, that there 
 was talk of emigration to New Zealand. Another scheme 
 ventilated was that he should join his father in starting 
 a school, to be conducted on enlightened educational 
 principles. But before the end of the year his appoint- 
 ment as sub-editor of ' The Economist ' relieved him from
 
 118 HERBERT SPENCER I 
 
 the necessity of considering such alternatives. The record 
 of his life henceforth is one of steady progress towards a 
 goal which gradually took definite shape in the ten years 
 which followed his settling in London. The first step 
 towards it was taken by the publication of ' Social Statics.' 
 Many of his evenings were devoted to it during his first 
 year in London. Great pains were taken with the style, 
 and it was the end of 1850 before the book saw the light. 
 
 Before considering its contents more carefully it will 
 be well, at the point now reached, to ask what the seven 
 years just reviewed may be regarded as having added to 
 Spencer's mental equipment and outlook, and what gen- 
 eral characteristics of the man may be gleaned from his 
 narrative. It is clear that his multifarious activities had 
 given him a considerable knowledge of men and business 
 affairs, while his studies and experiments had increased 
 his acquaintance with physical science and natural history. 
 Besides novels, he also read some of the books which were 
 impressing his contemporaries, such as ' Sartor Eesartus,' 
 Emerson's 'Essays,' and Euskin's 'Modern Painters.' 
 The last • mentioned he seems to have valued chiefly 
 because it gratified his spirit of dissent by daring to 
 express unfavourable opinions about some of Eaphael's 
 works. There are several references of an antagonistic 
 nature to Carlyle's doctrine of hero-worship in the ' Social 
 Statics,' and Carlyle appears from time to time in the 
 ' Autobiography ' as the incorporation of retrogressive 
 ideals. In one passage " some months in a dark dungeon 
 on bread and water " are suggested as a cure for his anti- 
 utilitarianism and his "ridiculous notion that happiness 
 is of no consequence." But though unaffected by alien 
 ideas, Spencer was not insensible to vigour and charm of 
 style, and his reading at this time extended to the poets.
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK. 119 
 
 Shelley's ' Prometheus Unbound ' he pronounces, in a 
 letter of 1845, to be "the most beautiful thing I ever 
 read by far," and he rates Shelley about that time as 
 " by far the finest poet of his era." The mature philo- 
 sopher is rather at a loss to explain this early enthusiasm, 
 and can only surmise that the poem satisfied one of his 
 organic needs, variety. He finds the same trait in con- 
 nection with food. " Monotony of diet is not simply 
 repugnant; it very soon produces indigestion." The 
 reader will probably conclude more justly that the 
 Spencer of the forties was more of a human being than 
 the dyspeptic analyst of the ' Autobiography.' A letter 
 to his intimate friend, Lott, in 1844, describing a journey 
 through South Wales, reveals a vivacity of unsophisti- 
 cated feeling which goes much farther to explain the 
 phenomenon than the laboured hypothesis referred to. 
 
 As regards his philosophical equipment, it is to be 
 remarked that there continues the same singular absence 
 of the metaphysical, and even of the psychological interest. 
 " All through my life," he says, " Locke's * Essay ' had 
 been before me on my father's shelves, but I had never 
 taken it down ; or, at any rate, I have no recollection of 
 having read a page of it." Mill's ' Logic ' he glanced at 
 when it came out, but did not carry the study far. 
 When he came across a translation of Kant's ' Critique 
 of Pure Eeason ' in a friend's house, he stumbled at the 
 outset over the doctrine that time and space are subjec- 
 tive forms, and went no farther. " It has always been 
 out of the question," he explains, " for me to go on read- 
 ing a book the fundamental principles of which I entirely 
 dissent from. Tacitly giving an author credit for con- 
 sistency, I, without thinking much about the matter, take 
 it for granted that if the fundamental principles are 
 wrong, the rest cannot be right, and thereupon cease
 
 120 HERBERT SPENCER : 
 
 reading — being, I suspect, rather glad of an excuse for 
 doing so." Acting on this highly dangerous principle, 
 he tells us that whenever, in later years, he took up the 
 ' Critique,' he similarly stopped short after rejecting its 
 primary proposition. Spencer's interests during the 
 period under review continued, in fact, to be those of 
 physical science on the one hand and of socio-political 
 theory on the other. But although he had no traffic 
 with the philosophers, a certain amount of reflection on 
 what may be called natural theology was inevitable as 
 his belief in historical Christianity dropped from him. 
 The older natural theology summed itself up in the 
 doctrine that the world had its origin in the creative act 
 of a personal God. A letter to his father in 1848 shows 
 that Spencer had considered this theory and definitely 
 set it aside as incapable of proof, taking up for himself 
 a purely agnostic position. 
 
 "As regards 'the ultimate nature of things or origin of them,' 
 my position is simply that I know nothing about it, and never 
 can know anything about it, and must be content in my ignorance. 
 I deny nothing and I affirm nothing, and to any one who says 
 that the current theory is not true, I say just as I say to those 
 who assert its truth — you have no evidence" (i. 346). 
 
 The turn given to the argument and the phraseology in 
 which it is expressed anticipate very closely, as he 
 claims, the doctrine set forth in ' First Principles ' twelve 
 years later. In truth, beyond the new name given to it 
 in baptism by Huxley, there is nothing recondite in this 
 easy method of shelving the question. It is the daily 
 practice of millions. Besides, the cosmological problem, 
 isolated thus and treated as a quasi-scientific question, 
 ceases to have a properly religious interest. " Men have 
 fought for the doctrine that God made the world," says
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK. 121 
 
 Mr Mallock, in his philosophical novel, " merely because 
 they considered it essentially bound up with the doctrine 
 that a God exists who has dealings with the human soul." 
 It was because, with Spencer, the religious emotions 
 were so little engaged that the agnostic position seemed 
 to him so simple, and apparently satisfied him so 
 completely. 
 
 The choice of a satisfactory title for his volume caused 
 considerable difficulty, and the one eventually fixed upon 
 led to misapprehensions of a kind to which Spencer was 
 all his life peculiarly sensitive. The title he originally 
 had in view, 'A System of Social and Political Morality,' 
 comes much nearer a simple and intelligible description 
 of the contents than the scientific metaphor which he 
 afterwards pressed into his service: a friend, however, 
 whom he consulted thought it too bald and threadbare. 
 ' Demostatics,' a word used in the Introduction (but sup- 
 pressed before publication) was the next idea. Spencer 
 considered that it accurately described the subject-matter 
 of the book, namely, the maintenance of social equilibrium 
 through conformity to the law of equal freedom, and sug- 
 gested at the same time the strictly scientific character of 
 the treatment. But the publisher was decisive against 
 this pedantic neologism, and the term ' Social Statics ' was 
 eventually determined on as expressing the same idea, 
 though his uncle warned him that it would be taken by 
 many people for social statistics. The sub- title in the 
 original form, "a system of equity synthetically developed," 
 is perhaps more accurately descriptive than that which 
 finally appeared, " the conditions essential to human 
 happiness specified, and the first of them developed," 
 though the second has the advantage of indicating a rela- 
 tion between the new work and the general Utilitarian 
 doctrine of contemporary English thought. The title.
 
 122 HERBERT SPENCER: 
 
 ' Social Statics,' if it was not productive of the confusion 
 which his uncle feared, produced not unnaturally a wide- 
 spread impression that the ideas promulgated in the 
 book were inspired by the social philosophy of Comte, 
 who had actually employed the same term for one of the 
 divisions of his system. It is true that a perusal of the 
 book would have disclosed fundamental differences between 
 the two thinkers ; but it was difficult for the ordinarily 
 constituted man to conceive that any one should under- 
 take a treatise on social philosophy without making 
 himself acquainted with Comte's work, a knowledge of 
 which, through Mill and others, had been spreading in 
 England for ten years previously ; still less that he 
 should use a technical title of that thinker's coinage with- 
 out intending to indicate some relationship between their 
 views. But we have seen how, when he set about 
 systematic reading for his book, Spencer consistently 
 eschewed his predecessors in the same field ; and, in- 
 credible as it may seem, we have no reason to doubt his 
 assertion that he " then knew nothing more of Auguste 
 Comte than that he was a French philosopher — did not 
 even know that he had promulgated a system having 
 a distinctive title, still less that one of its divisions 
 was called ' Social Statics.' The misunderstanding thus 
 originated continued to haunt and waylay Spencer 
 through the greater part of his life, much to his annoy- 
 ance, and was the occasion of emphatic and repeated 
 disclaimers. 
 
 When we turn to the work itself, the source of its 
 inspiration is found to be much nearer home. The con- 
 clusions, as we have seen, are, with very slight modifica- 
 tions, those of the ' Letters on the Proper Sphere of 
 Government.' With the practical doctrines he remained 
 entirely satisfied ; it was with their theoretical basis that
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK. 123 
 
 he was concerned. He desired, in accordance with the 
 synthetic bent of his mind, to exhibit the various con- 
 clusions as so many applications of a single principle, 
 from which, when formulated, they might be deductively 
 derived. The principles of " the Spencer family," in 
 short, have to be philosophised, and the principles of the 
 Spencer family were an exceptionally clear and logical 
 expression of the principles of the English political 
 dissenters, and of contemporary Eadicalism generally, 
 Spencer began his systematic reading for the book in the 
 year of the abolition of the corn laws. The philosophical 
 Eadicals had given place, in popular influence, to the 
 Manchester school ; but both were at one in their devo- 
 tion to the principle of laissez-faire. By both the laws 
 of political economy were interpreted, not in the modern 
 scientific sense as statements of what would happen under 
 certain given conditions — statements, therefore, neces- 
 sarily abstract, and in no sense preceptive as to what 
 ought to happen in the concrete, — but as ordinances 
 of nature divinely instituted, with which it would be 
 impiety as well as folly to interfere. Those who were 
 not in the habit of speaking theistically shared the 
 current optimism as to the beneficent operation of these 
 great impersonal forces. The old Liberalism also, fresh 
 from its campaign against privilege, still occupied the 
 field with its purely negative ideal of freedom from 
 restriction. 
 
 Such was the contemporary English world in which 
 Spencer's political thinking grew to maturity ; by tem- 
 perament " radical all over," he absorbed the principles of 
 political individualism and economic optimism so com- 
 pletely, that they assumed for him the guise of intuitions 
 of the moral sense. When he proceeds to formulate 
 the " true fundamental intuition which can be logically"
 
 124 HERBERT SPENCER: 
 
 unfolded into a scientific " (or, as he elsewhere calls it, a 
 purely synthetic) " morality," what we get is the famous 
 doctrine of Natural Eights, deriving in England from 
 John Locke, exported to France and receiving there 
 world-wide expression from Eousseau and the Declara- 
 tions, which embody " the principles of 1789," re-imported 
 for English political use by Tom Paine and the earlier 
 Kadicals, and practically animating the Benthamite re- 
 formers, in spite of the fact that Bentham wrote a 
 treatise on ' Anarchic Fallacies ' to expose the French 
 Declaration/ " The law of equal freedom," or " the liberty 
 of each, limited alone by the like liberty of all," is the first 
 law, says Spencer, and " we may almost say that the first 
 law is the sole law " on which scientific morality and the 
 organisation of society depend. Or, as he states it later 
 in italics, " Every man has freedom to do all that he wills, 
 provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other 
 man." He cites it himself in one place as the doctrine 
 that " all men are naturally equal," and expressly refers, 
 in illustrative vindication, to Locke's ' Treatise on Civil 
 Government,' the Declaration of American Independence, 
 " the late European revolutions and the preambles to the 
 new constitutions that have sprung out of them," " the 
 political agitations that have run a successful course 
 within these few years," and even to " the maxim of the 
 Complete Suffrage movement." This principle being laid 
 down, it follows that government is a necessary evil ; is, 
 indeed, " essentially immoral " (p. 207). It is necessary 
 because man, now compelled by the increase of popula- 
 tion to live in the social state, retains the predatory 
 instincts of his primitive life, and therefore does not 
 uniformly respect the rights of others. But it is a transi- 
 tional phase of human development — not essential but 
 
 ^ Cf. supra, p. 13,
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK. 125 
 
 incidental. Progress is in all cases towards less govern- 
 ment ; and, " as amongst the Bushmen we find a state 
 antecedent to government, so may there be one in which 
 it shall have become extinct." Indeed such extinction is 
 inevitable, because the process of civilisation means the 
 adaptation of man to his new conditions. Man possesses 
 indefinite adaptability, and " humanity must in the end 
 become completely adapted to its conditions." 
 
 " Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity. Instead 
 of civilisation being artificial, it is a part of nature ; all of a piece 
 ■with the development of the embryo or the unfolding of a flower. 
 The modifications mankind have undergone, and are still under- 
 going, result from a law underlying the whole organic creation ; 
 and provided the human race continues, and the constitution of 
 things remains the same, these modifications must end in com- 
 pleteness. As surely as the tree becomes bulky when it stands 
 alone, and slender if one of a group ; as surely as the same 
 creature assumes the difi'erent forms of cart-horse and race-horse, 
 according as its habits demand strength or speed, ... so surely 
 must the human faculties be moulded into complete fitness for 
 the social state ; so surely must the things we call evil and im- 
 morality disappear ; so surely must man become perfect " (p. 65). 
 
 In the meantime, till this consummation is arrived at, 
 the State has its function. It may be defined as " men 
 voluntarily associated for mutual protection" (p. 275). 
 There is " nothing to distinguish it in the abstract from 
 any other incorporated society." Citizenship is " willingly 
 assumed," and one of the indefeasible natural rights 
 enumerated is " the right to ignore the State " — that is, 
 to " secede from " it, " to relinquish its protection, and to 
 refuse paying towards its support" (p. 250). Police 
 protection (and, he now adds with a grudge, protection 
 against external enemies) being the purpose for which the 
 State is instituted, its duty must be rigorously limited to
 
 126 HERBERT SPENCER: 
 
 this function. When it seeks to " interfere " in any other 
 way, whether it be by trying to regulate commerce or by 
 maintaining a religious establishment, by instituting poor- 
 laws or providing for national education, by imposing 
 sanitation or maintaining the currency and the postal 
 arrangements, it is transgressing its proper sphere and 
 displaying, indeed (p. 295), " an absurd and even impious 
 presumption " by taking into its own hands " matters that 
 God seems to be mismanaging," and undertaking to set 
 them right. Those in whom the power of self-restraint 
 needs educating 
 
 " must be left to the discipline of nature, and allowed to bear the 
 pains attendant on their own defect of character. The only cure 
 for imprudence is the suffering which imprudence entails. . . . 
 All interposing between humanity and the conditions of its exist- 
 ence — cushioning off consequences by poor-laws or the like — 
 serves but to neutralise the remedy and prolong the evil. Let us 
 never forget that the law is adaptation to circumstances, be they 
 what they may" (p. 353). 
 
 So again : — 
 
 " Inconvenience, suffering, and death are the penalties attached 
 by nature to ignorance as well as to incompetence — are also the 
 means of remedying these. And whoso thinks he can mend 
 matters by dissociating ignorance and its penalties, lays claim to 
 more than divine wisdom and more than divine benevolence " 
 (p. 378). 
 
 To guard ignorant men against the evils of their ignorance 
 by protecting them, for example, against quack prescrip- 
 tions, is " to divorce a cause and consequence which God 
 has joined together." What a contrast there is, he ex- 
 claims, between the " futile contrivances of men and the 
 admirable silent- working mechanisms of nature " (p. 355). 
 
 " Always towards perfection is the mighty movement — towards 
 a complete development and a more unmixed good ; subordinat-
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK. 127 
 
 ing in its universality all petty irregularities and fallings-back, 
 as the curvature of the earth subordinates mountains and valleys. 
 Even in the evils the student learns to recognise only a struggling 
 beneficence. But above all he is struck with the inherent suffic- 
 ingness of things, and with the complex simplicity of those prin- 
 ciples by which every defect is being remedied — principles that 
 show themselves alike in the self-adjustment of planetary pertur- 
 bations and in the healing of a scratched finger, in the balancing 
 of social systems and in the increased sensitiveness of a blind 
 man's ear, in the adaptation of prices to produce and in the accli- 
 matisation of a plant. Day by day he sees a further beauty, . . . 
 contemplation thus perpetually discovering to him a higher har- 
 mony and cherishing in him a deeper faith. And now, in the 
 midst of his admiration and his awe, the student shall suddenly 
 see some flippant red-tapist get upon his legs and tell the world 
 that he is going to put a patch upon nature. Here is a man who, 
 in the presence of all the wonders that encompass him, dares to 
 announce that he and certain of his colleagues have laid their 
 heads together and found out a way to improve upon the divine 
 arrangements. . . . These meddlers, these self-appointed nurses 
 to the universe, have so little faith in the laws of things and so 
 much faith in themselves that, were it possible, they would chain 
 earth and sun together lest centripetal force should fail ! Nothing 
 but a parliament-made agency can be depended on. . . . Such, 
 in essence, is the astounding creed of these creation-menders." ^ 
 
 " Astounding " is the word which most readers will be 
 inclined to apply to these and many similar passages of 
 Spencer's by reason both of their apparent heartlessness 
 and of their colossal optimism. It will be observed how, 
 along with the doctrines already referred to, Spencer 
 reproduces in his argument the deification of nature's 
 arrangements, which plays so great a part in eighteenth 
 century thought. He talks freely of " the Creator's pur- 
 pose " and " the divine idea " (which is, indeed, the title 
 of one of his chapters), and, as we have seen, of the 
 resistless march of progress carrying this idea to its 
 
 1 ' Social Statics,' p. 293 (p. 323 in the reprint of 1868).
 
 128 HERBERT SPENCER: 
 
 realisation. This deeply-rooted optimism, a relic of the 
 " natural religion " of the preceding century, Spencer 
 carries over into his later philosophy of evolution, after 
 he has dropped the theistic setting ; and though he 
 broke it down at points, as he proceeded, by in- 
 consequent admissions, he was unaware — and probably 
 many of his readers are equally unaware — how 
 much his original espousal of the theory was due to 
 the working of this optimistic teleology, and how insen- 
 sibly it inliuenced his reading of the evolutional process. 
 Progress as a beneficent necessity, complete adaptation as 
 the goal — these are the original inspiring thoughts, even 
 although they be crossed in the end by the paralysing 
 thought of " Dissolution," which reduces the cosmos to an 
 aimless cycle of alternate building up and pulling down. 
 
 It is obviously impossible in the present context to 
 criticise Spencer's political individualism. It has been 
 pointed out times without number that the theory which 
 he carries to its apotheosis is as unhistorical as it is 
 unphilosophical. The pre-social unit with his natural 
 rights never existed ; the free individual is the goal of 
 social evolution, not its starting - point. We can only 
 note, therefore, that, however salutary Spencer's later 
 protests may have been in his ' Man versus the State,' 
 as a counterpoise to crudely conceived socialistic schemes, 
 or as an invigorating discourse upon the virtues of self- 
 help, his social theory in its totality is no more than a 
 survival in the modern world. An organic theory of 
 society and the State, derived more or less remotely from 
 Hegel or from Comte, has definitely superseded the older 
 individualism, though, as time goes on, incorporating more 
 fully into itself the truths and ideals of the earlier view ; 
 for Hegel also, it may be remembered, defines the history 
 of the world as "none other than the progress of the
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK. 129 
 
 consciousness of freedom." Save for a few anarchists and 
 the new individualists who range themselves under 
 Nietzsche's banner,— individualists strangely unlike the 
 old, whose profoundest belief is in the inequality of man 
 and the right or duty of the stronger to subjugate and ex- 
 ploit his neighbour, — the conception of man as essentially 
 social, and of the State as the organ of the general will, 
 has so firmly established itself that Spencer's pamphlets 
 during the last twenty years sounded like a belated echo, 
 and he had the air, even to himself, of one crying in the 
 wilderness. The remarkable thing is that while Spencer 
 wrote a special essay on " the social organism " as far 
 back as 1860, and greatly contributed to popularise the 
 phrase, his own political thinking remained, to the end, 
 dominated by the conceptions of an abstract and un- 
 historic individualism, an essentially pre-evolutional phase 
 of thought. 
 
 The importance assigned to ' Social Statics,' and the 
 space devoted to tracing the education and life-circum- 
 stances of which it was the outcome, are justified by 
 Spencer's own statement in 1879 when he interrupted 
 the regular course of his publications to write ' The 
 Data of Ethics.' He has begun to fear, he says in the 
 Preface to that book, that health may not permit him to 
 reach ' The Principles of Ethics,' the last part of the 
 task he had marked out for himself. " This last part of 
 the task it is," he continues, " to which I regard all the 
 preceding parts as subsidiary. Written as far back as 
 1842, my first essay, consisting of letters on 'The 
 Proper Sphere of Government,' vaguely indicated what 
 I conceived to be certain general principles of right and 
 wrong in political conduct ; and from that time onwards 
 my ultimate purpose, lying behind all proximate pur- 
 poses, has been that of finding for the principles of right 
 
 I
 
 130 HERBERT SPENCER : 
 
 and wrong in conduct at large a scientific basis." In 
 similar terms a letter of the same date declares that " the 
 whole system was at the outset, and has ever continued 
 to be, a basis for a right rule of life, individual and 
 social." Besides this estimate of the place which his 
 ethical and political doctrine held in its author's scheme 
 of thought, it has already been pointed out that the 
 principles and assumptions which he elaborated in 1850 
 were of decisive influence in shaping his statement of the 
 philosophy of evolution. A closer consideration of the 
 steps by which his cosmic doctrine was reached yields 
 proof of this assertion. 
 
 The chief interest of the decade between 1850 and 
 1860 lies in the gradual evolution in Spencer's mind 
 of the idea of a system of philosophy. In the series of 
 articles published during these years, supplemented by 
 his comments in the ' Autobiography,* we can follow the 
 stages of his thought with some minuteness. To these 
 years belongs his intimacy with George Eliot and the 
 formation of lasting friendships with Lewes, Huxley, and 
 Tyndall. It was in a ramble with Lewes, in the autumn 
 of 1851, that he first met the expression, "the physio- 
 logical division of labour," which stamped firmly upon his 
 mind the analogy between biological and social evolution, 
 of which we already find traces in the ' Social Statics.' 
 His friendship with Lewes also led him to read not only 
 his friend's novels, but also his ' Biographical History of 
 Philosophy,' from which he derived his first acquaintance 
 with the general course of philosophical thought. " Up 
 to that time," he says significantly, " questions of philo- 
 sophy had not attracted my attention." And although, 
 by his theory of benevolence and justice in ' Social Stat- 
 ics,' he has shown his aptitude for psychological reflec-
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK. 131 
 
 tion, psychology likewise (apart from some phrenological 
 speculations) had remained outside his interests. " I had 
 not, up to 1851, made the phenomena of mind a subject 
 of deliberate study." The next step in the organisation 
 of his ideas, and one to which Spencer consistently 
 attributed decisive importance, was his coming across the 
 formula in which Von Baer summed up the development 
 through which every plant and animal passes — the 
 change from homogeneity to heterogeneity. It obviously 
 expresses in a more generalised form the aspect of organic 
 growth already described by the economic metaphor of 
 division of labour. Formulating the nature of the 
 transformation in a purely structural instead of a func- 
 tional way, and presenting, as Spencer says, " a more 
 graphic image " of the change, it naturally suggested the 
 transference of the conception to the inorganic world. 
 But before this idea definitely took shape in his mind, 
 Spencer's newly awakened psychological interest led him 
 to extend the idea of development to the mental sphere. 
 He had long before given in his adhesion to the La- 
 marckian doctrine of the transmutation of species, moved 
 rather by a species of anti-supernatural instinct than by 
 adequate evidence in support of it; and in 1852, in a 
 short essay on ' The Development Hypothesis,' he had 
 publicly professed his faith in the theory, basing it upon 
 the cumulative effect of functionally produced modifica- 
 tions. In the ' Principles of Psychology ' (which occu- 
 pied him during 1854 and 1855) mind, animal and 
 human, is treated in close connection with its bodily 
 conditions ; and the biological idea of adaptation is trans- 
 ferred to the mental sphere, progressive adaptation being 
 defined as increasing adjustments of inner subjective re- 
 lations to outer objective relations ; while the correspond- 
 ence between the two is described as advancing from the
 
 132 HERBERT SPENCER : 
 
 homogeneous to the heterogeneous, and as increasing in 
 speciality and complexity. It is significant that the 
 closing paragraph of the ' Psychology ' emphatically re- 
 peats the beHef of ' Social Statics ' in the " beneficent 
 necessity displayed in the progressive evolution of the 
 correspondence between the organism and its environ- 
 ment." This correspondence "must become more and 
 more complete " ; " the life must become higher and the 
 happiness greater." The admission of free-will, it is 
 argued, would interrupt this " advance to a higher har- 
 mony." " There would be an arrest of that grand pro- 
 gression which is now bearing humanity onwards to 
 perfection." 
 
 The same inspiration is revealed in the title of his 
 next important piece of work, an essay on ' Progress, its 
 Law and Cause,' which he agreed to write for ' The West- 
 minster Eeview' in the autumn of 1854. This article, 
 which states the law of evolution for the first time as a 
 law of universal application, had its origin in the stir and 
 enlargement of his ideas which accompanied the writing 
 of the ' Psychology ' ; but, owing to the breakdown which 
 followed the publication of that work, it did not appear 
 till 1857. It may be regarded, he says, as "the initial 
 instalment of the 'Synthetic Philosophy.'" Beginning 
 with the nebular hypothesis, Spencer sweeps the law with 
 a wealth of illustration through cosmic, geologic, organic, 
 and social phenomena, and concludes, exactly in Yon 
 Baer's terminology, that, " from the remotest fact which 
 science can fathom, up to the novelties of yesterday, that 
 in which progress essentially consists is the transforma- 
 tion of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous." He 
 next proceeds to ask whether the universality of the law 
 does not imply a universal cause, and this cause he finds 
 in what he calls the multiplication of effects. Every
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK. 133 
 
 cause produces more than one effect, and hence " it is an 
 inevitable corollary that through all time there has been 
 an ever-increasing complication of things." " Should the 
 nebular hypothesis ever be established, then it will 
 become manifest that the universe at large, like every 
 organism, was once homogeneous ; that, as a whole, and 
 in every detail, it has increasingly advanced towards 
 greater heterogeneity." And " thus," he concludes on 
 the old note, " progress is not an accident, not a thing 
 within himian control, but a beneficent necessity " 
 ('Essays,' i. 52). 
 
 Scarcely had he finished this essay, however, before 
 he seemed to discover a more ultimate cause of evolution 
 in the instability of the homogeneous. 
 
 "The social parts of any homogeneous aggregation are neces- 
 sarily exposed to different forces, — forces that differ either in 
 kind or amount ; and, as a corollary from the law of ' the 
 conservation of force,' it follows that unlike changes will be 
 produced in the parts thus dissimilarly acted upon." ('Essays,' 
 i. 281.) 
 
 At the same time he took occasion to supplement his 
 account of the evolutionary process by calling attention 
 to certain features which had been overlooked in the 
 previous essay. " As usual, Herbert, thinking only of 
 one thing at a time," was a frequent reproach of his 
 father's in his boyhood; and in his preoccupation with 
 the advance towards greater heterogeneity he had over- 
 looked or temporarily forgotten the fact that it is not an 
 advance towards mere heterogeneity, but is characterised 
 by what he here calls " subordinate integrations." In 
 the living being, for example, the parts become con- 
 solidated into definite organs with distinct functions, 
 which are at the same time closely united as members
 
 134 HERBERT SPENCER : 
 
 of one whole. And so we arrive at the definition of the 
 law which appears in the first edition of ' First Prin- 
 ciples'(1862):— 
 
 " Evolution is a change from an indefinite, incoherent homo- 
 geneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity, through continuous 
 differentiations and integrations" (p. 216). 
 
 The formula had not even yet, however, reached its final 
 stage of elaboration. In 1864, while working at the 
 ' Classification of the Sciences,' he awoke to the fact that, 
 in making differentiation the primary trait, he had been, 
 as it were, putting the cart before the horse. Aggregates 
 of matter must first be formed before the growth of com- 
 plexity in their structure can be profitably considered. 
 Hence the primary phase of the process is the integration 
 of matter, a process which necessarily implies a concomi- 
 tant dissipation of motion. Accordingly, in 1867, 'First 
 Principles ' was largely recast for a second edition ; and 
 the evolution formula appeared in its final shape : — 
 
 " Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipa- 
 tion of motion, during which the matter passes from an indefinite, 
 incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity, and 
 during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel trans- 
 formation." 
 
 For our present purpose, however, the subsequent 
 elaboration of the formula is of subordinate interest ; the 
 important step was taken by Spencer in the two essays 
 referred to above. This is shown by the fact that, 
 within three months of the publication of the second, he 
 had drafted the scheme of a system in which " the con- 
 crete sciences at large should have their various classes 
 of facts presented in subordination to these universal 
 principles." Commenting in the 'Autobiography ' on the
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK. 135 
 
 nature of the advance made, Spencer characterises it as 
 a transition of the theory in his own mind from the in- 
 ductive to the deductive stage. 
 
 " With this change from the empirical to the rational, the theorem 
 passed into the region of physical science. It became now a 
 question of causes and eflfects reduced to their simple forms — a 
 question of molar and molecular forces and energies ; a question 
 of the never-ending redistribution of matter and motion con- 
 sidered under its most general aspects." 
 
 At the same time he adds — 
 
 " The indefinite idea of progress passed into the definite idea of 
 evolution when there was recognised the essential nature of the 
 change as a physically determined transformation conforming to 
 ultimate laws of force." ('Autobiography,' ii. 12.) 
 
 Both these statements are true, though in both cases 
 their implications are different from what Spencer 
 imagined. By progressively generalising the statement 
 of what happens in development so as to arrive at a 
 " graphic image " of the process, Spencer has at length 
 reduced it to a problem in mechanics. Now whatever 
 happens may unquestionably be described as a phase in 
 " the never-ending redistribution of matter and motion " ; 
 but it is quite another thing to suppose that, when we 
 look at the process or the product in that abstract way, 
 we have " recognised the essential nature of the change." 
 On the contrary, that is the least we can say of it, the 
 most abstract description we can give of it, — -a description, 
 moreover, which leaves out, as we shall see, all that we 
 ordinarily understand by evolution. And that leads to 
 Spencer's second statement regarding the substitution 
 of the idea of evolution for that of progress. There seems 
 no reason to doubt, from the whole history of the idea 
 in Spencer's mind, and from his first mode of stating it.
 
 136 HERBERT SPENCER: 
 
 that the statement of evolution was originally intended 
 to apply to the universe as a whole, " The universe at 
 large," he had said, "like every organism, was once 
 homogeneous ; as a whole, and in every detail, it has 
 unceasingly advanced towards greater heterogeneity." 
 It was this conception of one vast cosmic process, irresist- 
 ibly advancing towards a great consummation, which 
 inspired his imagination, — a consummation which might 
 not inaptly be styled, in language used by himself in 
 ' Social Statics,' the realisation of a divine idea. In par- 
 ticular, this ' beneficent necessity ' was carrying mankind 
 onwards to the goal of a perfectly adjusted human life. 
 But it soon became evident that, if the cosmic process be 
 regarded simply as redistribution of matter and motion, 
 the series of changes which we have described as Evolu- 
 tion is no more characteristic of it than the opposite 
 series of changes which may be called Dissolution. 
 
 Accordingly, in ' First Principles,' this counter process 
 is for the first time introduced, towards the close, in a 
 chapter on equilibration, in which it was pointed out that, 
 in every case, the process of evolution has its impassable 
 limit. Spencer is now driven, accordingly, to relegate his 
 goal, " the establishment of the greatest perfection and 
 the most complete happiness," to the penultimate stage 
 (that of what he calls " the moving equilibrium"), the last 
 stage of all being that complete equilibration which, in 
 the case of an organism, we call death. Unable, however, 
 to acquiesce in " universal death " as the final goal, he 
 finds refuge in the idea of " alternate eras of evolution 
 and dissolution " — " an alternation of evolution and dis- 
 solution in the totality of things." But it is perfectly 
 illegitimate to deal with " the totality of things " as a finite 
 evolving object; and if it were possible, then no such 
 resurrection as Spencer anticipates from the clash of
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK. 137 
 
 systems would be possible, for there would be only one 
 dead mass left. But, in point of fact, the two processes 
 are always going on simultaneously ; and, if we are to be 
 quite strict, neither notion has any application to the 
 ceaseless shiftings of the cosmic dust. One organism, 
 society, or system is growing towards its perfection while 
 another has entered upon the downward path. More- 
 over, when we speak of such individuals, and of their 
 perfection and evolution, we are introducing conceptions 
 which are quite irrelevant and quite unintelligible at the 
 purely mechanical standpoint. Nor can the process of 
 evolution, so regarded, be deduced from any laws of 
 matter or energy known to physicists. The hopeless 
 ambiguity of Spencer's law of the persistence of force, and 
 of his use of physical conceptions generally, has often 
 been criticised, but never so conclusively — one might 
 almost say so remorselessly — exposed as in Professor 
 Ward's ' Agnosticism and Naturalism.' 
 
 The projected interpretation of " the detailed phenomena 
 of life and mind and society in terms of matter, motion, 
 and force," and the consequent " development of science 
 into an organised aggregate of direct and indirect deduc- 
 tions from the persistence of force," was thus, ah initio, 
 foredoomed to failure. In the case of life, there is the 
 belated but none the less significant and courageous 
 confession of Spencer himself, in the chapter on " The 
 Dynamic Element in Life," added to the revised edition 
 of the ' Principles of Biology ' in 1898. " We are obliged 
 to confess," he says, " that life in its essence cannot be 
 conceived in physico - chemical terms. The processes 
 which go on in living things are incomprehensible as re- 
 sults of any physical actions known to us " (pp, 117, 120). 
 
 Of his own previous definition of life he does not 
 hesitate to say that, while it gives due attention to the
 
 138 HERBERT SPENCER: 
 
 connections among the manifestations, " no attention has 
 been paid to that which is manifested. Its vahie is 
 comparable to that of a cheque on which no amount is 
 written." We are forced, therefore, to conchide that 
 " that which gives the substance to our idea of life is a 
 certain unspecified principle of activity. The dynamic 
 element in life is its essential element." A similar diffi- 
 culty met him in the case of mind or consciousness, the 
 specific nature of which was clearly irreducible to 
 material terms. In this case, Spencer sought to evade 
 the difficulty by falling back upon the modern principle 
 of psycho-physical parallelism, but at the cost of import- 
 ing into his system a dualism quite inconsistent with the 
 promises held out in * First Principles ' of a deduction 
 from the persistence of force. To note these inevitable 
 failures implies no desire to vindicate a supposed mirac- 
 ulous creation of certain life-germs, as an appendix to 
 the material world, at some given moment in the past. 
 Creation in such a sense does not enter into science, and 
 it forms no part of modern philosophy. What is meant 
 is simply that, if we attempt to " interpret the phenomena 
 of life and mind and society in terms of matter, motion, 
 and force," instead of reaching, as Spencer contended, 
 " the essential nature " of the phenomena, we leave 
 that nature out altogether. And this he ultimately 
 confessed. 
 
 It may seem a strange thing to say that the ideas of 
 the apostle of evolution were, philosophically speaking, 
 of a pre-evolutional type. But, after all, it is not more of 
 a paradox than what so many commentators have demon- 
 strated of Kant, that the author of the critical philosophy 
 was still, on many points, in bondage to the dogmas of 
 pre-critical thought. Spencer's idea of explaining all 
 phenomena in terms of molar and molecular forces is akin
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK. 139 
 
 to his treatment of religion ; or rather, the latter is a special 
 case of the general point of view. Eeligion is a phenomenon 
 in which a historical development is demonstrable to- 
 wards worthier conceptions and nobler feelings ; but, 
 although recognising this development, Spencer ends by 
 finding the essence of religion in the acknowledgment of 
 an unknowable power — a residuary belief which he finds 
 common to all forms of the religious consciousness. To 
 some extent, it may be said, Spencer emancipates himself 
 from his own logic and seeks a law of development ; but 
 the tendency thus exemplified, to find " the essential 
 nature " in rudimentary abstractions like matter and 
 motion, or in some feature which remains the same 
 through all the stages of a process, is really to thrust us 
 always back upon a bare beginning or an identical 
 element, and so, in effect, to deny the reality of evolution 
 altogether. Spencer congratulated himself, as we have 
 seen, upon the substitution of the definite idea of 
 evolution for the indefinite idea of progress ; but few 
 self-congratulations have ever been more premature, and 
 already, in the second edition of * Pirst Principles ' 
 (p. 286), there is a paragraph intimating that the term 
 is " open to grave objections," and is only used, faute de 
 mieux, because it is " now so widely recognised as signify- 
 ing sundry of the most conspicuous varieties " of the 
 process, that it would be impossible to substitute another 
 word. What he professed to seek was " a word which 
 has no teleological implications" ('Autob.,* i. 100). Per- 
 haps he meant by that phrase adaptation by an external 
 designer; in any case he failed to see that his own 
 cosmic conception, at least up to its penultimate stage, 
 was through and through teleological ; and that, without 
 a teleology of some sort, there can be no talk of develop- 
 ment, but only of indifferent and meaningless change.
 
 140 HERBERT SPENCER : 
 
 It was undoubtedly, as we have seen, the teleological 
 implications of the process, especially in an ethical and 
 social regard, which from the beginning cast their 
 glamour over Spencer himself. As late as 1882, in a 
 postscript to his speech in New York, he speaks of 
 Nature as leading men unknowingly or in spite of them- 
 selves to fulfil her ends — " Nature being one of our ex- 
 pressions for the ultimate cause of things, and the end, 
 remote when not proximate, being the highest form of 
 human life." And only in the edition of 1900 was a 
 sentence withdrawn from the ' First Principles ' which 
 stated that, after deducing from the persistence of force 
 all the various characteristics of evolution, " we finally 
 draw from it a warrant for the belief that evolution can 
 end only in the establishment of the greatest perfection 
 and the most complete happiness" (ed. 4, p. 517). He 
 had explained in a controversial essay that the fittest 
 who survive are not necessarily, or indeed most fre- 
 quently, the best; yet as late as 1893, in the preface to 
 the second volume of his ' Principles of Ethics,' while 
 expressing his disappointment that in this part of the 
 subject he has derived no direct aid from the general 
 doctrine of evolution, he says that indirectly it sanctions 
 certain modes of conduct by showing that they " fall 
 within the lines of an evolving humanity, are conducive 
 to a higher life, and are for this reason obligatory." So 
 impossible is it to exorcise the teleological implications 
 of the word, so meaningless would the word be without 
 them. 
 
 And if Spencer himself was to the last unconsciously 
 swayed by these implications, it was certainly, in part, to 
 the comforting suggestions of the word that the theory 
 owed its prestige in uncritical circles. Another factor 
 which helps to explain the extraordinary vogue of
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK. 141 
 
 Spencer's philosophy was its coincidence in point of 
 time with Darwin's discovery. But for the inductions 
 by which biological evolution was established as a fact, 
 it seems doubtful whether a speculative theory like that 
 of Spencer's would have commanded, in scientific and 
 general circles, the attention and acceptance which, as a 
 matter of fact, it gained. Spencer became the philosopher 
 of the new movement ; and if many of the ardent fighters 
 of its battles were probably in Darwin's case, who 
 honestly confessed that he " did not even understand 
 H. Spencer's general doctrine," ^ they were equally ready 
 to " suspect that hereafter he will be looked at as by far 
 the greatest philosopher in England, perhaps equal to 
 any that have lived." " And as the protagonists were 
 men of distinguished ability, men to whose ideas the 
 future belonged, Spencerianism became the creed to which 
 every one naturally gravitated who desired to take part 
 against obscurantism. Similar motives operated to 
 spread his fame on the Continent, where the feud between 
 " enlightenment " and " clericalism " is bitter and constant. 
 Partly, also, continental thinkers who stood above such 
 animosities (a historian like Hoffding,^ for example) were 
 impressed by the fact that here at last was an English 
 thinker who had given to the world a Weltanschauung — a 
 complete system of philosophy ; a philosophy also which 
 realised their expectations by carrying out consistently 
 the realistic traditions of English thought. 
 
 But these more or less adventitious aids are not suffi- 
 cient to explain Spencer's reputation. It is more deeply 
 based. Although his philosophical interpretation of the 
 process was radically at fault, and although he has, of 
 course, no property in the idea of evolution as such, still 
 
 1 ' Life and Letters,' iii. 193. ^ Ibid., 120. 
 
 ' 'Die Englische Philosophie,' p. 241.
 
 142 HERBERT SPENCER : 
 
 his early and independent espousal of the idea, and his 
 consistent advocacy of its universal extension at a time 
 when such views were very far from being in the air, 
 made him an intellectual force of great importance. 
 So completely has the idea passed into the fibre of our 
 thinking, that it is difficult for the men of the present 
 generation to estimate the full extent of our debt to 
 Spencer's work. And especially is this the case as the 
 philosophical defects of his own imposing structure be- 
 ■come more and more evident. The absence of the meta- 
 physico- religious element in his constitution and his 
 ignorance of preceding philosophy, both of which the 
 ' Autobiography ' so strikingly confirms, explain what a 
 critic so fair and temperate as Henry Sidgwick was fain 
 to call "the mazy inconsistency of his metaphysical results." 
 Dominated by an exclusively physical imagination, he 
 accepted as dogmas the practical assumptions of common- 
 sense. Hence, when attacked by thinkers like Green 
 and Professor Ward, although sensitive in points of 
 detail, he completely failed to appreciate the fundamental 
 defects or inconsistencies against which their criticisms 
 were directed. But it was impossible for a mind so 
 active as Spencer's, so fertile in hypotheses, and so full of 
 apt illustration, to marshal the sciences of life and man 
 under the guidance of a great idea without enriching 
 them by a wealth of luminous suggestion. In the very 
 context of the stricture quoted above Sidgwick speaks of 
 " the originality of his treatment and leading generalisa- 
 tions, the sustained vigour of his scientific imagination, 
 the patient, precise ingenuity with which he develops 
 definite hypotheses where other thinkers offer loose 
 suggestions." 
 
 What is here said of the ' Psychology ' is no less true 
 of the ' Biology ' and of his important contributions to
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK. 143 
 
 sociological theory. But besides such departmental work, 
 it was much to hold aloft in an age of specialism the 
 banner of completely unified knowledge ; and this is, 
 perhaps, after all, Spencer's chief claim to gratitude and 
 remembrance. He brought home the idea of philosophic 
 synthesis to a greater number of the Anglo-Saxon race 
 than had ever conceived the idea before. His own 
 synthesis, in the particular form he gave it, will neces- 
 sarily crumble away. He speaks of it himself, indeed, at 
 the close of ' First Principles ' (ed. 1), modestly enough 
 as a more or less rude attempt to accomplish a task 
 which can be achieved only in the remote future, and by 
 the combined efforts of many, which cannot be completely 
 achieved even then. But the idea of knowledge as a 
 coherent whole, worked out on purely natural (though 
 not, therefore, naturalistic) principles — a whole in which 
 all the facts of human experience should be included — 
 was a great idea with which to familiarise the minds of 
 his contemporaries. It is the living germ of philosophy 
 itself.
 
 EEVIEWS
 
 JONES'S PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE.^ 
 
 PPtOFESSOE JOXES has gone very thoroughly to work 
 upon Lotze, for this book — which rims to 375 
 pages — deals only with " the doctrine of thought," as 
 set forth, for the most part, in his ' Logic,' and a second 
 volume is promised which shall deal with Lotze's meta- 
 physical doctrines. Even those who are most grateful to 
 Lotze for his services to philosophy may be disposed to 
 think that this is to rate his importance too highly ; for, 
 with all his acumen, Lotze is not a philosopher of the 
 first rank. The unsystematic character of his mind for- 
 bids us to place him among the dii majores to whom 
 commentaries are rightly dedicated. It is not, however, 
 the sympathetic deference of a disciple which has induced 
 Professor Jones to devote so much attention to Lotze's 
 methods and conclusions. Lotze is used throughout as 
 an object-lesson. The conclusion which the book seeks 
 to establish is that " the main contribution of Lotze to 
 philosophic thought, the only ultimate contribution, con- 
 sists in deepening that Idealism which he sought to over- 
 throw. He yields a tergo, and as an unwilling witness, 
 an idealistic conception of the world " (Preface). The 
 
 1 A Critical Account of the Philosophy of Lotze (The Doctrine of 
 Thought). By Henry Jones, M.A., Professor of Moral Philosophy in the 
 University of Glasgow. The following critical notice appeared in * Mind,' 
 October 1895.
 
 148 Jones's philosophy of lotze. 
 
 purpose of the book is thus not only to disarm Lotze's 
 criticism of Hegelian idealism by convicting him of 
 inconsistencies, but also to re -inculcate Hegel's funda- 
 mental tenet. It may be doubted whether this is the 
 best way of approaching either Lotze or Idealism ; for 
 it necessarily thrusts into the background the elements 
 of truth underlying Lotze's criticism which gave it its 
 vitality, and which Professor Jones seems now and 
 again to acknowledge. On the other hand, the indirect 
 method of approaching the idealistic position involves so 
 much controversial detail that we do not get beyond a 
 very general statement of the position itself. But as a 
 living contribution to the philosophical problem as that 
 is shaping itself at present in English-speaking countries, 
 the volume possesses a distinct importance of its own, and 
 it is doubtless in this light, rather than as a historical 
 monograph upon Lotze, that the author would like his 
 book to be regarded. Needless to say that Professor 
 Jones brings critical insight to the destructive part of his 
 work, and force and fervour to the constructive part which 
 supplies the nerve of the whole. The whole book is 
 vigorous and remarkably fresh, and the emphasis laid in 
 the last chapter upon the " frankly realistic " nature of 
 his own theory gives Professor Jones's presentation of 
 Absolute Idealism a degree of originality which differen- 
 tiates it from the ordinary versions of English Hegelian- 
 ism that descend from Green. 
 
 The first chapter, which deals with " The Main Prob- 
 lem of Lotze's Philosophy," takes a general view of Lotze's 
 historical position in relation to the main currents of 
 thought during the century, and gives some account of 
 his chief philosophical contentions, the motives which 
 underlay them, and the schools or tendencies against 
 which they were directed. It is so well done that the
 
 Jones's philosophy of lotze. 149 
 
 ordinary reader will regret that more of the like is not 
 vouchsafed him ; the remaining chapters plunge at once 
 into " the doctrine of thought," and are sufficiently 
 stiff reading. As Professor Jones points out in this 
 chapter, it is as a critic of the two dominant tendencies 
 of the century that Lotze possesses historical importance. 
 He criticises, on the one hand, the Naturalism or Material- 
 ism which was so confidently propounded in the middle 
 of the century as the philosophical outcome of science, 
 and, on the other hand, the claims of " pure thought " — 
 what he considered to be the exclusive intellectualism of 
 dialectical idealism and its inadequate provision for the 
 spiritual needs of the individual. To say, however, that 
 Lotze " sets himself against the two great constructive 
 movements of modern thought on behalf of the contents of 
 the ordinary consciousness," ^ is rather an unfair way 
 of stating the case ; and, indeed, Professor Jones admits 
 that this " may seem to be a hard saying," and even that 
 " taken absolutely it is not true." He supplies himself 
 a more generous estimate when he says, a little farther 
 on, that "Lotze has avoided the one-sided development 
 of abstract views, placed himself at the point of collision 
 of the primary interests of human life " ; or again, " It 
 is no small honour to Lotze that, in an age which 
 was given over to abstract constructions of man and the 
 world, he stood almost alone protesting against the rash 
 haste which secured unity by sacrificing its content." In 
 the light of these admissions, the original statement 
 would be more correct if, for the words which Professor 
 Jones italicises, we substitute others and read the sent- 
 ence thus : Lotze set himself against the two great 
 constructive movements of modern thought on behalf of 
 elements of experience which they alike neglect. It is his 
 ^ The italicB are in the original.
 
 150 Jones's philosophy of lotze. 
 
 massive protest against the sacrifice of " man's inalienable 
 and highest aspirations " (as he terms them in the 
 ' Microcosmus '), combined with his skilful exposure of the 
 weak places of systems that would override our deep- 
 est needs, to which he owes his honourable place in the 
 history of nineteenth-century thought. By his undaunted 
 reassertion of the fundamental truth of the view of the 
 world implied in moral or spiritual experience, he re- 
 inspired confidence in many who felt the consequences of 
 Materialism and a deified Logic to be almost equally 
 disastrous, but who had been intimidated by the assur- 
 ance with which the system-makers promulgated their 
 conclusions. And if, as the century draws to a close, 
 there is a very general and growing recognition of the 
 limitations of the scientific point of view, and if Absolute 
 Idealism, on the other hand, in the person of Professor 
 Jones and others, endeavours to dissociate itself from the 
 abstractions of " Panlogismus," and acknowledges more 
 freely the defects of many statements that have passed 
 current, — this result is due in no small degree to Lotze's 
 patient work between 1840 and 1880, a period of forty 
 years during which he must often have seemed to himself 
 and to others like the voice of one crying in the wilder- 
 ness. 
 
 In point of fact, he has exercised a more pervasive 
 influence than usually falls to the lot of any one who is 
 not a thinker of first-rate originality and genius. No 
 doubt Lotze has been enlisted as an ally, or rather 
 adopted as a champion, by many representatives of what 
 Professor Jones calls " the popular and theological con- 
 sciousness," and it is not to be denied that the curiously 
 unsystematic character of Lotze's mind, and his habit of 
 balancing conflicting possibilities without indicating any 
 definite conclusion, give him at times the air of falling
 
 Jones's philosophy of lotze. 151 
 
 back upon popular thought. But it has to be remem- 
 bered that what Lotze means to defend is not the specific 
 formuhe of any accepted creed or system, but only the 
 ethical or spiritual convictions that underlie its dogmas, 
 and of which perchance these dogmas may be a very 
 imperfect expression. To put it even more generally, it 
 is simply the spiritual view of the world for whose safety 
 he is concerned. Similarly Lotze's revolt against 
 Panlogism and his insistence on the part played by the 
 feelings, both in the structure of reality and in our 
 reconstructive estimate of it, has no doubt favoured the 
 development of a type of theological thought which 
 seeks to fence off the territory of religion from reason 
 altogether, and thereby ingeniously evades an answer to 
 the question of the metaphysical truth or untruth of the 
 doctrines it teaches. But this divorce of the ethical 
 or religious from the rational can hardly be considered 
 part of Lotze's own programme. He has left on record 
 in many passages his appreciation of the effort of 
 speculative idealism, and if that idealism was really, 
 as he says, in pursuit of " the supreme and not wholly 
 unattainable goal of science," then there is no part 
 of experience from which reason can be, as it were, 
 warned off. But of course the historical consequences of 
 a doctrine may always be fairly produced in evidence 
 against it, and, so far, Professor Jones is quite within his 
 rights in pointing out the dangers involved in Lotze's 
 positions, or at least in his way of stating them. 
 
 But it is time to pass from these generalities to 
 the precise thesis of Professor Jones's book. The points 
 in Lotze's doctrine of thought on which Professor Jones 
 lays most stress — and which he sets himself to controvert 
 — are (1) the subjectivity of thought, and (2) its merely 
 formal or instrumental function in our experience.
 
 152 Jones's philosophy of lotze. 
 
 Under the first head, he refers to the numerous passages 
 in which Lotze insists that while our thoughts are valid 
 or true of things — correspond to things — they yet are 
 not the things themselves. "The things themselves do 
 not pass into knowledge ; they only awaken in us ideas 
 which are not things." " We may exalt the intelligence 
 of more perfect beings above our own as high as we 
 please ; but so long as we desire to attach any rational 
 meaning to it, it will never he the thing itself, but only an 
 aggregate of ideas about the thing." To condemn or dis- 
 parage knowledge on account of this necessary subjectivity 
 is, however, according to Lotze, quite unjustifiable, unless 
 we assume that the function of knowledge is not to know 
 things but to be them. In a sense, Professor Jones ad- 
 mits the obvious truth of these considerations ; but at the 
 same time he intimates that Lotze's way of stating the 
 case makes "the rift between thought and its objects 
 final." But the two points mentioned above are too 
 closely connected to be kept definitely separate in ex- 
 position, and the central part of the book, after the two 
 introductory chapters, is devoted rather to the second — 
 that is to say, to a critical analysis of Lotze's limitation 
 of thought to a formal or instrumental function in our 
 experience. Thought, according to Lotze, is, as Professor 
 Jones puts it, " only a single part or element or faculty of 
 mind, occupying a restricted place amongst several others, 
 which co-operate with it in the production of the contents 
 of our intelligent life " (p. 5 0). More particularly, thought 
 is dependent upon sense and an " unconscious psychical 
 mechanism" for its content. Again, the feelings and 
 emotions are absolutely irreducible to thoughts or concep- 
 tions: so much so that, as Lotze says, "it is possible 
 that even divine intelligence would find nothing in the 
 conception of knowledge alone that should necessitate
 
 Jones's philosophy of lotze. 153 
 
 feeling to issue out of it." It is to feeling that we owe 
 the consciousness of the worth which objects have for us. 
 Feeling, as the source of our judgment of value, thus takes 
 precedence of cognition, for the Good is a higher category 
 than the True. Indeed it may be said that to feeling we 
 owe the ideal of knowledge itself — the conception of an 
 all-comprehensive and harmonious whole, — and feeling 
 also awakens the impulse to seek it. Finally, thought 
 yields only hypothetical necessity ; absolute or uncondi- 
 tional necessity is given only in the immediate certainty 
 of aesthetic and moral conviction. " It is not pure in- 
 telligence, whether we call it understanding or reason, 
 that dictates to us those assumptions which we regard as 
 inviolable ; it is everywhere the whole mind, at once 
 thinking, feeling, and passing moral judgments, which, 
 out of the full completeness of its nature, produces in us 
 those unspoken first principles to which our perception 
 seeks to subordinate the content of experience." " The 
 fact that there is truth at all cannot in itself be under- 
 stood, and is only comprehensible in a world the whole 
 nature of which depends upon the principle of the Good " 
 (' Microcosmus,' Bk. ix. c. 5). Professor Jones sum- 
 marises the position thus : " The conception that thought 
 depends upon a foreign source for its data lies at the root 
 of the whole attempt of Lotze to limit its powers. It 
 leads him, in fact, to share the material of thought 
 between feeling on the one side and sensation on the 
 other. Feeling supplies it with the ideals which inspire 
 and guide knowledge, and which express, although in- 
 definitely, the harmonious totality of experience ; and 
 sensation supplies it with the material out of which is 
 elaborated our world of sensuous objects" (p. 63). And 
 he points out a parallelism in some respects between 
 Lotze's Feeling and Kant's Fieason, feeling being for
 
 154 Jones's philosophy of lotze. 
 
 Lotze the source of our moral and religious ideals. But 
 he considers the dualism of Lotze's doctrine more dangerous, 
 inasmuch as it leads (or has led historically) to the sub- 
 jugation of intelligence to feeling, to despair of philosophy 
 and an appeal to faith and " the intuitions of the heart." 
 
 After this analysis of Lotze's doctrine, the third chapter 
 proceeds to redargue the position so far as concerns the 
 account given of the relation between perception and 
 conception. Attention is called at the outset to some 
 of Lotze's metaphors. Thought is "a tool," or, again, 
 thinking is the path we take to the hill-top ; it is the 
 circuit we are compelled to make in consequence of the 
 position of the human mind, not at the centre of things, 
 but " somewhere in the extreme ramifications of reality." 
 By thinking we succeed in reconstructing the real world ; 
 we do get our view from the hill-top. But " the act 
 of thinking can claim only subjective significance. . . . 
 All the processes which we go through in the forming of 
 conceptions, in classification, in our logical constructions, 
 are subjective processes of our thought, and not processes 
 which take place in things." According to Lotze, however, 
 these subjective processes do in the end enable us to reach 
 an objective result, and Professor Jones describes his atti- 
 tude as an attempt to " strike a middle path between the 
 Scepticism which severs knowledge and reality and the 
 Idealism which seemed to him to identify them." The 
 remainder of the chapter is intended to prove the im- 
 possibility of such a via media. 
 
 The specific function of thought, according to Lotze, 
 is " to reduce the coincidence of our ideas to coher- 
 ence." It does this " by adding to the reproduction 
 or severance of a connection in ideas the accessory 
 notion of a ground for their coherence or non-coherence." 
 It thus converts an associative into a reflective or rational 
 experience. This leads Professor Jones to ask what is
 
 JONES S PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 155 
 
 the nature of the relation which exists between the 
 associative and the thinking form of consciousness. 
 " Does thought produce the principles which give co- 
 herence to the contents of our experience, or does it 
 only discover them in that experience ? Is the original 
 datum of thought a genuine manifold with no inherent 
 connections, or is there in truth no such thing as a 
 manifold, but only what appears to be a manifold, because 
 the principles of unity within it are latent or merely 
 implicit ? " (p. 84). He finds Lotze's answer " ambiguous, 
 if not inconsistent," and it may be said at once that 
 he lays his hand here upon serious weaknesses in Lotze's 
 statement. The last sixteen pages of this chapter form 
 a very cogent piece of reasoning, as well as an admirable 
 piece of philosophical writing. Professor Jones succeeds,. 
 I think, in showing that Lotze wavers between a repre- 
 sentation of the datum " now as a mere meaningless 
 state of consciousness, and now as a world of objects 
 related in space and time." "According to one view, 
 so much is supplied to thought that nothing is left ta 
 it except to ' sift ' the rich content of perceptive ex- 
 perience and rearrange it, without adding anything to 
 it except the reasons for its combinations. Thought,, 
 on this view, is formal and receptive, and its only 
 work is that of reflection. It presents the old world 
 over again, but in the new light of an ordering principle. 
 According to the other view, it is only through the inter- 
 vention of thought that there are either ideas or an intel- 
 ligible world at all. It arrests the shifting panorama of 
 subjective states of consciousness, objectifies and fixes 
 them so as to give them meaning, and then relates them 
 into a systematic world of knowledge. On this view, every- 
 thing, except the absolutely meaningless subjective data, 
 is due to the spontaneous activity of thought. In other 
 words, thought, instead of being receptive and formal, is
 
 156 Jones's philosophy of lotze. 
 
 essentially constructive, the cause on account of which 
 alone there can be either ideas or objects, or connections 
 between them " (pp. 96, 97). 
 
 Now it is plain enough that Lotze is here working at 
 a real problem ; but every careful student of his ' Logic ' 
 must admit that in trying to articulate a theory of 
 what actually happens, he involves himself in serious 
 confusion. Professor Jones is, in my opinion, substan- 
 tially right when he finds that the root of this confusion 
 is " the assumption that the first datum of knowledge is 
 the subjective state, or the change in consciousness con- 
 sequent upon the varying stimuli arising from the outer 
 world, and that the first act of thought is to objectify 
 this subjective. His whole doctrine rests upon the psy- 
 chological hypothesis that what we first knoio, indefinitely 
 enough perhaps, is a subjective state, and that the first 
 act of thought is to make this state in ourselves repre- 
 sentative of an outward object. The subjective is pro- 
 jected, reified, posited, so as to become an object " (p. 105). 
 As against this. Professor Jones successfully maintains 
 that, just as we do not infer the existence of a seen 
 object from physiological changes in our brain or nerves, 
 but, on the contrary, infer these processes because we 
 have first seen the object, so, although it is true that con- 
 sciousness as a matter of fact must change in order that 
 we may know the object which incited the change, that 
 " does not prove that we first know the change in ourselves 
 and then infer the object. On the contrary, the first in 
 the order of events is again the last in the order of 
 thought. ... In the order of knowledge the objective 
 comes first. . . . The reality first given to us indefinitely, 
 opens out upon us into differences, and sunders into the 
 primary distinctions of subjective and objective. But we 
 are not entitled, on account of the fundamental character
 
 Jones's philosophy of lotze. 157 
 
 of this distinction, to forget or deny the unity of the 
 reality in which the distinction takes place ; nor is there 
 any justification for fixing a complete gap between the 
 subjective and the objective, and compelling thought in 
 some unknowable way either to objectify the former or 
 a part of it, or to leap blindly from one world into the 
 other, from the sphere of mere subjective states to that of 
 external facts corresponding to them. ... If we begin 
 with the purely subjective, we must end there. . . . 
 Lotze himself nowhere explains this extraordinary pro- 
 cess of seizing upon a mere change in consciousness, 
 flinging it, or a part of it, into a sphere in which it can 
 confront the self as a not-self, and endowing it with a 
 quasi-independent existence. Nor is it explicable, . . . 
 for in order to begin at all, we must already have an 
 object" (pp. 105-113). 
 
 I think it can hardly be denied that Lotze's account 
 of the objectification of the subjective as the first operation 
 of thought, converting impressions into ideas, lays him 
 open to this criticism, and is, in point of fact, funda- 
 mentally misleading. It is an attempt, in an account of 
 knowledge, to get behind the fact of knowledge altogether, 
 to explam how that which is not in any sense knowledge 
 — " nothing but a state of consciousness, a mood of our- 
 selves," a " mere internal movement," a " meaningless 
 change in the state of the soul " — is transformed into 
 knowledge, and comes to have significance or cognitive 
 value for the subject in which it takes place. Now if 
 thought is to objectify or in any way to deal with these 
 subjective states, it must have some knowledge or aware- 
 ness of them as such ; and that implies the fact of 
 knowledge as already existing. It is indeed obviously 
 impossible for us to place ourselves outside of this fact 
 and explain how knowledge of any sort is possible.
 
 158 Jones's philosophy of lotze. 
 
 Nothing is more certain than that " the miracle of know- 
 ledge " has, from a logical and ultimate point of view, 
 simply to be accepted. As Professor James puts it 
 (' Psychology,' ii. 8) : " In his dumb awakening to the 
 consciousness of something there, a mere this as yet (or 
 something for which even the term this would perhaps 
 be too discriminative, and the intellectual acknowledg- 
 ment of which would be better expressed by the bare 
 interjection ' lo ! ') the infant encounters an object in 
 which (though it be given in a pure sensation) all the 
 categories of the understanding are contained. . . . Here 
 the young knower meets and greets his world ; and the 
 miracle of knowledge bursts forth, as Voltaire says, as 
 much in the infant's lowest sensation as in the highest 
 achievement of a Newton's brain." From a physiological 
 or psychological standpoint, we may, of course, say that 
 the miracle bursts forth on the occasion of certain 
 antecedent processes ; but to ask how these processes 
 give rise to the unique relation of knowledge is to 
 involve ourselves in a hopeless hysteron proteron. To 
 enquire how there is such a fact as knowledge at all, 
 may indeed be said to be the ultimate form of the type 
 of enquiry which Lotze so often indicates — the desire to 
 know how being is made. To say that " thought " creates 
 knowledge out of mental states unreferred, is a highly 
 misleading way of saying that knowledge in the finite 
 consciousness depends upon organic stimulus. Such 
 " mental states " are the hypothetical result of the 
 organic stimulus, interposed between that stimulus and 
 the mental reaction in the shape of attention ; but even 
 psychology can say nothing of these hypothetical states 
 beyond consigning them to the convenient receptacle of 
 the sub - conscious. The desire to explain the actual 
 passage from the organic to the conscious, to catch
 
 Jones's philosophy of lotze. 159 
 
 nature in the act, as it were, — half in and half out, as 
 Dr Stirling somewhere puts it, — is probably at the root 
 of theories of objectification like Lotze's, but the inter- 
 position of unreferred states does not really help to 
 elucidate the transition, or to ease in any way the accept- 
 ance of the miracle of knowledge. 
 
 The consequence of this false start on Lotze's part is 
 that at one time he talks as if the whole intelligible 
 world were the work of thought, superinduced upon a 
 meaningless datum ; at another time he speaks of thought 
 as a purely formal function, which receives from percep- 
 tion a world of objects in space and time, and which is 
 limited to the reflective discovery of the grounds of the 
 coherence of what is already associatively combined for 
 it. These are the two views which Professor Jones 
 signalised in the passage quoted above, and it is plain 
 that they are the same two views which we find imper- 
 fectly reconciled in Kant's account of the synthesis of 
 imagination. Lotze's " unconscious psychical mechanism," 
 which prepares the data of sense for the advent of 
 reflective thought, is just the " blind but indispensable 
 function of the soul," which plays so important a part 
 in the Kantian exposition. And it seems to me that 
 Professor Jones's method with Lotze here may be 
 instructively illustrated by the divergent views which 
 commentators have taken of this part of the Kantian 
 theory. According to one interpretation of Kant, objec- 
 tivity, order, and connection are first introduced by the 
 categories into the formless manifold of sense ; the 
 apperceptive unity consciously acting through these 
 functions seems thus actually to make the world we 
 know. This is the impression we carry away from much 
 of Green's writing, and to this view, if I am not mistaken, 
 Dr Caird's first commentary lent some countenance.
 
 160 Jones's philosophy of lotze. 
 
 Dr Stirling's ' Text-book to Kant,' on the other hand, 
 largely in a spirit of polemic against the subjectivity of this 
 view, laid undivided stress upon the preparatory work of 
 imagination, to the extent of apparently making the 
 whole work of thought otiose, a " stamping " of connec- 
 tions already given. From this point of view he ended 
 by characterising Kant's whole scheme of the categories 
 as a laborious " superfetation." Dr Caird, in the second 
 edition of his Commentary, gives a more discriminat- 
 ing account of Kant's real meaning by emphasising the 
 words which Kant himself italicises, namely, that the 
 synthesis of the imagination, although " blind " inas- 
 much as it does not bring the categories consciously into 
 play, yet takes place according to the categories. The 
 work of the reflective understanding is simply to bring 
 to explicit consciousness the principles in which the 
 associative or pre - rational consciousness has been un- 
 consciously proceeding. Neither in Kant nor in Lotze, 
 however, is this distinction between the associative and 
 the rational consciousness drawn with sufficient clearness 
 and breadth. I know no place where it is so satisfactorily 
 worked out as by Professor Laurie in his ' Metaphysica 
 Nova et Vetusta.' Professor Laurie employs the apt term 
 Attuition or the attuent mind to designate the receptive 
 consciousness of objects, and of the relations between 
 objects, possessed by the higher animals or by a child 
 before the emergence of active Pteason in the strict sense 
 of that term. Eeason converts attuits or passive recepts 
 into actively grasped percepts, and in its search for 
 grounds transforms (some instances of) sequence into 
 causal connections. In general, it makes possible the 
 beginnings of science, the beginnings of our human 
 knowledge of a stable system of things. It will not be 
 denied that this pre-rational consciousness exists ; and
 
 Jones's philosophy of lotze. 161 
 
 (although the life of reason in every case rises from it as 
 a basis) the distinction between the two can hardly, it 
 seems to me, be too sharply drawn. The two lives are 
 on different planes, and there is no passage from the one 
 to the other save by a leap. The presence of the reason- 
 impulse means all the possibilities of science, — it means 
 morality, art, and religion, and all the possibilities of 
 human history ; its absence means the absence of all 
 these. But the attuent consciousness, although without 
 the formative impulse of reason it does not possess the 
 notion of objectivity and truth which gives rise to 
 science, is very far from being limited to a succession of 
 purely subjective states or atomic sensations. It receives 
 images of objects which it distinguishes from one anotljer, 
 and some of which it comes to associate together. This 
 Lotze sees clearly enough, and hence he attributes so 
 much to sense and the unconscious mechanism, and 
 apparently leaves so little for thought to do. Professor 
 Jones is perhaps hardly just — or, let us say, hardly 
 generous — to Lotze's intention here ; his criticism some- 
 what resembles Dr Stirling's method with Kant. He 
 beats Lotze up and down the field, thrusts him back 
 upon his " meaningless changes in the state of the soul," 
 quotes his acknowledgment that thought is necessary to 
 objectify these, and then claims that he has surrendered 
 his whole position and admitted the presence of thought 
 in perception from the very first and throughout the whole 
 process. Or if this is not granted, he insists that Lotze 
 reduces thought to an otiose appendage of sense. The 
 success which attends this method of criticism is due, 
 as we have seen, to Lotze's blundering attempt to get 
 behind knowledge altogether and describe how " impres- 
 sions " are converted into " ideas." But if we disregard 
 this and look at the facts as they are, we are bound to 
 
 L
 
 162 Jones's philosophy of lotze. 
 
 admit that the sensuous and associative stage does exist, 
 and so does the rational. Lotze expresses the difference 
 between the two by saying that in the latter thought has 
 supervened, affirming and organising. This may not be 
 an unexceptionable, but surely it is a fairly legitimate, 
 way of stating the difference, seeing that Lotze always 
 means by thought the reflective, consciously ratiocinative 
 function, the logical understanding. It is the case that 
 thought, so understood, adds nothing but its own form to 
 the sense-matter presented to it, and that many of the 
 connections which it establishes among sense-objects are 
 merely reaffirmed or actively taken possession of. But, 
 even so, the imposition of this form is surely all- 
 important ; it is the first condition of an intelligible 
 world. And there are, besides, notions of reason which 
 cannot be said to be given in sense at all, such as 
 those of cause and end. Lotze signalises the first as 
 constituting in an especial sense the form of reason, when 
 he says that thought has to convert coincidence into 
 coherence ; sense only knows h after a, reason knows h 
 through a or because of a. 
 
 Professor Jones makes it a general objection to Lotze 
 that " the same series of processes seem to be repeated 
 upon two different levels, once by feeling or experience 
 and once by thought" (p. 93). But this is exactly what 
 happens. Moreover, the reproach seems out of place in 
 the mouth of one who professes a general allegiance to 
 Hegel ; for, according to Hegel, all advance is simply 
 repetition of the same form at different stages. Professor 
 Jones would probably reply that it is just because Lotze 
 does not take the associative and the rational conscious- 
 ness as different stages of the same life or the same 
 world, that he finds his statement of the case objection- 
 able. Indeed this is what he does say : " The world of
 
 Jones's philosophy op lotze. 163 
 
 sense and the world of thought correspond point by 
 point [i.e., in Lotze's account] ; but Lotze does not try 
 to furnish any reason for this correspondence and 
 mutual adaptability. If he had supplied such a reason, 
 the worlds of thought and sense would have become 
 species in a universal, to use his language, or different 
 stages in the evolution of a single principle of reason, 
 to use the language of idealism." " We might expect 
 the simple conclusion that because the higher is possible 
 only if it is also in the lower, therefore it is in the 
 lower, and the lower is only an elementary form of the 
 higher" (pp. 99, 100). Now I am not concerned to 
 defend Lotze's way of stating the case. I have already 
 admitted and emphasised his grave initial error. I will 
 go farther, and add that he frequently does seem to 
 leave sense and thought side by side or over against 
 one another as unrelated opposites. He treats the laws 
 of thought — the conditions of the thinkable — as if they 
 were written upon the sky of some abstract heaven, 
 and had no inherent relation to reality. He repeatedly 
 stops to give fresh expression to his astonishment that 
 the world is responsible to thought at all, and not, ah 
 initio and essentially, unthinkable. Such preposterous 
 astonishment certainly seems to imply that the mutual 
 adaptability is the result of a happy accident; and 
 so far Lotze falls behind Kant, who also emphasised 
 the mutual adaptation of sense and thought, but 
 adduced it as evidence that the world has its origin in 
 intelligence as regards its matter no less than as regards 
 the formal categories. To speak as Lotze does is 
 certainly, so far as language goes, to divorce reality from 
 intelligence and to leave it standing as an " unknown 
 external something," as " unknown things and processes," 
 as " things themselves inaccessible to observation which
 
 164 Jones's philosophy of lotze. 
 
 we suppose to underlie our sensuous perception," as " an 
 invisible something which we suppose to be outside us." 
 These expressions, all culled from Lotze's ' Logic,' prove 
 sufficiently that he commits what I agree with Professor 
 Jones in considering the unpardonable philosophic sin — 
 the assertion of the thing-in-itself as an unknown and 
 unknowable kernel of reality. In the light of this 
 sinister consequence, one can understand Professor Jones's 
 jealousy of Lotze's procedure in delegating to sense and 
 the psychical mechanism one after another of the functions 
 of " thought." He seems to Professor Jones to hand 
 over these functions to an essentially non-rational process 
 and to leave thought with its occupation gone, an 
 uncalled - for excrescence on the self - acting system of 
 sense. This danger does lurk, we may admit, in Lotze's 
 general habit of thought, but it does not necessarily 
 attach to the distinction between the work of sense and 
 association and the subsequent work of reflective thought. 
 One may emphasise the work done by the attuent con- 
 sciousness, and even speak of " thought " as a formal 
 function which supervenes upon a ready-made world, 
 without in the least intending to deny that the world of 
 attuition is a preformation of reason in sense. Professor 
 Laurie, for example, after making this distinction the 
 pivot of his whole exposition, finds no difficulty in 
 concluding " that the outer is not merely an x negating 
 my self - consciousness, but that, on the contrary, it is 
 Reason externalised, and that, as universal reason, it is> 
 one with the moments of my finite reason. ... It 
 would be a strange thing indeed if the energy of Reason 
 seizing the external found that the one did not answer 
 the other — that the datum of sense defeated the process 
 of dialectic, that the plastic power of Reason encountered 
 material which it failed to mould. It would be equally 
 strange if the datum of sense failed to find its knower
 
 JONES S PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 165 
 
 and interpreter, if it for ever remained what it appears 
 to a dog or a horse (' Meta. Nova et Vetusta/ 2nd ed., 
 pp. 213 and 227). 
 
 But while we may intelligibly speak thus of the 
 external world as the externalisation of reason (seeing 
 that the formal categories of reason are reflected in its 
 structure), it must still be maintained that the way in 
 which Hegelian idealists speak of " thought " is calcu- 
 lated to darken counsel. Thought, whether we wish it 
 or not, is identified beyond recall with the intellect as 
 such. Philosophers will never make " thought " do duty 
 not only for thought but for sense, feeling, and will as 
 well. Professor Jones himself admitted lately, in an 
 article on Lotze published in the 'New World,' that 
 " thought " is an inapt and unfortunate term as an 
 expression of what the Idealists mean. Commenting on 
 Lotze's opposition of experience or " the whole mind " to 
 thought or thinking, he added : " This is a change of 
 terminology which Idealists would not care to oppose. 
 In fact, ' whole mind ' or ' spirit ' expresses their 
 meaning less ambiguously than ' thought,' in so far as 
 the former terms cannot be easily confused with the 
 purely formal faculty of the logician." And he further 
 spoke of " the idealistic identification of reality not with 
 abstract thought but with spirit and its manifold 
 activities." It is disappointing, therefore, to find him 
 throughout this volume using Thought in the traditional 
 Hegelian sense, which has been prolific of so much con- 
 fusion. The outcome of this usage is the reduction of 
 the world to a system of thought-relations, as we find it 
 in Green's laborious and, after all, ineffectual, attempt to 
 eliminate the function of sense in perception. Though 
 we may be able to say nothing of sense as sense (and 
 this lies in the nature of the case), the difference between 
 perception and conception remains fundamental and
 
 166 Jones's philosophy of lotze. 
 
 irreducible. The one is immediate relation to, or experi- 
 ence of, reality ; the second, though itself also, of course, 
 a real experience, is, as compared with the first, a mediate 
 relation, which may doubtless give a fuller and truer ac- 
 count of the real, but which depends for its whole mean- 
 ing — and for its existence — upon the primary and vital 
 relation of perception. Green is obliged to fall back 
 surreptitiously upon the sense-data which he seems afraid 
 openly to acknowledge. In various passages Professor 
 Jones fully recognises the necessity of two factors — 
 " sense " and " thought." " Sense by itself," he says, 
 " gives as little as thought by itself. The whole problem 
 lies in the nature of the relation between these two factors. 
 No one now can well deny the need of either, and the 
 difficulty which we have to meet is how to conceive of 
 both so as to enable them to co-operate and produce the 
 concrete fact of knowledge, in which form and content 
 interpenetrate. . . . Hegel and his followers would find 
 a unity beneath their differences, and regard that unity 
 as best characterised by the term Thought or Spirit " 
 (p. 300). Here he gives us, it is true, the alternative of 
 " spirit," but in other passages he talks of " the Idealism 
 which found nothing in the world except thought " 
 (p. 99), of "the Hegelian view that thought is a con- 
 structive and concrete reality" (p. 287), of "the truth 
 of Idealism which makes thought think thought " (p. 154). 
 Now surely, if the living whole consists of thought and 
 sense, it cannot but provoke misunderstanding to give 
 to the whole the name of one of the factors. To say 
 that thought thinks thought, that there is nothing in 
 the world except thought, cannot but be taken as 
 an attempt to evade acknowledgment of the facts of 
 sense. Yet that acknowledgment finds its way into the 
 statements of even the most uncompromising idealists.
 
 JONES S PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 167 
 
 Thought cannot get to work unless it has a " material " 
 (p. 105), unless it has "elements of sense" to work 
 upon (p. 104). It "seizes upon an indefinite reality 
 and articulates it into system" (p. 359); but the 
 articulation cannot proceed unless the reality is somehow 
 given in order to be seized. Professor Jones also speaks 
 quite freely at times of " the sensuous and the intelligible 
 elements" of experience (p. 335), or, what is the same 
 thing in other words, of " the content and forms of our 
 experience" (p. 303). He speaks of conception as 
 abstracting from " our sensibility," and in one place he 
 says that what he has tried to show, as against Lotze, 
 is that the " immediate forms of knowledge [perception, 
 feeling, &c.] could not supply thought with its necessary 
 data unless they were armed with all the powers of 
 thought, as well as with those which are peculiar to them- 
 selves" (p. 325). He here admits that thought requires 
 data, that these data are supplied by immediate forms 
 of knowledge, and that these immediate forms of know- 
 ledge have powers peculiar to themselves. 
 
 But the form in which he clothes the admission enables 
 us, I think, to understand what he and other idealists 
 are really fighting for, under cover of an unfortunate 
 terminology. He is contending for the inseparability, 
 the mutual implication, of sense and thought, which 
 seems to him to be threatened by the emphasis which 
 Lotze and others lay upon the contribution of sense. 
 Sense seems to him to be asserted as a source of data 
 altogether alien to intelligence, and to be put forward 
 as the sole depositary of reality ; and this is either to 
 play into the hands of a sensationalistic scepticism, or to 
 evoke the spectre of a hopeless dualism. As against 
 such a supposed position. Professor Jones contends, in 
 words already quoted, for " the mutual implication of the
 
 168 Jones's philosophy of lotze. 
 
 content and forms of our experience." When Lotze says 
 that " what is good and evil can as little be thought as 
 what is blue and sweet," and asks whether the essence of 
 love and hate can be exhausted in concepts, he retorts 
 by asking " whether love and hate and blue and sweet 
 can be given without thought." The answer, he says, is 
 obvious ; " sense, by itself, gives as little as thought by 
 itself." To this way of stating the case I, for one, have 
 no objection, and I cannot think that Lotze would have 
 denied the position. So, again, in regard to the relation 
 of thought and reality — which is another form of the 
 same question, — what Professor Jones proves, and what 
 he has doubtless really at heart, is the necessity of 
 acknowledging cib initio what he calls in one place their 
 "ontological affinity" (p. 334): "If the world is to 
 reveal itself to man's thought, it must have ontological 
 affinity to his thinking powers." Just as we must 
 acknowledge the " correspondence and mutual adapta- 
 bility " of sense and thought, or, in other words, the 
 " ontological relation between the two elements of 
 knowledge " (p. 329), so we must not treat the 
 world as a reality independent of thought and unrelated 
 to thought ; for, in that case, it would of necessity 
 remain to the end unknowable by thought. Here again 
 I have nothing to object to, but why does Professor 
 Jones go on to obliterate distinctions and reinvoke 
 the old confusions by translating " ontological rela- 
 tion" into "ultimate identity" (p. 330), and speaking 
 of sensation and perception not only as " essentially 
 related to thought," but as " identical with " thought ? 
 Surely there may be necessary relation without identity ; 
 in fact, if there were identity, the relation would be im- 
 possible. Thought and reality are not the merely different, 
 but neither are they the merely identical. Moreover,
 
 JONES S PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 1G9 
 
 Professor Jones's relapse into such phrases is inconsistent 
 with what he says of the value of Lotze's criticism of 
 the idealistic position.^ And I should like to add that 
 in insisting on relation, while denying identity, I am not 
 actuated by a precisian anxiety about a word or phrase ; 
 for as soon as we speak of identity, the way is prepared 
 for that sublimation of experience into the world of 
 mere " thought " which Professor Jones condemns as 
 strongly as any one. I find Professor Jones himself upon 
 this dangerous inclined plane in his attempt to explain 
 away the difference between perception and conception, 
 or to maintain, at least, that the difference " is only a 
 difference in degree of definiteness " (pp. 346 et seq.) 
 " Redness," he says, " if we contrast it with colour, is a 
 particular perception, but if we contrast it with its own 
 shades of crimson, scarlet, and so on, it is a universal 
 conception." But we are moving here altogether in a 
 world of conceptions. Pted is a concept whether we con- 
 trast it with colour in general or with its own shades ; 
 the percept red is always a particular shade of red, 
 though we may not stop at the moment reflectively to 
 particularise it. The concept crimson or scarlet itself 
 does not reach the inexhaustible particularity of its own 
 sense - presentation, as that is constituted by what 
 Professor Jones calls the " aggressive relations of time 
 and space and our sensible affections." These relations 
 and affections may be " comparatively insignificant to the 
 
 ^ ' ' Hegel, as against his predecessors, opposes mainly the tendency so 
 to separate the real and ideal as to obscure or annul the principle which 
 reveals itself in both of them : Lotze directs his main attack against what 
 he conceived to be their immediate identification by Hegel. And it is 
 this which, in my opinion, makes him so valuable as an expounder of 
 Idealism, and helps us to know more clearly than Hegel's immediate 
 successors what he meant by the principle of thought which he identified 
 with the principle of reality" (p. 273).
 
 170 Jones's philosophy of lotze. 
 
 true understanding of things," but it hardly becomes us 
 to complain of their " aggressive " character, seeing that 
 they are, as it were, the tissue in which the real world is 
 given to us. I heartily agree with the contention that 
 we must not regard perception as giving us the truth of 
 reality once for all, and conception as leading us on a 
 path of abstraction farther and farther away from the 
 nature of things. Our conceptual account of the world, 
 as formulated by the sciences, and ultimately by philo- 
 sophy, is nearer the truth than the inadequate judgments 
 of perception with which we start. In this sense, the 
 process of knowledge is continuous ; it is, as Professor 
 Jones says, " a process of discovering distinctions within 
 an indefinite subject" (p. 362), or the "articulating into 
 system" of "an indefinite reality" (p. 359). But it is 
 still true that conception has only a mediate relation to 
 reality, while in perception there is an immediate relation. 
 We cannot explain in what this direct experience consists, 
 for that would be to make it mediate — would be, in fact, 
 to dig up the roots of our own life. All we can say is 
 that without this direct contact with reality, or rather 
 this immediate presence of reality in us, there would be 
 no subject within which to discover distinctions, no 
 reality to articulate into conceptual system. The dis- 
 tinction, therefore, between perception and conception is 
 not only "undeniable within its own limits"; it is primary 
 and fundamental, and the attempt to minimise, if not to 
 obliterate it, seems to me perhaps the most questionable 
 and dangerous part of Professor Jones's book. In one 
 sense, as explained above, it is true to say that reality, 
 i.e., the true account of reality, is reached only at the end 
 of our scientific and philosophical analysis ; but, in another 
 sense, it is as true to say that reality is given in percep- 
 tion or, more generally, in immediate experience, and given
 
 Jones's philosophy of lotze. 171 
 
 there alone. Lotze may not sufficiently distinguish these 
 two senses, but they are not in themselves inconsistent, 
 as Professor Jones seems to think (p. 356). 
 
 I have left myself no space to comment upon the more 
 detailed criticism of Lotze's logical doctrines ; but for 
 penetrative analysis the chapter on Lotze's theory of the 
 Judgment (chap, iv.) is one of the best in the book. 
 The laboriously artificial theory into which Lotze is led 
 by his start from pure identity is successfully shown to 
 reduce Judgment in the end to a useless tautology — ex- 
 cept so far as Lotze supplements his original principle 
 by that of Sufficient Keason, which is tantamount to the 
 idea of a system of related elements. Professor Jones 
 justly censures Lotze's characteristic method of patching 
 up the defects of one principle by supplementing it by 
 another. In this case, the second principle, which alone 
 makes thought possible, is treated by Lotze as a fortunate 
 accident (!), and the two are left standing inconsistently 
 side by side. Chap. v. contains a very full exposition 
 of Lotze's theory of Inference, which is submitted to 
 criticism in chap. vi. " The symbol of inference is not 
 mechanical connection but organic growth. It is the 
 evolution of the contents of a single, though not a simple, 
 idea ; and evolution neither admits of anything new nor 
 simply repeats itself." The fundamental function of 
 thought consists " not in connecting the discrete but in 
 differentiating a unity." This view is convincingly driven 
 home throughout the chapter, which contains a luminous 
 account of the actual reasoning process. Lotze's theory 
 is found to be involved in contradiction because it starts 
 from the opposite view, that the operation of thought 
 consists in connecting the discrete. It is the same view 
 which leads him, in his account of Judgment, to the verge 
 of declaring that predication is either idle or impossible.
 
 172 Jones's philosophy of lotze. 
 
 In his account of Inference, the same dominating idea is 
 seen in his attempt to escape from this conclusion by 
 passing from Subsumption to Substitution. Substitution, 
 as Professor Jones observes, " is not inference at all. It 
 is rather the result of a process of inference. The 
 mathematician will not substitute a-\-h + c for x, unless 
 he has already ascertained that they are equivalent; and 
 the process of inference lies in the discovery of that 
 equivalence, after which the act of substitvition may 
 follow as a matter of course" (p. 242). It must be 
 admitted, I think, that Lotze's account of inference is 
 vitiated by the original sins of his theory of Judgment, 
 but I am not sure that Professor Jones's account of the 
 advance of knowledge is, at bottom, so different from 
 Lotze's as he thinks. He blames Lotze for attributing 
 all the processes that are effective in the growth of know- 
 ledge to "sense, perception, and faith" (p. 267) — "intu- 
 itive processes resting on material knowledge'' (p. 254). 
 But when he gives his own account — " thought has 
 only one way of proving a truth, namely, that of show- 
 ing that it is already contained in the premises. And 
 it shows that it was already in the premises hj a more 
 exhaustive investigation of them" (p. 243) — Lotze might 
 fairly ask whether this investigation is in strictness 
 part of the reasoning process. Or, again, when he says 
 speaking of mathematical calculation, " The inference is 
 in no wise hased upon mathematical considerations, but 
 upon the material premises ; and into these premises the 
 investigator throws all the wealth of his previously 
 acquired knowledge of nature. And the more discrimina- 
 tive his knowledge, or the more systematic, or the greater 
 the degree in which he is able to focus the light of the 
 whole world on the problem in hand, the greater his 
 success in developing the indefinite system which is in
 
 Jones's philosophy of lotze. 173 
 
 the datum into an explicit system of necessarily relative 
 elements. It is consideration of the material lohich enables 
 him to 'predict, and to extend his universal law over cases 
 not yet observed " (p. 262) — is this essentially at variance 
 with Lotze's own statement, that " the discovery of a 
 universal law is always a guess on the part of the imag- 
 ination, made possible by a knowledge of facts " ? The 
 difference here would seem to be in the main one of 
 terminology. Lotze, with his analytic habit of mind, 
 represents as the co-operative result of a number of 
 factors what Professor Jones describes as a single living 
 process. And if we extend a similar lenience to Lotzes 
 account of the relation of sense to thought — upon which 
 Professor Jones returns at the beginning of this chapter 
 on Inference, — might not a sympathetic expositor say 
 that Lotze's prefiguring of the universals of thought in 
 corresponding universals of sense might be plausibly 
 interpreted as another way of saying that the real is 
 ideal ? And I cannot forbear pointing out in this con- 
 nection that Professor Jones's repeated insistence here on 
 the " constitutive " nature of thought as " producing " its 
 "content" (p. 227) turns out on closer investigation to 
 have a modified and much more modest meaning. It is 
 constitutive of the content " in the sense that the partic- 
 ulars cannot exist except in their coherence" (p. 228). 
 It thus " comprehends and penetrates its content," but it 
 does not constitute or creatively give its sensuous matter. 
 This is the same conclusion as we arrived at in dealing 
 with this point more fully above. 
 
 I do not, however, put forward these suggestions as a 
 complete justification of Lotze's procedure, still less with 
 any intention to minimise the value of the searching 
 examination to which that procedure has been subjected 
 by Professor Jones. On the contrary, I think that that
 
 174 Jones's philosophy op lotze. 
 
 examination has laid bare serious defects in Lotze's 
 statement, and that Professor Jones has, in the main, 
 made good his assertion of two warring tendencies in 
 Lotze's thought. Lotze is, at bottom and in his intention, 
 it seems to me, at one with what we may agree to call 
 the idealistic view of the universe. But he stood chrono- 
 logically nearer to Hegel than we do. In his youth the 
 Hegelian system was still a living theory, held by its 
 adherents with a rigour and vigour of which, at this 
 distance of time, we have little conception. To us now 
 — even to those who are most inclined to call Hegel 
 Master — his system has already become historical : it is 
 simply the last great type of Idealism or Spiritual 
 Monism. But we do not hesitate to criticise, or simply 
 to drop, the asperities of the original statement, and to 
 present what we consider the vital principle in a form 
 moulded by our own controversies and adapted to our pres- 
 ent needs. But when Lotze began to write, time had not 
 yet softened the outlines of the theory, and thrown its 
 details into the shade ; and he may probably be accepted 
 as a better authority than the present generation on its 
 original lineaments. He stood forth, in any case, as the 
 unsparing critic of " the dialectical idyll " and the too ex- 
 clusive intellectualism of the Hegelian system ; and the 
 emphasis given in his writings to this critical note has 
 led to his being (erroneously) regarded as fundamentally 
 at variance with the principle of Idealism. Other charac- 
 teristics of his work combined to strengthen this miscon- 
 ception. His mind is analytical and critical rather than 
 constructive ; and as it is his habit to begin by criticism 
 of some popular conception or accepted theory, he seems 
 to be always starting (to use his own metaphor) some- 
 where in the extreme ramifications of the subject. He 
 ^eems never to weld his conclusions together from a
 
 Jones's philosophy of lotze. 175 
 
 central point of view. In a book like the ' Microcosmus/ 
 which meanders through the whole region of the know- 
 able, this want of unity of conception becomes no less 
 than distressing to the philosophical reader. Fresh as 
 his criticisms generally are, and instructive as his 
 laborious analysis undoubtedly often is, his habit of 
 balancing conflicting possibilities and then passing to 
 another theme is as undeniably irritating and unsatis- 
 factory. One cannot wonder if it produces upon many 
 readers the impression that a solution of the difficulties 
 has been abandoned, and that the result is simply a 
 return to the disjecta membra of popular orthodoxy. 
 And even the attempts at co-ordination which we find 
 are apt to appear to the thinker of speculative and 
 synthetic tendencies as the mechanical piecing together 
 of elements reached by different methods and belonging 
 to inconsistent theories of the world. I do not say 
 that this impression is just, but it must be admitted 
 that it is not without excuse. Hence I do not think 
 that Lotze can claim a permanent place as a thinker 
 with a system of his own. There is great danger that 
 those who go to him in search of such a system without 
 much previous philosophical training will miss the point 
 of much of his finest work, and simply be strengthened 
 in their antecedent prejudices and unphilosophical beliefs. 
 But after all these liberal deductions, it remains true 
 that, by his criticism of dogmatic materialism on the one 
 hand and of dogmatic intellectualism on the other, he has 
 been a most important factor in guiding contemporary 
 thought towards truer conclusions ; and the reader who 
 is in some measure abreast of the tendencies of modern 
 speculation will still find much in his writings that is 
 incisive and memorable and convincingly reasoned. 
 I have not dwelt seriatim and separately with Professor
 
 176 Jones's philosophy of lotze. 
 
 Jones's concluding chapters on " The Subjectivity of 
 Thought" and "The Principle of Eeality in Thought 
 and its Processes." As they sum up and bring to 
 a focus the principles on which the whole critical 
 argument of the book depends, they have been 
 frequently laid under contribution in the foregoing 
 account. But reference should be made to the criticism 
 of Lotze's fundamental and characteristic position, that 
 " all our conclusions concerning the real world rest upon 
 the immediate confidence or the faith which we repose in 
 the universal validity of a certain postulate of thought 
 which oversteps the limits of the special world of 
 thought." " As regards the ultimate principles which 
 we follow in this criticism of our thoughts," he says 
 elsewhere, " it is quite true that we are left with 
 nothing but the confidence of Eeason in itself, or the 
 certainty of belief in the general truth that there is a 
 meaning in the world." Otherwise expressed, it is only 
 the Good which has in itself the complete right to be ; 
 and this is recognised in a judgment or postulate of 
 value, which carries us beyond the merely intellectual 
 region into the domain of feeling. But Lotze nowhere 
 says, as Professor Jones makes him say, that this judgment 
 is possible " apart from and without the co-operating 
 activity of thought." He only says that it would be 
 impossible to a thought which was not coloured by 
 feeling. The criticism here appears to me, therefore, 
 hardly fair to Lotze, especially as Professor Jones seems 
 unwilling to deny that the Good and the Eeal may be 
 taken as identical, and metaphysics ultimately based 
 upon ethics (p. 295). And when, in his concluding 
 chapter (the robust realism of which I have already 
 signalised), Professor Jones says that " the only way to 
 reach reality at the end of the process is to take our
 
 Jones's philosophy of lotze. 177 
 
 departure from it" (p. 334); or, again, that Idealists 
 " have made this conception of the systematic and 
 rational coherence of reality their starting - point, in 
 such a manner that they do not doubt, any more than 
 men of science do, that the endeavour of thought will 
 lead to truth, or that reality will yield its treasures to 
 the inquiring intellect," and that hence they " return 
 once more to the attitude of ordinary consciousness and 
 of science, and commit their thinking to the guidance 
 of fact " — may it not fairly be asked whether this 
 " starting-point " is not itself of the nature of faith ? 
 Doubtless it is a necessary assumption, and one which 
 the advance of knowledge, in particular the growing co- 
 herence of knowledge, tends more and more to confirm ; 
 but is it not ultimately a trust, a supreme hypothesis ? 
 
 M
 
 DEWEY'S STUDIES IN LOGICAL THEORY.^ 
 
 THE pre-eminent obligation which the writers of this 
 book express to Professor James, as well as the 
 general trend of the doctrines they expound, connect the 
 volume obviously with the philosophical attitude which 
 calls itself Pragmatism, and which is so much in evidence 
 at the present time. But it is not always easy to har- 
 monise the utterances of the adherents of this creed, nor, 
 in some cases, is it easy to know what precisely they 
 intend by their principle. Hence it will be best in 
 dealing with the book to limit the discussion to the 
 positions actually advanced, or apparently accepted, by 
 the writers, and, for the rest, to treat it as a serious and 
 detailed discussion of logical doctrines in a new light, 
 rather than as a " manifesto " in support of a new philo- 
 sophical faith. In so doing, I believe we shall best con- 
 sult the wishes of the editor and his contributors ; for 
 though they speak with the confidence of those who find 
 themselves in possession of a fresh clue to old-standing 
 difficulties, they speak without pretentiousness or undue 
 contempt for the theories they claim to supersede. They 
 
 ^ Studies in Logical Theory. By John Dewey, with the co-operation of 
 Members and Fellows of the Department of Philosophy of the University 
 of Chicago. The University of Chicago Press, 1903. The following 
 critical notice appeared in ' The Philosophical Review,' November 1904.
 
 dewey's studies in logical theory. 179 
 
 make no claim of finality or of systematic completeness. 
 " The point of view," says the editor, referring to possible 
 divergencies among the eight contributors to the volume, 
 " is still (happily) developing, and showing no signs of 
 becoming a closed system." The divergencies, however, 
 so far as I can judge, are really remarkably slight, ob- 
 servable for the most part only in the greater emphasis 
 or sweep with which one writer or another states prin- 
 ciples or doctrines common to all. It is, indeed, most 
 unusual to find a series of philosophical papers by different 
 writers in which (without repetition or duplication) there 
 is so much unity in the point of view and harmony in 
 results. That this is so is a striking evidence of the 
 moulding influence of Professor Dewey upon his pupils 
 and coadjutors in the Chicago School of Philosophy. The 
 unfamiliar phraseology in which the writers sometimes 
 couch their meaning makes the volume far from easy 
 reading at first, but there always is a meaning to be 
 grasped ; and, as a carefully thought-out contribution to 
 the " live " thought of the day, the book reflects honour 
 upon the university among whose publications it appears. 
 The chief points of agreement — and therefore the 
 main contentions of the book — are concisely stated by 
 the editor in his prefatory note ; and as the statement 
 may be regarded as in a sense official, it may profitably 
 be set down here for reference. " All agree that judg- 
 ment is the central function of knowing, and hence 
 affords the central problem of logic ; that since the act 
 of knowing is intimately and indissolubly connected with 
 the like yet diverse functions of affection, appreciation, 
 and practice, it only distorts results reached to treat 
 knowing as a self-enclosed and self-explanatory whole, — 
 hence the intimate relations of logical theory with func- 
 tional psychology ; that since knowledge appears as a
 
 180 dewey's studies in logical theory. 
 
 function within experience, and yet passes judgment upon 
 both the processes and contents of other functions, its work 
 and aim must be distinctively reconstructive or trans- 
 formatory ; that since Reality must be defined in terms 
 of experience, judgment appears accordingly as the medium 
 through which the consciously effected evolution of Eeality 
 goes on ; that there is no reasonable standard of truth 
 (or of success of the knowing function) in general, except 
 upon the postulate that Eeality is thus dynamic or self- 
 evolving, and, in particular, through reference to the 
 specific offices which knowing is called upon to perform 
 in re-adjusting and expanding the means and ends of life." 
 The obligation of the writers is further expressed " to 
 those whose views are most sharply opposed. To Mill, 
 Lotze, Bosanquet, and Bradley the writers then owe 
 special indebtedness." The inclusion in a common cate- 
 gory of thinkers so different in standpoint as those named 
 strikes the reader at first with surprise, but its meaning 
 and justification, from the point of view of the essayists, 
 becomes apparent in the detailed criticism to which Pro- 
 fessor Dewey subjects Lotze's theory of knowledge (in 
 Essays 2, 3, and 4), and in Miss Thompson's critical 
 analysis of Bosanquet's theory of judgment in the paper 
 which follows. The opposition of what we may call the 
 new view to that which the essayists regard as held in 
 common by the authors mentioned, and substantially as 
 the logical tradition of previous philosophers, is summarily 
 expressed by Professor Dewey when he contrasts the 
 " epistemological " with the " instrumental " type of logic. 
 This antithesis introduces us at once to the main thesis 
 of the volume. Thought, it is urged, is not something 
 " pure," " absolute," or by itself, — whose occupation is to 
 mirror or represent an independently complete and self- 
 existent world of reality; it is to be regarded as one
 
 dewey's studies in logical theory. 181 
 
 function among others arising in the course of experience, 
 and as having for its sole purpose the transformation, 
 reconstruction, or reorganisation of experience. Now in 
 such a statement it seems to me there is much to which 
 we may cordially assent, though perhaps without regard- 
 ing it as the exclusive discovery of the pragmatists ; 
 while there are other implications of the words which 
 we should be compelled to regard as false, or at least as 
 misleading, in the form stated. We may agree, for 
 instance, in the emphatic condemnation of the repre- 
 sentational view of knowledge which has so disastrously 
 dominated modern philosophy. Professor Dewey and 
 his fellow-essayists argue convincingly that the view of 
 knowledge as copying or reproducing an independent 
 reality inevitably issues in scepticism, because in the 
 very mode of stating the question it opens a gulf be- 
 tween thought and reality which no subsequent effort is 
 able to bridge. " In whatever form the ' copy ' theory 
 be stated," says Professor MacLennan, " the question in- 
 evitably arises, how we can compare our ideas with reality 
 and thus know their truth. On this theory, what we 
 possess is ever the copy ; the reality is beyond. In 
 other words, such a theory, logically carried out, leads to 
 the breakdown of knowledge." Professor Dewey's ex- 
 posure of the shifts to which Lotze is driven by his 
 initial acceptance of this dualism is a masterly piece of 
 analysis, running for a considerable part of the way 
 on the same lines as Professor Jones's criticism in his 
 ' Philosophy of Lotze.' The whole conception of " two 
 fixed worlds " must undoubtedly be abandoned. As Pro- 
 fessor Dewey excellently puts it in his opening pages : 
 " Neither the plain man nor the scientific inquirer is 
 aware, as he engages in his reflective activity, of any 
 transition from one sphere of existence to another. He
 
 182 dewey's studies in logical theory. 
 
 knows no two fixed worlds — reality on one side and mere 
 subjective ideas on the other ; he is aware of no gulf 
 to cross. He assumes uninterrupted, free, and fluid 
 passage from ordinary experience to abstract thinking, 
 from thought to fact, from things to theories and back 
 again. Observation passes into development of hypo- 
 thesis ; deductive methods pass to use in description of 
 the particular ; inference passes into action with no sense 
 of difficulty save those found in the particular task in 
 question. The fundamental assumption is continuity in 
 and of experience, . . . Only the epistemological spec- 
 tator is awaie of the fact that the ordinary man and 
 the scientific man in this free and easy intercourse are 
 rashly assuming the right to glide over a cleft in the 
 very structure of reality." 
 
 If epistemology is understood to imply belief in a cleft 
 of this nature, then the sooner both the name and the 
 thing are banished from philosophy the better. In this 
 shape the supposed problem is inherited from Descartes's 
 individualistic starting-point and the two -substance 
 doctrine which he impressed on modern thought. But 
 the isolation of the mind as a subjective sphere, intact 
 and self - contained, outside and over - against reality, 
 necessarily implies that reality is in a strict sense un- 
 knowable. Hence the scepticism and agnosticism which 
 infect so many modern theories of knowledge. But 
 reality is one : the knowing mind and its thought are 
 themselves within the course of reality, parts of its 
 process, immersed in the give-and-take of living experi- 
 ence. Whether we talk of reality or of experience does 
 not seem greatly to matter if we are agreed that there 
 is no real world except the world which reveals itself to 
 us in our experience and of which we feel ourselves to be 
 a moving part. Whatever term we use, the essence of
 
 DEWEY S STUDIES IN LOGICAL THEORY. 183 
 
 our contention is the unity and continuity of the world. 
 And if I read the signs of the intellectual world aright, 
 this conviction has so penetrated recent philosophical 
 thought that the long - drawn discussions as to the 
 possibility and validity of knowledge which so keenly 
 occupied the theorists of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 and much of the nineteenth century seem to revolve 
 round a self-made difficulty, and have ceased to that 
 extent to possess a vital interest for us. We may be 
 vividly enough aware of the poverty of our knowledge 
 both in extent and intent, but that there should be in 
 knowledge an inherent incapacity to know at all is too 
 topsy-turvy a notion to give us a moment's uneasiness. 
 
 This conviction of the unity of existence, I repeat, has 
 so permeated the best thought of the time that it cannot 
 be claimed by the pragmatists as an insight specifically 
 their own ; and it strikes one, therefore, with a sense of 
 surprise to find Bosanquet's theory of judgment selected 
 for critical analysis as typical of the old representational 
 view. There are certainly phrases in Mr Bradley's work 
 which might seem to leave us, contrary to the author's 
 intention, with an unknowable Eeality lurking behind the 
 world of ideas which we predicate of it. But Professor 
 Bosanquet, one would have thought, had taught more 
 persuasively than any other living writer the unity of 
 experience and the fallacy of all dualistic conceptions. 
 And perhaps it is really because he so nearly approaches 
 what they consider the true position that the Chicago 
 logicians have undertaken to show to what extent the 
 old leaven still works in him and makes him fall short of 
 the perfect truth. On turning to the essay in question, 
 I cannot help thinking that Miss Thompson lays undue 
 stress on expressions which are perfectly legitimate, and 
 indeed unavoidable^ in any theory which recognises
 
 184 dewey's studies in logical theory. 
 
 objectivity in knowledge at all. After all, there is a 
 nature of things to which our ideas have to adapt them- 
 selves, if it would be well with us ; and in this sense the 
 real world is certainly independent of our ideas, and un- 
 modified by what we think about it. Why, according to 
 the pragmatists themselves, it is the difficulty of coping 
 with a " situation " which is the evoking cause of thought. 
 Such a " situation " is the very type of an independent 
 world, whose precise nature we have to learn with more 
 or less expenditure of labour, if we are successfully to 
 extricate ourselves from our difficulty. The primary 
 function of knowledge, in such a case, is to represent 
 the situation accurately, in order to find a way out of it. 
 But if such phrases are at once innocent and inevitable 
 in the mouth of a pragmatist, they cannot in themselves 
 fairly be held to convict Professor Bosanquet of dualism. 
 But the main objection of the critic seems to be to 
 Bosanquet's description of knowledge as a system of judg- 
 ments about reality — reality being ultimately given for 
 each individual " in present sensuous perception and in 
 the immediate feeling of my own sentient existence that 
 goes with it." This position (which, again, I hold to be 
 beyond dispute) is, I submit, entirely transformed when 
 it is paraphrased as " the mere assurance that somewhere 
 behind the curtain of sensuous perception reality exists " 
 (p. 92). This is a version of the critic's preconception 
 rather than of the author's natural meaning. Similarly 
 Professor Bosanquet may be venturing on slippery ground 
 when he permits himself to speak of the individual's 
 " point of contact with reality as such," and (still more 
 so) when he describes the immediate subject as " the 
 point at which the actual world impinges on my con- 
 sciousness." But it is a far cry from such lapses of 
 expression to speaking of Bosanquet's real world as " that
 
 dewey's studies in logical theory. 185 
 
 against which we have bumped." The first of the two 
 phrases would not indeed, I think, in the context of 
 Bosanquet's theory, suggest any suspicion of the old 
 dualism, except to one morbidly on the outlook for 
 symptoms of that virus. An alternative phrase of 
 Professor Bosanquet is that the real world is present in 
 perception ; and while such phrases imply that there is 
 more of the world, and more in the world, than is appre- 
 hended by us at the moment, they cast no doubt upon 
 the actuality of the apprehension. Indeed, I cannot see 
 how this immediate apprehension of reality differs from 
 " the immediate experiences," or the unreflective " ways 
 of living," which the essayists everywhere assume as the 
 matrix out of which reflective or logical thinking 
 develops, and into which it resolves itself again. And 
 when Green's criticism upon the logic of Locke and 
 Hume — namely, that "the more thinking we do the 
 less we know about the real world " — is applied to Bosan- 
 quet's theory, and the result is said to be avoided only 
 " by a pure act of faith," it is surely as open to Pro- 
 fessor Bosanquet as to his critic to reply that the 
 results of thinking validate themselves by the harmony 
 or system which they introduce into our experience. 
 All thinking starts in faith, and is justified by its works. 
 If that is pragmatism, then we may all set up as prag- 
 matists. But the badge of pragmatism, in the ordinary 
 sense attached to the term, is the utilitarian estimate of 
 knowledge as everywhere ultimately a means to prac- 
 tical activity of the biological and economic order. And 
 in regard to this estimate I cannot do better than quote 
 a few sentences from Professor Bosanquet's Inaugural 
 Address at St Andrews, in which he aptly traces the 
 pragmatist contention to the very same obsolete view 
 of knowledge which his critic here attempts to fasten
 
 186 dewey's studies in logical theory. 
 
 upon him. After referring to the " debasement of 
 the conception of knowledge which followed from 
 the separation between world and individual, char- 
 acteristic of the modern mind," he proceeds : " In this 
 whole conception, that Cognition is something secondary, 
 it seems to me that we have a mingling of obsolete 
 logic and meaningless spatial metaphor. The entire 
 fabric is annihilated when we realise a single point. 
 Knowledge is not a reproduction of an outside world, 
 but an endeavour to realise our nature by the construc- 
 tion of a harmonious experience. The truth of Cognition 
 is not its correspondence to something else, but its 
 degree of individuality in itself. In a word. Cognition 
 is one great aspect of the life of the soul, in so far as it 
 is lived apart from the struggle against matter. I have 
 not repeated the ancient doctrine that it forms by itself 
 the essence of morality and religion ; but genuinely to 
 understand how this doctrine fails to be true, is a 
 problem which modern popular philosophy has never 
 approached at all. Certainly it is true that in Cognition 
 our nature affirms itself after a completer type than in 
 the Volition of everyday life." ^ 
 
 The eloquent vindication of Theoria in the Aristo- 
 telian sense, of which these sentences form part, raises 
 the whole question whether the pragmatists' view of 
 knowledge is not due to the limitations which they 
 themselves put upon the term. The writers in this 
 volume insist upon the " derivative and secondary," the 
 " intermediate and instrumental character " of thought ; 
 and by thought they agree in meaning " reflective 
 thought," or reasoning. Thought, in this sense, as Pro- 
 fessor Dewey puts it in his opening sentences, " comes 
 after something and out of something and for the sake 
 
 ^ On the Practical Value of Modern Philosophy, p. 14.
 
 dewey's studies in logical theory. 187 
 
 of something." " Thinking is a kind of activity which 
 we perform at specific need, just as at other need we 
 engage in other sorts of activity : as converse with a 
 friend ; draw a plan of a house ; take a walk ; eat a 
 dinner ; purchase a suit of clothes ; &c., &c." This 
 view of thought as a specific function within experi- 
 ence is fundamental with all the writers, and they use 
 a variety of terms to express the other phases of ex- 
 perience with which they contrast it. Thought is said to 
 arise out of " unreflective antecedents," which are some- 
 times described as " ways of living " ; and when the 
 thinking process has been successfully carried through, 
 it " allows us to proceed with more direct modes of 
 experiencing." Its aim, indeed, is " the resumption of 
 an interrupted experience." Experience, with or with- 
 out some adjective, is thus the term on which the 
 writers most generally fall back. Eeality is described 
 by Professor Dewey as " the drama of evolving experi- 
 ence," a " world of continuous experiencing." Confiict 
 in the contents of our " experiences " makes them 
 " assume conscious objectification. They cease to be 
 ways of living, and become distinct objects of observa- 
 tion and consideration." Objects thus " only gradually 
 emerge from their life-matrix." " The object as known " 
 is accordingly, we are told, " not the same as the object 
 as apprehended in other possible modes of being con- 
 scious of it" (p. 251). When even the conclusion or 
 the completed judgment — the insight at which we 
 arrive — is emphatically denied to be a judgment at all 
 (p. 122), it becomes plain that the terms thought and 
 knowledge are being used exclusively of the psycholog- 
 ical process of solving a difficulty or arriving at a con- 
 clusion on some matter about which we are in doubt. 
 Judgment is therefore described as essentially dynamic.
 
 188 dewey's studies in logical theory. 
 
 " developmental," " transitive in effect and purport." 
 That is to say, it exists, as it were, only momentarily 
 in the passage from one mode of activity to another ; 
 as soon as a " re-adjustment " is effected, " experience " 
 flows on. " There is always antecedent to thought," 
 says Professor Dewey, " an experience of some subject- 
 matter of the physical or social world, or organised 
 intellectual world, whose parts are actively at war with 
 each other, — so much so that they threaten to disrupt 
 the entire experience, which accordingly for its own 
 maintenance requires deliberate re - definition and re- 
 relation of its tensional parts. This is the re -con- 
 structive process termed thinking ; the re-constructive 
 situation, with its parts in tension and in such movement 
 toward each other as tends to a unified experience, is 
 the thought situation" (pp. .39, 40). He calls it else- 
 where " the particular functional situation termed the 
 reflective" (p. 18). 
 
 But in proportion as we narrow in this way the 
 application of the term " thought " by emphasising its 
 " intermediate " character and its double dependence, — 
 " its dependence upon unreflective experience for exist- 
 ence and upon a consequent experience for the test of 
 final validity," — it is plain that debate as to the ex- 
 clusively practical reference of thought becomes inept ; 
 the question as to this particular mode of experience 
 being settled by definition, and everything turning, as to 
 the general question, on the nature of those antecedent 
 and subsequent modes of experience which admittedly in- 
 clude so much of our conscious life. For by the ante- 
 cedents of thought is not to be understood a pre-rational 
 or merely animal consciousness, but the general course of 
 our lives, so far as it flows on smoothly without working 
 itself up into those express efforts of purposive attention
 
 dewey's studies in logical theory. 189 
 
 which constitute a " thought-crisis." The antecedents are, 
 in short, as Professor Dewey puts it, " our universe of life 
 and love, of appreciation and struggle." And each crisis, 
 in turn, has for its result a unified or harmonised experi- 
 ence which, as we have seen, is the test of its validity. 
 " The test of thought," says Professor Dewey, " is the 
 harmony or unity of experience actually effected. In 
 that sense the test of reality is beyond thought as 
 thought, just as, at the other limit, thought originates 
 out of a situation which is not reflectional in character." 
 Those experiences beyond thought as thought — " pauses 
 of satisfaction," to employ a phrase of Professor Eoyce's 
 adopted by Professor Moore in the last essay — are ob- 
 viously the end for which the thought-process, in the 
 sense defined, exists. But to regard them in turn as 
 merely practical or instrumental is gratuitously to fall 
 into the snare of the infinite regress ; while to speak of 
 them as volitional or active states is true only in the 
 sense that all our states are energisings of the conscious 
 self. The satisfaction may be gained in the theoretic 
 insight of the man of science and the philosopher, or in 
 the aesthetic contemplation of a landscape or a picture, as 
 well as in the smoother working of some practical activity 
 in the ordinary sense of that word. This is borne out by 
 the acknowledgment, at the close of the long essay on 
 " Valuation as a Logical Process," that " the aesthetic ex- 
 perience would appear to be essentially post-judgmental 
 and appreciative. ... As an immediate appreciation it 
 has no logical function, and on our principles must be 
 denied the name of value. ... It may have its origin 
 in past processes of the reflective valuational type, Never- 
 theless, viewed in the light of its actual present character 
 and status in experience, the aesthetic must be excluded 
 from the sphere of values." Without commenting on
 
 190 Dewey's studies in logical theory. 
 
 this arbitrary inversion of terms, which refuses the title 
 of value to what might more reasonably be taken as the 
 typical instance of an experience possessing independent 
 value, it is sufficient to note that, on this showing, the 
 whole realm of sesthetic experience, as post-judgmental 
 and extra-logical, is excluded by the writers of this vol- 
 ume from what they mean by thought. Now the insight 
 and the glow of art, of knowledge as such, or of religious 
 vision, certainly display what we may call the static 
 character of intuition, rather than the features of what 
 one of the essayists aptly labels " the doubt-inquiry pro- 
 cess " of discursive thinking. But intelligence, reason, or 
 thought in the highest sense, is of the very essence of 
 such states, — is indeed the basis of their possibility, — for 
 art, science, and religion are the triple differentia of the 
 human from the merely animal consciousness. And, in 
 spite of " our reigning biological categories," it is in the 
 vision of truth and of beauty and of a perfect Good that 
 man realises a satisfaction which, though it may be tran- 
 sient in his individual experience, he recognises as not 
 merely instrumental but an end-in-itself, — the satisfac- 
 tion of his specific nature. 
 
 It is the more to be regretted, therefore, that these 
 Studies throw no light on the nature of those non-reflective 
 experiences which apparently include so much more of 
 our life, and which are certainly so much more valuable 
 than the function of thought in the narrower sense in which 
 it is differentiated from them. Professor Dewey recognises 
 the existence of the problem, but he passes from it. 
 " The nature of the organisation and value that the ante- 
 cedent conditions of the thought-function possess is too 
 large a question here to enter upon in detail." It may 
 be hoped that in another place he will undertake " the 
 wholesale at large consideration of thought" which he
 
 dewey's studies in logical theory. 191 
 
 says that he is here " striving to avoid." He draws a 
 distinction in the opening essay between logic in the 
 narrower sense, as the theory of " the particular func- 
 tional situation termed the reflective," and " the logic of 
 experience, logic taken in its wider sense." " In its 
 generic form," he says, the latter " deals with this ques- 
 tion : How does one type of functional situation and 
 attitude pass out of and into another ; for example, the 
 technological or utilitarian into the aesthetic, the aesthetic 
 into the religious, the religious into the scientific, and 
 this into the socio-ethical, and so on ? " Such an invest- 
 igation, involving, as it necessarily would, an analysis of 
 the attitudes in question, could not fail to prove instruct- 
 ive in Professor Dewey's hands. Its result would be, I 
 think, to limit and qualify the pragmatist position in 
 such a way as to deprive it of much of its paradox and 
 novelty, without robbing it of the truth and interest 
 which it undoubtedly possesses. 
 
 In the narrower sphere of logic just indicated, — in 
 logic proper, apart from epistemological or metaphysical 
 issues of a general nature, — the discussions of the present 
 volume are markedly fresh and suggestive ; and it need 
 not be denied that they owe these qualities in no small 
 degree to the stimulus which the writers derive from 
 their general point of view, and to the systematic way in 
 which they utilise for the purposes of logic the results of 
 functional psychology. Professor Dewey's incisive criti- 
 cism of Lotze has already been mentioned. Special refer- 
 ence might perhaps be made to his criticism of Lotze's 
 metaphors of the scaffolding, which is taken down when 
 the building is completed, and of the path to the view- 
 point at the mountain-top. Such a view of our think- 
 ing procedure, he contends, makes thought a tool in the 
 external sense or a merely formal activity. The work of
 
 192 dewey's studies in logical theory. 
 
 erecting should not be set over against the completed 
 building as a mere means to an end ; " it is the end 
 taken in process or historically. . . . The outcome of 
 thought is the thinking activity carried on to its own 
 completion ; the activity, on the other hand, is the out- 
 come taken anywhere short of its own realisation and 
 thereby still going on, . . . Thinking as a merely formal 
 activity, exercised upon certain sensations or images of 
 objects, sets forth an absolutely meaningless proposition. 
 The psychological identification of thinking with the pro- 
 cess of association is much nearer the truth. It is, 
 indeed, on the way to the truth. We need only to 
 recognise that association is of contents or matters or 
 meanings, not of ideas as bare existences or events ; and 
 that the type of association we call thinking diifers from 
 the associations of casual fancy and reverie in an element 
 of control by reference to an end which determines fitness, 
 and thus the selection of the associates, to apprehend how 
 completely thinking is a reconstructive movement of 
 actual contents of experience in relation to each other, 
 and for the sake of a redintegration of a conflicting 
 experience" (pp. 79, 80). 
 
 Miss Thompson's analysis of " every live judgment," 
 as involving a situation in part determined and taken for 
 granted and in part questioned, is very ably stated. In 
 the doubt-inquiry process of the judgment, the subject 
 represents what is given or taken for granted in each 
 case ; while the predicate is that part of the total expres- 
 sion which is taken as doubtful or tentative. As soon as 
 the doubt arrives, there is always present some sort of 
 tentative solution ; and if the subject may be described 
 as fact or real, the predicate is for the time being ideal. 
 The opposition of fact and idea thus becomes a relative 
 opposition within the total process of experience, and one
 
 dewey's studies in logical theory. 193 
 
 which is continually being resolved. As Miss Thompson 
 puts it : " All judgment is in its earliest stages a question, 
 but a question is never mere question. There are always 
 present some suggestions of an answer, which makes the 
 process really a disjunctive judgment. A question might 
 be defined as a disjunctive judgment in which one member 
 of the disjunction is expressed and the others implied. 
 If the process goes on to take the form of affirmation or 
 negation, one of the suggested answers is selected. . . . 
 The question as to whether a judgment turns out to be 
 negative or positive is a question of whether the stress of 
 interest happens to fall on the selected or on the rejected 
 portions of the original disjunction. Every determina- 
 tion of a subject through a predicate includes both." 
 The same point is well put by Professor Dewey in his 
 introductory essay in connection with the growth of 
 science and the passage of mere hypothesis into accepted 
 theory ; and the idea is instructively worked out in Dr 
 Ashley's essay on " The Nature of Hypothesis," to which 
 Professor Dewey contributes an interesting comparison of 
 Mill and Whewell. The whole discussion is eminently 
 fresh, and seems to me an illuminative contribution to 
 logical theory, though I do not believe that the interpre- 
 tation given is bound up so closely with " the practical 
 and biological criterion of fact " as some of the writers 
 seem to suppose. 
 
 Dr Gore's treatment of the relation of the image to 
 the symbolic idea (which may, as one of the essayists 
 puts it, become a mere index-sign) is one of the most 
 convincing parts of the book. The idea as working 
 symbol connects itself, he contends, with the final stage 
 in thinking, when the content of the image has become 
 so familiar that it acts as a direct, or, so to speak, auto- 
 matic stimulus. " We are working along lines of habitual 
 
 N
 
 194 dewey's studies in logical theory. 
 
 activity so familiar that we can work almost in the dark. 
 We need no elaborate imagery. Guided only by the 
 waving of a signal flag or by the shifting gleam of a 
 semaphore, we thread our way swiftly through the maze 
 of tracks worn smooth by use and habit. But suppose a 
 new line of habit is to be constructed. No signal flags 
 or semaphores will suffice. A detailed survey of the 
 proposed route must be had, and here is where imagery 
 with a rich and varied yet flexible sensuous content, 
 growing out of previous surveys, may function in project- 
 ing and anticipating the new set of conditions, and thus 
 become the stimulus of a new line of habit, of a new and 
 more far-reaching meaning. As this new line of habit, 
 of meaning, gets into working order with the rest of the 
 system, imagery tends normally to decline again to the 
 rdle of signal flags and semaphores" (pp. 198, 199). Some 
 mention should also be made of Dr Stuart's analysis of 
 the process of ethical deliberation as consisting essentially 
 in the action and reaction of the previously accepted 
 moral standard and the new mode of conduct contem- 
 plated (pp. 196-202). But it would obviously be im- 
 possible in a notice like the present to enumerate all the 
 points of interest in the volume. The specimens given 
 may suffice to suggest how much stimulus and instruction 
 it provides for all genuine students of logic.
 
 M'TAGGAET'S SOME DOGMAS OF RELIGION.^ 
 
 MK M'TAGGART'S last volume is written in the 
 clear, crisp style to which he has accustomed his 
 readers, and in substance it may be described as the 
 negative complement of his own constructive theory, 
 expounded in ' Hegelian Cosmology.' The real drift of 
 the argument can hardly be understood without reference 
 to the earlier volume, and in what I have to say I will 
 endeavour to connect the two books. Mr M'Taggart 
 begins by defining what he means by " dogma " and 
 " religion." By " dogma " he means any proposition 
 which has metaphysical significance, and a religious dogma 
 is one whose acceptance or rejection by any person would 
 alter his religious position. He considers various defini- 
 tions of religion, including the suggestion that religion is 
 identical with morality ; but he rightly contends that the 
 two names denote separate things, and should therefore 
 be kept distinct. Arnold's definition of religion as 
 " morality touched by emotion " is commented upon 
 The defect of that definition is, that it does not indicate 
 the source of the emotion. Eeligion, says Mr M'Taggart, 
 
 1 Some Dogmas of Religion. By John M'Taggart Ellis M'Taggart, 
 Doctor in Letters, Fellow and Lecturer of Trinity College in Cambridge, 
 author of ' Studies in Hegelian Dialectic ' and ' Studies in Hegelian Cos- 
 mology.' London: Edwin Arnold, 1906. The following critical notice 
 appeared in ' The Hibbert Journal,' October 1906.
 
 196 m'taggart's some dogmas of religion. 
 
 may best be described as " an emotion resting on the 
 conviction of a harmony between ourselves and the 
 universe at large " ; and some belief in such a fundamental 
 harmony between our ideals and the nature of things has 
 always been implied, he contends, in religion. Eeligion 
 is conceived in common usage as " something which brings 
 with it rest and peace and happiness." 
 
 This view of the relation of religion to morality seems 
 to me fundamentally sound, and is substantially identical 
 with the position formulated by Hoffdingj in his ' Phil- 
 osophy of Eeligion,' that " the characteristic axiom of 
 religion is the conservation of value — the conviction 
 that no value perishes out of the world." Eeligion 
 would certainly seem to imply such a belief. Ethics, or 
 morality as such, only tells us what the " good " is. It 
 does not tell us how far the good is realised, or is cap- 
 able of realisation. That depends on our view of the 
 nature of the universe as a whole. But, as Mr M'Taggart 
 says, a view of the universe as a whole is a metaphysical 
 belief or a dogma. In this large and ultimate sense, there- 
 fore, dogma is essential to religion. Our beliefs on meta- 
 physical subjects are, accordingly, far from being as un- 
 practical as many people suppose. They may be of supreme 
 importance for the determination of our attitude towards 
 reality in general and towards our own lives in particular. 
 " It will depend on those beliefs," says Mr M'Taggart in 
 a fine passage, " whether we shall consider the universe 
 as determined by forces completely out of relation with 
 the good, or whether, on the contrary, we may trust that 
 the dearest ideals and aspirations of our own nature are 
 realised, and far more than realised, in the ultimate 
 reality. It will depend on them whether we can regard 
 the troubles of the present and the uncertainties of the 
 future with the feelings of a mouse towards a cat,
 
 m'taggart's some dogmas of EELIGION. 197 
 
 or of a child towards its father. It will depend on them 
 whether we look on our pleasures as episodes which will 
 soon pass, or on our sorrows as delusions which will soon 
 be dispelled. It will depend on them whether our lives 
 seem to us worth living only as desperate efforts to make 
 the best of an incurably bad business, or as the passage 
 to a happiness that it has not entered into our hearts to 
 conceive. It will depend on them whether we regard 
 ourselves as temporary aggregations of atoms or as God 
 incarnate. . . . These questions are not devoid of prac- 
 tical importance. It is common to speak of metaphysical 
 problems as abstract and unpractical. In reality, all 
 other questions are abstract as compared with these, and 
 most, as compared with these, are unpractical." 
 
 But how is dogma to be established ? In other words, 
 how are such metaphysical convictions to be justified ? 
 In his second chapter Mr M'Taggart considers various 
 attempts at justification. Dogmas are sometimes sup- 
 ported by the assertion that they do not rest on argu- 
 ments at all, and cannot therefore be shaken by them. 
 They rest on the immediate conviction of the believer. 
 " If the person who holds a belief in this manner," says 
 Mr M'Taggart caustically, " mentions the fact to me as 
 a reason why I should not waste his time in trying to 
 upset it, he is acting in a perfectly reasonable manner. 
 And it is also strictly relevant to mention it if he is 
 writing an autobiography, for it may be an important 
 fact in his life. Also it is relevant as a contribution to 
 statistics. It shows that one more person has this par- 
 ticular conviction in this particular way. But it is not 
 relevant if it is put forward for any other motive. Above 
 all, it is absolutely irrelevant if it is put forward as a 
 reason to induce other people to believe the same dogma." 
 Dismissing this view, therefore, he proceeds to consider
 
 198 m'taggaet's some dogmas of religion. 
 
 the argument that a dogma must be true because it is 
 held by all, or by most people. If it were really held 
 by all, it would be superfluous to spend time in proving 
 it. This argument must therefore mean no more than 
 that the belief is, or has been, very general. But the 
 opinion of the majority has very often been proved wrong 
 in the past; and besides, the appearance of a decisive 
 majority for a particular dogma is often gained by first 
 excluding certain nations on the ground of their asserted 
 inferiority. This test of truth, therefore, cannot be 
 applied with consistency or safety. Nor can the truth 
 of a religious dogma be proved by miracles. Finally, 
 there is the argument from consequences. If a particular 
 dogma is not true, this argument runs, the universe would 
 be intolerably bad, and therefore the doctrine must be 
 true. Put in this way, however, the argument evidently 
 begs the very point in question ; for what reason have we 
 at this point to assert that the universe is not very evil ? 
 Moreover, in arguing from our desires and aspirations to 
 their fulfilment, men too often ignore the races to which 
 they do not belong, and also leave out of account those 
 of their own race whose desires are different from their 
 own. Such arguments are generally put forward in 
 favour of the orthodox ideas of a particular time and 
 place. This is notably the case, for example, with the 
 doctrine of immortality. And if it is argued that any 
 dogma which would paralyse our activity cannot be true, 
 we may ask whether there is really any dogma the belief 
 in whose truth would paralyse action. " It would be 
 absurd to act, no doubt, if action made no difference in 
 any result which was of value. But neither materialism 
 nor any other dogma which has ever been maintained 
 could lead to this conclusion. We may not survive the 
 death of our bodies, and the race may be destined to
 
 m'taggart's some dogmas of religion. 199 
 
 endure for only a few brief millions of years ; but mean- 
 while the race has not yet ceased to exist, and here we 
 are, particular individuals, and while we are here, what- 
 ever the future may be, it is better that we should be 
 full than hungry, better that we should work than steal, 
 better that we should read Kobert Browning than that we 
 should read Eobert Montgomery." As a last resort, an 
 appeal is often made to faith in matters of dogma on 
 account of the limitation of our knowledge. Of the 
 limitation of our knowledge Mr M'Taggart is as pro- 
 foundly convinced as Hume, but, as he neatly puts it, 
 " it is somewhat remarkable that our want of knowledge 
 on any subject should be put forward as a reason for 
 coming to a particular conclusion on that subject." 
 
 So far as these arguments are concerned, therefore, 
 Mr M'Taggart's result is entirely negative. He next 
 proceeds to discuss in detail the three dogmas of God, 
 freedom, and immortality, which are usually considered 
 to form the substance of religious belief. He begins 
 with the question of human immortality, arguing, in the 
 first place, that the presumption against immortality, 
 produced in many people by supposed results of physical 
 science, should be discarded. Science is concerned solely 
 with uniformities in the routine of our perceptions. 
 Physical science can have nothing to say, for example, 
 on the question of the independent existence of matter, 
 which is only one theory about the causes of our sensa- 
 tions, and a theory which, on examination, is found to 
 be involved in inconsistency. The " self," therefore, 
 cannot be treated as an activity of the body. Its con- 
 scious existence is, on the contrary, a primary reality. 
 On lines which recall Berkeley and Lotze, Mr M'Taggart 
 thus leads up to the theory of monadistic idealism, 
 which he had already advocated in his ' Hegelian Cos-
 
 200 m*taggart's some dogmas of religion. 
 
 mology,' and, as in that book, he again proceeds to 
 connect the belief in immortality with the belief in 
 pre-existence. " The present attitude of most Western 
 thinkers to the doctrine of pre-existence," he says, " is 
 curious. Of the many who regard our life, after the 
 death of our bodies, as certain or probable, scarcely 
 one regards our life before the birth of those bodies 
 as a possibility which deserves discussion ; and yet it 
 was taught by Buddha and by Plato, and it is usually 
 associated with the belief in immortality in the Far East. 
 Why should men who are so anxious to-day to prove 
 that we shall live after this life is ended, regard the 
 hypothesis that we have already survived the end of 
 a life as one which is beneath consideration ? " Mr 
 M'Taggart himself believes that any evidence which will 
 prove immortality will also prove pre-existence. 
 
 The ethical argument that immortality is demanded 
 by the claims of the moral personality, and that such a 
 belief is required if we are to vindicate the goodness 
 of God or the moral order of the universe, Mr M'Taggart 
 dismisses on the general ground that the nature of reality 
 is obviously not incompatible with the existence of some 
 evil, and therefore we cannot hope for an a priori proof 
 that any particular evil is too bad to be consistent with 
 the nature of the universe. We are forced back, there- 
 fore, he says, " on the purely metaphysical arguments." 
 These, as partially disclosed here and more fully de- 
 veloped in ' Hegelian Cosmology,' turn out to be based 
 on abstract considerations as to the nature of substance. 
 They are, indeed, curiously pre-Kantian in character, and 
 it is strange to find so profound a student of Hegel 
 using substance throughout as the ultimate category 
 in speaking both of the self and of God. The perdur- 
 ability of substance naturally refers just as much to the
 
 m'taggart's some dogmas of religion. 201 
 
 past as to the future. Substance, indeed, is conceived 
 as that which can neither be created nor destroyed. 
 Mr M'Taggart believes accordingly that our present 
 existence has been preceded by a plurality of lives, and 
 will be followed in like manner by a plurality of future 
 lives. The obvious objection to this theory is the fact 
 that we retain no memory of those previous lives, and 
 Mr M'Taggart, it is to be noted, does not imply that 
 in the lives to come we shall have any memory of 
 our present existence. " An existence that is cut up 
 into separate lives, in none of which memory extends 
 to a previous life, may be thought to have no practical 
 value." He labours hard to prove that this is not 
 so, his most important argument being that though 
 the actual experiences are forgotten, their results in the 
 training of mind and character may be carried forward 
 into the next life, so that the man will be wiser and 
 better in the second life because of what has happened 
 in the first. He will, as it were, have a better start ; he 
 will build in the new life upon the foundations laid 
 in the old. This sounds, however, more plausible than 
 it really is, and depends upon the ambiguity of the word 
 " person." " In spite of the loss of memory," says Mr 
 M'Taggart, " it is the same person who lives in the 
 successive lives." Now, as Mr Bradley has forcibly 
 recalled to us, it is exceedingly difficult to determine 
 precisely what we mean by personal identity and what 
 its limits are. Obviously, within the present life, count- 
 less items of our experience lapse from conscious memory 
 and survive only as aptitudes, dispositions, and ten- 
 dencies. But they play their part in training the mind 
 and tempering the character. Our personality is not 
 exhausted, therefore, by the individual experiences we 
 can consciously recall. Still, although much may persist
 
 202 m'taggart's some dogmas of religion. 
 
 only in this sub-conscious fashion, it seems clear that a 
 continuity of conscious memory within certain limits is 
 involved in the ordinary notion of personality, so that 
 a complete break of such continuity (and this is supposed 
 to occur between one life and another) would make the 
 assertion of personal identity in the two lives unmean- 
 ing. Locke is arguing, therefore, on right lines when he 
 emphasises in his well-known chapter "that personal 
 identity consists not in the identity of substance, but in 
 the identity of consciousness." 
 
 I cannot help feeling that throughout the discussion 
 Mr M'Taggart substitutes for the living and concrete 
 unity of self-consciousness, as manifested in experience, 
 the numerical unity of a soul-substance or indestructible 
 soul-atom on which the personal unity of experience is 
 supposed to depend, or in which it is somehow housed. 
 This soul-substance forms, as it were, the vehicle by 
 which the mental and moral qualities acquired by an 
 individual in the course of a single life are transmitted 
 to the next incarnation to be his working capital and the 
 starting-point, possibly, of further advance. The two 
 lives are thus continuous in the sense that both have 
 the same metaphysical substrate, and the identity of 
 substance manifests itself, on Mr M'Taggart's theory, in 
 identity or continuity of attributes. But even so, it is 
 surely paradoxical, or rather simply misleading, to speak 
 of this continuity as " personal identity," and to say that 
 in spite of the loss of memory it is " the same person 
 who lives in the successive lives." The identity that 
 exists is the identity of an object for an onlooker; it 
 does not exist for any one of the successive incarnations. 
 Each self is the realised unity of its own separate life, 
 and if the new life is not consciously knit to the old, it 
 is unmeaning to speak of the new individual as the same
 
 m'taggarts some dogmas of religion. 203 
 
 self. Mr M'Taggart argues that the loss of memory 
 need not render immortality valueless, because the pres- 
 ent life has value, although, admittedly, it carries no 
 memories beyond itself. Why, then, he says, should 
 not future lives have value, although in the same way 
 without memory beyond themselves ? " In that case 
 a man will be better off for his immortality, since it will 
 give him an unlimited amount of valuable existence, 
 instead of a limited amount. And a man who believed 
 that he had this immortality would have a more desir- 
 able expectation of the future than if he did not believe 
 it." Certainly the future lives, when they come, have 
 the same chance as this life of being valuable to the 
 persons who have to live them, and as the lives go on for 
 ever, there will thus be " an unlimited amount of valu- 
 able existence " ; but there is to me a savour of mockery 
 in the saying that the " man " is better off because the 
 prospect gives " him " an unlimited, instead of a limited, 
 amount of valuable existence. Mr M'Taggart himself is 
 candid enough to add that " if a man should say that he 
 takes no more interest in his own fate, after memory of 
 his present life had gone, than he would take in the fate 
 of some unknown person," he does not see how he could 
 be shown to be in the wrong. " His own fate " is so far 
 a question-begging description of the facts, since it im- 
 plies the truth of Mr M'Taggart's theory of what con- 
 stitutes identity. He puts the case more fairly in 
 ' Hegelian Cosmology ' when he says : " Suppose a man 
 could be assured that in a short time he would lose for 
 ever all memory of the past, would he consider this to be 
 annihilation, and take no more interest in the person of a 
 similar character who would occupy his old body than 
 he would in any stranger ? " In both connections Mr 
 M'Taggart expresses his own conviction that most men
 
 204 m'taggart's some dogmas of eeligion. 
 
 would regard the fortunes of this hypothetical individual 
 with an interest at least analogous to that which they 
 take in their own conscious survival. That is a question 
 which could only be determined by statistics, and I will 
 at least record my adhesion to the opposite view. I am 
 not here arguing in defence of an immortality accom- 
 panied by memory. I can vividly appreciate the stim- 
 ulus of the Positivist view that all the good of every life 
 becomes the enduring possession of the race ; or, on more 
 homely ground, I can understand a man working for his 
 family or his country without giving a thought to his 
 personal continuance. But I fail to understand what 
 special interest a man can take in the unknown series of 
 those who are to inherit his soul-substance, any more 
 than in the equally unknown series of those who had the 
 usufruct of it before him. Nor can I see how what I 
 should describe as the non-personal immortality of such 
 individual substances, should " make any difference to 
 our attitude towards reality in general and towards our 
 own lives in particular." 
 
 I think, however, that I see in what consists for Mr 
 M'Taggart the attraction of the belief, considered not 
 with reference to the particular person who is mislead- 
 ingly described as immortal, but as a general theory of 
 the nature of existence. It is because it seems to 
 guarantee an idealistic theory of the universe. Mr 
 M'Taggart holds, and in this I agree with him, that 
 value resides only in the experience of conscious beings. 
 Such values are realised (it may be, progressively realised) 
 in the present life of the human race upon the earth ; 
 but if these values are realised only in perishing indi- 
 viduals, in perishing civilisations or races, — if our solar 
 system, for example, is after a given time to pass away, 
 leaving behind it no result beyond a certain increase in
 
 m'taggart's some dogmas of religion. 205 
 
 the temperature of surrounding space, — there is an aim- 
 lessness in this ceaseless process of building up and 
 pulling down which is at variance with our moral ideas, 
 and seems to contradict the belief that spiritual values 
 constitute the ultimate facts of existence. In order to 
 save the situation, therefore, Mr M'Taggart argues that 
 reality consists, in ultimate terms, of a definite number 
 of eternal " selves " or monads, which appear over and 
 over again in the time series, and serve as the media in 
 which the cumulative results of experience in the time- 
 process are preserved. These spiritual entities flower, as 
 it were, in successive lives. They constitute the " funda- 
 mental differentiations of the Absolute," which is, in fact, 
 only a name for the " assembly of spirits " formed by 
 these " finite individuals, each of which finds his character 
 and individuality in his relations to the rest, and in his 
 perception that they are of the same nature with him- 
 self." Such a " city of God " has been recognised by 
 various thinkers as the highest form of the spiritual 
 ideal, but the attempt to give precision to the idea by 
 converting it into the doctrine of a definitely determined 
 number of eternal self- existent substances seems to me to 
 obscure the true meaning of personality and to exemplify 
 the kind of metaphysical speculation from which Kant, 
 and still more Hegel, was supposed to have set us free. 
 
 The other dogmas above referred to — the existence of 
 God and the freedom of the will — are treated by Mr 
 M'Taggart in a more exclusively negative sense. Not 
 only does he set himself to demolish the ordinary argu- 
 ments by which they are supported, but he holds that on 
 metaphysical grounds they can be shown to be untrue. 
 The discussion of free-will seems to me below Mr 
 M'Taggart's usual level of freshness and incisiveness. 
 He attacks a " freedom of indetermination " for which I
 
 206 m'tagg art's some dogmas of religion. 
 
 do not think any champion would enter the lists. What 
 upholder of freedom, for example, would accept the state- 
 ment that " according to the indeterminist theory our 
 choice between motives is not determined by anything 
 at all " ? And when Mr M'Taggart says that " on the 
 determinist hypothesis an omnipotent God could have 
 prevented all sin by creating us with better natures and 
 in more favourable surroundings," and that " he cannot 
 see what extraordinary value lies in the incompleteness 
 of the determination of the will, which should counter- 
 balance all the sin, and the consequent unhappiness 
 caused by the misuse of that will," the answer is that 
 creatures so turned out would not be moral beings at all. 
 They would be things, and not persons. Mr M'Taggart's 
 own arguments treat the question entirely on the plane 
 of efficient causality, on which motives are regarded as 
 external forces impinging upon a given " nature " — that 
 is to say, an inherited or implanted disposition. But 
 such schematic representation remains entirely outside 
 the realities of the moral consciousness. In the funda- 
 mentals of ethical theory, however unfortunately he may 
 sometimes have expressed himself, Kant's insight is un- 
 erring, and the basis of all ethical discussion is just the 
 difference between a person and a thing. A being who 
 can only act imder the idea of freedom is really free in 
 the sense required by ethics. It is the judgment of the 
 moral agent upon his own action which can alone tell 
 us the real nature of the act, however justifiably the 
 psychologist, the historian, or the social reformer may 
 deal with it from another point of view. I believe that 
 a more sympathetic study of the great master in ethics 
 would have made Mr M'Taggart's chapter on " Free Will " 
 more adequate to its theme. 
 
 Belief in immortality and belief in God usually go
 
 m'taggart's some dogmas of religion. 207 
 
 together. Indeed, the tendency of modern thought is 
 rather to make the conviction of immortaUty dependent 
 on the doctrine of God. But for Mr M'Taggart the one 
 doctrine excludes the other. The eternity of finite selves 
 in the sense explained above negates for him the sup- 
 position that the Absolute is a self or person. " It would 
 be difficult," he has told us in his ' Hegelian Cosmology,' 
 " to find a proof of our own immortality which did not 
 place God in the position of a community rather than a 
 person." In the present volume, Mr M'Taggart begins his 
 discussion of the question by distinguishing God from the 
 Absolute. The two terms are generally used, he allows, 
 as synonymous ; but the God of Spinoza, for example, is 
 not personal, whereas personality seems inseparable from 
 the ordinary idea of God. " By God," says Mr M'Taggart, 
 " I mean a being who is personal, supreme, and good ; " 
 and the definition may be taken as coinciding, so far as 
 it goes, with ordmary usage. By most men the attri- 
 bute " supreme " is probably taken to imply that God 
 is the Creator or Author of the universe ; but in Mr 
 M'Taggart's view it is not necessary for a belief in God 
 that God should be conceived either as omnipotent or as 
 creative, provided the belief is retained in a being who is 
 personal, supreme, and good. He himself, indeed, denies 
 the existence of God, if understood as a being omnipotent 
 and creative, but he is willing to admit the possibility of 
 a non-omnipotent God, whom he styles " the director of 
 the universe," " a person of appreciable importance when 
 measured against the whole universe," " one who fights 
 for the good and who may be victorious." The only 
 reason why we should not believe in the existence of 
 such a God, he says, with a dash of cynicism, is that 
 there is no reason why we should believe in it. 
 He first attacks the doctrine of an omnipotent and
 
 208 m'tagg art's some dogmas of religion. 
 
 creative God. The cosmological argument from the neces- 
 sity for a first cause, he points out, is powerless. If we 
 suppose that God exists in time, " then we have a sub- 
 stance which has persisted through an infinite past time." 
 But if one substance can so exist without being caused, 
 why not others ? If God did not need a creator, why 
 should " a man " or " a pebble " require one ? On the 
 other hand, if God's nature is timeless, then it is incap- 
 able of change, and the creation of the universe at a par- 
 ticular moment cannot, therefore, be explained from the 
 nature of God. If we pass to the argument from design, 
 Kant has already told us that it can prove, at most, the 
 existence of an architect or designer, not that of an omni- 
 potent creator. If it proved the existence of a God at 
 all, says Mr M'Taggart, it would also offer a positive 
 disproof of his omnipotence. He next proceeds to argue 
 that the existence of evil in the world is incompatible 
 with the belief in an omnipotent being who is also good. 
 He repudiates with not unnatural warmth the theory of 
 Pascal and Mansel that goodness in God may mean 
 something quite different from what is called goodness in 
 men. He refers to Mill's famous saying in this connec- 
 tion as " words which form one of the turning-points in 
 the religious development of the world." This is, surely, 
 somewhat exaggerated language, and in view of this high 
 estimate of the sentiment, it strikes one as quaint when 
 Mr M'Taggart goes on to criticise the prudence of Mill's 
 resolve. It might be wiser after all, he suggests, to com- 
 pound with such a God-monster than to risk the extremes 
 of his malignity. It must be said that the discussion in 
 this chapter is, on the whole, rather profitless, because 
 Mr M'Taggart insists on taking omnipotence as implying 
 the power to make contradictions true. It may be un- 
 desirable to use the word at all, but as those whom he is
 
 m'taggart's some dogmas of religion. 209 
 
 attacking never assert omnipotence in the sense of ability 
 to override intellectual and moral necessities, the polemic 
 is rather in the air. It is no pertinent answer, for ex- 
 ample, to the argument that the evil in the universe is 
 the result of free will, to say that " a God who cannot 
 create a universe in which all men have free will and 
 which is at the same time free from all evil is not an 
 omnipotent God, since there is one thing which he can- 
 not do." 
 
 Mr M'Taggart passes next to consider the alternative 
 of a creative God who is not omnipotent, referring in this 
 connection to Dr Eashdall's essay in the volume ' Personal 
 Idealism.' If God is creative, he argues, nothing exists 
 unless He decides to create it — unless, that is, He prefers 
 its existence to its non-existence. We cannot, therefore, 
 in strictness, speak of God's will as thioarted by the exist- 
 ence of evil, for He willed the universe as a whole with 
 the evil in it. Such a being, he concludes, could not be 
 a God in the sense in which we have agreed to under- 
 stand the word, because he would not be good. Here 
 again, however, there seems to be implied in Mr 
 M'Taggart's argument the same interpretation of creative 
 power as we found in the case of omnipotence. He 
 understands by it power to compass moral, if not intel- 
 lectual, impossibilities. The contention of those against 
 whom Mr M'Taggart is arguing would be that moral 
 goodness, or indeed the existence of a moral agent or 
 a personality at all, is impossible without the risk 
 (without the practical certainty, we may say) of the 
 occurrence of evil volitions. But it does not follow 
 from this, they would maintain, that evil is not repug- 
 nant in itself to the author of the universe. The dis- 
 cussion of the third possibility, that of a non-omnipotent 
 God who is not regarded as creator but as one person 
 

 
 210 m'taggart's some dogmas of religion. 
 
 among others, though indefinitely more powerful, leads to 
 the less negative, but somewhat equivocal, result already 
 indicated. To be frank, one sees no reason why this 
 mythical " person of appreciable importance " should be 
 dignified with the august name of God ; and as a descrip- 
 tion of Mr M'Taggart's own conclusions the blunt expres- 
 sion in ' Hegelian Cosmology ' seems preferable, " the Abso- 
 lute is not God, and in consequence there is no God." 
 
 The concluding chapter considers the negative result 
 of the whole discussion in its bearing on human happi- 
 ness. The existence of an omnipotent creator, it is 
 argued, would give us no reason to expect any goodness 
 in the universe which we should not have expected other- 
 wise. The existence of a non-omnipotent God would 
 give us "no appreciable help towards a cheerful view of 
 the universe," seeing that it leaves us uncertain how 
 much God may be able to do. On the other hand, " it 
 is quite possible without a belief in God to maintain that 
 the nature of reality is such as to ensure the predomin- 
 ance of good. There might be a God and yet the universe 
 might be, on the whole, bad. There might be no God 
 and yet the universe might be, on the whole, good." The 
 only way, therefore, of arriving at any certainty on this 
 point " would be by the establishment of a complete system 
 of metaphysics." Mr M'Taggart evidently refers here to 
 his own theory as sketched in ' Hegelian Cosmology.' 
 
 In spite of its acuteness, and in spite of the flashes of 
 deep feeling which redeem much that is merely clever, 
 the book leaves me with a distinct impression of unreality. 
 I may be to some extent disqualified as a critic. When 
 one does not believe in a creator ah cxira, whether omni- 
 potent or non-omnipotent, and when the conception of a 
 finite director of the universe strikes one as frankly 
 fantastic, it is perhaps difficult to appreciate a laborious
 
 M'TAGGARTS SOME DOGMAS OF RELIGION. 211 
 
 discussion of these alternatives. But if Mr M'Taggart 
 was going to discuss religious dogmas to any purpose, he 
 should have spent his time upon the view which is only 
 mentioned in passing, that " God is the sole reality." 
 Neither religion nor philosophy can seriously entertain 
 any other alternative. In many cases this view has led 
 to a denial of the personality of the divine; but even 
 Martineau, personalist of the personalists, speaks of God 
 as " the soul of all souls." The preliminary difficulty, 
 therefore, which Mr M'Taggart alleges, of conceiving 
 " how one person could be part of another," is of a nature 
 which suggests a reconsideration of the conception of 
 personality rather than the omission of a thorough dis- 
 cussion of the only vital theory of God and man. If I 
 may say so without offence, Mr M'Taggart's treatment of 
 the dogmas he discusses seems to deprive them of their 
 primary reference to the needs and utterances of the 
 religious consciousness. The doctrines seem, if I may so 
 express myself, to become finitised and mechanised. I 
 have already indicated my view of the doctrine of eternal 
 soul-substances. Similarly, in the case of God, it is 
 surely not the existence of " a substance which has 
 persisted through an infinite past time " that we are 
 concerned about, or even the existence of another person 
 to love. When Mr M'Taggart speaks of the love of God 
 as " something entirely distinct from reverence and ad- 
 miration and gratitude — a feeling of one person for 
 another, which is not unworthy to bear the same name 
 as the feeling of friend for friend," I feel somehow that 
 Spinoza's description of the anior intellectualis Dei and 
 Kant's austere warning against importing the notion of 
 " pathologische Neigung " into the practical love of God 
 are at bottom more religious, and become the situation 
 better. What does the existence of God, or the person-
 
 212 m'taggart's some dogmas of religion. 
 
 ality of God, mean for the religious thinker save the 
 intense conviction of the rationality and the righteous- 
 ness of the universe ? And is it not strange to say, as 
 Mr M'Taggart does, of faith in God (p. 69), that " it will 
 only give us light on one particular dogma, that the world 
 is wisely and righteously governed " ? Surely this is the 
 sum and substance of all religious faith and of all philo- 
 sophical construction. Does it not carry with it the 
 ultimate answer in regard to immortality as in regard to 
 every other question ? As Carlyle puts it in one of the 
 pathetic outbursts of the ' Autobiography ' : " Perhaps we 
 shall all meet Yonder, and the tears be wiped from all 
 eyes. One thing is no Perhaps ; surely we shall all meet, 
 if it be the will of the Maker of us. If it be not His 
 will, then is it not better so ? "
 
 EEPKINTS
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF KELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 PHILOSOPHY, as metaphysic, is occupied in deter- 
 mining with increasing accuracy the definitions 
 and the mutual relations of the three great objects of 
 thought — God, the World, and Man. Eeligion, in its 
 current acceptation, implies a certain theory of the 
 nature of at least two of these — God and man — and 
 their relation to one another. Philosophy and religion 
 are, therefore, and have always been, most intimately 
 connected. Prom another point of view, again, religion, 
 considered as a subjective manifestation, is so universal 
 a mark of human culture, when it advances above the 
 lowest stages, that it cannot be left unnoticed by any 
 philosophy which pretends to give an exhaustive account 
 of man and his relation to the system of which he forms 
 a part. Every epoch of culture has derived its specific 
 form and colour from its relation to certain religious 
 ideas : difference of civilisation means, in the main, 
 difference of religious training. In these circumstances, 
 it is perhaps not too much to say that the capacity of a 
 
 ^ As explained in the Preface, the chapters which follow were written 
 in 1881, and appeared in the following year as the second part of a volume 
 on 'The Development from Kant to Hegel.'
 
 216 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 philosophy to find room for religion in its scheme of 
 things becomes no unfair gauge of the adequacy or in- 
 adequacy of the system in question. 
 
 In Christian times the relations of philosophy and 
 religion have been mainly determined by the attitude of 
 reason towards the churchly doctrine of revelation. 
 Three relations of the human reason to the things 
 of God are possible. 
 
 (1) It may be said that the content of theology is 
 matter communicated by God in an extraordinary fashion 
 — truths otherwise unattainable, and on which it is 
 beyond the competency of reason to sit in judgment. 
 We have thus two spheres arbitrarily separated. As 
 regards their mutual relation, theology is at first supreme 
 and law -giving ; reason, as the handmaiden of faith, is 
 occupied solely in applying the premises which it receives 
 from the hand of theology. These are the Middle Ages, 
 the Ages of Faith. Then we have the relation of in- 
 difference, typically represented by a man like Bacon. 
 When Bacon, in his circumnavigation of the intellectual 
 globe, comes to theologia sacra, he steers clear of the 
 subject with the remark : " If we proceed to treat of it, 
 we must leave the bark of human reason and pass into 
 the ship of the Church." Divinity, he says elsewhere, 
 " is founded upon the placets of God." " In such there 
 can be no use of absolute reason. We see it familiarly 
 in games of wit, as chess or the like. The draughts and 
 first laws of the game are positive . . . and not examin- 
 able by reason." The position is, in words, the same as 
 that of the Middle Ages, but it is formulated in a 
 different interest : the irreverent comparison is significant 
 of the secular spirit that characterised Bacon and, in a 
 measure, the whole Elizabethan generation. But the 
 relation of indifference, or of mock subservience (as it
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 217 
 
 is found in Bayle), is necessarily transient: it merely 
 marks the end of the period of unnatural separation. In 
 the long-run reason claims the whole man. It is in 
 virtue of his reason that he is the subject of a revel- 
 ation ; and he is continually being asked to exercise his 
 reason upon parts of the revelation, even by those who 
 most strenuously maintain the severance of the two 
 spheres. It is only because there is a certain reason and 
 fitness in the conceptions of revealed religion that he has 
 ever made them his own, and that he continues to use 
 them and to find in them some kind of meaning and 
 edification. The external relation of reason to religious 
 truth cannot, therefore, continue ; nor can the encroach- 
 ments of reason be stemmed by temporary distinctions 
 between the WTinatural and the supern&tursil. 
 
 (2) A natural movement of revulsion carries reason 
 into assuming an extreme or purely negative attitude 
 towards revealed religion, such as we find exemplified in 
 the current of thought which prevailed during the eigh- 
 teenth century. The dry light of the understanding has 
 here usurped all the ground to itself ; and the explanation 
 of the rise of positive religions is sought in the hypothesis 
 of deceit, ambition, and priestcraft. Eeligion is identified 
 with morality plus an intellectual adherence to certain 
 dogmas of current philosophy — the existence of God and 
 the immortality of the soul — which are dignified with 
 the title of Natural Eeligion. But it was impossible 
 that this dry rationalism should survive the moving of 
 the deeper springs of feeling that marked the close of 
 the century. The first revival of a sense of historic 
 probability showed the untenable nature of a hypothesis 
 which derived man's greatest onward impulse from a hot- 
 bed of corruption and deceit. But to overcome the 
 abstract opposition of reason and revelation, a philosophy
 
 218 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 was needed which should give a wider scope to reason 
 and a more inward meaning to revelation. 
 
 (3) This is the third position, as occupied by the best 
 thinkers of the nineteenth century. It cannot be 
 attained without the abandonment of the mechanical 
 philosophy and the unhistorical criticism of the preceding 
 age. So long as the Deistic view of God and of His 
 relations to the world and history held the field, a revel- 
 ation necessarily meant simply an interference ah extra 
 with the established order of things. Deism does not 
 perceive that by separating God from the world and man 
 it really makes Him finite, by setting up alongside of 
 Him a sphere to which His relations are transient and 
 accidental. The philosopher to whom the individual 
 self and the sensible world form the first reality gradu- 
 ally comes to think of this otiose Deity as a more or less 
 ornamental appendage to the scheme of things. In 
 France the century ended in Atheism, and in cosmo- 
 politan circles in England and Germany the belief in 
 God had become little more than a form of words. But 
 if Individualism is provably untenable, all this will be 
 changed. If man himself be inexplicable, save as sharing 
 in the wider life of a universal reason, and if the process 
 of history be realised (in an intimate sense, and not with 
 a mere formal acknowledgment) as the exponent of a 
 divine purpose, then revelation denotes no longer an 
 interference with the natural course of that development, 
 but becomes the normal method of expressing the rela- 
 tion of the immanent spirit of God to the children of 
 men at great crises of their fate. The relation is never 
 broken, the inspiration is never withdrawn, but there are 
 times at which its nearness is more particularly felt. 
 To these the religious sense of mankind, not without a 
 true instinct, tends to restrict the term revelation
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 219 
 
 and such a turning-point is, for us, the advent of 
 Christianity. 
 
 It was Lessing who first flung this fertile idea into the 
 soil of modern thought, where it was destined soon to 
 bear fruit an hundredfold. In spite of his own imperfect 
 statement (in the ' Education of the Human Eace ' and 
 elsewhere), he may be said to have founded the Phil- 
 osophy of Keligion in the sense in which it is now 
 understood. Lessing and Kant stand together in 
 Germany, closing the old age and opening the new. 
 Every epoch-making mind has two sides. Like Janus, 
 it looks two ways : one face is turned to the past, the 
 other to the future. No one can read Kant intelligently 
 without perceiving two tendencies that strive for the 
 mastery. In Lessing the conflict between the old and 
 the new is still more painful, and communicates an 
 element of unrest to his whole life. When he is brought 
 in contact with the manuscripts of Eeimarus, the un- 
 mitigated representative of the eighteenth century, he is 
 driven by a kind of revulsion to elaborate grounds for 
 the defence of the idea of revelation, and even of certain 
 dosmas of the Christian faith. But it was after all a 
 tmir dc force ; and when he was left alone, without the 
 stimulus of opposition, he was apt to become once more 
 a man of the Enlightenment like those around him. But 
 he never attained their self-complacency. In his life- 
 time he gained only the distrust of both parties ; now we 
 can sympathise with his struggles, and recognise in him 
 the pioneer of a new time. This indication of his 
 position and influence must be enough in a sketch like 
 the present, which does not aim at going beyond the 
 limits fixed by the two names Kant and Hegel. We 
 pass, therefore, without further preface, to consider the 
 treatment which religion receives at the hands of Kant.
 
 220 PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 
 
 The foundations of Kant's philosophy are laid in 
 his ethics. It is only in connection with his ethical 
 theory, therefore, that his Philosophy of Eeligion 
 can be understood. The immediate consciousness of 
 the moral law introduces us to a world of realities, 
 from which, according to Kant, the categories and 
 forms of our own thought exclude us in the sen- 
 sible sphere. It is quite possible to accept the 
 gist of Kant's position here, and at the same time 
 to hold that we know all the reality of the sen- 
 sible world that there is to know. There is no need 
 to adopt Kant's mystification about things in them- 
 selves, as different from the things that are known ; 
 but he is right in saying that the world of sense is 
 not noumenal, if by noumenon be understood the notion 
 of that which can be an end-in-itself. The sensible 
 world is essentially phenomenon ; it exists for reason 
 and as a means to rational consciousness. If it were 
 possible to think of Nature out of that reference, it 
 would be seen to be destitute of anything that could 
 fairly be deemed to confer permanent value upon it. 
 Its forms might flit for ever across the inane, without 
 the suggestion of any end which they were there to 
 realise, and which reason must pronounce as worthy, 
 in its own self, of being realised. Without such an 
 end-in-itself, existence is, literally, to the speculative 
 mind a vain show. Philosophy may be intelligibly 
 defined, from this point of view, as the search for the
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 221 
 
 supreme end, which shall serve, as it were, to justify 
 existence — something in the contemplation of which a 
 rational being may find complete and permanent satis- 
 faction, and to the advancement of which he may 
 unquestioningly subordinate his individual efforts. The 
 phenomenalness of the sensible world may be taken 
 to mean simply that it does not supply to reason 
 such an end. All the forms of its life are ends only 
 in a relative sense ; they have their true end outside 
 of themselves. It is evident that, in this sense, there 
 can be no more than one noumenon. The notion of 
 end - in - itself implies that whatever is so designated 
 receives its title because all other ends, relatively so- 
 called, hold their significance in fee from it, and 
 because there is nothing beyond itself with which it 
 can be compared, or to which it can be subordinated. 
 The idea of a plurality of ends-in-themselves may, at 
 most, be employed, with a certain laxity, as indicating 
 the variety of aims which are reduced to unity in the 
 one central conception. Nor can there be any doubt 
 where this one noumenon is to be found : reason or 
 the rational being alone does not require to go outside 
 of itself to seek its end. If it did, we should be em- 
 barked upon a hopeless progressus in infinitum, and 
 must despair of any answer to the question. What is 
 good in itself — what is the good ? But reason is self- 
 centred, and fixes its own end. Even in such a pro- 
 gressus the objects of pursuit would be, to all eternity, 
 such as reason dictated to itself as worthy of attain- 
 ment. Sooner or later the acknowledgment is forced 
 from us that reason must itself be dominant in all 
 its ends, and that it is impossible to cast off this 
 sway. For reason, in other words the supreme end, 
 of which all the rest are only specific determinations,
 
 222 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 must be the realisation of its own nature. Reason, 
 therefore, or the rational being, as rational, is the 
 sole noumenon or end-in-itself. 
 
 This may be described, without misrepresentation, as 
 the permanent result of the Kantian Ethics ; and it is 
 essentially, from another side, the same as the result 
 of the Critique of Knowledge. Just as the source of 
 the categories cannot be brought under the categories, 
 so the source of all ends cannot of itself be subordinated 
 to any of the ends it sets up. The pure Ego cannot 
 be compassed by any of its lower forms ; " it must be 
 thought through itself, and all other things through it." 
 So here the ultimate, satisfying good of reason must 
 be reason itself. In both cases the subject is recog- 
 nised as raised above the sphere of things — as deter- 
 mining, not determined. Man bears in his own person 
 the last principle of explanation, whether in a theoretical 
 or in a practical regard. The value of Kant's result, 
 however, depends on the interpretation put upon reason, 
 and on the relation in which reason is supposed to stand 
 to the worlds of knowledge and action. The fruitful- 
 ness of the principle is impaired, in Kant's own system, 
 by the purely formal or abstract way in which it is 
 taken. This makes it impossible for him to deduce 
 either a real world or a concrete system of duties. 
 In the Pure Reason the unity of apperception remains 
 a form into which matter is poured from another 
 source : in ethics, similarly, the result must be an 
 imperative that commands nothing in particular, unless 
 reason is seen to have creatively specified itself in the 
 historical life and institutions of the world. 
 
 Kant's ethical position, however, must be put in a 
 clearer light to be properly understood. " An intelli- 
 gence," he says, "has this prerogative over all other
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 223 
 
 beings, that he fixes his end for himself." ^ Nature is 
 governed by mechanical, chemical, and biological laws, 
 which it fulfils without knowing them. The animal 
 has its ends fixed for it by recurring instinct, and, of 
 itself, it does not move out of the beaten circle of 
 these natural impulses. The mark of a rational being 
 is that it is raised above the government of a succes- 
 sion of impulses. Intelligence consists in the power 
 of realising mentally a general law or principle, and 
 will is the power of determining action accordingly. 
 By the possession of these twin faculties, man is 
 differentiated from the brute. Will, freedom, person- 
 ality in its most intimate sense, are all contained in 
 the initial self - determination. It introduces us, in 
 short, to the knowledge of good and evil, and makes 
 us the subjects of another legislation, quite different 
 from the natural. Intelligence has not been given to 
 man merely to enable him to satisfy his animal desires 
 more copiously and exquisitely : happiness is, in fact, 
 far more effectually secured under the guidance of in- 
 stinct than under that of reason. The possession of 
 reason intimates another and a higher purpose to be 
 realised in human life. "With the transference of the 
 reins from the hands of nature to our own, comes also 
 the responsibility for the course of the driving. A 
 beast fulfils its instincts, and is blameless ; man, en- 
 lightened by consciousness, often abuses them. It is 
 of the essence of reason to generate the conception of 
 " ought." Morality is founded on this unique concep- 
 tion; and a moral or an immoral life becomes at once 
 possible, according as we do, or do not, make its 
 "objective law" the subjective law or determinator of 
 
 1 "Die verniinftige Natur" is Kant's phrase here. 'Werke,'iv. 285. 
 The references throughout are to Hartenstein's edition of 1867.
 
 224 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 our will. The relation between the law which reason 
 lays down, and our subjective freedom to follow the law 
 or to swerve from it, is the subject-matter of morality ; 
 the idea of obligation which the relation contains, is 
 formulated by Kant in the Categorical Imperative.^ 
 
 In accordance with his usual custom, Kant proceeds 
 to consider how such a command is possible — whence 
 it derives its indisputable authority. He finds the ex- 
 planation in a view of reason such as has been already 
 indicated. The law is binding upon all rational beings, 
 because it is reason's own law. The aspect of the law 
 as a command — expressing necessitation — is due to the 
 fact that we are not purely rational. We have a sen- 
 sitive nature, and are swayed by sensitive determinants ; 
 hence our will is not holy, or in perfect conformity to 
 the law. Nevertheless, it is not a foreign yoke that is 
 imposed upon us ; we are subject to our own legislation. 
 Man as noumenon, or purely rational being, gives the 
 law ; man as phenomenon receives it. This is the prin- 
 ciple of the Autonomy of the Will, by which Kant may 
 be said to have solved the question of obligation. As 
 long as the authority imposing the law is separated from 
 the consciousness to which it appeals, its right to command 
 may be called in question. The law must be such in its 
 conception that every man may be, as it were, thrust 
 back on himself, so as to recognise in it his own law. 
 
 ^ It is important to remark that the Categorical Imperative is simply 
 the scientific formulation of the universal recognition, in some shape or 
 other, of an "ought" and an "ought-not"; to which is added, in the 
 Kantian Ethics, an account of the conditions under which alone such a 
 universally binding command is possible. The history of the evolution 
 of the conception of right, with its meaning always gaining in purity 
 and complexity, is, therefore, quite beside the question investigated by 
 Kant. The possibility of the occurrence of a moral action, and, conse- 
 quently, the possibility of Ethics as a science, depends on the existence 
 of such a notion, whether the form it assumes be adequate or not.
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 225 
 
 The moral Sollen is his necessary Wollen as member 
 of an intelligible world, — that is, as a will capable of 
 abstracting from the particular determinants of sense. 
 The notion of such an absolute law is plainly, from 
 another side, the same notion as that of an absolute 
 End by which all action must be conditioned. The 
 authority of the law springs, on this view, from the fact 
 that it enjoins the realisation of what we recognise as 
 our permanent and essential self. The position is, in 
 ethics, the same as that of the self-conditionedness of 
 thought in speculation. The End which intelligence 
 fixes for itself cannot be, Kant says, a material end to 
 be achieved ; for in that case the will would be deter- 
 mined by something beyond itself. It must be an in- 
 dependent end (ein selbststandiger Zweck) ; and " this 
 can be nothing else than the Subject of all ends itself." ^ 
 Or, as he says elsewhere, " humanity, as objective End, 
 ought to form, as law, the supreme limiting condition of 
 all subjective ends." ^ 
 
 Such, then, is the foundation, and probably the most 
 valuable part, of Kant's ethical construction. The Cate- 
 gorical Imperative, or the pure form of universally 
 obligatory law, is " the sole fact of pure reason." ^ The 
 rationale of the possibility of such a command is found 
 in the idea of reason or the rational will as self-legis- 
 lative, and so laying down a law which every rational 
 being must recognise. In the ' Groundwork of the 
 Metaphysic of Ethics,' Kant talks of deducing from this 
 single Imperative " all the imperatives of duty." It 
 cannot be said, however, that he has succeeded in con- 
 
 1 ' Werke,' iv. 285. In the idea of a good will we must abstract, he 
 saj's, "von allem zu bewirkenden Zwecke." 
 
 2 Ibid.,iv. 279. 
 
 '^ Ibid., V. 33, "das einzige Factum der reinen Vernunft." 
 
 P
 
 226 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 necting his scheme of duties with his central principle. 
 If he had paid more attention to the idea of reason as 
 End, and so the source of the matter as well as the form 
 of its action, it might have been possible to bring the 
 particular and the universal more effectively together. 
 But this would have meant virtually that reconsideration 
 of the nature of the universal Self and its relations to 
 the world which we everywhere miss in Kant, and which 
 even in his ethical scheme remains fragmentary. The 
 disjunction of the universal Self from the phenomenal 
 world — in this instance, from the historical world of 
 institutions and customs — is the source of the formalism 
 which succeeding critics have so copiously blamed in the 
 Kantian Ethics. The notion of End remains for Kant 
 strictly convertible with the pure form of law. Hence he 
 describes it, in the passages quoted above, as " limiting " 
 condition — as an End which " must be thought negatively, 
 that is, counter to which we must not act." This is quite 
 of a piece with his unsatisfactory method of exemplifying 
 his formula by taking up particular laws empirically, and 
 testing them by comparison with its limiting condition. 
 An absolute End, however, cannot be reached by abstract- 
 ing from all real ends ; it can be got at only by showing 
 all real ends to be included in one conception. And if 
 the notion of a universal or noumenal Self is to acquire 
 positive content, it must not be separated from the reason 
 that is in the world. Apart from the definite forms of 
 that development, the Self is no more than an abstract 
 point of unity. It was the impossibility of finding a real 
 End in his abstract notion of the rational Self that made 
 Kant round off his ethical system with a conception of 
 the summum honum which is essentially Eudsemonistic in 
 character.
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 227 
 
 It was through the implications of the Categorical 
 Imperative that Kant reached the completed theory of 
 the world, which he found denied him in the theoretical 
 reason. These implications are what he called the Postu- 
 lates of the Practical Eeason ; and they correspond to 
 the three Ideas which he designates in the ' Critique of 
 Pure Eeason ' as the proper object of metaphysical in- 
 quiry — God, Freedom, and Immortality. The noumenal, 
 and therefore unending, existence of the soul ; the possi- 
 bility of a reconciliation between the idea of free causa- 
 tion and the completely determined series of conditions 
 demanded by reason in accounting for a phenomenon ; 
 and the reality of the idea of God, — are the questions 
 treated by Kant in the Dialectic under the heads of 
 Psychology, Cosmology, and Theology respectively. In 
 the field of pure reason, the Idea of the Ego as noumenal 
 unity, and the Idea of God as " the supreme and neces- 
 sary unity on which all empirical reality is based," are 
 simply points of view (Gesichtspunkte) by which reason 
 introduces unity of system into its experiences. They 
 are " regulative principles " or " formal rules " in the 
 process of organising experience : we proceed as if all 
 the phenomena of the internal sense were unified in one 
 unchanging subject, and as if all phenomena, subjective 
 and objective, were grounded in " one all-embracing Being 
 as their supreme and all-sufficient cause." Similarly, we 
 proceed in Cosmology according to the regulative Idea of 
 the World as an infinite series of necessary causation ; 
 but the possibility is still left open of the existence of 
 an intelligible or noumenal freedom alongside of this 
 phenomenal determination, should such a conception be 
 imperatively demanded on other grounds. The demand 
 comes from the side of Ethics. Freedom, Immortality,
 
 228 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 and the Existence of God are involved, Kant maintains, 
 in the unconditional Imperative of the moral law. They 
 are the conditions requisite for the observance of its com- 
 mand ; and they lose, therefore, — at least, so far as the 
 practical reason is concerned, — their merely regulative 
 character. They become objects of rational belief (Ver- 
 nunftglaube). It is true that, just because the Postulates 
 are reached on ethical grounds, they are not to be treated 
 as theoretical dogmata. " Moral theology," he says, " is 
 only of immanent use, namely, with reference to the 
 fulfilment of our destiny here in the world." Indeed, 
 to treat the Postulates as scientific facts would be to try 
 to defeat the very object of reason in leaving us in this 
 comparative twilight : it would make a disinterested moral 
 will impossible. But none the less does this " moral 
 belief " or " moral certainty " represent Kant's definite 
 notion of the intelligible unity of the world. 
 
 The first of the Postulates to be deduced is that of 
 Freedom. It is treated, indeed, by Kant less as a Postu- 
 late than as a fact : he calls it the one Idea of Pure 
 Eeason whose object is a fact to be reckoned among 
 scibilia} It is immediately deducible from the primary 
 fact of the moral law. The Imperative is an absolute 
 " Thou shalt "; and, in such a case, if the command is 
 not to be quite meaningless, " We can, because we ought." 
 Morality and Freedom thus reciprocally condition one 
 another : the moral law is the ratio cognoscendi of Free- 
 dom, while Freedom is the ratio essendi, or the condition 
 of the possibility, of the moral law. Hence, in spite of 
 the inevitable determination of every event in the pheno- 
 menal sphere by antecedent events, Kant maintains the 
 perfect freedom of the will, in each case of action, to 
 choose between obedience and disobedience to the law. 
 
 1 'Werke,' V. 483.
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 229 
 
 Phenomenal antecedents can furnish no excuse for dis- 
 obedience, for time does not enter into the conception of 
 the immediate relation which exists between the will and 
 the moral law. Though all a man's past actions have 
 been bad, yet every fresh act of volition is an absolutely 
 new beginning, in which he has a perfectly free choice 
 between good and evil. He is conscious that he might 
 have annulled the whole evil past, and acted morally, 
 even while the actual immoral action which results is 
 seen to flow with strict necessity from his phenomenal 
 character, as revealed in his previous actions.^ 
 
 ^ It is no part of my present purpose to trace the difficulties in which 
 Kant's conception of Freedom involves him. By way of explaining the 
 last statement, Kant says : "A rational being may rightly say of every 
 illegal act he perpetrates that he could have left it undone, although, as 
 phenomenon, it is sufficiently determined by the past, and so far in- 
 fallibly necessary ; for the act, with all the past that determines it, 
 belongs to a single phenomenal character with which he endows himself 
 (einem einzigen Phanomen seines Charakters, den er sich selbst verschafft), 
 and by force of which he imputes to himself, as a cause independent of 
 every sensuous determinant, the causality of those phenomena." Simil- 
 arly Kant speaks of the empirical character as the " sensuous schema" of 
 the intelligible. It seems from such passages as if, in each individual 
 action, the agent were simply reaffirming the original act by which he 
 took that intelligible character to himself. This is how the matter 
 appears when it is thought out by Schelling. Freedom is placed in an 
 original "timeless" act, which contains the seeds of all determination in 
 itself. The letter of Kant leads directly to such a theory, as well as to 
 the further application of the same idea by Schopenhauer to his doctrine 
 of a blind or unconscious Will. Taken as science, Kant's theory of in- 
 telligible freedom seems to me untenable. There is no such separation 
 between the phenomenal and the noumenal as he supposes, and if man is 
 not free phenomenally, he is not free at all. In separating the vuin from 
 his " character" — intelligible or phenomenal — an unwarrantable abstrac- 
 tion is involved : Kant seems to be in quest of the phantasmal freedom 
 which is supposed to consist in the absence of determination by motives. 
 The error of the Determinists from which this idea is the recoil involves 
 an equal abstraction of the man from his thoughts, and interprets the 
 relation between the two as an instance of the mechanical causality which 
 exists between two things in nature. The point to be grasped in the con-
 
 230 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 The second Postulate is the Immortality of the Soul. 
 The law demands complete conformity with itself : it is to 
 be the sole determinator of the will. In a being sensitive 
 as well as rational, this conformity is never more than 
 partial. Nevertheless, whatever the Imperative demands 
 must be possible : if a holy will is not possible in 
 humanity as a present achievement, it must be realis- 
 able under the form of an infinite progress or continual 
 approximation to the idea of holiness. In this way the 
 ethical Imperative guarantees to us an immortality in 
 which to work out its behest. But the mere subjection 
 of the will to the form of law represents only one side of 
 our nature. Man has a phenomenal or sensitive nature, 
 which cannot and ought not to be wholly left out of 
 account. Subject to the supreme condition of conformity 
 to the moral law — worthiness — man, as a sensitive being, 
 asks for Happiness, and figures to himself the summum 
 honum as the combination of Virtue with Happiness. 
 Now the moral law simply commands the sacrifice of all 
 subjective desires or inclinations when duty calls ; it does 
 not provide for the making good to the individual of 
 the possible, and even probable, loss of happiness which 
 he may sustain. There is thus a breach between the 
 consciousness of moral integrity and the happiness which 
 consists in the satisfaction of ineradicable and harmless 
 subjective desires. The consciousness of rectitude is in 
 itself bare : it is only by a figure of speech that the 
 
 troversy is that a man and his motives are one, and that consequently he 
 is in every instance self-determined. In reference to the Kantian position, 
 it may be said that, inasmuch as the moral law is a permanent motive re- 
 cognisable as his " proper self," a rational being must in every act acknow- 
 ledge his "responsibility " to follow after, if haply he may attain to, this 
 idea of his destiny. The presence of this moral ideal in man as man, and 
 its infinitely regenerative power in breaking the yoke of the past, are all 
 the facts that I can see to be contained in Kant's statements.
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 231 
 
 possession of the mens conscia sihi recti can be identified 
 with perfect happiness. Worthiness to be happy is, of 
 course, in an ethical legislation, the first requisite ; but 
 the perfect moral world for whose realisation man works, 
 and in whose ultimate existence he believes, is one in 
 which Happiness shall be the necessary consequence of 
 moral desert.^ This proportionality, however, is not 
 realised in the present state of separation between the 
 ethical will of the individual and the sway of mechanical 
 causality in nature. The causal determination of nature 
 by our will is regulated, as to the measure of its success, 
 " not by the moral disposition of the will, but by the 
 knowledge of the laws of nature and the physical power 
 of using them in furtherance of our aims.^ The ultimate 
 equation of the two sides, which reason in its practical 
 function declares to be a " moral necessity," is impossible 
 without presupposing the existence of God as an Author 
 of nature, whose causality is regulated by a regard to 
 the moral disposition of His creatures. This, then, is 
 the third and final Postulate, which completes the edifice 
 of Kant's Ethical Theology. In other words, the idea 
 of a perfect ethical legislation, which is contained in 
 the Categorical Imperative, carries with it the idea of an 
 ultimate harmony between the sensible sphere and the 
 practical ends of reason. The moral law, though in itself 
 without promise of Happiness, imposes upon us the 
 realisation of this highest good as " the last object of all 
 conduct." But the actual attainment of this object or 
 end is impossible without the independent existence of 
 
 ^ Happiness (Gluckseligkeit), it may be noted, is defined by Kant as 
 "the satisfaction of all our inclinations (Neigungen) : extensively, as re- 
 gards their multiplicity ; intensively, as regards their degree ; and pro- 
 tensively, as regards their duration." — ' Werke,' iii. 532. 
 
 2 Ibid., V. 119.
 
 232 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 the idea in God as the union of moral perfection with 
 perfect blessedness. God, as " the highest original Good," 
 is to Kant the cause of the ultimate adjustment of perfect 
 happiness to perfect virtue in the world, and so the 
 necessary condition of the summum honum} 
 
 Erdmann points out that all the three ' Critiques ' close 
 with Ethico - theology, or the system of rational belief 
 contained in the Postulates of the moral reason. It is 
 Kant's substitute for the Eational Theology or dogmatic 
 metaphysic of the schools which he demolished. It is in 
 the last analysis a system of ethical teleology, and it 
 represents, as already remarked, Kant's final notion of 
 the unity and government of the world. Criticism may 
 be deferred till after consideration of the Kantian Philo- 
 sophy of Pteligion, which stands in the most intimate 
 connection with the ethical scheme just developed. 
 
 Kant has not left us to gather his Philosophy of 
 Religion inferentially from stray references. He has 
 expounded his view of the necessary content of true 
 religion in a separate work, which, from the place it 
 occupies in the development of the German JReligions- 
 philosophie, has a fair claim to rank in importance 
 alongside of the three ' Critiques.' This is the ' Eeligion 
 within the Limits of Mere Reason.' ^ The exposition of 
 
 (( 
 
 ^ Kant distinguishes between the existence of God as the highest 
 independent" or "original" Good — and the summum honum as "the 
 highest possible Good in a world," or " the deduced highest Good." Cf. 
 ' Werke,' iii. 535, v. 135, 138. Speculatively, the distinction may be said 
 to be, in one aspect, the same as that already drawn between the Idea as 
 real and the same Idea as a process of realisation in time. But the two 
 are not connected in this intimate way by Kant. God is simply cause, 
 and, as such, remains a pure abstraction or deus ex machina. 
 
 2 ' Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft.' ' Werke,' 
 Ti. 95-301.
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 233 
 
 the doctrines of true or absolute religion necessarily 
 implies an account of the relation in which the different 
 positive religions of the world stand to this pure religious 
 truth. Kant's view of the function of positive religion, 
 and his interpretation, in this connection, of the leading 
 Christian doctrines, form, indeed, the most interesting 
 and important part of the book. The language in which 
 he expresses his ethico- religious positions is moulded 
 throughout by a reference to the scheme of doctrines 
 which the Christian Church has founded upon its sacred 
 writings. 
 
 In the Preface, Kant indicates the relation which 
 he conceives to exist between religion and morality. 
 Morality, he says, leads necessarily to religion, the point 
 of contact between the two being the notion of the 
 summum bonum, and of the moral Euler who realises it. 
 We have seen that the End must not determine the 
 will. Nevertheless, there can be no ethical action with- 
 out the notion of some result flowing from our rectitude ; 
 and in a completed theory of the issues of life, such as 
 religion uniformly professes to give, the notion of the End 
 or final cause of all things necessarily comes to the front.^ 
 The content of philosophical theology and of ethics is, 
 in fact, the same ; but the latter deals with the ethical 
 consciousness as such, and its foundation in the Cate- 
 gorical Imperative ; the former — religion, as intellectually 
 formulated in philosophical theology — presupposes this 
 consciousness, and concentrates its attention on the 
 metaphysical implications of morality, as the practical 
 
 1 This ethical Idea is here called broadly the " Endzweck aller Dinge," 
 and Kant presents it as the only means of combining the reference to End, 
 •which is the basis of freedom, with a teleological view of Nature. It is 
 characteristic of Kant that, two pages farther on, he treats the necessity 
 of the Idea as a species of condescension to the " unavoidable limitations 
 of man and his faculty of practical reason."
 
 234 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 reason reveals them in its Postulates. However, in spite 
 of this difference of attitude, the whole aim of " religion 
 proper," according to Kant, is moral or practical, and 
 this must never he lost sight of in expounding it. We 
 know nothing of the nature of God, for example, except 
 so far as His attributes (and His actions) bear upon our 
 conduct. Kant's religion, therefore, is his ethic writ 
 large ; but it is morality from the point of view, not so 
 much of the individual consciousness, as of the divine 
 ethical system of which the individual recognises himself 
 to be a part. This recognition, with all that it may be 
 found to imply, constitutes the distinctive mark of the 
 religious, as opposed to the purely ethical, consciousness ; 
 so that Kant's theory of religion is often summed up — 
 correctly, perhaps, but somewhat baldly — in the state- 
 ment that religion is the recognition and discharge of 
 duty as the will of God. 
 
 The first section of the book places Kant at once in 
 striking opposition to the easy-going optimism character- 
 istic of the eighteenth century, and of the general move- 
 ment known as the Illumination or Enlightenment. It 
 is entitled — " Of the indwelling of the evil principle side 
 by side with the good, or on the radical evil in human 
 nature." Kant begins by balancing against one another 
 two opposing theories of human nature and history. 
 The first asserts that the world lies in wickedness, and 
 is going from bad to worse ; the second — which he calls 
 the " heroic " — sees in the course of history a continu- 
 ous amelioration, due to the natural development of the 
 healthy instinct of humanity. Kant proposes to medi- 
 ate between these conflicting hypotheses by showing 
 that man is by nature partly good and partly bad. 
 First, he explains what he means by his terms. A 
 man's moral quality depends, as Aristotle can tell us,
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 235 
 
 not on the quality of his actions taken in themselves, 
 but on the nature of the intentions which may be 
 reasonably inferred from the actions. In the Kantian 
 phraseology, a man is bad when the maxims according 
 to which he guides his conduct are bad. Now the 
 cause of evil, if the man is to be responsible for it 
 (and responsibility belongs to the very notion of moral 
 evil), must lie in the man himself. In saying that a 
 man is bad hy nature, therefore, there can be no talk of 
 shifting the blame from man's own shoulders, and laying 
 it upon some inevitable bias. In discussing moral ques- 
 tions we never leave the ground of freedom. The cause 
 of the evil must lie in the free adoption of a funda- 
 mental maxim or principle of volition. The ground or 
 motive of such a choice remains of course inexplicable, for 
 we cannot go behind a free act. But the point to be 
 borne in mind is, that the bias, if it should be proved to 
 exist, must be first communicated to the will by an act 
 of freedom. At the same time, if the adoption of a cer- 
 tain maxim as an underlying principle of ethical choice 
 is found to be a universal characteristic of mankind, the 
 ground of the adoption of this maxim — and, with it, the 
 good or evil that it may contain — may fairly be said to 
 be innate in human nature. It is innate in the sense 
 that the will must be conceived to have given itself 
 this bias before any opportunity arises for employing 
 its freedom within experience. This " first subjective 
 ground " may, therefore, be called by the more familiar 
 term " disposition " (Gesinnung) ; and, though itself freely 
 adopted, it must plainly have determining influence upon 
 the whole series of our actions in time. 
 
 Should the disposition of humanity as such, therefore, 
 exhibit a " propensity to evil " (Hang zum Bosen), that 
 propensity would deserve to be called natural, even
 
 236 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 though it must be held to consist, as has been explained, 
 and as Kant repeats, simply " in the subjective ground 
 of the possibility of deviation from the maxims of the 
 moral law." The deflection of the v^^ill from the law 
 must be due to the fact that the will has taken to itself 
 another maxim, which runs directly counter to the 
 primary maxim of implicit obedience ; and this causes a 
 permanent incapacity to make the moral law the consist- 
 ent maxim of conduct, — an incapacity which may fitly 
 be called, Kant says, in the phraseology of Scripture, 
 " the evil heart." Now the adoption of this evil heart 
 has been described as our own act ; yet it has been as 
 emphatically declared to precede all acts. The word 
 " act," therefore, must be taken here in two different 
 senses ; and Kant proceeds to explain that the origin of 
 the propensity to evil, as the formal condition of all the 
 immoral acts of experience, must be an " intelligible act, 
 cognisable only through reason without any condition of 
 time." It is just as impossible to assign a cause for this 
 corruption of the supreme maxim of volition, as for any 
 fundamental property of our nature ; but it may fairly 
 be called, again in the language of the Church, an act of 
 original sin {peccatum originarmm). The question of 
 the origin of evil in the human heart is manifestly not a 
 question of origin in time : time has nothing to do with 
 the notion of the will or of a moral change. It is, 
 indeed, a contradiction in terms to seek for the cause in 
 time of a free action, in the same way as search is made 
 for the cause of an event in nature. The cause of an 
 ethical change must be ethical, and must lie, accord- 
 ingly, simply and solely in the will itself. The question 
 is confined, therefore, to the rational origin (Vernunft- 
 ursprung) of the morally bad. That is to say, the exist- 
 ence of evil is taken simply as a fact, without any
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 237 
 
 reference to time ; and what is sought is the rational 
 bond necessary for the thought-connection of this state 
 of the human will with the normal (and therefore logi- 
 cally prior) state of complete conformity to the moral 
 law. Ethically, the passage from the one state to the 
 other, as taking place within the will, must necessarily 
 appear as an immediate transition. Man is viewed as 
 passing directly from a state of innocence to the com- 
 mission of a morally bad action ; and, from the ethical 
 standpoint, every instance of the morally bad is such a 
 lapse. The moral law judges every action as an original 
 use of freedom, and finds no excuse for a man in the 
 evil of his past, even though it may have become to 
 him, as we say, a second nature. This " intelligible " 
 departure from the perfect law is represented in Scrip- 
 ture as the Fall of man. As a strictly ethical fact, it is 
 independent of considerations of time. It may be con- 
 ceived as taking place in every immoral act ; or, as 
 universally characteristic of himianity, it may be con- 
 ceived as taking place once for all. " In Adam all have 
 sinned." The account in Genesis, when stripped of its 
 narrative form, agrees, according to Kant, in all partic- 
 ulars with the ethical analysis. Even in the detail of 
 the serpent, as a spirit tempting humanity to sin, we 
 may see expressed the ultimate inexplicability of the 
 origin of evil in a creature whose original nature is 
 good. 
 
 Kant thus, in mediating between the two views of 
 human nature mentioned at the outset, asserts the exist- 
 ence of a radical evil in man. The presence of evil 
 consists in the fact that man, though conscious of an 
 obligatory law, has yet adopted as maxim of conduct 
 the occasional deviation from the same. Its ground is 
 not to be sought in the sensitive nature of man and the
 
 238 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 natural impulses of which that is the root. These have 
 in themselves no direct connection with evil, and we are, 
 moreover, not responsible for their existence in us.^ Nor 
 can it be found in a corruption of the ethically legislat- 
 ive reason. Such a corruption would reduce man to a 
 completely devilish condition. No man, however, can 
 completely throw off allegiance to the moral law : it 
 belongs to his essence, and refuses to be silenced. The 
 solution of the problem of evil must be sought in the 
 relation between the rational and the sensitive nature of 
 man. The moral law would rule absolutely in his con- 
 duct, were it not that the sensitive nature (in itself 
 harmless) supplies him with other and non-moral in- 
 citements to action. The evil heart consists in the 
 reversal of the ethical order of precedence which sub- 
 sists between these two classes of motives. The man 
 who subordinates the pure motive of ethical obedience 
 to " the motives of inclination " — which may be grouped 
 under the general name of Happiness — is, in his intel- 
 ligible character, bad, even though his empirical char- 
 acter, as it appears in his actions, may be blameless. 
 The tacit adoption of a maxim of occasional deviation 
 from the law in the interest of personal desires, is the 
 root of all evil. " This evil is radical, because it corrupts 
 the ground of all maxims. Moreover, as natural pro- 
 pensity, it cannot be eradicated ; for that could only be 
 done by means of good maxims, and inasmuch as the 
 supreme subjective ground of all maxims is ex hypothesi 
 corrupt, their adoption becomes impossible." ^ 
 
 " Nevertheless," Kant continues, " it must be possible 
 
 1 It is not with flesh and blood, as Kant says, that we have to fight, 
 but against principalities and powers ; that is, according to his exegesis, 
 against the unseen might of a maxim that infects all our willing. 
 
 2 'Werke,' vi. 131.
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 239 
 
 to gain the mastery over it, seeing that it is found in 
 man as a freely acting being.'" This is the question 
 which next emerges. How is a man who is thus by 
 nature evil to make himself good ? Whatever a man is 
 morally, or is to become, must be his own work ; yet 
 how can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit ? It is 
 something that passes our power of comprehension ; but 
 it must be possible, for the moral law commands its 
 performance. The tree, happily, is not wholly corrupt ; 
 otherwise the task would be impossible. The moral law 
 remains with us, and the susceptibility to ethical ideas 
 which it implies is indestructible. What has to be done 
 is to restore the law to the place of supremacy among 
 motives of action which rightfully belongs to it. But 
 the restoration, as we have seen, cannot be effected 
 by any gradual process of amelioration. The supreme 
 subjective ground of all maxims must be changed, or, in 
 other words, the man must be renewed in the spirit of 
 his mind. The passage from corruption to purity of 
 moral maxim implies a revolution as radical as that of the 
 original act of sin : by a single unalterable resolve, the 
 man must undo what was then done. The subject who 
 has effected this revolution within himself is ethically a 
 new creature, and is accepted before God from that 
 moment as good and well -pleasing in His sight. The 
 change is likened in Scripture to a change of heart or a 
 new birth. From such a point moral education must set 
 out ; for all possibility of progress lies in the fundamental, 
 if often only half -acknowledged, principle of action which 
 is then adopted. It is vain to enforce upon a man the 
 performance of special duties so long as he is not, as it 
 were, born again : the ground slips like sand from under 
 our feet. Insight into the possibility of this restoration 
 is no more attainable here than in any other case where
 
 240 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 the moral imperative seems to conflict with the deter- 
 mination of events by their antecedents. But that does 
 not affect its real possibility. The principle of the 
 natural depravity of the human will is not to be used dog- 
 matically, so as to exclude the possibility of a regenera- 
 tion. Its ethical function is simply to forewarn us that 
 all is not right as things stand — that the state of nature, 
 though it may often appear very harmless, is yet, 
 from the point of view of ethics, bad. A dogmatic 
 assertion of the futility of effort would, on the contrary, 
 nip the moral life in the bud. In any case, even though 
 the change of heart should be impossible without " higher 
 co-operation," all true religion teaches that only he who 
 has done all that is in his power — he who has not buried 
 his talent — will be the subject of this divine grace. " It is 
 not necessary, therefore, for any one to know what God 
 does for his salvation; it is essential for him to know 
 what he himself has to do, in order to become worthy of 
 this assistance." 
 
 The struggle between the original good in man, as 
 represented by the moral law, and his present evil 
 disposition, forms the subject of the second section of 
 the book. Kant entitles it " Of the struggle of the good 
 principle with the evil for the dominion over man." The 
 Christian Scriptures represent " this intelligible moral 
 relation " of two principles in man as persons or powers 
 outside of him, contending for the exclusive sovereignty 
 over him. The evil spirit appears, in virtue of the Fall, 
 as the prince of this world. But in the midst of the 
 kingdom of darkness, the Jewish theocracy stood as a 
 memorial of "the indefeasible right of the first pro- 
 prietor." Among the Jewish people, in the fulness of 
 time, appeared a Person who, according to the belief of 
 his followers, announced himself as true man, and yet,
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 241 
 
 at the same time, as one whose original innocence was 
 unaffected by the compact which the rest of mankind 
 had made, in the person of its first forefather, with the 
 evil principle. "The prince of this world . . . hath 
 nothing in me." By a resolute resistance to temptation, 
 he declared war to the death against the evil principle 
 and all its works. In its physical aspect, the strife could 
 not end otherwise than in the death of him who thus 
 attacked a kingdom in arms. But his death is itself the 
 culminating " presentment of the good principle, — that is, 
 of humanity in its moral perfection, as example for the 
 imitation of every one." The kingdom of darkness exists 
 still, but its power was broken by the example of that 
 death. " To them that believe in his name " — that is, 
 Kant interprets, to those who, upborne by his example, 
 realise in themselves the same triumph over the assaults 
 of evil — the transgressions of the past have no longer any 
 terror. A new life has begun within them, and the 
 fetters of the old have been struck off. Power has been 
 given them to become the sons of God. 
 
 According to Kant, we have only to strip this account 
 of its " mystic husk " in order to recognise in it an 
 ethical content valid and obligatory for all time. It 
 remains, then, to see his interpretation of its " spirit 
 and rational meaning." In the first place, without any 
 disparagement of its possible historical truth, the narra- 
 tive form disappears, as such, in a statement of moral 
 relations. " The good principle did not descend merely 
 at a certain time, but from the origin of the human race 
 it has descended from heaven in invisible fashion upon 
 humanity." Of this the presence of a perfectly holy 
 moral ideal in man alongside of his sensitive nature is 
 sufficient proof. Humanity — or, more widely, rational 
 existence — in its moral perfection, Kant here declares 
 
 Q
 
 242 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 without reservation to be the only thing that can make 
 a world the object of the divine decree and the End of 
 creation. This Idea of a perfect humanity was in the 
 beginning with God, and through it, or for the sake of its 
 realisation, all things were made that were made. It is, in 
 short, the only begotten Son in whom God is well pleased. 
 To this ideal and prototype of humanity it is our duty to 
 raise ourselves; and for this the Idea itself gives us 
 strength, being present within us, as if it had descended 
 from heaven. There is no objection to saying that the 
 ideal is necessarily personified by us in a man, such as is 
 represented in the Gospel history ; but, in a practical 
 regard, the reality of the Idea is independent of its exem- 
 plification. The prototype of an example must always be 
 sought in our own reason. " Its presence there," Kant 
 adds, " is in itself sufficiently incomprehensible, without 
 supposing it hypostatised besides in a particular man." At 
 the same time, such a divinely-minded Teacher, if he did 
 appear, would be able to speak of himself with truth, as if 
 the ideal of the good were actually manifested by him ; 
 for he would speak, in such expressions, only of the spirit 
 which ruled his actions. It is of the " mind " which was 
 in Christ Jesus, and which ought also to be in us, that 
 account must be taken. The spirit of such a life — that 
 is to say, ideal humanity, whether realised in a definite 
 individual or not — is a complete satisfaction, in the eyes 
 of supreme justice, for all men at all times and in all 
 worlds. By identifying ourselves with this perfect mind, 
 we put away our old heart and purify the ground of our 
 maxims. It is true the law says : " Be ye perfect as 
 your Father in heaven is perfect," and the distance that 
 separates us from conformity to the perfect will of God is 
 infinite ; so that, in act, this ideal righteousness remains 
 unattainable. But the morally purified disposition, as the
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF KELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 243 
 
 germ from which all good is to develop itself, is accepted 
 in lieu of the deed by God, who is the searcher of hearts, 
 and who views the infinite progress of the moral life at 
 once as a completed whole. The righteousness of the 
 perfect Man is imputed to us, and covers our short- 
 comings. 
 
 The reconciliation of this with the principles of divine 
 justice presents certain difficulties, however, which lead 
 Kant to go into the theory in greater detail. The new 
 heart is accepted before God as the earnest of an unrest- 
 ing progress in good, which He is pleased to regard as 
 equivalent to that perfect righteousness to which, in his 
 heart, the man clings. But even though the man con- 
 tracts no new debts after his change of heart, yet, from 
 the point of view of justice, the old remain unpaid. In 
 avoiding offence for the future he does no more than his 
 duty, and the doing of his duty to all eternity will yield 
 no surplus of merit to weigh against the sins of his 
 former life. The evil heart or disposition which he has 
 cast off contained in itself, like a corrupt fountain, an 
 infinity of transgressions, and calls, therefore, for an 
 infinite punishment. The debt of sin, too, is the most 
 personal of all obligations, and must in every case be paid 
 by the sinner himself. Yet one who has laid hold on the 
 good in the way described cannot be the subject of the 
 wrath of God. How is this punishment to be borne by 
 the man, consistently with the complete forgiveness of 
 sin which accompanies repentance and the new heart ? 
 The answer is found by Kant in an analysis of the 
 notion of the moral change that has taken place. The 
 fundamental principle of the man's action, it must be 
 noted, is changed, so that he is actually, in an ethical 
 sense, a Tiew man. Though he is physically the same 
 person, yet, in the eye of a divine Judge, he is another.
 
 244 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 In the language of Scripture, the change consists in 
 putting off the old man and his deeds and putting on the 
 new. The sacrifice which this implies — crucifying the 
 flesh — and the sufferings which are the inevitable lot of 
 humanity in this life (and which the old man might fitly 
 have regarded, from the religious point of view, as the 
 punishment of his disobedience) are cheerfully assumed 
 and borne by the new man, not unwillingly as the wrath 
 of an angry God, but in a spirit of perfect obedience. 
 The pure mind of the Son of God present within him 
 bears, as his substitute, the penalty of his past sins, 
 redeems him by suffering and death, and finally appears 
 as his advocate before the Judge. Or, if the idea be 
 personified, it may be said that the Son of God himself 
 does all this. The only difference between the two forms 
 of expression is, that when we adopt the personified form, 
 the death which the new man dies daily appears as a 
 death suffered once for all by the representative of 
 mankind. In this way, then, the claims of justice are 
 satisfied, for the substitutionary office undertaken by the 
 new man is something over and above the mere punctual 
 discharge of his duty. At the same time, it is by an act 
 of grace that this merit is reckoned to our account, inas- 
 much as the ideal of a morally perfect humanity exists 
 in us as yet only as a set purpose of heart. 
 
 This imperfect, or merely germinal, character of the 
 good within him need not, however, disturb unduly the 
 man who has undergone this saving change. He must 
 not permit himself to be tormented by a continual fear 
 of backsliding ; he must preserve the due mean between 
 over-confidence and a cowardly distrust of the sincerity 
 of his repentance. His steadfastness and continuous 
 progress in the past form his only standard for judging 
 of the probabilities of the future. The man, therefore,
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 245 
 
 who can say, on an honest review of his actions, that his 
 repentance has stood proof, sees before him the prospect 
 of an endless future of the same happy progress. On the 
 contrary, he who has always fallen back into e\dl, or 
 sunk from bad to worse, has the outlook into an equally 
 endless future of wretchedness. The attraction of the 
 one view — Heaven — gives calmness and strength to the 
 former ; the horror of the other view — Hell — serves to 
 rouse the conscience of the latter to stem the evil, so far 
 as that may yet be.^ Certainty of the unchangeable 
 nature of our disposition is not possible to man, nor 
 would it, if attainable, be morally beneficial ; but a good 
 and pure disposition begets a confidence in its own per- 
 manency, and acts thus as a Paraclete or comforter when 
 our stumblings might cause us grave anxiety. 
 
 The first two sections of the book thus contain a state- 
 ment of the main doctrines of ethical religion, together 
 with an identification of this creed with the leading 
 dogmas of Calvinistic Christianity. Kant's method is, 
 first, to evolve the ethical position, and then, by means 
 
 ^ Kant emphasises here, it will be observed, the ethical advantages of 
 the popular conception of an eternal state of happiness or misery in 
 another life. On the other hand, he points out, in a long note, the dis- 
 advantages of the same conception when taught dogmatically. It is the 
 same with the doctrine that the reckoning of each man's deeds is closed 
 inexorably at the end of the present life. The doctrine, he says, is one of 
 evident practical utility. It is eminently calculated to impress on men 
 the importance of present repentance and welldoing. But the assertion 
 of its dogmatic truth is just as little within the province of human reason 
 as in the former case. ' ' In short," he concludes, "if we limited our judg- 
 ment to regulative principles of practical application, instead of extending 
 it to constitutive principles of the knowledge of supersensible objects, it 
 would stand better in very many particulars with human wisdom ; and a 
 supposed knowledge of what we at bottom know nothing about would 
 not breed a groundless and too curious reasoning, plausible for a time, 
 but becoming in the end prejudicial to morality." See 'Werke,' vi. 
 164-166.
 
 246 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 of an allegorical interpretation of the Christian records, 
 to exhibit its radical identity with this or the other 
 doctrine of the Church. It hardly needs to be pointed 
 out, however, that his statement of ethical truth would 
 never have assumed the form it does in this book but for 
 the fact that he found this scheme of doctrine already 
 elaborated and, so to speak, in possession of the field. 
 This is particularly obvious in regard to the laborious 
 attempt, just considered, to give an ethical interpretation 
 of the doctrines of Substitution and the Perseverance of 
 the Saints. Throughout, it may be said, the real start 
 is made from the dogma, which is then allegorised, with 
 more or less success, into an ethical truth. The whole 
 constitutes an attempt to extract a moral and purely 
 rational meaning from a generally accepted interpretation 
 of the Christian documents.^ This, as will presently 
 appear, is of the essence of Kant's position towards a 
 positive religion which is received by us as a heritage 
 from the past. The two remaining sections of the book 
 
 ^ la addition to the doctrines already involved in the preceding 
 account, it may be well, for the sake of completeness, to state Kant's 
 interpretation of the Trinity. The doctrine represents for him the union 
 of holiness, benevolence, and justice in the Divine nature ; and the con- 
 templation of God in this triple capacity (as lawgiver, governor, £ind 
 judge) is useful, he contends, in a moral view, as forcing us always to 
 consider any one attribute as limited and conditioned by the others. It 
 prevents us from regarding Him either as an earthly despot, ruling 
 according to His mere good pleasure, or as a Being weakly indulgent to 
 entreaty that has not its basis in moral reformation. The service we 
 render Him is thus cleared of the anthropomorphic elements that so 
 readily cling to it. Kant compares this triplicity in the notion of God 
 with the separation of the legislative, executive, and judicial functions in 
 the notion of the State. This circumstance seems to him to account for 
 the occurrence of the idea in so many religions. It ought to be added, 
 however, that hints towards a more vital notion of the Trinity are con- 
 tained in what has been alreadj' said of the Idea of humanity as the true 
 Son of God.
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 247 
 
 are devoted to defining the relation of positive and 
 publicly established creeds to the moral faith, or, more 
 particularly, the function of the former in the service of 
 the latter. 
 
 The third section passes from consideration of the 
 moral conflict within the individual to the definitive 
 triumph of the good principle, which cannot be real- 
 ised except in an ethical community, in which the 
 purpose of the individual shall no longer be under- 
 mined, as at present, by the influence of his fellows. 
 Such a commonwealth, all the members of which are 
 governed by the same laws of virtue, is, in its very 
 idea, universal and all-embracing : its foundation would 
 be " the foundation of a Kingdom of God upon earth." ^ 
 Its necessity is obvious. The isolation and cross-pur- 
 poses of the ethical " state of nature " permit individuals, 
 even with the best intentions, to act as if they were 
 " instruments of evil " ; it is the duty, therefore, of every 
 one to abandon that state, and become a member of an 
 ethical community. Inasmuch as this union is neces- 
 sary for the complete triumph of the good, it is 
 incumbent upon every one who aims at that triumph 
 in himself and others. This idea of an ethical common- 
 wealth is identical with the idea of " a people of God," 
 by whom the laws of virtue are viewed as proceeding 
 from a Lawgiver who is perfect holiness, and who 
 searches the hearts of His subjects, so that the in- 
 most secrets of their disposition are open before Him. 
 The foundation of a kingdom of God is a work which, 
 as a matter of fact, can be achieved by God alone. 
 Nevertheless, man must not remain inactive : on the 
 
 ^ Hence the title of the third section: "The victory of the good 
 principle over the evil, and the foundation of a Kingdom of God 
 upon earth."
 
 248 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 contrary, here, as in all ethical matters, " he must 
 proceed as if everything depended on himself." 
 
 The idea of a people of God takes in man's hands 
 the form of a Church. The Church, as it owes its 
 foundation to man, may be called the visible Church, 
 to distinguish it from the invisible universal Church, 
 or the ideal union of all upright men in a morally 
 governed universe. The only possible foundation of a 
 universal Church (and, in its idea, every Church is 
 universal) is the pure faith (der reine Religionsglaube), 
 which has been already expounded. Those doctrines 
 alone whose content is purely rational, and which are 
 in no way dependent on historical facts, can command 
 universal assent. But the natural need of mankind for 
 something on which they can lay hold with their senses 
 — some fact of experience which may serve, in a 
 manner, as a voucher for the ideas of reason — has 
 effectually prevented them, as history testifies, from 
 ever founding a Church on this purely ethical belief. 
 It is not easy to convince men that constancy in a 
 morally good life is all that God asks from them, and 
 that, in the performance of their duties to themselves 
 and others, they are " constantly in the service of God." 
 They persist in regarding God after the manner of an 
 earthly monarch, who has need of honour and marks 
 of submission from his subjects. There emerges, accord- 
 ingly, the idea of a religion of ritual observance or a 
 cultus (eine gottesdienstliche Eeligion). Morally in- 
 different actions are exalted even above the performance 
 of duty, because they are supposed to be done for 
 God. We invariably find, therefore, alongside of the 
 moral code, a set of statutory or positive commands, 
 which, as well as the former, are supposed to emanate 
 from the divine will. The commandments of morality
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 249 
 
 are discoverable by every man in his own reason, and 
 they constitute for humanity as such the perfect and 
 sufficient worship of God. It cannot be denied, how- 
 ever, that the addition of a set of statutory commands 
 seems to he a necessity for man as a member of an 
 ethical community ; and these imply the form of a 
 revelation — that is, of a historical belief, which, in 
 contradistinction to a purely rational faith, may be 
 called the belief of the Church (Kirchenglaube). The 
 safest depository of this extra-belief, as it may be called, 
 is found by experience to be a sacred book. But, in 
 some form or other, a Kirchenglaube is found invari- 
 ably, as if by an ordinance of nature, preceding the 
 pure Religionsglauhe, In the process of breaking in 
 mankind to an ethical commonwealth, the one serves 
 as the vehicle for the introduction and propagation of 
 the other. 
 
 This being, then, one of the facts to which we must 
 accommodate ourselves,^ the question arises. What is the 
 proper attitude of reason towards the Church's claim to 
 be the depositary of a special revelation ? Kant answers 
 this question with the full measure of Critical caution. 
 He indicates as his own position that of pure Eationalism, 
 as opposed to Naturalism on the one hand and Super- 
 naturalism on the other. The pure Rationalist does not, 
 like the Naturalist, deny the possibility of a revelation ; 
 he is ready even to admit that a revelation may have 
 been necessary for the introduction of the true religion. 
 But he does not consider a belief in this supernatural 
 origin and its accompaniments to be an essential part of 
 saving faith, as the Supernaturalist does. The question 
 
 There is a ring of semi-ludicrous resignation about the copious array 
 of particles in which Kant reconciles himself to the inevitable: "Wenn 
 es nun also einmal nicht zu andern steht, u.s.w."
 
 250 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 of origin is thus shelved, as a transcendent inquiry which 
 is beyond the scope of the critical reason, but which is 
 at the same time of no practical moment. A religion 
 must be judged, in the end, not by its origin, but by its 
 content : its capacity to become a universal religion de- 
 pends on the identity of its content with the moral faith 
 which reason reveals. It is part of Kant's aim in this 
 book, as we have seen, to exhibit this identity in the 
 case of Christianity. In this connection he introduces 
 a distinction which seems almost to contain a reference 
 to Lessing's leading thought in the ' Education of the 
 Human Eace.' A religion, he says, which, objectively, 
 or in respect of its content, is a natural religion, may 
 yet, subjectively, or in the mode of its first appearance, 
 be called a revelation. Where the religion is of such 
 a nature that men might have arrived at it, and 
 ought to have arrived at it, of their own accord by 
 the mere use of their reason, but yet, if left to them- 
 selves, would not have reached it so early or so gener- 
 ally, — there, and in this specific sense, the term revela- 
 tion cannot be objected to.^ With this suggestion Kant 
 leaves the matter, and we are at liberty to infer, if we 
 like, that this was his personal view of the origin of 
 Christianity : it is evident that he considers the sub- 
 jective revealedness of a religion a question of little im- 
 portance, when the religion is once there, and recog- 
 nised as a natural or rational faith. 
 
 So far as a religion is objectively a revelation — that is, 
 so far as it contains contingent or non-rational matter — 
 it is, in Kant's view, temporal and local, and destined to 
 pass away. The value of such positive creeds is not to 
 be depreciated. They serve as vehicles for the ideas of 
 true religion, and they are not to be rudely or thought- 
 
 1 ' Werke,' vi. 254.
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 251 
 
 lessly attacked.^ On the contrary, it is our boimden 
 duty to utilise whatever historical Kirchenglmihe we find 
 in general acceptance around us. The " empirical belief," 
 however, must be interpreted throughout in a practical 
 or ethical sense. The theoretical part of the Church's 
 creed has no interest for us, except so far as it aids us 
 in realising our duty as the divine will, and in perform- 
 ing it as such. This is the supreme canon of interpreta- 
 tion : "All scripture is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, 
 for correction, for instruction in righteousness." The in- 
 terpretation may often appear forced, as regards the text 
 of the revelation ; nay, it may often really be so. But 
 the interpreter is not, therefore, to be reckoned dishonest, 
 as long as he does not pretend that the moral sense 
 which he attaches to the symbols of the popular belief or 
 its sacred books is the original sense in which they were 
 intended by their authors.^ Alongside of this inter- 
 pretation in the interests of reason, the " learned " or 
 historical interpretation may of course assert its place,^ 
 as necessary for the systematising of the belief of the 
 Church as a definite organisation within certain limits of 
 time and space. But the historical belief is " dead in 
 itself " ; it is only by the comparative ease with which 
 a revelation lends itself to an ethical exegesis that it 
 justifies its claims to a divine origin. Historical belief 
 is, in fact, in every case merely a leading-string to bring 
 us to pure religion, and ought to be employed with the 
 
 ^ As Kant says in a note elsewhere : " All deserve the same respect, so 
 far as their forms are attempts of poor mortals to body forth to themselves 
 the Kingdom of God upon earth ; but all deserve the same blame, when 
 they take the form in which they represent this idea for the thing itself." 
 — ' Werke,' vi. 274, n. 
 
 2 Kant refers approvingly, in this connection, to the philosophic 
 allegorising of the pagan myths in later antiquity ; which forms, indeed, 
 an apt parallel to some of his interpretations of Biblical dogmas.
 
 252 PHILOSOPHY OP RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 consciousness that it is nothing more. That Church is 
 a true church whose creed contains the principle of 
 continual approximation to this pure belief, so as to 
 enable us eventually to dispense with the leading-string. 
 There are two articles of a " saving faith," Kant pro- 
 ceeds, resuming in effect what he had said in the first 
 two sections. These are the belief in a satisfaction due 
 for sin and the belief in the possibility of finding accept- 
 ance with God by perseverance in the good life. Kant 
 again points out that a belief in satisfaction or substitu- 
 tion (in the sense already explained) is necessary only 
 for the theoretical explanation of salvation ; whereas the 
 unconditioned command attached to the second article 
 makes the improvement of a man's life the supreme 
 principle of a saving faith. But so far as belief, in the 
 case of the first article, is fixed simply on the idea of a 
 perfect humanity, it is itself ethical ; and the two articles 
 represent " one and the same practical idea," in which 
 the standard of holy living is contemplated from two 
 opposite sides. But the same cannot be said if the 
 article be taken to mean an empirical belief in the 
 historical appearance of the ethical ideal in a definite 
 individual. In this form, the idea is closely connected 
 with the non-moral notions of expiation which are to be 
 found in all religions. " But in the God-man," Kant 
 says, " it is not what the senses apprehend, or what can 
 be known of him through experience, but the prototype 
 which lies in our reason, that is properly the object of 
 saving faith." It is a necessary consequence of our 
 natural development, he concludes, that religion should 
 be gradually severed " from all empirical grounds of de- 
 termination, from all statutes which rest on history, and 
 which provisionally, by means of a Kirchenglauhe, unite 
 men for the furtherance of the good. So at last pure
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 253 
 
 rational religion will reign universally, ' that God may be 
 all in all.' . . . The leading-string of sacred tradition 
 which did good service in its day becomes gradually no 
 longer necessary, and is felt at last as a fetter, when 
 humanity arrives at manhood. ' When I was a child, I 
 understood as a child ; but when I became a man, I put 
 away childish things.' " ^ 
 
 In considering this process as exemplified in the 
 historic religions of the world, Kant restricts his view 
 to Christianity. He is apparently unable to trace any 
 uniformity of development in the other faiths of man- 
 kind. In particular, it is worth noting that he emphati- 
 cally denies to Judaism any connection with the Christian 
 Church. The political and positive aspect of Jewish 
 religion, the national exclusiveness which found expres- 
 sion in it, and the want of reference to the immortality 
 of the soul, combine to make Kant do less than justice to 
 the religious elements which the Hebrews undoubtedly 
 possessed. The trouble which the first teachers of 
 Christianity took to connect the new belief with historical 
 Judaism, he considers to be a natural expedient on the 
 part of men anxious to spread their principles among 
 a prejudiced and exclusive race, but as in itself proving 
 nothing. Of the actual history of Christianity Kant 
 takes a very gloomy view. Its origin is obscure, for it 
 is passed over without mention by the " learned public " 
 of that day : we do not know, therefore, the effect of its 
 doctrines upon the life of its early professors. But its 
 later history, as exemplified in the Eastern and Western 
 Empires, in the Crusades, and in the ambitious intrigues 
 of the Popes, " might well justify the exclamation — 
 Tantum religio jpohiit suadere maloi'um ! " Such a fate 
 was not to be escaped, so far as Christianity was founded 
 
 1 ' Werke,' vi. 219.
 
 254 PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 on a historical belief ; but, in spite of this miscarriage, 
 " the true first intention " of its institution was evidently 
 " the introduction of a pure religious belief, about which 
 there could be no conflicting opinions." If asked what 
 period in the whole known history of the Church is the 
 best, Kant says he has no hesitation in answering — the 
 present. The universal Church is already bursting the 
 bonds of special doctrine in which it has been confined. 
 As evidence in support of his opinion, Kant instances the 
 general spread of a spirit of modesty and tolerance 
 towards the claims of revealed religion, together with 
 a firm conviction that in ethics lies the core of the whole 
 matter. In the universal acknowledgment of these 
 principles consists the coming of the Kingdom of God, 
 which, in the sacred records, is represented chiliastically 
 as the end of the world. But the universal Church will 
 not come with violence and revolution : it will be the 
 result of gradual reform and of ripe reflection. " The 
 kingdom of God cometh not with observation." Empiri- 
 cally we cannot see to the end of this development,^ but 
 intellectually we must regard ourselves as already citizens 
 of such a kingdom. " Behold, the Kingdom of God is 
 within you." 
 
 The fourth section, " Of service and spurious service 
 under the dominion of the good principle, or of religion 
 and priestcraft," is more of the nature of an Appendix ; 
 and most of what is important in it has been already 
 anticipated. Kant's object is to contrast the pure service 
 of God, which consists in a moral life, with the spurious 
 
 ^ Indeed, in a note at another place Kant treats the idea of a universal 
 Church as an Idea of reason, which can never be realised, but which is 
 indispensable as a "practical regulative principle." Every Church, like 
 every kingdom, strives after universal dominion ; but always when it 
 seems in a fair way to make good its pretensions, a principle of dissolution 
 shows itself, which breaks it up anew into different sects.
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 255 
 
 notions of service that are the natural growth of a 
 statutory system. He maintains the essential identity 
 of Christianity with the moral religion ; and, by a some- 
 what copious reference to the teachings of Christ in the 
 Gospels, he has little difficulty in showing their exclusive 
 reference to purity of heart and life. Even where the 
 form of expression is accommodated to the traditions of 
 Judaism, there shines through, according to Kant, " a 
 doctrine of religion universally intelligible and universally 
 convincing." But the " episodic means of recommenda- 
 tion " employed by Christ and the first teachers of His 
 religion have been exalted by theologians into essential 
 articles of faith, just " as if every Christian were to be 
 a Jew, whose Messiah has come." By so doing, the 
 doctors of the Church do their best to defeat the inten- 
 tion of the Founder of the religion, by imparting to it 
 a statutory character, A religion so conceived is the 
 natural soil in which false ideas of the service due to 
 God spring up. Spurious service consists essentially in 
 the notion of winning the divine favour by other means 
 than by uprightness of moral will. Whether it be sacri- 
 fices, or castigations and pilgrimages that we lay on our- 
 selves, or ceremonies, solemn festivals, even public games 
 (as in Greece and Rome), the idea is the same : something 
 is done specially for God, by way of proving our entire 
 submission to His will, and inducing Him to look with a 
 kindly eye upon His servants. Usually the more useless 
 the action, the more efficacious is it supposed to be. The 
 secret motive of such service is the hope of influencing 
 to our advantage the unseen power that directs the des- 
 tiny of man. In all its phases, therefore, it is Fetichism. 
 The man supposes himself to influence God, and so em- 
 ploys Him as a means to produce an effect in the world. 
 In opposition to this, true religion teaches that we have
 
 256 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 nothing to do but to cultivate a dutiful disposition. To 
 such a disposition all things that are lacking in its 
 righteousness will be added by Supreme Wisdom in some 
 way — it matters not how. Everything, in short, depends 
 on the order in which the two ideas of morality and the 
 service of God are taken. We must begin with virtue, 
 and end with the conception of our duty as a continual 
 service of God by obedience to His will. Otherwise we 
 make God himself an idol. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN STANDPOINT AND TRANSITION 
 
 TO HEGEL. 
 
 There are two points in which Kant's treatment of 
 religion differs from that of the Aufkldrung — viz., in its 
 recognition of the important function of positive creeds 
 in leading men towards the true faith, and in its repudi- 
 ation of the easy-going Optimism which is repugnant to 
 the very genius of religion. The Aufkldrung was pro- 
 foundly unhistorical in its spirit, and was content, for the 
 most part, to consider the genesis of positive religion as 
 sufficiently accounted for by priestcraft and deceit. The 
 doctrines, symbols, and sacred books of the historical 
 faith appear to it, therefore, in a merely obstructive light. 
 They are weeds which have to be pulled up ; and when 
 the ground is cleared, the doctrines of natural or of 
 rational religion will have free course. Man is man 
 all the world over : history cannot change the essential
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 257 
 
 character of his reason ; and reason reveals to him, by its 
 natural light, the existence of God and the immortality 
 of the soul. Any addition to this creed is superstition, 
 and fires the iconoclastic zeal of the century. The atti- 
 tude of the Aufkldrung towards historical religion, or, 
 what for it is the same thing, historical Christianity, is 
 thus one of assault : it is purely negative. Kant's Phil- 
 osophy of Religion, defective as it may be in many 
 ways, represents a break with this spirit, and the dawn 
 of something like a historical sense. 
 
 To begin with, the mechanical view of religion, as a 
 contrivance of priests and lawgivers, is definitely given 
 up. Positive or statutory religion is recognised as the 
 leading-string which guides the race towards the realisa- 
 tion of the Kingdom of God. The leading -string is 
 acknowledged to be necessary, if humanity is to attain 
 this end ; and a necessary means may fairly be regarded 
 as of divine appointment. This implies an entire change 
 of tone in the criticism of historical systems. They 
 are no longer subjective delusions to be rudely brushed 
 away : they are the steps on which the human spirit has 
 mounted to its present elevation. They may express the 
 pure religion imperfectly, and with much admixture of 
 error ; but the ladder which has served the childhood of 
 thought, and which, it may be, still serves many of our 
 fellow-men, is not there simply to be kicked contemptu- 
 ously aside. Destructive criticism finds no favour with 
 Kant. It is not that he himself holds to the literal sense 
 of the Church's doctrines : on the contrary, it is pretty 
 plain that his personal conclusions on these points were 
 not very different from those of the Aufklarung gener- 
 ally. But the prevalent style of negative criticism (as 
 exemplified, for instance, in the Wolfenbiittel Fragments), 
 with its delight in demolishing miracles and laying bare 
 
 B
 
 258 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 discrepancies in the Biblical narratives, seemed to him to 
 place altogether too much stress on the historical. Kant's 
 whole aim was to separate what he conceived to be the 
 true and eternal content of Christianity from the " husk " 
 of circumstance in which those truths were first presented 
 to the world. His own canon of interpretation is, as has 
 been seen, exclusively ethical ; and all questions of the 
 original sense or historical accuracy of the sacred writings 
 are simply left on one side. " We must not dispute un- 
 necessarily over the historical weight to be attached to 
 anything, if (whatever construction be put upon it) it 
 contributes nothing towards making us better men. . . . 
 Historical knowledge, which has no such universally valid 
 inward reference, belongs to the aSta^o/oa, concerning 
 which each may believe what he finds to be for his own 
 edification." ^ He speaks with something like contempt 
 of the mode of dealing with Scripture which gets from it 
 nothing more than an " unfruitful enlargement of our 
 historical knowledge " ; and in the same breath he places 
 the truths of religion above historical proof. There is no 
 point, indeed, on which Kant is more explicit than that, 
 when we are once in possession of true religion and of 
 the rational grounds on which it is based, it can be nowise 
 fruitful to dispute the Biblical narratives and the popular 
 interpretation of them. He applies this especially to the 
 case of miracles, which constitute the criLx of ordinary 
 rationalism. The Christian miracles, for instance, may 
 all be true, he says, as well as the miracle of inspiration, 
 which guarantees the account of them. " We may let 
 them all rest on their merits, and even continue to 
 reverence the husk which has served to publish and to 
 spread such a doctrine ; but the credentials of the doc- 
 trine rest on a document preserved ineffaceably in every 
 
 1 ' Werke,' vi. 137, note.
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 259 
 
 soul, and requiring no miracles to attest it." ^ This 
 theoretical possibility of the miraculous, however, has 
 nothing to do with religion, as we now understand it. 
 Keligion is degraded by being made to rest on such 
 evidence ; and practically, he adds somewhat ironically, 
 the belief is harmless, for rational men never allow for 
 the possible recurrence of such phenomena in the busi- 
 ness relations of life. But, just because the historical 
 is so unimportant in his eyes, Kant deprecates useless or 
 wanton attacks upon the contents of the sacred books. 
 "It is the most rational and equitable course, in the case 
 of a book which is once for all there, to continue to use 
 it as the foundation of instruction in the Church." " It 
 is understood, of course, that in doing so we labour to 
 bring out its really religious side, and endeavour to let 
 the adventitious matter fall, as much as may be, out of 
 sight. This attitude, we shall see, is shared by Hegel, 
 who defends his position on very similar grounds. 
 
 The other point on which Kant parts company from 
 the eighteenth century is his renunciation of the Optim- 
 istic view of life and of human nature. This brings him 
 at once much nearer to a distinctively religious stand- 
 point. It is a commonplace to say that the element of 
 religion is not light-hearted satisfaction with the present, 
 and a belief that all is going well. It is the need of 
 some explanation for the cruel riddles of destiny that 
 drives men to religion ; and though its issue, as a cele- 
 bration of the victorious purpose of God, is necessarily 
 optimistic, yet the pain and the wrong of the present are 
 an essential element. The root of religion may even be 
 said to be a consciousness of present sin and misery. 
 The human consciousness, as Kant remarks, seems 
 instinctively to connect suffering with sin. When mis- 
 
 1 ' Werke,' vi. 181. ^ ibij,^ 231.
 
 260 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 fortune comes upon him, man forthwith, as if by an 
 impulse of nature, examines himself to see by what 
 offence he has deserved the chastisement. Eeligion 
 takes its rise in the consciousness of sin which is the 
 result of this introspection. For the savage is sure 
 to discover some neglect or transgression which has 
 laid him open to the anger of his god, and his next step 
 is to devise some method of atoning for his guilt. The 
 mental analysis of the savage may be at fault, and his 
 expiation immoral ; yet the notions which his conduct 
 involves are the germ of religion. Eeligion always goes 
 within for its explanation, and the unsophisticated voice 
 of the religious consciousness is invariably a cry of infinite 
 un worthiness. Man is forced to acknowledge the justice 
 of his punishment, and to admit that he has no right 
 even to the measure of happiness and wellbeing he 
 enjoys. The notion of " sin," which is peculiar to 
 religion, contains more than that of wrong - doing. 
 Wrong-doing is external and legal in its application, or, 
 if the expression be allowable, it is a finite notion. 
 Each action is viewed separately, and compared with 
 an external standard. But religion, because it moves 
 entirely in an inward or spiritual sphere, recognises no 
 such separation. Action — even a single action — is the 
 expression of the whole character. There can, therefore, 
 be no measurement of guilt : the man sees only an infinite 
 alienation of his whole being from holiness, and there 
 comes the despairing question — How, then, can man be 
 justified before God ? The consciousness of sin, in other 
 words, is the consciousness of the need of a reconciliation 
 or atonement. These twin notions of sin and recon- 
 ciliation are at the root of all that is distinctively 
 religious. But both ideas were in abeyance in the 
 eighteenth century, and, as a necessary consequence, there
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF KELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 261 
 
 was a failure to fathom the religious consciousness and 
 its manifestations in the historical religions of mankind. 
 The eighteenth century was convinced that man was on 
 the whole good ; and its God was a species of hon Dieu, 
 who could not find it in his heart to be an exacting 
 master. Hence the significance of Kant's emphatic 
 assertion that man is by nature not good, but that, on 
 the contrary, there is a radical taint in the human will. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is impossible to regard Kant's treat- 
 ment as wholly satisfactory, whether as regards the cause 
 of evil or as regards the rationale which he offers of the 
 nature of redemption. There is a wire-drawnness in his 
 interpretation of the dogmas of the Church which is the 
 result, in part, of a tendency, constitutional in Kant, to 
 carry out his scheme too much into detail ; in part, of 
 the peculiarly elaborate and juridically conceived theory 
 of Christian doctrine, which he assumed as his basis of 
 operations. Hence, though there can be no doubt of the 
 ingeniousness of the ethical interpretation, this, rather 
 than its soundness, is apt to be the quality which most 
 impresses the reader. Of course, to have any value at all, 
 the interpretation of religion must be ethical ; but the 
 unconvincingness of Kant's theory is due to the separation 
 of ethics from metaphysics. Hence the ethical problem 
 appears as a problem of the individual alone, and to be 
 worked out by the individual himself ; and the consequence 
 is that Kant hardly seems to regard his own construc- 
 tion as vital, and occasionally shows a tendency to cast 
 it all to the winds, and to return with a fling to the 
 simple moral command. In these respects, the Hegelian 
 Philosophy of Religion, though essentially based upon 
 the Kantian, has manifest advantages over it. It possesses 
 the background of metaphysic, which seems essential to
 
 262 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 religion. Hegel's * Eeligionsphilosophie ' may even be said 
 to be, in a sense, the centre of its author's thinking. 
 
 On the cardinal point of original sin, it must be 
 admitted, I think, that Kant's theory of an " intellig- 
 ible act," as the explanation of the origin of evil, is both 
 mystical and unintelligible. It is useless to speak of 
 the act as timeless, for the word " act," and the notion 
 of evil as originating, are not thinkable by us except in 
 terms of time. To a certain extent, however, Kant's 
 language here may perhaps be viewed as an accommoda- 
 tion to the narrative form in which the Church presents 
 the necessary implication of evil in the human conscious- 
 ness. In describing himself as seeking, not the origin 
 in time, but the Vernunftursprung, of evil, he seems to 
 indicate that he is showing, not how a creature, sup- 
 posed to be originally good, passed into evil, but how 
 evil is essentially bound up with the notion of the 
 human will. This is borne out by a comparison of the 
 theory of the Fall given in this book with a suggestive 
 interpretation of the Mosaic story in a small treatise 
 belonging to the year 1786, entitled 'Probable Begin- 
 ning of Human History.' ^ The loss of Paradise is there 
 interpreted as the transition from mere animality to 
 humanity — " from the go-cart of instinct to the guidance 
 of reason." The career of rational progress which was 
 then begun is " for the race a progress from worse to 
 better, but it is not the same for the individual. Before 
 reason awoke, there was neither command nor prohibi- 
 tion, and therefore no transgression. But when reason 
 began its work, and, weak as it was, came into conflict 
 with the whole strength of the animal nature, evils, and 
 — what is worse — when reason became more cultivated, 
 
 ^ " Muthmasslichei- Anfang der Menschengeschichte," — 'Werke,' iv. 
 312-329.
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 263 
 
 vices, could not but arise, which were unknown to the 
 state of ignorance. The state of ignorance was a state 
 of innocence. . . . The history of Nature, therefore, 
 begins with good, because it is the work of God ; the 
 history of Freedom begins with evil, because it is the 
 work of man. For the individual, who, in the exercise 
 of his freedom, looks only to himself, the change meant 
 loss ; but for Nature, whose aims are for the race, it was 
 gain." The Fall from a state of animal innocence is 
 thus at the same time the condition of the possibility of 
 a life of rational freedom ; and as humanity in this 
 capacity is the only thing of " worth " in the world — or, 
 to repeat Kant's phrase, the only possible object of the 
 divine decree, — the Fall appears as a necessary part of 
 that purpose, and as an advance upon the foregoing stage. 
 Nevertheless, it consists essentially in the assertion of self, 
 and in the setting up of ends other than those which 
 Nature seems to have with the animal creature. It is 
 viewed accordingly, in each case, as being, in the most 
 intimate sense, a free or personal action. It must also 
 inevitably appear as a transgression, for the first form of 
 freedom is arbitrary selfishness. Consequently responsi- 
 bility and the consciousness of evil are inseparably bound 
 together, the one being possible only through the other. 
 
 Whether we choose to identify the "intelligible 
 act " with such a transition from instinct to reason or 
 not, the fact that Kant is formulating is simply this 
 inevitable implication of evil in the moral consciousness. 
 The fact is, after all, what we must stand by ; for an 
 actual genesis of reason and morality out of instinct is 
 just as impossible to construct as a supposed intelligible 
 act. The man (or animal) must have been morally 
 accountable before the primal act, it may be argued, if 
 he is to recognise himself as responsible for it after-
 
 264 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 wards, and so on ad infinitum. Consciousness cannot be 
 treated in any of its phases as something which comes 
 into being. The idea of an absolute beginning, in short, 
 has no place in philosophy, because philosophy does not 
 deal with a series of events : it deals with the notions 
 which these events imply, and is content with showing 
 how one notion is connected with another and with all 
 others. The point in question here is the relation of the 
 consciousness of evil to morality, and to the whole struc- 
 ture of human progress. The relation of reason to sense 
 may certainly constitute the basis of morality, whether 
 the inconceivable transition from a merely natural to a 
 rational life was ever actually made or not. In Hegel 
 we find substantially the same view as in the 'Muthmass- 
 licher Anfang,' combined with the same curious allegoris- 
 ation of the Biblical story. Hegel is at pains to show 
 that the breach of the merely natural harmony carries 
 with it the promise of a higher reconciliation in reason. 
 By the conception of such a reconciliation as involved in 
 the divine purpose, that is to say, philosophically, as 
 eternally complete in God, he is able, without resorting 
 to Kant's artificial doctrine of substitution, to put a 
 more vital meaning into the leading tenet of historical 
 Christianity. 
 
 Kant's whole theory of religion suffers from the limit- 
 ations of his Critical standpoint. The central idea in 
 religion, to which all others return, is the idea of God ; 
 and it is just here that the breakdown of Criticism be- 
 comes most apparent in the hands of its author. It 
 must be remembered that, in spite of the ample materials 
 which Kant supplies for the construction of a new the- 
 ology, he never got fairly outside of the old-fashioned 
 mechanical construction of Deism. God is, according to 
 this conception, a Being by himself, to whom no neces-
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 265 
 
 sary relations attach ; but He is supposed, by an exercise 
 of "will," to have "created" the world, and, with it, 
 finite intelligences. The manner or the meaning of this 
 creation is not explained, and so its assertion becomes 
 simply a word. That is to say, reason, in its search for 
 the causes of individual things, extends its range, and 
 ends by asking for the cause of the collective fabric of 
 things. As a temporary satisfaction, this causation is 
 thrown back upon a Being postulated in hunc efectum, 
 and called, in virtue of his function, the Great First 
 Cause. The designations of Supreme Being, or Absolute 
 Being, give no additional information as to his nature ; 
 and the inferential knowledge which Deism professes to 
 have of its God will always be found to dwindle down 
 to the bare assertion that he exists. It is against the 
 possibility of proving the existence of such a deistic God 
 that Kant does battle in the Pure Eeason ; and, in that 
 regard, his arguments and those of others must be ac- 
 knowledged to be conclusive — though only in that regard. 
 Take, for example, his famous illustration of the hundred 
 dollars. I may have an idea of a hundred dollars, but 
 my pocket may be empty enough for all that. In like 
 manner, Kant argues, I may have an idea of God, but 
 that is far from proving, as the supporters of the Onto- 
 logical argument would have us believe, the objective 
 existence of a Being corresponding to my idea. Clearly, 
 Kant's reasoning depends for its validity on the measure 
 of analogy between God and the hundred dollars. If 
 God is a Being or thing as separable from me as the 
 hundred dollars are, then certainly there is no passage 
 from idea to reality. Deism puts God at a distance in 
 this way ; and Deism, therefore, succumbs to Kant's 
 illustration. But if God cannot be, in any sense, a thing 
 or object, then the idea of God may very well be at the
 
 266 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 same time His real existence. If the idea of God is in- 
 separable from consciousness as such — is, in fact, the 
 perfect rational synthesis of which every consciousness is, 
 and recognises itself to be, the potential form, — then this 
 existence " in thought " seems to give all the reality that 
 can be asked for. Unless, indeed, we are determined to 
 materialise God into an object of our present or future 
 senses, this is the only existence of which we can speak. 
 If this idea be substituted for the deistic conception, it 
 will be found that the utterly bare and self-contradictory 
 notion of a First Cause must be exchanged for that of a 
 final cause or End. In other words, it is absurd to seek 
 a cause of the universe as a whole. The universe exists, 
 — that is all we can say about it. But though a cause 
 cannot be assigned, there is a sense in which a reason 
 may. This will be found in the Idea, should this be dis- 
 coverable, which the universe realises. The Idea is then 
 the purpose or raison d'etre, or simply the " meaning," of 
 the universe. For the word purpose must not be held to 
 imply a separation of the Idea (as in a scheming intel- 
 lect) from its actual realisation. 
 
 This notion of the Divine existence, however, can 
 hardly be said to have been definitely formulated in 
 Kant's time, and accordingly it does not affect the course 
 of his reasoning. In the sphere of Pure Eeason, God 
 remains, according to Kant, unknowable and unprovable. 
 But Kant did not leave things so ; for the existence of 
 God is, as has been seen, a Postulate of the Practical 
 Keason. What is more, it is postulated precisely in 
 the old deistic sense. It is true, there is the saving 
 clause, that what is reached on ethical grounds has, 
 so far as we are concerned, only an ethical content, 
 and is to be employed solely in an ethical interest. 
 And for Fichte, accordingly, the notion became at 
 once synonymous with that of the moral order of the
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 267 
 
 universe. But by Kant the moral order is conceived, 
 in the spirit of the baldest Individualism, as the final 
 adjustment of happiness and virtue; and God becomes 
 purely a Deiis ex Tnachina to effect this combination. 
 The indignity of the position is obvious, for He is 
 treated in the scheme primarily as a means towards 
 the happiness of the particular individual. Once there, 
 He is clothed, of course, with the qualities of moral 
 Lawgiver; but the motive of His introduction at all 
 is the one just indicated. The law and its authority 
 are sufficiently explained, Kant admits, by the notion 
 of the noumenal Self, and so the knowledge of duty 
 as the will of God seems, in the Kantian scheme, a 
 somewhat superfluous duplication of what we already 
 possess. The noumenal and self - legislative Self is, 
 indeed, when properly conceived, identical with the 
 will of God, and leaves no room for any extraneous 
 Deity. But the thoroughly mechanical idea of such 
 a Power weighing happiness against virtue cannot be 
 charmed out of the letter of Kant's theory. This 
 has been the stumbling-block which has caused many 
 to reject his Ethics in toto, and to identify the true 
 Kant exclusively with the Critical scepticism of the 
 intellectual theory. This, however, it has been already 
 pointed out, is a mistake. Kant was not unfaithful 
 to his method in the moral sphere : it is his method 
 itself which is defective. It may be readily admitted 
 that the great excellence of the Critical standpoint is, 
 that it explodes the pretended knowledge of tran- 
 scendent realities in which Dogmatic metaphysic had 
 dabbled. But the weakness of Kantianism, in the 
 hands of its author, is that the ghost of transcendent 
 reality is not laid : it cannot be seen, but it is sup- 
 posed still to stalk on the other side of knowledge. 
 The temptation to transcendent speculation cannot be
 
 268 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 perfectly removed, except by a philosophy which is 
 able to view experience as a whole, and to see realised 
 in the synthesis of the actual the true sense of the 
 objects which such speculation overleaps itself to reach. 
 What is known, in a broad sense, as Hegelianism, is 
 at least an attempt at such a complete and rounded 
 philosophy ; and in it the dualisms which vex us in 
 Kant disappear. The ideas of God and man are still 
 so far mutually exclusive for Kant, that what is done 
 by man in history appears to be necessarily done 
 without God. What is done by God, on the con- 
 trary, — as, for example, a revelation, — appears like a 
 hand from behind the clouds thrust suddenly into the 
 web of human affairs. Hence the antithesis between 
 Naturalism and Supernaturalism, and the non liquet, 
 which is the last dictum of the Critical reason. Hegel- 
 ianism abolishes the antithesis, by conceiving the whole 
 process of history as the work of God, and a growing 
 revelation of His nature and purpose. It remains now 
 to sketch very shortly, more by way of indication 
 than of exhaustive exposition, some of the leading 
 features of the Philosophy of Religion, as they appear 
 from such a standpoint. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE HEGELIAN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 
 
 The metaphysical position of Hegel may be summarily 
 distinguished from that of Kant, by saying that in the 
 later philosophy thought is recognised as absolute or self- 
 conditioning — as the unity, in other words, within which
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 269 
 
 all oppositions are only relative. Thought is, therefore, 
 the source of all the distinctions which make up the 
 knowable universe — even of the distinction between the 
 individual self and the objective world to which it is 
 related. Thought itself becomes the object of philosophy, 
 and the search for something " real," beyond and apart 
 from thought, is definitely abandoned. The business of 
 philosophy is henceforth the explication of the distinctions 
 which belong to the nature of thought, and this is other- 
 wise definable for Hegel as " the explication of God." 
 
 Philosophy thus becomes identical in its object with 
 religion ; for the constant aim of religion is to deter- 
 mine the nature of God, and His purpose in the in- 
 dividual and in the world. It is impossible to deny 
 this metaphysical character to religion, and to present 
 it simply as a set of empirical rules for conduct. 
 " From the beginning of the world down to the present 
 day," says Fichte, " religion, whatever form it may 
 have assumed, has been essentially metaphysic." In 
 other words, it is the need of a final synthesis, which 
 both philosophy and religion strive to satisfy, — the one 
 predominantly on the side of the intellect, the other pre- 
 dominantly on the side of the heart and life. Keligion 
 is never content till it apprehend the working whereby 
 God is able to subdue all things unto Himself. After 
 a more or less sufficient probing of the imperfection 
 and wrong in the world, it will invariably be found 
 putting forward some conception or theory, as the 
 solution of the contradictions that baffle us from day 
 to day. The conception may, or it may not, be 
 adequate to the difficulties of the case, — that is ac- 
 cording to circumstances. But it is the presence of 
 this conception that imparts to religion the joy and 
 confidence which are lacking in morality as such. Re- 
 ligion has been defined in our own day as " morality
 
 270 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 touched by emotion." The definition, as applied by 
 its author, is both suggestive and beautiful; but it 
 is still necessary to inquire into the source of the 
 emotion. This, I think, is always derived from a 
 certain view of the world as a whole, — that is to say, 
 more or less articulately, from a metaphysical con- 
 ception. It is the subject's identification of himself 
 with a divine world-order, that is the perennial source 
 of the religious emotion which lifts him who experi- 
 ences it above the lets and hindrances of time. With- 
 out this, he is an atom struggling in vain with the 
 evil of his own nature, and possibly, too, with the 
 misery of surrounding circumstances. If he is to be 
 successful in the struggle, he must be persuaded that 
 he is not alone, or, in the language of religion, that 
 God is for him, and that nothing, therefore, can be 
 ultimately against him. The triumph that he only 
 anticipates in himself and others he must conceive as 
 secure of fulfilment — in fact, as already fulfilled in the 
 eternal purpose of God. The peace which this con- 
 viction imparts is itself, in a sense, the realisation of 
 that triumph in the individual, — his present recon- 
 ciliation with God. It is also the most powerful 
 dynamic that can be supplied to morality. 
 
 Kant himself was not able to eliminate the meta- 
 physical side of religion entirely, though he considers 
 it necessary only for " the theoretical explanation of 
 salvation," and always returns by preference to the un- 
 varnished religion of right -doing. In the notion of 
 moral perfection as the End of creation, — an End 
 realised in God, and destined to be realised in man, — 
 and in the notion of the Church as a corporate unity for 
 the expression of this idea, the world is represented by 
 Kant as an ethical whole, in which atonement is made
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 271 
 
 for the sins of the individual and of the moment. This 
 appears much more emphatically in Hegel.^ The attain- 
 ment of reconciliation with God is the motive of all 
 religions ; the fact of an accomplished reconciliation is, 
 according to Hegel, the deepest religious truth. It is 
 revealed in the Christian religion. It is at the same 
 time the profoundest insight of philosophy, for it is the 
 expression of the essential nature of Spirit. True 
 religion and true philosophy coincide, for " the absolute 
 content," as Hegel says, must be the same. The notion 
 of Spirit is not the absence of contradiction, for that 
 would mean absolute sameness, which is equivalent to 
 pure nonentity : it is the solution of contradiction, by 
 exhibiting the opposite as held in its own unity. Spirit 
 lives by difference, but in all difference it is still identity 
 with itself. God was first known as Spirit, Hegel says, 
 in the Christian religion, and this is the meaning of its 
 central doctrine of the Trinity. The determination of 
 God as Triune is not to be taken, as Enlightenment 
 takes it, with reference to the number three. Eightly 
 understood, it is a reading of the nature of God, which 
 is fatal to the abstract unit which deistic freethought 
 deems so easy of acceptance. This God-in-himself, as 
 the idea may be styled, has a connection with the world 
 that is purely arbitrary, and serves reason merely as a 
 point d'appui. He is nothing more than a name upon 
 our lips ; we know nothing of his nature, because, as so 
 conceived, there is nothing to know. To say that God 
 is unknowable, and to say that He is the Supreme Being, 
 are, according to Hegel, identical propositions. God 
 cannot be known apart from the world ; He cannot be 
 
 ^ Hegel'a ' Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion ' are contained in 
 vols. xi. and xii. of the ' Werke,' but references to religion occur in almost 
 every one of his works.
 
 272 PHILOSOPHY OF RKLIGION IN KaNT AND HEGEL. 
 
 said to exist out of that reference. " Without the world, 
 God were not God." " God is the Creator of the world ; 
 it belongs to His being, to His essence, to be Creator. 
 . . . That He is Creator is, moreover, not an act under- 
 taken once for all : what is in the Idea is the Idea's 
 own eternal moment and determination." ^ This is 
 expressed in the doctrine of the Trinity, Hegel con- 
 tinues, by saying that from eternity God has begotten a 
 Son, or that He produces Himself eternally in His Son. 
 But this absolute diremption or distinction of Himself 
 from Himself is at the same time perfect identity ; and 
 the knowledge of God as the unity of Father and Son is 
 the knowledge of Him as Spirit or as the Triune God. 
 The Holy Ghost is the " eternal love," which expresses 
 this unity — this distinction in which there is no differ- 
 ence. Here is the " still mystery," which is the source 
 of the world's life. It may be otherwise expressed, by 
 saying that it is a necessity of the Absolute to create a 
 world of finite spirits. God is, in the strictest sense, 
 neither more nor less than this self-revelation. Man is 
 as necessary to God as God to man. The true infinity of 
 Spirit is realised in the knowledge of the Infinite as in 
 the finite, and of the finite as in the Infinite, or, as 
 Christianity says, in the oneness of God and man. God 
 is this eternal process or history. 
 
 But, so far as we have gone, there seems no room for 
 the disturbance or alienation from God, which is the 
 subjective root of religion. Where there is no estrange- 
 ment, reconciliation, in the ordinary sense of the term, 
 can have no function. It may fairly be objected to 
 Hegel's account given above, that it moves too much in 
 the clear .lether of the Idea, in which distinction is not 
 difference. As Hegel says in the ' Phaenomenology,' the 
 
 ' Hegel, ' Werke,' xii. 181 ( ' Philosophie der Religion,' vol. ii.)
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 273 
 
 notion of the divine life as a play of love with itself, even 
 though true, sinks to insipidity if " the seriousness, the 
 pain, the patience and labour of the negative " are not 
 allowed for. The first may be said to be the notion of 
 the universe from the divine standpoint : it is, in fact, 
 in Hegelian terminology, the Idea. The second is the 
 human side of the relation, — the Idea as it appears in 
 history. Here the world is viewed not in its ideal com- 
 pleteness, as the Son who is eternally and essentially one 
 with God, but as the world in the more proper sense of 
 the term, in which the otherness of the relation is 
 accentuated and comes to its right. We have here the 
 other, as the other ; the world (of nature and of finite 
 spirit) appears as something independent of God and free 
 in itself. It is a mark, Hegel characteristically adds, of 
 the freedom and security of the Idea, that it permits this 
 relative independence without detriment to its ultimate 
 synthesis. Nevertheless, he is somewhat at a loss to 
 find a motive for passing from the perfect Son to the 
 imperfect world. For it is, of course, necessary to suppose 
 that with the freedom there comes also the weakness 
 and the imperfection of separation ; it is the fact of " this 
 present evil world " that caUs for explanation. This is 
 the point where Hegel approximates most nearly to 
 Schelling. He seems to treat the origin of the finite 
 system of things as a species of Ah/all or primal 
 apostasy ; and as Plato has recourse to the mythical form 
 where clear thought fails him, so we find Hegel falling 
 back on Jacob Bohme. The first begotten, he quotes 
 from Bohme, was Lucifer, the light-bearer, the bright, the 
 clear one ; but Lucifer lost himself in his imaginings, and 
 asserted his independence, and fell. " So we pass into 
 the determination of space, of the finite world, of the 
 finite spirit." That, at least, is Hegel's complacent 
 
 S
 
 274 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 continuation. The whole reminds the reader very- 
 much, not to go farther afield, of Schelling's treatise 
 on ' Philosophy and Keligion.' But the point is only 
 touched on by Hegel, and the net result is simply 
 that the finite world, as finite, is due to a holding 
 fast of the form of difference. So far as this finitude or 
 difference exists, the restoration of unity appears as a 
 process in time — something to be gradually worked out. 
 Here properly comes in the need of reconciliation and, 
 with the need, the idea. 
 
 Eeconciliation can be effected only in the sphere of 
 Spirit ; and as religion exists only in relation to man or 
 finite spirit, we may concentrate attention on the way in 
 which Hegel interprets alienation here. " This is the 
 place of the confiict of good and evil — the place, too, 
 where this conflict must be fought out." ^ For the rest, 
 we know that Nature is but the theatre or sphere of spirit. 
 But man, as he first appears on that theatre, is simply a 
 part of Nature. Man in a state of nature is a complexus 
 of animal desires, which he fulfils in turn as they arise. 
 But the notion or destiny of man is to be intelligent and 
 free ; therefore his existence as a merely natural being 
 is in itself, as inadequate to his notion, evil. The state 
 of nature or " immediacy " is simply a starting-point, which 
 is to be left behind. Consciousness brings the knowledge 
 of this breach between the " is " and the " ought-to-be," 
 and with knowledge comes guilt. In this connection 
 we have the well-known Hegelian interpretation of the 
 Fall, which occurs in various parts of the Works. The 
 connection between evil and knowledge in the story is, 
 according to Hegel, essential. Man was evil in his 
 merely natural state — i.e., he was not as he ought to be ; 
 but with the dawn of consciousness he knows that he is 
 
 1 'Werke.'xii. 62.
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 275 
 
 evil. The knowledge of his state opens up to him the 
 possibility of escape from it, and he becomes responsible 
 for further continuance in it. The " absolute demand " 
 made upon man is, that he do not continue in this state ; 
 and though the content of the newly awakened will is, to 
 begin with, simply the full play of the man's animal 
 desires, yet the conviction grows that this ought not so 
 to be. In other words, consciousness brings with it a 
 separation between the subject and the natural basis 
 of desires with which he was formerly identical ; and the 
 separation means (in the long-run) the knowledge that 
 the true will or self is not to be found in the mere 
 satisfaction of the wants of the natural individual. It 
 means the knowledge of a higher rational Self, of an 
 obligation to realise it, and an infinite falling short of 
 attainment. The breach between the natural man and 
 that which he necessarily regards as his essence or 
 destiny, is the source (also in the long-run) of an infinite 
 pain ; and out of pain and un worthiness springs religion 
 with its conception of reconciliation. 
 
 Hegel turns to history for the verification of his thesis. 
 The sense in man of failure to realise his vocation, and 
 the consequent misery of alienation from his true good, 
 is what religion calls the consciousness of sin. This 
 consciousness continued to deepen in the human heart ; 
 and of the various religions that appeared on the earth 
 none had more than a partial cure for it. It was 
 necessary that the lowest depths of suffering should be 
 fathomed, before any healing could be effectual ; for it is 
 a principle of universal application, that a contradiction 
 must be strained to its utmost before it can be successfully 
 solved. So it was with the religious consciousness. The 
 extreme of abandonment and despair was reached in the 
 Eoman world before " the fulness of time " came and the
 
 276 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 word of reconciliation could be spoken. Profoundly dis- 
 satisfied with the existent world, men tried, in Stoicism 
 and kindred systems, to escape from it by withdrawing 
 wholly within themselves. But this flight from the world 
 could not be the world's salvation ; it is in itself merely 
 a confession of discomfiture. In my relation to the world 
 consist my duties ; Stoicism is the renunciation of these, 
 and so remains barren. The principle that is destined to 
 transform the world bears another aspect. " I pray not 
 that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but 
 that thou shouldest keep them from the evil." To a 
 distracted humanity Christ whispers the tidings of the 
 nearness of God. In the midst of unworthiness and 
 helplessness there springs up the new consciousness of 
 reconciliation. Man, with all his imperfections on his 
 head, is still the object of the loving purpose of God. 
 God is reconciled, if only man will strip off his painful 
 individuality and believe it. There is a victorious purpose 
 in the world, if only he will find himself in it, and work 
 joyfully in its light. With this assurance in the depth 
 of his heart comes the peace of essential unity with 
 what, to his individual effort, is still a flying goal. His 
 subjective frailty and shortcomings simply do not 
 count, when weighed against the active perception of 
 unity with God which is the substance or element of 
 his life. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the reconciliation must still be 
 worked out on the stage of the individual life and of 
 universal history. Faith without works, as we know, is 
 dead ; it is an idea which lacks its embodiment in reality. 
 But the faith must be there, if man is to work from 
 a proper vantage-ground. Hence Christianity teaches 
 God's reconciliation of the world with himself as a fact 
 or as an eternal truth ; and this becomes a presupposition
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 277 
 
 for the individual. It is something that is " finished," and 
 in the strength of which he works. This accomplished 
 reconciliation is the basis of the Church or the Christian 
 community (Gemeinde); it is taught in the Church's 
 doctrine, and the Church is itself the outward expression 
 of the truth. The relation of the subject to the problem 
 of salvation is, therefore, essentially different, according 
 as he is, or is not, born within the pale of the Christian 
 community. This is expressed by the Church in the 
 sacrament of Baptism, Baptism says in symbol that the 
 child is not born into a hostile world, but that his world, 
 from the beginning, is the Church, which is built upon 
 the consciousness of reconciliation. The Church is, in 
 its notion, a society where the virtual conquest over evil 
 is already achieved, and where, therefore, the individual 
 is spared such bitter conflict and outcast wretchedness 
 as preceded the formation of the community. The 
 education which the Church bestows smooths his path 
 for him ; and, in every respect, he essays the individual 
 problem under more favourable conditions. The last and 
 most solemn expression of the Church's life is in the 
 Eucharist, or the sacrament of the Supper. Here the 
 Church celebrates its sense of present reconciliation, and 
 the conscious unity of the subject with God. 
 
 But so long as this unity is realised only in the Church, 
 there remains an opposition between the Church and the 
 world. The Church, in these circumstances, may be said 
 to represent rather the idea than the reality of recon- 
 ciliation, inasmuch as it is faced by a hostile power in 
 which its principles have no application. This opposition 
 is the distinctive mark of Mediteval Christianity, in which 
 Christianity resembled rather a flight from the world than 
 the subjugation of the world to God. The virtues of 
 the Church were celibacy and poverty. The world was
 
 278 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 denounced as unholy ; and, as a natural consequence of 
 the stigma set upon it, it actually was unholy. Men's 
 consciences convicted them of sin, when they tampered 
 with the accursed thing. But this unhealthy dualism 
 could not last, and, in the end, the spirit of world- 
 liness possessed itself also of the Church. Instead of 
 universal corruption, however, this was the signal for the 
 appearance of the true conception of reconciliation, on 
 which modern life is built. The Eeformation is, in one 
 aspect, the denial of that dualism between the Church 
 and the world, between religion and secular life, which is 
 the mark of Mediaevalism in all its forms. The relations 
 of the Family and the State are restored to the divineness 
 that belongs to them ; or rather, their divineness is, for 
 the first time, consciously realised. In the laws and 
 customs of the rational or freely moving State, the 
 Church first penetrates the real world with its principles. 
 The State is " the true reconciliation, whereby the divine 
 realises itself in the field of reality." This final stage of 
 realisation in the world must not, of course, be held to 
 supersede the inward function of religion ; ^ but we 
 recognise here the point to which Hegel always returns. 
 As he says in the ' Philosophy of History,' " The State is 
 the Divine Idea as it exists on earth." The secular life 
 
 ^ It would be a misinterpretation of the Hegelian law of stages to 
 suppose that the final stage abolishes those that dialectically precede it. 
 Hegel's positions are often represented in a false and repulsive light under 
 the influence of this idea. The ' Philosophie des Rechts,' for example, is 
 represented as if the ultimate stage of Sittlichkeit were meant entirely to 
 supersede the subjective function of Moralitdt or conscience. It is obvious 
 that the two sides must continue to co-exist ; the only thing that is super- 
 seded is the abstract conscience that ignores the actual, and insists on 
 judging everything anew. So here, the objective reconciliation effected 
 in the true State is not intended to supersede, for the individual, the 
 subjective life of devotion.
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 279 
 
 of the modern world has been built up by Christianity ; 
 it is founded upon Christian conceptions of the dignity 
 and the rights of man. The secular, therefore, is itself 
 divine. This is, in Hegel's view, at once the principle of 
 Protestantism and the last principle of thought. 
 
 As may be imagined from the elaborate parallelism, or 
 rather identity, which he seeks to establish between his 
 own philosophical positions and the leading doctrines of 
 the Christian Church, Hegel has no sympathy with the 
 prevalent modern aversion to theological dogma. He 
 aims rather at a philosophic rehabilitation of dogmatic 
 Christianity ; ^ and he is never more in his element than 
 when running out his heavy guns against the theology 
 of feeling. The basis of a Church must be a system of 
 doctrines, and with their withdrawal the community 
 lapses into an aggregation of atoms. It is only prin- 
 ciples or beliefs that can be held in common ; feeling, as 
 such, is purely subjective, and can afford no bond of 
 union. Feeling is certainly indispensable in religion. 
 Eeligion must be realised in the element of feeling, if it 
 is to have active force in the life. But feeling is in 
 itself a mere form ; it is indifferent to its content, and 
 will attach itself, for the matter of that, to any content. 
 It is of the utmost importance, then, to understand that 
 religion, like philosophy, must found upon " a substantial, 
 
 ^ "Die Wiederherstellung der iichten Kirchenlehre muss von der 
 Philosophie ausgehen," — ' Werke,' xi. 10. Elsewhere he deplores the 
 state to which theology has sunk, when it becomes necessary for philo- 
 sophy to undertake the defence of the dogmas of the Church against the 
 orthodox theologians themselves. There is a flavour of the humorous 
 perceptible in the unction with which he takes Tholuck to task for the 
 slackness of his zeal in defending the doctrine of the Trinity. See in 
 particular the Preface to the second edition of the ' Encycloptcdia,' — 
 ' Werke,' vi. p. xi et seq.
 
 280 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 objective content of truth." ^ This content, as the theory 
 of the relations of God and man, is the absolute content ; 
 that is to say, it is an expression, in its last terms, of the 
 process of the universe, and, as such, is necessarily ident- 
 ical in both. But from what has been seen of Hegel's 
 statement of the " eternal " content of religion, it is evi- 
 dent that the doctrines of ordinary Christianity undergo 
 a considerable transformation in the process of philosophic 
 interpretation. And this, according to Hegel, is no more 
 than we need expect ; this is, in fact, Hegel's fundamental 
 distinction between Vorstellu7ig and Begriff. Eeligion 
 is truth for all ; it is easy of comprehension. " The 
 poor heard Him gladly." Philosophy is truth for those 
 who are capable of the prolonged effort of thought which 
 it implies. Philosophy presents truth essentially for the 
 intellect — truth, therefore, in its exact, scientific, ultimate 
 form. Eeligion presents the same synthesis, but primarily 
 for the heart — presents it, therefore, in a form calculated 
 to affect the feelings, and through them to work upon the 
 moral will. Eeligious enlargement speaks the language 
 of imagination ; it is saturated with feeling. But its 
 statements cannot be pressed as scientifically exact. 
 Eeligion, Hegel says, is reason thinking naively? It has 
 got hold of vital and eternal principles ; but the form in 
 which it presents them, while best suited to its own 
 purpose, is not adequate to the principles themselves. 
 Facts of the Notion, constitutive of the universe as such, 
 it treats as pieces of contingent history, which have been, 
 
 ' * Werke,' xvii. 299 (Preface to Hinrich's ' Religionsphilosophie '). This 
 Preface, written in 1822, and now printed among the " Vermischte 
 Schriften," throws much light on Hegel's attitude towards religion, 
 towards the historical element in Christianity, &c. It contains also a 
 bitter polemic against Schleiermacher, without, however, mentioning 
 names. 
 
 2 'Werke,' xi. 117.
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 281 
 
 and are no more. So with the Fall, so again with the 
 Eeconciliation ; its form is throughout pictorial and 
 narrative. All this Hegel means by saying that rehgion 
 appears in the form of Vcnstelluny. The distinction 
 between the Vorstellung and the Begriff is all-important, 
 he contends, for it keeps us from confounding the living 
 principles of religion with the historical form in which 
 they are conveyed. A certain historical form is neces- 
 sary ; but the historical, as such, is contingent, and can- 
 not, therefore, form part of the essential religious content. 
 That content, when separated from its contingent setting, 
 is found to be identical with notional truth, or with the 
 Begriff. The Begriff, however, Hegel seems to say, can 
 never, for the mass of mankind, supersede the Vorstellung. 
 This opens up the whole question of Hegel's relation 
 to historical Christianity. A memorable utterance of 
 his own may be taken as the authoritative text of what 
 follows : Eeligion must contain nothing but religion ; it 
 contains, as such, only eternal truths of the spirit.^ A 
 certain historical form, as just mentioned, is necessary. 
 The true religion must appear, must he. The idea must 
 have the side of reality, otherwise it is a mere abstrac- 
 tion ; and reality implies the circumstantial surroundings 
 of space and time. Or, to put it less abstrusely, the 
 historical or sensuous form was essential, if the truth was 
 ever to become a common possession of mankind. " The 
 unity of the divine and human is the thought (Gedanke) 
 of man ; but it was necessary that this should first be 
 believed as true of one individual Man." " The con- 
 sciousness of the Absolute Idea is produced, in the first 
 instance, not for the standpoint of philosophical specula- 
 tion, but in the form of certainty for mankind." ^ It is 
 a universal rule that we set out from sensuous certainty, 
 1 ' Werke,' xi. 152. 2 . Werke,' xii. 237, 238.
 
 282 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 from something given, something positive. But the given 
 has always to be intelligised ; its meaning has to be 
 reached. So the external world is given to us in sensa- 
 tion ; but it is not a world till we have constructed 
 sensations into a rational system. Keligion also comes 
 to us as something given, something positive, — to the 
 child in the form of education, to the race in the form 
 of revelation. But the attitude of thought to sense, or 
 to what is merely given, is always negative : we pass 
 from it, and retain only the rational content of which 
 it is the bearer. By the fact of a historical appearance 
 (recognised as a necessary element of the truth) we must 
 not, therefore, be misled into elevating the particulars of 
 that history to the rank of divine verities. The frame, 
 though necessary, does not stand on the same level as 
 the work of art that it encloses.^ The particulars of 
 history are always contingent — that is, they may be so 
 or they may be otherwise ; no truth of reason is involved 
 in their being either. In this way, Hegel says, the whole 
 question of miracles ought not to trouble us. We neither 
 attack them nor defend them; but the testimony they 
 could afford to religious truth was confined to the age in 
 which they are said to have been wrought. The spiritual 
 cannot be attested by the external or unspiritual, and, in 
 regard to miracles, the main point is that we set them 
 aside.^ The demonstration of the spirit is the only testi- 
 mony that can be ultimately accepted. 
 
 The sensuous history in which Christianity first ap- 
 peared is thus merely the point of departure (Ausgangs- 
 punkt) for the spirit, for faith. The doctrine of the 
 Church is neither the external history of its Founder, as 
 
 1 'Werke.'xvii. 283. 
 
 2 Ibid., xii. 160, — "Die Hauptsache in dieser Seite der Wunder ist, dass 
 man sie in dieser Weise auf die Seite stellt."
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 283 
 
 such, nor His own immediate teachings.^ It is the mean- 
 ing of the history, as apprehended in the consciousness 
 of the Christian Church. It is not to the point to say 
 that this meaning is contained in the Bible, and that the 
 whole doctrine is, as it were, spelled out of this text. The 
 Bible is merely another form of the " given " ; and as 
 soon as we depart from the words of the sacred text, we 
 have transformed it. Here, as elsewhere, the spirit is 
 active in its receptivity. It is the Church's exegesis of 
 the Bible that is the foundation of faith, and not the 
 words of the Bible, as such. The necessity of this pass- 
 ing away of the sensuous, or, at all events, of its trans- 
 formation by the spirit, is clearly perceived by the author 
 of the Fourth Gospel. The Johannine Christ expresses 
 this insight in pregnant words, when he makes the growth 
 of the Church dependent on his own departure. " It is 
 expedient for you that I go away. . . . The hour is come 
 that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, 
 I say unto you. Except a corn of wheat fall into the 
 ground and die, it abideth alone : but if it die, it bringeth 
 forth much fruit. . . . Greater works than these shall he 
 [the believer] do, because I go to my Father." Hence, 
 according to Hegel, the importance of so far detaching 
 the content of Christianity from its first sensuous present- 
 ment as to regard it in itself as " eternal truth." " The 
 true content of Christian faith is to be justified by phil- 
 osophy, not by history." ^ Why, then, should we be 
 always returning to the garments of flesh from which the 
 spirit has passed ? We get thus but a dead Christ ; 
 the living Christ is to be found in the Church 
 that He has founded, and in the doctrines of the 
 
 ^ " Christus Lehre kann, als diese unmittelbare, nicht christliche Dog- 
 matik, nicht Lehre der Kirche Bcin," — ' Werke,' xii. 241. 
 2 ' Werke,' xii. 266.
 
 284 PHILOSOPHY OF KELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 relation of God and man, of which it is the visible 
 symbol. 
 
 The whole position may perhaps be put more generally. 
 From the religious point of view, the value or worth of a 
 history lies solely in the circumstance that it is the vehicle 
 of such and such truths. Strip it of this significance and 
 the history is no more than any other bit of fact ; it ceases 
 to have any religious bearing at all. A history affects 
 us only when read in the light of the eternal purpose of 
 God. It is that purpose, therefore, which moves us, not 
 the bare recital of events ; and by any events the divine 
 purpose must be inadequately represented or set forth. 
 All spiritual effects must have spiritual causes. It is by 
 eternal principles or truths that the mind is influenced ; 
 and though certain narratives may have proved them- 
 selves specially efficacious in bringing home these truths 
 to men's minds, still that is no reason for insisting that 
 the narratives, as they stand, are scientifically maintain- 
 able in all their particulars. That the majority of men 
 find their account in holding to the original sense of the 
 narratives, is likewise a very inadequate reason for be- 
 lieving this to be the ultimate form of the truth. The 
 mass of men are habitually unaware of the true theory of 
 what they nevertheless perform with sufficient correctness. 
 The truth which the narratives convey reaches them and 
 influences them, without their being able to indicate 
 exactly how it does so. The rationale of the process 
 remains obscure, but the edification is a fact. Beyond 
 this fact the ordinary man does not, as a rule, travel ; 
 and when he does, his reasonings on spiritual causation 
 are as likely to be wrong as his reasonings on natural 
 causation. The post hoc ergo propter hoc is the prevalent 
 form of argumentation in both cases. He does not sift 
 the antecedents. All the prominent circumstances that
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 285 
 
 preceded the spiritual phenomenon are massed together 
 as its cause ; and he is as likely as not to point out as 
 the essential element in the causation precisely the most 
 contingent and indifferent circimistance. Spiritual in- 
 stinct is unerring in the choice of its proper food ; but 
 it is helpless when asked to explain how that food 
 nourishes it. 
 
 Nor is it anything to the point that a great number of 
 those who derive benefit from the narratives and religious 
 symbols in question perceive no conflict between their 
 literal sense and the prerogative of reason in other 
 spheres. The ordinary man, as Spinoza says, is slow 
 to perceive contradictions, because he does not hriTig 
 them together. His thinking is not continuous ; it is 
 often, indeed, interrupted and casual to the last degree 
 — here a little and there a little. And so it comes 
 that he passes from the religious half of his life to the 
 secular half without observing any inconsistency between 
 his presuppositions and general habit of thought in the 
 two spheres. But sooner or later the contradiction conies 
 to light. So long as a spirit of simple, unaffected piety 
 prevails, it does not appear ; for piety passes, as if in- 
 stinctively, to the inner content, and really lays no stress 
 on the finite particulars. They are there, and the 
 thought of calling them in question has not arisen ; 
 but to the unsophisticated religious consciousness they 
 in no wise constitute the foundation of faith. In one 
 aspect, it is their unimportance which has saved them 
 from question. But when the genuine spirit of re- 
 ligion fades out of the Church, its place is taken by 
 an abstract logic and a philosophy of the understand- 
 ing without insight into the things of God. Orthodoxy 
 in this form, having no root in itself, begins to lay a 
 disproportionate weight on the external and historical.
 
 286 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 It insists on making all these indifferent details a 
 matter of faith. But here it is met by the Aufkldrwng , 
 or the spirit of scientific enlightenment and historical 
 criticism. In a historical reference, this is the move- 
 ment specially associated with the activity of the 
 eighteenth century, though it goes on still, and in 
 many quarters may be said to be only beginning. 
 It is to be noted that Hegel does not dispute the 
 place and function of the negative here. He speaks 
 of the Enlightenment as " the better sense " of man- 
 kind rising in revolt against the pretensions of a 
 pettifogging orthodoxy; and as regards the contingent 
 matter to which this orthodoxy would pin our faith, 
 he unhesitatingly acknowledges the victory of the 
 Aufkldrung over its adversary.^ Individual utterances 
 in this connection may be ambiguous — sometimes, per- 
 haps, studiously so, — but the general tenor of Hegel's 
 thought is, I think, not to be mistaken. The calm- 
 ness with which he regards the Aufkldrung is due to 
 the fact that, on one side, he is prepared to admit all 
 its contentions. What he disputes is the inference 
 which Enlightenment draws from these admissions. He 
 complains that it knows only the negative, and makes 
 no distinction between the external or circumstantial, 
 and the true or divine. In short, he denies the pre- 
 supposition on which both ordinary orthodoxy and 
 ordinary rationalism proceed — viz., that the peculiarly 
 Christian doctrines stand or fall with the provable 
 extra -naturalness of certain facts. The condemnation 
 of the Aufkldrwng in an absolute regard is that its 
 tendency is to sweep away religion altogether along 
 with its finite forms. Mere enlightenment is no sub- 
 stitute for religion, and the inquiries on which its 
 
 ^ "Diese [die AuflddrvAVj\ ist Meister geworden iiber diesen Glauben," 
 — 'WerkCj'ix. 150.
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 287 
 
 champions spend their energies are likewise essentially 
 non-religious. Hence Hegel considered that the Auf- 
 Mdrung had done its work : it had given its gift to 
 the world, and was henceforth barren. Like Kant, 
 therefore, he deprecates, in a religious interest, the 
 perpetual renewal of useless controversy. Wanton at- 
 tacks upon the sacred books of Christianity indicate 
 a defect in culture quite as much as in religious 
 sense. The Church is right, he holds, from its own 
 standpoint, in fighting shy of investigations into matters 
 of fact undertaken in a non- religious interest.^ The 
 reason is, that such investigations lend an exaggerated 
 importance to the merely historical — an importance 
 which it does not possess as treated by the Church. 
 This is, of course, not the way in which the Church 
 formulates its opposition : it is Hegel's sympathetic 
 interpretation of her attitude. Hegel's sympathies are 
 essentially religious, and this sometimes communicates 
 a tone of undue depreciation to his remarks on the 
 AufkldruTig. But, as we have seen, he does not send 
 Enlightenment away without the portion of goods that 
 falls to its share. He considers his own position as 
 a vantage-ground beyond both traditional orthodoxy and 
 ordinary rationalism. In the strife, therefore, which still 
 goes on between these two, Hegel can be invoked on 
 neither side. His thoroughgoing distinction of Vorstell- 
 ung and Begriff absolves him from descending into the 
 noisy arena. " Thought justifies the content of re- 
 ligion, and recognises its forms, — that is to say, the 
 determinateness of its historical appearance ; but, in 
 the very act of doing so, it recognises also the limita- 
 
 1 ' Werke,' xii. 260, — " So thut die Kirche insofern Kecht daran, wenn 
 sie solche Untersuchungen nicht annehmen kaiin." He iustances the 
 case of investigations into the reality of the reported appearances of 
 Christ after his death.
 
 288 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 tions of the forms." ^ This sentence from the con- 
 clusion of the ' Philosophy of Religion ' is well adapted 
 to summarise the whole attitude of the Hegelian phil- 
 osophy towards the question at issue. 
 
 Such, then, in outline, is the Hegelian Philosophy 
 of Religion. So far as it trenches on technically 
 theological ground, I am not called upon to criticise 
 it here. Historically, its direct affiliation to the Kantian 
 position is not to be mistaken. The relation of Hegel 
 to Kant in his theory of religion is, indeed, an exact 
 parallel to the relation between them in respect of 
 the doctrine of knowledge. In both cases the same- 
 ness is more striking than the difference. Kantianism 
 seems everywhere on the point of casting off the pre- 
 suppositions which bind it to the old metaphysic. In 
 evidence of this it is only necessary to specify, in the 
 present case, Kant's whole attitude to positive religion, 
 his treatment of the Fall, and even, to some extent, 
 of the idea of Reconciliation. But the new metaphysic 
 developed by Hegel out of Kantianism does away with 
 the abstract distinction between God and man which 
 still remains at the Kantian standpoint. God is recog- 
 nised, Hegel says, " not as a Spirit beyond the stars, 
 but as Spirit in all spirits " ; and so the course of 
 human history is frankly identified with the course 
 of divine self-revelation. The culmination of this re- 
 ligious development"^ is reached in Christianity; and 
 
 1 ' Werke,' xii. 286. 
 
 ■^ The limits and the plan of this sketch make impossible even an 
 outline of the course of this development in the historical religions of 
 humanity. Hegel's characterisations of the different faiths are mines 
 of thought, especially in the later stages, where he comes to compare 
 Judaism, Hellenism, and the prosaic secularism of Rome, with "the 
 absolute religion " for which they were destined to make way.
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 289 
 
 Christianity reveals nothing more than that God is 
 essentially this revelation of Himself.^ In this con- 
 nection it is that a new significance is given to the 
 doctrine of the Trinity, which thereby becomes funda- 
 mental for the Hegelian Philosophy of Eeligion. This 
 attitude towards the course of history, and towards 
 Christianity in particular, is the only one which 
 is permissible to an Absolute philosophy. However 
 fenced about with explanations, the thesis of such 
 a philosophy must always be — "The actual is the 
 rational." 
 
 The difficulties of such a system are always found in 
 accounting for contingency, for imperfection, for suffer- 
 ing and evil. It would not be fair to leave the subject 
 without pointing out in a word or two where the strain 
 €omes upon Hegelianism, when it is conceived as such 
 a final and absolute system. Hegelianism, it may be 
 premised, has, in the individual reflection of its author, 
 no other basis than the bit-by-bit experience on which 
 empiricism builds. This is a matter of course, which 
 ought not to require stating ; nevertheless, owing to 
 the form which Hegel has given his thoughts, it is 
 frequently ignored. Though the particulars, or the 
 " given," must necessarily come first in ordine ad in- 
 dividuum, yet, the principle of synthesis having been 
 divined, the Hegelian method does not present its results 
 as a collection of inductions or deductions, more or less 
 fragmentary, from experience. The subjective process 
 by which the results are reached is, as it were, sup- 
 pressed ; and an attempt is made to lay before us the 
 system of the actual — the actual as it exists in ordine ad 
 universicm, or from a divine standpoint. It is essential 
 to the success of such an undertaking that the system 
 
 1 'Werke,' xii. 158. 
 T
 
 290 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 round itself in itself. What we get must be a perfect 
 system of mutual relativity, and like the Divine 
 Labourer we must be able at the end to pronounce 
 all things very good. That is just equivalent to saying 
 that it must actually he a system, and not the disjecta 
 membra of one. The idea of perfection — Optimism, 
 not as a hope, but as a reality — is the very nerve of 
 such a synthesis. The world must be seen, as it were, 
 to have its genesis in divine perfection, and it must 
 be sealed up there again at the close. In other words 
 (that all suspicion of an emanation hypothesis be avoided 
 in the expression), there must be no hitch, no flaw, in 
 the system, which might be inconsistent with the per- 
 fection of the whole. 
 
 Now the objections to which Hegel's synthetic or 
 genetic mode of presentment has given rise — that his 
 philosophy is an a 'priori system, a metaphysical cobweb 
 spun in flagrant disregard of experience, and so forth — 
 may be summarily dismissed, for they have their root in 
 misconception and ignorance. But it is impossible to 
 deny that it is precisely when Hegelianism presents 
 itself in system, as a self -cohering explanation of the 
 whole, that we are apt to be least satisfied with it. The 
 thoughts of the reader will revert instinctively, in the 
 present case, to the hardly disguised failure of the trans- 
 ition from the Son to the world of finite men and things.^ 
 Hegel is perfectly at home in describing the triune 
 relations of the Idea ; but as soon as their transparency 
 or pellucidity is blurred by real difference, the strain 
 comes upon him. The transition here is, in its way, an 
 instructive counterpart to the unsatisfactory phrases in 
 which the passage is made, in the ' Encyclopaedia,' from 
 the necessity of the logical Idea to the contingency of 
 
 1 Cf. p. 273 supra.
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 291 
 
 Nature. In its general aspect, the problem is no less 
 than to show how the existence of an imperfect world is 
 compatible with divine perfection ; and, of course, when 
 we start from the perfect, the difficulty of explanation is 
 enhanced. Hegel seems to gain the imperfect by a leap. 
 When he has once gained it, he is much more successful 
 in exhibiting the process of regeneration. His treatment 
 of evil as an essential element in the consciousness of a 
 sensuous being, for example, is profound and funda- 
 mental; but it manifestly presupposes the fact of the 
 manifestation of reason in a sensuous creature like man. 
 All imperfection may flow from the combination, but 
 why should this combination itself be necessary ? So, 
 too, there is no point which Hegel is fonder of emphasis- 
 ing than the labour of the Spirit. The world-spirit, he 
 says, has had the patience to undertake " the prodigious 
 labour of the world's history " : only subjective impati- 
 ence demands the attainment of the goal without the 
 means. His reference to " the seriousness, the pain, the 
 patience and labour of the negative," has been already 
 quoted. It would be an egregious mistake, therefore, to 
 suppose that Hegel's Optimism is born of a superficial 
 glance that ignores the darker sides of existence. 
 Throughout, indeed, it takes the shape much more of a 
 deliverance from evil than of the unimpeded march of 
 a victorious purpose. In this respect, it is a much 
 closer transcript of the course of the actual than most 
 Optimistic systems are. But the inevitable question 
 rises — Whence the necessity of this pain and labour 
 in the all-perfect ? And if we lose our grasp of this 
 idea of an all-perfect whole, can we be said still to 
 possess the imposing synthesis which Hegel lays claim 
 to ? Hegel might answer, that our difficulty is created 
 by the abstract idea of perfection with which we start.
 
 292 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL. 
 
 Such pure perfection would be colourless nonentity : there 
 is no victory possible without an adversary, and exist- 
 ence is, in its very essence, this conflict of opposites. 
 His own position, he might say, is demonstrably identical 
 with that of religion, which maintains that evil is " per- 
 mitted " for the sake of the greater good, or, as philosophy 
 expresses it, is involved in its possibility. Evil that is 
 the means to good, a dualism that yet is overcome, 
 Optimism upon a ground of Pessimism, — such, he might 
 say, is the character of existence as it reveals itself to us. 
 God is this eternal conquest or reconciliation. We have 
 no right to make unto ourselves other gods, or to con- 
 struct an imaginary world, where good shall be possible 
 without evil, result without effort. Whether Hegel 
 would accept what is here put into his mouth, and 
 whether, if he would, the position amounts to an abso- 
 lute philosophy, are questions too wide to discuss further 
 in a work whose object is mainly expository. But I 
 probably express the conviction of many students when 
 I say that the strength of Hegelianism lies not so much 
 in the definite answer it gives to any of the questions 
 which are supposed to constitute philosophy, as in its 
 criticism of history. In history, whether it be the 
 history of philosophies, of religions, or of nations, Hegel 
 is like Antaeus on his mother earth : his criticisms are 
 invincible, and his interpretations are ever fresh.
 
 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 
 
 A HUNDRED years have passed^ since Kant, in a 
 note to the preface of the first * Critique/ declared 
 his age to be pre-eminently the age of an all-embracing 
 criticism, and proceeded therewith to sketch the outlines 
 of what he called the Critical philosophy. The latter 
 has grown to be a great fact even in that dim general 
 consciousness in which humanity keeps record of the 
 deeds of its past. But a hundred years have apparently 
 not been long enough for commentators and critics to 
 make clear to a perplexed public the exact import of 
 what Kant came to teach. And if Kant had survived 
 to dip into the literature of the centenary and see the 
 different doctrines with which he is credited, one can 
 fancy the indignant disclaimers that would have filled 
 the literary journals. The agreement is general that 
 Kant's contribution to philosophy forms a bridge between 
 one period of thought and another ; but opinion is sadly 
 di\dded as to the true philosophic succession. Hence it 
 is probably better, in any treatment which aims at 
 philosophical persuasion, to regard Kant not so much 
 with reference to the systems of which his own has 
 been the germ, as with reference to the whole period 
 
 ^ This essay was published in 1883 in the volume ' Essays on Philo- 
 sophical Criticism.' See Preface.
 
 294 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 
 
 which he closed. If we get in this way to see what 
 notions it was that he destroyed, then we may possibly 
 reach a certain unanimity about the principles and out- 
 lines of the new philosophy. When we know on what 
 ground we stand, and what things are definitely left 
 behind, we are in a position to work for the needs of our 
 own time, taking help where it is to be found, but with- 
 out entangling ourselves in the details of any particular 
 post-Kantian development. 
 
 An unexceptionable clue to the way in which Kant 
 was accustomed to regard his own philosophic work is 
 furnished by the use he makes of the term criticism. 
 Criticism, as every one knows, is generally mentioned 
 by Kant in connection with Dogmatism and Scepticism, 
 as a third and more excellent way, capable of leading us 
 out of contradiction and doubt into a reasoned certainty. 
 The term thus contains, it may be said, Kant's own 
 account of his relation to his predecessors. That account 
 — often repeated in the Kantian writings — bears a 
 striking similarity, at first sight, to Locke's description 
 of his discovery that most of the questions that perplex 
 mankind have their source in the want of "a survey of 
 our own understandings." " Were the capacities of our 
 understandings well considered, the extent of our know- 
 ledge once discovered, and the horizon found which sets 
 the bounds between the enlightened and dark parts of 
 things — between what is and what is not comprehensible 
 by us, — men would perhaps with less scruple acquiesce 
 in the avowed ignorance of the one, and employ their 
 thoughts and discourse with more advantage and satis- 
 faction in the other " (' Essay,' Book I., chap, i., § 7). 
 
 But Locke was a man of the world rather than a 
 philosopher by profession ; and, being an Englishman, he 
 had not been much troubled by the metaphysical system-
 
 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 295 
 
 builders. Kant, on the other hand, has the latter con- 
 tinually before his mind : " the celebrated Wolff," in par- 
 ticular, had made a deep impression upon him. But he 
 perceived that not one of the metaphysicians was able 
 to establish his system as against the equally plausible 
 construction of others, or in the face of the sceptical 
 objections brought against such systems in general. The 
 disputes of the Schools seemed best likened to the blood- 
 less and unceasing combats of the heroes in Walhalla. 
 A scepticism like David Hume's appeared the natural 
 end of these ineffectual efforts to extend our knowledge. 
 Profoundly convinced, however, that scepticism is not a 
 permanent state for human reason, Kant tried to form- 
 ulate to himself the necessary causes of the failure of the 
 best-meant of these attempts to construct a philosophy. 
 This is how he differentiates his own work from Hume's. 
 Hume, he says, was satisfied with establishing the fact of 
 an actual failure on the part of metaphysics, but he did 
 not show conclusively how this must be so. Hence, in 
 the general discredit which he threw upon the human 
 faculties, he involved much of the knowledge of the 
 natural world which no one disputes, but which it is 
 impossible to vindicate on the principles of Humian 
 scepticism. Besides, though an effectual solvent of pre- 
 ceding systems, Hume's method offers no guarantee that 
 other philosophers will not arise, more subtle and per- 
 suasive, winning many to accept their constructions, and 
 calling for a second Hume to repeat the work of demoli- 
 tion. What is essential is to set the bounds between 
 our necessary knowledge and our equally necessary 
 ignorance. We must submit to critical evaluation, not 
 facta of reason, but reason itself. Proof must be had 
 not merely of limitation or finitude in general, but of a 
 determinate boundary line that shuts off knowledge from
 
 296 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 
 
 the field of the unknown and unknowable. That is, we 
 demonstrate, on grounds of principle, not only our ignor- 
 ance in respect to this or that subject, but our ignorance 
 in respect to all possible questions of a certain class. 
 There is no room for conjecture. In the region of com- 
 plete certitude alone can reason take up its abode, and 
 to mark out the firm " island " of truth is the task of 
 Criticism.^ 
 
 All the conclusions of the system-builders are vitiated, 
 Kant explains, by the fact that they have not submitted 
 the conceptions and principles which they employ to a 
 preliminary criticism in order to discover the range of 
 their validity. Conceptions which are familiar to us 
 from daily use we assume to be of universal applic- 
 ability, without considering what are the conditions 
 of our present experience, and whether these condi- 
 tions may not be of essential import in determining for 
 conceptions the range of their application. Conceptions 
 quite unimpeachable under these conditions may be 
 quite unmeaning when these conditions are removed. 
 A metaphysic which is oblivious to such considerations 
 Kant calls Dogmatic. Thus when philosophers conclude 
 that the soul is immortal because it is a substantial 
 unit and therefore indiscerptible, their argument is alto- 
 gether in the air, for they have omitted to consider 
 whether such a conception as substance can have any 
 meaning except as applied to a composite object in 
 space. Similarly, when Locke attempts to prove the 
 existence of God by the " evident demonstration that 
 from eternity there has been something," he is importing 
 the conceptions of time and causality into the relations 
 
 1 Cf. Kant's * ' Methodenlehre " at the end of the 'Critique of Pure 
 Reason.' The special reference is to the second section of the first 
 chapter.
 
 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 297 
 
 between God and the universe, without reflecting whether 
 time and causality are available ideas when we venture 
 beyond the context of our sense-experience. 
 
 Nothing could well be more satisfactory than this. 
 But in such an undertaking everything depends upon 
 the thoroughness with which the idea of criticism is 
 applied, and Kant, unfortunately, left the most funda- 
 mental conception of all uncriticised. He dogmatically 
 assumed the conception of the mind as acted upon by 
 something external to it. In other words, the mechanical 
 category of reciprocity, which psychology and ordinary 
 thought may justifiably employ for their own purposes, 
 was taken by him as an adequate or philosophic repre- 
 sentation of the relation of the knowing mind to the 
 objective world. The distinction between mind and the 
 world, which is valid only from a certain point of view\ 
 he took as an absolute separation. He took it, to use 
 a current phrase, abstractly — that is to say, as a mere 
 fact, a fact standing by itself and true in any reference. 
 And of course when two things are completely separate, 
 they can only be brought together by a bond which is 
 mechanical, external, and accidental to the real nature 
 of both. 
 
 Hence it comes (in spite of the inferior position to 
 which Kant explicitly relegates empirical psychology) 
 that the ' Critique of Pure Eeason ' sets out from a 
 psychological standpoint and never fairly gets beyond it. 
 " In what other fashion is it to be supposed that the 
 knowing faculty could be roused to exercise, if not by 
 objects which affect our senses ? " Kant hardly waits to 
 hear the answer, so much does it seem to him a matter 
 of course. Such a self-revelation is too naive to be got 
 rid of by saying that this sentence in the first paragraph 
 of the Introduction expresses no more than a provisional
 
 298 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OP CATEGORIES. 
 
 adoption of the standpoint of ordinary thought, in order 
 to negate it and rise above it by the progressive criticism 
 of the remainder of the book. That this point of view is 
 negated and surmounted in the ' Critique ' I do not in 
 the least doubt ; but it is just as certain that Kant did 
 not mean to express here a merely provisional standpoint 
 from which he could intelligibly launch his own universe 
 upon the reader. The passage may be matched by many 
 others taken from any stage of Kant's speculations. 
 They recur too often to be explained otherwise than by 
 the admission that, while his new method is the con- 
 clusive refutation of the claims of psychology to function 
 as philosophy, Kant himself never consciously called in 
 question the fundamental presupposition of psychological 
 philosophy, much less subjected it to the criticism which 
 his principles demanded. 
 
 Many untenable Kantian distinctions, to which students 
 — and especially students trained in English philosophy — 
 take exception at the outset, are connected in principle 
 with this initial psychological dualism. Such are, for 
 example, the sheer distinction drawn between the form 
 and the matter of experience, between a priori and 
 a posteriori, and the equally abstract way in which Kant 
 uses universality and necessity as the criteria of formal 
 or perfectly pure cognition. Since the whole of Kant's 
 scheme of thought appears to rest upon these distinctions, 
 it is not to be wondered at if many conclude that the 
 rest of the system must be entirely in the air. It is not 
 the less true, however, that this is a case in which the 
 pyramid does not stand upon its apparent base. 
 
 Such disjunctions in Kant are due to the effort of 
 reflection to escape from the unlimited contingency of 
 the Humian position, while retaining the ultimate pre- 
 supposition of the unrelatedness of mind and things,
 
 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 299 
 
 from which the scepticism of the earher thinker resulted. 
 AVTiat the mind learns from things must necessarily, on 
 this hypothesis, be so many bare facts or atoms of im- 
 pression cohering simply as they have been accidentally 
 massed in the piecemeal process of acquisition. Kant un- 
 hesitatingly endorses Hume's conclusion on this point: that 
 "experience" cannot yield universality and necessity is the 
 ground common to both Kant and Hume, which furnishes 
 the starting-point of the ' Critique.' On the one hand, 
 Kant found himself faced by this assumption ; on the 
 other, by the existence of judgments continually made, and 
 whole sciences constructed, whose universal and necessary 
 application it would be mere affectation to deny. The 
 lines of his own theory were virtually settled by these 
 two admissions. If the necessity which we find in 
 experience is confessedly not derivable from the atomic 
 data furnished to the mind by things, then it must be 
 infused into these data by the action of the mind itself. 
 We have thus the spectacle of experience as the product 
 of an interaction taking place between " the mind " and 
 things. The element contributed by the action of things 
 Kant calls the " matter " of experience ; the contribution 
 of the mind he calls the " form." On his own principles, 
 the " matter " ought to be pure matter or unlimited 
 contingency, containing in itself no germ of methodical 
 arrangement, while the " forms " of the mind should 
 compel this mass into order and system. But it is, of 
 course, impossible for Kant to maintain himself at the 
 point of view of a distinction which in this case simply 
 does not exist. He is forced to admit that, for the 
 particular applications of the general forms or laws im- 
 posed on experience by the mind, we remain dependent 
 upon things. But in such cases, if the particular applic- 
 ation is given in the matter, then a fortiori the law or
 
 300 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 
 
 principle in its general form must be so given. It must 
 be possible, by an ordinary process of generalisation and 
 abstraction, to formulate in its generality the principle 
 which the specific instances exemplify. In other words, 
 Kant admits that what is " given " to the mind is not 
 pure matter, not mere particulars, but matter already 
 formed, particulars already universalised — that is to say, 
 related to one another, and characterised by these rela- 
 tions. The task of the knower is simply to read off, or 
 at most laboriously to bring to light, what is there com- 
 plete before him in his material. There is not the 
 slightest doubt that, when we remain at the point of 
 view of the abstract distinction between mind and the 
 world which we have signalised in Kant, empiricists are 
 correct in insisting that not the matter of his experience 
 only, but the form as well, is derived by the individual 
 from the world with which he is set in relation. The 
 mind is not the seat of universals and the world a jumble 
 of particulars, the former being superimposed upon the 
 latter for the production of knowledge. Neither mind 
 nor the world has any existence as so conceived. How, 
 for example, can the unfilled mind of the child be regarded 
 as creatively producing order in a chaos of pelting im- 
 pressions, or what do we mean by postulating a mind at 
 all in such a case ? If they prove nothing else, such 
 considerations prove the complete impossibility of treating 
 knowledge from a psychological standpoint. We con- 
 clude, therefore, that matter and form are shifting dis- 
 tinctions relative to the point of view from which they 
 are contemplated ; and the same is true of the world and 
 the mind, of which opposition, indeed, the other is only 
 another form. From the standpoint of a theory of 
 knowledge it will be found that the mind and the world 
 are, in a sense, convertible terms. We may talk indiffer-
 
 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 301 
 
 ently of the one or of the other; the content of our 
 notion remains in both cases the same. 
 
 A similar criticism applies to the criteria of univer- 
 sality and necessity as employed by Kant. No sooner 
 are the words uttered than people begin to ransack their 
 minds in order to discover whether, as a matter of fact, 
 they ever make such judgments as are here attributed to 
 them. The absolute necessariness which Kant affirms of 
 <;ertain judgments becomes a species of mystic quality. 
 Some thinkers persuade themselves that they recognise 
 this quality in the judgments in question ; others, more 
 cautious, maintain that whatever stringency the judgments 
 possess may be sufficiently accounted for without resort- 
 ing to what they brand as an " intuition." Thus, when 
 a conscientious associationist like Mill comes forward and 
 denies that he finds any absolute universality and neces- 
 sity whatever in his experience, Kant's argument is 
 brought to a complete standstill. The question of fact 
 on which he builds being denied, there is no common 
 ground between him and his opponent. Few things can 
 be imagined more unfortunate than this reduction of the 
 controversy between Kant and empiricism to a discussion 
 about the existence or non-existence of some mystical 
 necessity in the propositions of geometry. Yet this 
 actually happened in the earlier stages of Kantian study 
 in England. Wherever " intuitions " come into play, the 
 point in dispute is referred to a merely subjective test, 
 and controversy necessarily fritters itself away into a 
 bandying of " yes " or " no " from the opposite sides. 
 No one who has learned Kant's lesson so as to profit by 
 it, should have any hesitation in finding Mill's hypo- 
 thetical theory of demonstration to be truer in conception 
 than any theory which insists on a difference of kind 
 between the necessity of geometrical and that of any
 
 302 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 
 
 other scientific propositions. All necessity is hypothetical 
 or relative, and simply expresses the dependence of one 
 thing upon another. No truth is necessary except in 
 relation to certain conditions, which being fulfilled, the 
 truth always holds good. The more general or simple 
 the conditions on which any truth depends, the wider is 
 the range of its validity ; and truths which, like those of 
 geometry, depend only on the most rudimentary elements 
 or conditions of experience, will of course be universally 
 and necessarily valid /o?' all experience depending on these 
 conditions. This, as every student ought to know, is the 
 only necessity which Kant's theory eventually leads him 
 to attribute to the propositions of geometry. It is the 
 more unfortunate that he should seem to base his argu- 
 mentation upon the assertion of an abstract or absolute 
 necessity. But this is only one of many instances in 
 which the true sense of Kantian terms must be defined 
 by the completed theory. Necessity of the latter type 
 — absolute necessity — is not so much doubtful in fact 
 as it is contradictory in notion. " Necessity " invari- 
 ably raises the question " Why ? " and the answer must 
 consist in showing the conditions. Something may be 
 necessary in relation to conditions which are themselves 
 of limited application : in that case we never speak of 
 it as necessary unless when these conditions are them- 
 selves under consideration. When we speak of any- 
 thing as being necessary in a pre-eminent sense, we 
 mean that our assertion depends for its validity on 
 nothing more than the system of conditions on which 
 experience is founded. There is no abstract opposition, 
 therefore, between the necessary and the contingent, such 
 as Kant presents us with : the difference is not one of 
 kind, but of degree. 
 
 This interpretation of necessity is particularly worth
 
 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 303 
 
 keeping in mind in connection with the Kantian cate- 
 gories or conceptions of the understanding; for Kant's 
 treatment of these so-called a priori elements as the 
 contribution of the mind has again led him into false 
 issues — or at least it has led many of his followers and 
 opponents. It is supposed, for example, that the whole 
 question turns upon the mental origin of certain concep- 
 tions, and this, as has been seen, is a fact which may very 
 properly be denied. It appears to be forgotten, amid the 
 'pros and cons of such an argument, that mental origin is 
 in itself no clue to the function of a conception or the 
 range of its validity, unless we connect our assertion 
 with a whole theory as to the nature of experience in 
 general. This, it must be allowed, Kant has not 
 neglected to do ; and his ultimate proof of the necessity 
 of conceptions like substance and cause is simply that 
 without them experience would be impossible. They are 
 the most general principles on which we find a concaten- 
 ated universe to depend. Their mental origin falls in 
 such a deduction completely into the background ; and 
 Kant is only obliged to assert it because of the absolute 
 opposition which he set up between the necessary and the 
 contingent, and the presupposition with which he started, 
 that experience can give us nothing but contingency. 
 The conceptions derive their necessity from their relation 
 to experience as a whole. Kant proceeds, indeed, to de- 
 scribe the conceptions in this relation as modes of mental 
 combination, according to which the Ego lays out the 
 variety poured in upon it from without. As nothing 
 can come within experience except so far as it fits itself 
 into the structure of the mental mould, the necessary 
 validity for experience of these conceptions is evident. 
 But nothing is gained by isolating these conditions, prin- 
 ciples, or categories from the experience in which they
 
 304 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OP CATEaORIES. 
 
 are disclosed to us, and hypostatising them as faculties 
 or modes of faculties — methods of action inherent in the 
 mind. On the contrary, this is essentially a mischievous 
 step ; for when we talk thus, we are inevitably held to 
 refer to the individual mind ; and the difiiQulties, or rather 
 absurdities, of such a position have already come under 
 our notice. It is to be regretted, therefore, that Kant 
 frequently described his undertaking as a criticism of 
 faculties, instead of keeping by the more comprehensive 
 and less misleading title (which, as we have seen, he also 
 employs) of a criticism of conceptions. Unfortunately, 
 this is not merely a verbal inconsistency ; it represents 
 two widely different views of the Critical philosophy. 
 
 Kant's general scheme is sufficiently well known to 
 render any minute account of it superfluous in this 
 connection. It was framed, as has been seen, to account 
 for the fact of universal and necessary judgments, and 
 its form was conditioned by the previous acceptance of 
 Hume's fundamental assumptions, Kant's way out of 
 the difficulty was contained in what he called his 
 Copernican change of standpoint. If there is no 
 necessity to be got by waiting on the world of things, 
 let us try what success attends us if objects are made 
 to wait upon us for their most general determinations. 
 The form or " ground-plan " of experience which Kant 
 discovers in following out this idea, consists of twelve 
 categories, conceptions, or methods of combination, ac- 
 cording to which the matter of sense is arranged in the 
 perceptive or imaginative spectra of space and time, the 
 process of arrangement being ultimately guided by three 
 ideals of intellectual completeness, and being referable at 
 every point to the unity of the transcendental Ego. Or 
 in Kant's psychological language, the mind is furnished, 
 first, with the a priori forms of space and time, in which
 
 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 305 
 
 all its impressions must be received ; and secondly, with 
 twelve principles of intellectual synthesis, by submission 
 to which the impressions of sense first become objects 
 in a world of related things. The relations of space and 
 of objects in space,^ as dependent upon the nature of the 
 mind-form and of the mind-imposed laws of combination, 
 may evidently thus be known with complete certainty. 
 We are in a position, so far as these points are con- 
 cerned, to anticipate experience : universality and neces- 
 sity are saved. But the counter-stroke is obvious. We 
 anticipate experience — and to that extent, as Kant 
 paradoxically puts it, legislate for nature — simply 
 because it is our own necessity, and not the necessity 
 of things, which is reflected back to us from the face 
 of this mind-shaped world. We purchase the sense of 
 certainty in our knowledge at the cost of being told that 
 our knowledge is not in a strict sense real knowledge at 
 all. The world of real objects (improperly so called, 
 inasmuch as they never are objects), on which Kant 
 represents us as waiting for the matter of our experience, 
 is necessarily cut off from us by the constitution of our 
 powers of knowing. Here Kant draws the line which 
 he says Hume neglected to draw — the line dividing the 
 region of complete certitude from that of necessary and 
 eternal ignorance. The first region is the field of 
 phenomena, related to one another in space and time 
 — the context of possible experience, consisting of the 
 mind - manipulated data of sense. The second, from 
 which our faculties debar us, is the world of things-in- 
 
 1 Time, Kant proves in the ' Refutation of Idealism,' is knowable only 
 in relation to space. He says elsewhere that inner sense receives its 
 whole filling from outer sense. The correlation of time and space being 
 necessary, the limitation of knowledge is correctly described in the text 
 as limitation to the contents of space. 
 
 U
 
 306 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 
 
 themselves, considered not merely as the unknown region 
 where our sense-experience takes its rise, but as a world 
 in which room may possibly be found for such non- 
 spatial entities as God and the soul, and the aspects 
 of human life which seem to depend on these ideas. 
 
 The nature of these results determines the special 
 sense which the term Criticism assumes in Kant's hands. 
 The term originally describes merely the method of 
 procedure, but it naturally becomes descriptive also of 
 the definite view of the universe to which his method 
 leads him. The Critical philosopher, accordingly, is one 
 who clearly apprehends what is implied in calling the 
 deduction of the categories transcendental. A transcen- 
 dental deduction is one undertaken solely with reference 
 to experience, — one which leaves us, therefore, without 
 justification for employing the deduced conceptions in 
 any other reference. And if it be considered that ex- 
 perience in this connection implies for Kant the relation 
 of the mind to an unknown object — means, in fact, the 
 application of the categories to the matter derived from 
 that object, — it is evident that when the latter element 
 falls away, the conceptions must become so many empty 
 words. Experience so conceived is called sense-experi- 
 ence, in order to describe our partially receptive attitude 
 and the compound character of our knowledge. It yields 
 us a knowledge only of material things and their changes ; 
 and the attempt to gain any other species of knowledge 
 by means of the categories Kant compares to the flap- 
 ping of wings in the unsupporting void. Criticism means, 
 then, the recognition of this limitation, and it pronounces 
 experience so limited to be merely phenomenal in char- 
 acter. Experience actual and possible represents, in 
 other words, not things as they are in themselves, but 
 only a certain relation of the human mind towards the
 
 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 307 
 
 world of reality. Our ignorance in this respect is in- 
 evitable and final ; and if there are other avenues by 
 which — in the case of the Self and God — we may pene- 
 trate to noumenal existence, yet the conviction we reach 
 is not such that we can rightly speak of it as knowledge. 
 All knowledge remains in the Kantian scheme pheno- 
 menal, — phenomenal in the sense that there is a reality 
 behind, which we do not know. 
 
 If now it be asked, by what right Kant draws the line 
 exactly where he does, and cuts off from knowledge 
 everything but a spatial world of interacting sub- 
 stances, the answer must be that his exclusion depends 
 ultimately on his uncritical acceptance of the dualistic 
 assumption of preceding philosophy. We express the 
 same thing in another form, when we say that the 
 result is due to the attempt to construct a theory of 
 knowledge from the standpoint of psychology. This 
 standpoint brings with it the distinction between 
 " sense " as the source of the data of knowledge, and 
 " understanding " as a faculty of " comparing, connect- 
 ing, and separating " the material supplied by sense. 
 This is Locke's distinction, and it is Kant's too.^ 
 Kant minimises the contribution of sense ; he speaks 
 of it on occasion as a mere blur, and in itself no better 
 than nothing at all. But the amount referred to sense 
 
 1 As it happens, Kant's phraseology in the opening paragraph of the 
 Introduction corresponds exactly with the account Locke gives of knowledge 
 in Book II., chap, xii., of the 'Essay.' "The materials being such as he 
 has no power over, either to create or destroy, all that a man could do is 
 either to unite them together, or to set them one by another, or wholly 
 separate them." Kant's language looks like a reminiscence of this passage, 
 when he speaks of impressions producing ideas, and rousing "the faculty 
 of the understanding to compare, connect, and separate these, and so to 
 work up the raw material of sensuous impressions into a knowledge of 
 objects," Of course, Kant's " raw material " turns out afterwards not to 
 mean so much as Locke's "simple ideas."
 
 308 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 
 
 does not affect the principle of the distinction : so far as 
 it is made in this form at all, its consequences will be 
 essentially the same — either with Hume, the denial 
 that (so far as we know) any real world exists, or with 
 Kant, the denial that such a world can ever be revealed 
 to us by knowledge. Hence the importance of observing 
 that the distinction is not a deduction from the theory of 
 knowledge, but a presupposition drawn from another 
 sphere. The division of the mind into receptivity and 
 spontaneity is the mere correlate of that view of the 
 universe from which the Kantian criticism was ultimately 
 destined to set us free — the view which represents the 
 relation of the world to consciousness as a case of inter- 
 action between two substances. 
 
 The effect of the distinction on the form of the 
 Kantian theory appears in the separation of the 
 Esthetic from the Analytic, and the hard and fast 
 line drawn in consequence between space and time, as 
 forms of sensibility, and the categories, as functions of 
 the understanding. Kant gets the perceptive forms 
 in the Esthetic by an independent set of arguments, 
 while in the first part of the Analytic his categories 
 seem to drop at his feet as pure intellectual concep- 
 tions. Hence the categories do not appear to him as 
 limited or inadequate in their own nature, but because 
 of their subsequent association with sense and its forms. 
 It would be nearer the truth to say that the Kantian 
 categories are themselves the reason why the world 
 appears to us in space : space is merely the abstraction 
 or the ghost of the world of interacting substances which 
 these categories present us with. If the Kantian cate- 
 gories can give us nothing beyond a world of material 
 things, the defect is in their own intellectual quality, and 
 not in any limitation extraneously attached to them. 
 They are bonds of connection, yet they may be said to
 
 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 309 
 
 leave the elements they connect still independent of 
 one another. The categories of quantity, while in one 
 sense they express a connection between all things, 
 express even more emphatically the complete indifference 
 of every individual point to its neighbours ; and though 
 the categories of relation — summed up, as they may be, 
 in reciprocity — undoubtedly express a system of elements 
 in which this mutual indifference is overcome, yet the 
 individuals brought into connection are not seen to have 
 any necessary relation to one another in the sense of 
 being members together of one whole. The individuals 
 appear endlessly determined by their relations to one 
 another, but there is involved in this very endlessness 
 an unavoidable sense of contingency. If we are to have 
 a real whole and real parts — parts, that is, whose exist- 
 ence can be understood only through the whole that 
 determines them — we must have recourse to other cate- 
 gories than these. But the imperfect relatedness just 
 referred to is the essential mark of what we call the 
 world of sense; and for a theory of knowledge, if it 
 retain the term sensible world, that world is definable 
 simply by this characteristic, and not by an imaginary 
 reference of its contents to an impressing cause. It is 
 defined, in other words, by the categories that constitute 
 it, and by the relation of these categories to the other 
 modes in which the mind endeavours to harmonise the 
 w^orld. With reference to Kant, then, the point to be 
 insisted on is, the categories which he offers as the only 
 categories are inherently inadequate to express a synthesis 
 more intimate than the mutual relatedness and mutual 
 externality of things in space. The world, therefore, 
 necessarily presents this aspect when viewed solely by 
 their light. They are not got independently of sense 
 (we might reply to Kant) and afterwards immersed in it ; 
 they are the categories of sense. Their true deduction is
 
 310 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 
 
 not from the table of logical judgments ; it is given in 
 the " system of principles " in the second part of the 
 Analytic, where they are proved to be the ultimate con- 
 ditions on which a coherent sense-experience depends. 
 In Kant's technical language, the categories do not 
 require to be schematised, because, apart from schematis- 
 ation, they do not exist even as conceptions. The con- 
 ception of substance, for example, means just that 
 relation of a permanent to shifting (or conceivably 
 shifting) attributes which is familiar to us in the sensible 
 world. The logical relation of subject and predicate, 
 which Kant seems to say is the pure category before it 
 is soiled by sense, is merely the image of this real 
 relation expressed in language.^ 
 
 There is thus no justification for a separation of space 
 from the categories, space being the ultimate appearance 
 of a world constructed on these categories alone. When 
 this is admitted, the mere fact that we perceive things 
 in space is no imputation upon the reality of our know- 
 ledge. In itself space is no limitation ; it is an 
 intellectual bond, it is one point of view from which 
 we may represent the world as one. This mode of 
 knowledge becomes limited and unreal only when it 
 claims to be the ultimate aspect from which the universe 
 is to be regarded. The nature of space affords no 
 grounds, then, for a division of knowledge into absolutely 
 phenomenal and absolutely noumenal, such as we find in 
 Kant. The so-called phenomenal world of sense is as 
 real as the so-called noumenal world of ethics — that is 
 to say, its account of the universe is as legitimate so far 
 as it goes ; but to claim for either an absolute truth is 
 the essential mark of dogmatism, whether the claim be 
 
 1 The relation of the table of logical judgments to the Kantian 
 categories (where it actually exists and is not a matter of forced inter- 
 pretation) is thus seen to be reversed.
 
 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 311 
 
 advanced by the man of science or the metaphysician. 
 Both are accounts which the mind gives to itself of the 
 world, — relatively justified points of view from which 
 experience may be rationalised. It is the province of a 
 theory of knowledge to point out the relation of the one 
 point of view to the other, and, in general, while showing 
 the partial and abstract nature of any particular point of 
 view, to show at the same time how it is related to the 
 ultimate or concrete conception of the universe which 
 alone admits of being thought out without self - con- 
 tradiction. The opposition between phenomenal and 
 noumenal worlds is thus replaced by one between more 
 abstract and more concrete points of view. That is to 
 say, the opposition itself is no longer of the rigid and 
 absolute nature which it was before. The truth of the 
 one point of view does not interfere with the truth of 
 the other : the higher may rather be regarded as the 
 completion or fulfilment of the lower. 
 
 Let us now see how far Kant helps us towards such 
 a philosophical conception. Reasons have been given 
 for disallowing his absolute limitation of knowledge by 
 erecting behind it a realm of unknowables. These un- 
 knowables are simply the impressing things of preceding 
 philosophy, uncritically assumed, and removed into a 
 somewhat deeper obscurity. But the theory w^hich 
 derives knowledge from impressions is essentially a 
 psychological theory which we, as spectators, form of 
 the rise of knowledge in an organised individual placed 
 in relation to a world which we already describe under 
 all the categories of knowledge. What we observe is, 
 strictly, an interaction between two things which are 
 themselves objects in a known world. And if we 
 afterwards extend inferentially to our own case the 
 conclusions which our observations suggest, we are 
 still simply repeating the picture of a known environ-
 
 312 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 
 
 ment acting on a known organism. The relation is 
 between phenomenal things and a phenomenal organism 
 in which they set up affections, not between a tran- 
 scendent or metempirical somewhat and intelligence as 
 such. In other words, when we have formed our 
 notion of the world, and of our own position as indi- 
 viduals in it, we can give even to such a misleading 
 metaphor as impression a certain intelligible meaning ; 
 but to step outside of the world of knowledge altogether 
 and characterise it by reference to something beyond 
 itself — this is the type of all impossibility. Yet it is no 
 less than this that Kant and some of his followers under- 
 take to do when they pronounce our knowledge to be 
 only phenomenal, implying by that term the existence 
 of something hidden from us in its own transcendency. 
 While adhering, therefore, in the fullest manner to 
 Kant's position that the categories are only of imma- 
 nent use for the organisation of experience, we deny 
 altogether that the existence of transcendent entities 
 may be justly inferred from such a statement. Only 
 to those who are haunted by the ghosts of the old 
 metaphysic can the proposition appear in the light 
 of a limitation of human reason : to others adhesion 
 to Kant's position, so far as it asserts immanence, 
 becomes a matter of course. What they combat in 
 Kant's scheme is the assumption that his twelve 
 categories are the only categories implied in our ex- 
 perience, and the belief, corresponding to this assump- 
 tion, that they give a completely coherent and exhaustive 
 account of that experience. 
 
 Kant himself, however, is prone to confess that ex- 
 perience is not exhausted by these categories, if by 
 experience is understood the whole life of man. The 
 world of ethical action (to take his own crucial in-
 
 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 313 
 
 stance) remains completely unintelligible when viewed 
 from the standpoint of mechanism. Determination by- 
 ends is the characteristic feature of this world ; and 
 action so determined cannot be understood, Kant says, 
 except under the idea of freedom. That is to say, the 
 attempt to explain it by the categories of natural 
 causality is equivalent to a denial of the existence of 
 the facts in question. Such a procedure means that 
 in our levelling zeal we obliterate the specific difierence 
 between two sets of facts ; whereas in reality the differ- 
 ence is the fundamental feature of the case which calls 
 upon us for a rationale of its possibility. Now it is 
 a matter of common knowledge that for Kant himself 
 moral experience was the reality. In the Preface to 
 the ' Critique of Practical Reason * he speaks of the 
 idea of freedom as the " topstone of the whole edifice 
 of a system of pure reason, speculative as well as 
 practical " ; and no attentive reader of the first Critique 
 can fail to notice the vista, ever and anon opened up, 
 of a world of supersensible reality into which we 
 are eventually to be carried by the march of the 
 argument. The whole Critical scheme of sense-experi- 
 ence is thereby invested with a palpably preparatory 
 character. Kant fully recognises, and indeed enforces, 
 this aspect of his work when he comes to review its 
 scope and method in the Preface to the second edition. 
 The whole investigation is there represented as merely 
 " makincT room " for the extension of our knowledcje on 
 the basis of practical data : Criticism simply fulfils the 
 function of " a police force " in keeping the unregulated 
 activity of the speculative reason within bounds. 
 
 It might well seem, then, as if, in going on to 
 treat the presuppositions of morality, we were merely 
 passing from one sphere of rational experience to
 
 314 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 
 
 another. Kant's method, too, is essentially the same 
 in all three Critiques. It is an analysis of certain 
 experiences with a view to determine the conditions of 
 their possibility. One would expect, therefore, that the 
 different sets of conceptions to which his analysis leads 
 him would be treated impartially, and on their own 
 merits, or looked at merely in their relation to one 
 another as parts of one rational explanation of ex- 
 perience. If there is no flaw in our deduction of the 
 conceptions, it seems very like stultifying the tran- 
 scendental method to talk of differences between them 
 in respect of objective truth or validity. Kant, how- 
 ever, as is well known, draws a variety of such dis- 
 tinctions. Thus, in the ' Critique of Judgment,' he 
 finds the idea of organisation to be as essential to a 
 complete account of nature as he had previously found 
 the conception of substance to be for a narrower 
 range of experience. Yet he arbitrarily holds the 
 former to be of merely regulative utility — a fiction 
 or contrivance of the mind to aid it in investigation, 
 — while the latter is allowed to be constitutive of 
 nature as such. And so, again, Kant restricts the terms 
 experience and knowledge to the sense-phenomena of the 
 first Critique, while the presuppositions of ethical ex- 
 perience are made at most matters of rational belief 
 or moral certainty. It is impossible to decorate the 
 one with pre - eminent titles without a corresponding 
 disparagement of the others. The term experience is 
 in these circumstances a question-begging epithet. When 
 «uch distinctions are drawn it inevitably tends to make 
 men regard the ' Critique of Pure Eeason ' as alone em- 
 bodying Kant's substantive theory of the world. The 
 categories of life, of beauty, and of morality come to 
 be looked on as appendices of a more or less un-
 
 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGOllIES. 315 
 
 certain character, the acceptance or rejection of which 
 does not interfere with the finality of the categories 
 of sense. This is unquestionably the form in which 
 Kantian results are most widely current at present. It 
 is a form for which Kant himself is chiefly responsible, 
 through his habit of " isolating " different spheres of 
 experience for the purpose of his analysis, and neglect- 
 ing afterwards to exhibit their organic relation to one 
 another. Kone the less is it a form which ignores 
 explicit intimations like those quoted from above from 
 the two Prefaces, and one which is based upon that 
 very notion of the relation of mind to reality which 
 Kant came to destroy. After all, too much stress 
 has probably been laid upon the difference of nomen- 
 clature which Kant adopts, and it ought to be re- 
 membered that though he refuses to call his moral 
 faith knowledge, he yet holds that it, and it alone, 
 brings him into contact with reality. 
 
 If we now return to Kant's account of the phenomenal 
 nature of our knowledge, and abstract altogether from 
 the illegitimate reference of our sense - objects to the 
 transcendent thing - in - itself , another meaning of the 
 phenomenality of sense -experience begins to emerge. 
 The opposition is no longer between the world of sense 
 and its unknown correlate (or cause), but between the 
 world of sense as nature or the realm of causal necessity, 
 and the " intelligible world," as Kant calls it, or the 
 realm of ends, in which the will determines itself by its 
 own law. Noumenal personality and freedom are reached 
 in the notion of the self-legislative and self-obedient will. 
 The condemnation of phenomenality comes upon the 
 world of sense because of the contrast which its exter- 
 nality of connected part and part offers to the self- 
 centred finality of a conception like the self-determining
 
 316 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 
 
 will. If this is not the meaning of phenomenality which 
 is most prominent in the ' Critique of Pure Eeason,' 
 still it is continually appearing there also ; and in pro- 
 portion as it comes into the foreground, the other refer- 
 ence of objects to their transcendental correlates tends 
 to lose its importance and almost to disappear. Any 
 one may convince himself of this by turning to Kant's 
 official chapter " On the ground of division of all objects 
 into phenomena and noumena." He will find that the 
 conception of noumena or non-sensuous objects is there 
 defined as a " Grenzbegriff," a limitative conception, or, 
 more exactly, as a conception which sets bounds to the 
 sphere of sense (ein die Sinnlichkeit in Schranken set- 
 zender Begriff). The conception is problematical, Kant 
 says, inasmuch as it does not give us a knowledge of 
 intelligible or non-sensuous objects as actually existing, 
 but merely affirms their possibility. Its utility lies in 
 the fact that by it we prevent sense-knowledge from 
 laying claim to the whole of reality. Evidently it would 
 be unfair to interpret the term problematical here as if 
 Kant meant by using it to throw doubt on the actual 
 existence of what he sometimes calls " the non-sensuous 
 cause " of our ideas. " In what other fashion is it to be 
 supposed that the knowing faculty should be roused to 
 exercise," he might repeat, " if not by objects which 
 affect our senses ? " The question of the origin of the 
 matter of sense remains for Kant just where it was, but 
 he is speaking here in quite another connection, and that 
 problem has fallen out of view for the time. He is 
 engaged in limiting sense so as to " make room " for the 
 mundus intelligihilis which he is afterwards to produce 
 as guaranteed by the Practical Eeason. It is the existence 
 of freedom and its implicates that is declared to be, in 
 the meantime, merely problematical. The phrase " in-
 
 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 317 
 
 telligible world " is never used by Kant, so far as I know, 
 
 except of the world of ethically determined agents, — an 
 
 additional proof that we are right in attributing to him 
 
 here a point of view which judges the inadequacy of 
 
 sense, not by reference to a somewhat beyond the confines 
 
 of intelligible experience altogether, but by reference to 
 
 a higher phase of experience itself. The lower point of 
 
 view is not, strictly speaking, abolished by the higher ; 
 
 but it is perceived that to try to take the sensible world 
 
 absolutely or by itself would be to render it unintelligible. 
 
 Isolated in this way, the world of interacting substances 
 
 would have all the irrationality of a series that cannot 
 
 be summed, of multiplicity without unity, of externality 
 
 without internality. It is impossible, in Kant's language, 
 
 to treat nature as an End-in-itself, as something there on 
 
 its own account ; yet reason demands this notion of the 
 
 self-sufficing and self-justifying, as that in which alone it 
 
 can rest. Kant recognises that it is only intelligence, and 
 
 especially intelligence in its moral aspect, that supplies 
 
 the lacking notion ; nature itself, he says, assumes a 
 
 unity which does not otherwise belong to it, and becomes 
 
 a " realm " or system, when viewed in relation to rational 
 
 beings as its end.-^ 
 
 It is thus on account of its incomplete and self-less 
 character that the mundus sensihilis appears phenomenal, 
 when regarded from the standpoint of the intelligible 
 world. And reason is compelled, Kant says, to pass be- 
 yond the phenomenal and occupy such a standpoint, " if 
 we are not to deny to man the consciousness of himself 
 as intelligence, i.e., as rational and through reason active, 
 in other words, as a free cause." ^ The importance 
 
 ' Cf. ' Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten.' ' Werke,' iv. 286. 
 ^ 'Werke,' iv. 306. The expression " Staiidpunkt " is used signifi- 
 cantly by Kant himself in this context.
 
 318 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 
 
 of the change in the point of view can hardly be over- 
 estimated. Self-consciousness is here put forward ex- 
 plicitly as the one noumenon to which all phenomena 
 are referred, and by which they are, as it were, judged, 
 and declared to be phenomenal. This is the real 
 Copernican change of standpoint which Kant effected, 
 or which at least he puts us in the way of effecting ; 
 and it must be pronounced fundamental, seeing that it 
 reverses the whole notion of reality on which the old 
 metaphysic was built. The dominating categories of 
 philosophy in the present day are still, it is to be feared, 
 those of inner and outer, substance and quality, or in 
 their latest and most imposing garb, noumenon and 
 phenomenon. And these are so interpreted as to repre- 
 sent the intellect clinging round the outside of things, 
 getting to know only the surface of the world, and 
 pining for the revelation of that intense reality, the 
 " support of accidents," which yet is unrevealable and 
 mocks our cries. A true metaphysic teaches that if we 
 so conduct ourselves, we do in very truth " pine for what 
 is not." This unapproachable reality is entirely a fiction 
 of the mind ; there is nothing transcendent, no unknow- 
 able, if we once see that a phenomenal world is a per- 
 missible phrase only when taken to mean something in 
 which reason cannot rest, and that the ultimate noumenon 
 is to be found in self-consciousness, or in the notion of 
 knowledge and its implications. The centre of the world 
 lies then in our own nature as self-conscious beings, and 
 in that life with our fellows which, in different aspects, 
 constitutes alike the secular and divine community. The 
 spirit fostered by physical science, and the mood familiar 
 to all of us — the mood which weighs man's paltry life 
 and its concerns against the " pomp of worlds " and the 
 measureless fields of space — is in reality less philosophical
 
 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 319 
 
 than that of the poet and humanist, to whom this pomp 
 is barren save as the background of the human drama. 
 Ordinary people get most of their metaphysics through 
 religion or through poetry, and they probably often come 
 nearer the truth in that way than if they went to the 
 professed philosophers. 
 
 Kant's ethics are part, therefore, of the strength and 
 not of the weakness of their author. They are not to be 
 regarded as a calling in of faith to repair the breaches of 
 knowledge ; on the contrary, they are founded on Kant's 
 deepest philosophical conceptions. But for all that, the 
 superstructure contains much questionable material ; and 
 as we are not engaged on a question of hermeneutics, it 
 is essential to arrive for ourselves at a general notion of 
 how the ethical point of view stands related to the 
 mechanical. This will serve as an illustration of the 
 main thesis of this essay, the distinction of categories or 
 points of view. It is at the same time the more neces- 
 sary in the present case, as Kant has expressed the 
 relation chiefly by negations, and has left the sensible 
 and intelligible systems separated by an apparently im- 
 passable gulf. The positive predicate of freedom which 
 he applies to the ethical world is, on the other hand, so 
 ambiguous, and to men of scientific training so ominous, 
 that it has been more productive of misconception than 
 of enlightenment. It may be said at once, then, that if 
 Kant's account of freedom contains anything which seems 
 to lift man, as it were, out of all the influences and 
 surroundings that make him what he is, and from this 
 height makes him hurl a decisive and solely self-originated 
 fiat into the strife of motives beneath — then, undoubtedly, 
 this idea is not only at variance with the teaching of 
 physical and social science, but is fatal to all rational 
 connection in the universe. But the self in such a con-
 
 320 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 
 
 ception is a bare unit, an abstraction which has no 
 existence in fact. So long as we take up with such 
 notions of the self, we must inevitably seem to be battered 
 about by the shocks of circumstance. The man whose 
 self could be emptied of all its contents and reduced to 
 this atomic condition would be, in a strict sense, no more 
 than the moving point which exemplifies the composition 
 of forces. In reducing the abstract self to this position, 
 and so abolishing it, determinism is entirely within its 
 rights : it is in vain that the upholders of " free-will " 
 try to save for this self even a power of directing atten- 
 tion on one motive rather than another. But happily 
 the real self is not this ghost of argumentative fancy. A 
 man cannot be separated from the world which lies about 
 him from his infancy — and long before it, — moulding him 
 after its own image, and supplying him with all sorts of 
 permanent motives in the shape of creeds and laws, 
 customs and prejudices, creating, in a word, the concrete 
 personality we are held to refer to when, in ordinary 
 speech, we name this or the other individual. The self- 
 conscious individual is not something identical with him- 
 self alone, and different from everything else : he is not 
 even exclusive as one thing in nature is exclusive of 
 other things. The whole past and the whole present are 
 transformed, as it were, by self-consciousness into its own 
 nature. A man's motives do not seem to him, therefore, 
 to come to him from without : they are the suggestions 
 of his good or evil self. And if he reviews his past 
 experience, when his self, as others might say, was in the 
 making, he cannot himself take this external view. It 
 is impossible to him, because it abolishes the one pre- 
 supposition from which he cannot depart: it abolishes 
 himself. Much rather he will say that he has made 
 himself what he is : he identifies himself necessarily with
 
 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 321 
 
 all his past, and of every deed he can say, " Alone I 
 did it." 
 
 In short, though the external view with its tabu- 
 lation of motives may be useful for statistical purposes, 
 and may yield scientific results that are not to be 
 despised, it is absolutely valueless in ethics or the ex- 
 planation of moral experience as such. The presupposi- 
 tion of ethical action, as of intelligence generally, is the 
 Ego. It is true that, as explained above, we do not 
 suppose the Ego, in action, to bring an inexplicable force 
 into play, any more than we suppose it, as intellect, to 
 add any determinations to things which were not there 
 already. But just as any metaphysic which does not 
 base itself on self-consciousness, as the fundamental pre- 
 supposition and the supreme category of thought, is 
 forced openly or tacitly to deny the conscious life, so a 
 science of ethics which does not assume as its basis the 
 self-determination of the rational being, remains outside 
 of moral experience altogether. Moral experience con- 
 sists entirely in this self -reference ; if this be destroyed, 
 the whole ethical point of view vanishes. Let us contrast 
 with this the point of view of physical science from which 
 we started. From this standpoint every moral action is 
 simply an event, and, as an event, forms a term in a series 
 of mechanical transformations. This is certainly one 
 way of regarding the actions in question : they are such 
 events, and for science that is the legitimate and true 
 method of treating them. All that we contend is that 
 the scientific explanation does not exhaust their signifi- 
 cance ; so far as they are actions, that is, related to the 
 moral consciousness, it gives no account of them at all. 
 The world of ethics is superimposed therefore upon that 
 of science, not as contradicting it, but as introducing a 
 totally new order of conceptions, by which actions which 
 
 X
 
 322 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 
 
 are for science mere factual units in a series become 
 elements in a life guided by the notion of End, or Ought. 
 Their sole ethical meaning is in relation to this ideally 
 judging consciousness, and to that extent they cease to 
 be facts conditioned by other facts. The ethical con- 
 sciousness identifies itself with each of its actions, and 
 each therefore is immediately referred to the standard of 
 duty. Ethically, that is to say, the action is not referred 
 backward in time to the circumstances and predispositions 
 of which, as motives, it is the legitimate outcome; but 
 the man brings his action face to face with a " Thou 
 shalt," which he finds within him,^ and according to its 
 conformity or want of conformity with this law he ap- 
 proves or condemns his conduct. The former method of 
 looking at his actions is appropriate to a spectator — a 
 psychologist, a statistician, a scientific educator, &c. — 
 but not to the man himself. As soon as an individual 
 begins to seek excuses for his " fault," by showing how 
 natural it was in the circumstances, he has fallen from 
 the ethical point of view. He is assuming the position 
 of a spectator or scientific observer, and however justi- 
 fiable this standpoint may be for others, it certainly 
 means the destruction of the ethical consciousness in him 
 who deliberately adopts it in his own regard. The proper 
 category of ethics is not cause and effect, but End, with 
 its correlative Obligation. 
 
 The realm of ethical ends, however, is only one 
 of the conceptions or points of view by which reason 
 makes the world intelligible to itself ; and by treating it 
 as the sole antithesis of the world of sense, Kant ran 
 
 ^ The "matter" which the law commands, depends of course upon his 
 social environment and his past ; but the "form " of law exists wherever 
 consciousness exists, since rights and duties are involved in the most 
 rudimentary notion of society.
 
 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 323 
 
 the risk, as was hinted above, of falling into a fresh 
 dualism. It is not even well to speak of the one 
 as " intelligible " by pre - eminence, lest the sensible 
 world lose its reference to consciousness altogether. 
 We might do worse than recall in this connection 
 Kant's demonstration of the intellectual elements in 
 sense-experience. We do not get " facts " given to us 
 in the mechanical scheme of science, and in ethics a 
 point of view from which to regard this factual world. 
 Bare facts in this sense have no existence save for 
 an abstract thought which conceives them as the pegs 
 on which relations may be hung. The process of 
 knowledge does not consist in the discovery of such 
 individua, but in the progressive overthrowal of such 
 ideas of the nature of the actual. In this process, the 
 scientific account of things forms one of the ways in 
 which the mind seeks to present the world as an in- 
 telligible whole : it is a theorising of the world, and 
 as it turns out, the theorising is incomplete and ulti- 
 mately contradicts itself. Such considerations prepare 
 us to expect a progress by more gradual stages from 
 the less to the more complete conception of the universe 
 than is found in Kant's great leap from mechanism to 
 morality. Here again Kant helps us on the way. The 
 ' Critique of Judgment,' according to his own account 
 of it, is intended to bridge over the gulf between the 
 world of the understanding, outlined in the first 
 Critique, and the world of reason or of free deter- 
 mination, outlined in the second. There is, as usual, 
 much that is artificial in the scheme of faculties with 
 which Kant connects his investigation. So far as we 
 are concerned here, the best method of approaching the 
 * Critique of Judgment ' is simply by reference to the 
 aspects of nature which it endeavours to explain. Its
 
 324 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 
 
 importance lies in its recognition of certain points of 
 view which are continually recurring in our contem- 
 plation of the world, but which find no place in the 
 Critical idea of nature, as so far expounded. These are 
 the aesthetic and the teleological judgment of things, 
 or, in less technical language, the phenomena of beauty 
 and of organisation.^ 
 
 The weakness of the book lies in the presupposition 
 on which it proceeds, that the record of objectivity 
 has been definitely closed in the first Critique. In 
 other words, Kant believes knowledge to be limited 
 by the imagination ; nothing is real (in the domain of 
 knowledge) unless what can be constructed in relations 
 of space. Now the ' Critique of Judgment ' consists 
 virtually in the production of two sets of negative 
 instances : a living body and an object considered as 
 beautiful are not exhausted in the space-relations which 
 constitute them. Imagination knows only parts that 
 are external to one another, and to that extent in- 
 dependent of one another; but in the organism this 
 externality and independence disappear. The parts are 
 only parts through the whole of which they are parts. 
 Part and whole acquire, in fact, a meaning in which 
 their necessary correlation is for the first time ap- 
 parent, — a correlation or union so intimate as to be 
 inadequately expressed by terms which contain, like 
 part and whole, a quantitative suggestion. Similarly, 
 the category of cause breaks down when applied to 
 the organism, for all the parts are mutually cause 
 and effect; and the organism as a whole is its own 
 cause and its own effect (causa sui). It organises 
 
 ^ To avoid confusion, the significance of the sesthetic judgment, or of 
 the categories of art, for our ultimate notion of the world, is not touched 
 upon in the present essay.
 
 PHILOSOPHY AS CillTICISM OF CATEGORIES. 325 
 
 itself. In all this, Kant's description of organic 
 phenomena is unexceptionable ; he pleads the case 
 well against himself. But unfortunately the negative 
 instances he produces did not lead to a recasting of 
 his theory. They only led to a fresh distinction. 
 The new aspects of nature could not be recognised 
 as constitutive or objectively valid, but they might 
 be accepted as regulative points of view for the in- 
 vestigation of phenomena. But as there is no ground 
 for this distinction except in presuppositions which 
 have been shown to be irrelevant we shall make no 
 scruple of ignoring it, and treating the relation of 
 organism to mechanism not as subjectivity to object- 
 ivity, but as a more adequate to a less adequate 
 interpretation of the same facts. 
 
 It must be observed that the notion of organism 
 given above constitutes no assertion of the existence 
 of a vital force as a separate cause of the phenomena 
 of life. This is the kind of deduction which meta- 
 physicians of the kind that have brought the name 
 into disrepute were quick to draw. But it is easy to 
 see that by explanations of this sort we are just setting 
 up a duplicate of the thing to be explained, or, in 
 other words, hypostatising it as its own cause. Besides, 
 when the physiologist comes to close quarters with a 
 living body, he finds everywhere a mechanism of parts 
 connected with one another and communicating with 
 the surrounding world. Motion is handed on from 
 one member of this system to another without the 
 intervention of any other than mechanical contrivances ; 
 and so far from a necessity arising for a transcendent 
 cause, there is nowhere a gap to be found in the circle 
 of mechanical motions where its introduction could be 
 effected. The physiologist, in short, in describing the
 
 326 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 
 
 action of the different parts of the organism, is in 
 precisely the same position as the psychologist in giving 
 an account of mental states and processes. The em- 
 pirical psychologist analyses the most complex states 
 into their elements, and builds up ethical and re- 
 ligious sentiment out of desires and aversions, and 
 all by a process essentially mechanical, without any 
 reference to the unity of the conscious life for which 
 these states exist. Just as the psychologist has neither 
 occasion nor right to consider any special power which 
 he calls the Ego, so the physiologist in the case of the 
 organism. He works within the conditions of organic 
 existence, as the psychologist within those of conscious- 
 ness, but neither requires for the purpose of his special 
 science to make any explicit reference to these con- 
 ditions. Hence it comes that physiology, so far as it 
 treats the living body as a whole, represents it as 
 merely a mechanical conjunction of parts in space. The 
 abstraction is not only defensible but necessary : none 
 the less, however, is it a complete abstraction from 
 the significance of the same parts viewed as members 
 of a living system. Viewed organically, or in their 
 relation to the whole, they are seen to be mutually 
 implicative, and within certain limits, mutually creative. 
 The presuppositions of mechanism are so far over- 
 thrown that at the organic standpoint the mutual 
 exclusiveness of the parts disappears : the organism, 
 qud organism, is not in space at all. If we persist, 
 therefore, in looking at the parts abstractly or in 
 their separateness, and if we tender this as the com- 
 plete account of them, we are leaving out of sight 
 the very fact which constitutes the phenomenon to be 
 explained. 
 
 So far from mechanism being objective and the notion
 
 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 327 
 
 of organism only subjective, we should be compelled, if 
 we were in the way of talking in this strain, to reverse 
 the relation. For even as applied to mechanical things, 
 if the category of causality be thought out into reci- 
 procity, and if reciprocity be conceived as complete, the 
 result is that we arrive at a closed circle of perfect 
 mutual conditionedness, in which all play of actual 
 causality is brought to a standstill. The universe 
 becomes like the sleeping-palace of Dornroschen ; there 
 is no point where movement might be introduced into 
 the dead picture. We sublate in this way the con- 
 ceptions with which we started, and only find the 
 contradiction solved for us (at least temporarily) in 
 the notion of the organism. 
 
 If the categories of reciprocity and abstract individual- 
 ity fail us in speaking of the living body, still less will 
 they serve us when they come to treat of conscious indi- 
 viduals and of what is called the social organism. Step 
 by step we have combated the intellectual vice of ab- 
 straction, but it is when we reach self-consciousness that 
 the nature of this fault becomes fully apparent. "When 
 we examine the conceptions of ordinary and scientific 
 thought in the light thrown upon them by that supreme 
 category, of which they are all the imperfect reflections, 
 the whole series of stages from which the individual 
 knower views the world appears as a gradual deliver- 
 ance from an abstract individualism, or, as Spinoza said, 
 from the imaginative thought which insists on taking the 
 individual as a thing by itself. When we reach the 
 only true individual, the self-conscious being, we find 
 that individuality is not the exclusive thing we had 
 imagined it to be. The self is individual only to the 
 extent that it is at the same time universal. It knows 
 itself, i.e., it is itself, just because it includes within its
 
 328 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 
 
 knowledge not only one particular self, as an object in 
 space and time, but also a whole intelligible world 
 embracing many such selves. A mere individual, sup- 
 posed for a moment possible, would be a self-less point ; 
 and it was the assumption of the reality of such self-less 
 points that led us into contradiction at a lower stage. 
 In the notion of the self we find that what is outside of, 
 or different from, a man in the narrow sense, yet enters 
 into and constitutes his self in such a way, that without 
 it he would cease to be anything more than the imaginary 
 point just referred to. The individual is individualised 
 only by his relations to the totality of the intelhgible 
 world. In a more restricted sense, his individuality 
 is constituted by the social organism of which he is a 
 member : he cannot be an individual except so far as 
 he is a member of society. If this is the relation of 
 society to the individual, it is at once apparent how false 
 any theory must be which tries to take the individual as 
 a mere individual, and regards society as an aggregate of 
 such beings combined together for mutual advantage. 
 The doctrine of laissez-faire and the theory of the police 
 state are immediate deductions from the individualistic 
 premisses. It is natural from such a point of view that 
 the State should be treated as a mechanism external to 
 the individuals, and constructed by them merely that 
 they may live at ease and enjoy their goods. But the 
 logic of practice refutes both these principles. The 
 economic doctrine has been largely modified even by 
 those who promulgated it, little as their professed philo- 
 sophical principles give them a right to do so ; and the 
 external view of the State is refuted not only by its 
 practical action in numberless spheres of life, but by 
 every patriotic emotion that passes over individuals or 
 peoples. If the State is the artificial aggregate it is
 
 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 329 
 
 represented as being, how shall we explain Shakespeare's 
 impassioned apostrophe to 
 
 " This happy breed of men, this little world. 
 This precious stone set in the silver sea, . . . 
 This blessed spot, this earth, this realm, this England, . . . 
 This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land " ? 
 
 This little world — a more felicitous phrase could hardly 
 be desired to describe what the true State must always 
 be to its citizens. The State is not Leviathan, as Hobbes 
 supposed, swallowing up the individual, but the ethical 
 cosmos into which he is born, and by which his relation 
 to the wider cosmos of universal experience is mediated. 
 These, however, are considerations which are being 
 recognised, one is glad to see, in many quarters, even 
 though it be as yet without a consciousness of their 
 ultimate philosophical bearing. Still we are not entitled 
 to depart from individualistic metaphysics in one point, 
 unless we recognise the fallaciousness of its method 
 everywhere. We need not fear by so doing to sacrifice 
 what are called the rights of individuality. Socialism, 
 for example, is the recoil from individualism, not the 
 refutation of it. Individualism and socialism are alike 
 refuted by the true notion of self-consciousness, which 
 combines all-inclusiveness with intensest concentration 
 in a way which might have seemed impossible, had we 
 been engaged in an abstract argument and not simply in 
 an analysis of concrete reality. While this notion is 
 held fast, the members in whom the social organism is 
 realised will not cease to know themselves as personal- 
 ities, and to demand that the free play of their lives be 
 not sacrificed to imaginary needs of the body politic. 
 
 Our whole criticism of categories thus leads us up to 
 the notion of self-consciousness or knowledge. Here we
 
 330 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 
 
 may connect ourselves for the last time with Kant. The 
 shortcomings of his theory of knowledge have been some- 
 what severely criticised in the earlier part of the essay. 
 It has been seen that he vitiated his analysis to a great 
 extent by confusing a psychological or a spectator's 
 account of the growth of knowledge with a transcendental 
 analysis of its conditions. It has also been shown how 
 the presuppositions that sprang from this confusion pre- 
 vented him from seeing the mutual relations of the 
 categories in their true light, as simply stages or phases 
 of explanation (of greater or less abstractness) which 
 necessarily supersede one another in the development 
 of knowledge. But in spite of the absolute line which 
 Kant drew at reciprocity, he explicitly announced the 
 emancipation of the category of categories — the unity of 
 apperception — from the dominion of the conceptions 
 which were its own creatures. It can be compassed, he 
 says, by none of them; it can be known only through 
 itself. Knowledge is related as such to a universally 
 synthetic principle which calls itself " I," and which is 
 described by Kant as the transcendental Ego, to dis- 
 tinguish it from the empirical consciousness which con- 
 stitutes, as it were, the matter of this formal unity. 
 Kant's view of this unity as merely logical and merely 
 human prevented him from recognising that he had 
 found the true noumenon here as well as in the ethical 
 sphere. Nevertheless, his assertion of the unity of the 
 subject as the ultimate principle of thought leads directly 
 to the conception of knowledge as necessarily organic 
 to a subject, and as constituting in this form the 
 complete Fact from which all so-called facts are only 
 abstractions. 
 
 Here the line between Dogmatism and Criticism may 
 be drawn, without prejudice to Kant's essential meaning.
 
 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 331 
 
 Dogmatism, or the use of uncriticised conceptions, means 
 practically the unquestioning application of the categories 
 of mechanism to the relation between consciousness and 
 things. Mind and matter are hypostatised, and the 
 category of reciprocity is employed to describe their 
 union in knowledge. How far Kant was himself a 
 Dogmatist in this sense has been already considered ; at 
 all events, the whole of modern philosophy before Kant 
 is based upon this conception. " In order to make his 
 theory work," says Professor Fraser in his article on 
 Locke in the ' Encyclopfedia Britannica,' " he [Locke] 
 begins by assuming a hypothetical duality beneath pheno- 
 mena — some phenomena referable to external things, 
 others referable to the conscious self, — and in fact con- 
 fesses that this dual experience is the ultimate fact, the 
 denial of which would make it impossible to speak about 
 the growth and constitution of our thoughts." It is to 
 be noted that what is spoken of is not a duality with 
 reference to knowledge — in which case knowledge itself 
 would be the ultimate fact; there is an assumption of 
 two facts or things, out of whose (contingent) relation to 
 one another a third fact arises as something additional. 
 The derivative fact acts as a mirror in which actuality, 
 consisting of the first two facts, is reflected. Now if we 
 start with the notion of a mind - substance (existing 
 prior to the self -consciousness which constitutes the 
 real existence of a self) and of an independently 
 existing world, it is easy to make a watershed of 
 experience in the fashion indicated, and so to appear 
 to establish the hypothetical duality with which we 
 started. This, as Professor Fraser says, is what Locke 
 did ; and all psychological philosophy does so still. As 
 speculation becomes more acute, it is necessarily led, as 
 idealism or materialism, to dissolve one of these sub-
 
 332 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 
 
 stances into a series of changes in the other, while 
 scepticism cahnly points out to both disputants that the 
 arguments which apply in the one case apply in the 
 other also. But idealism, materialism, and Humism 
 have meaning only with reference to the assumption 
 of a duality of self-existing substances to which experi- 
 ence is referred as to its causes. These theories exist as 
 the denial of one of the factors, or as the assertion of the 
 impossibility of proving either, but they do not attack 
 the abstraction on which this hypothesis of dual exist- 
 ence was originally founded. Hume is a sceptic because 
 he cannot prove either mind or matter to be real in the 
 sense in which Cartesian and Lockian metaphysics 
 understood reality. But if such realities are no more 
 than fictions of abstract thought, then a sceptical 
 disproof of our knowledge of them is so far from 
 being a final disproof of the possibility of any real 
 knowledge, that it is rather to be taken as indis- 
 pensably preliminary to the attainment of a true notion 
 of what reality is. 
 
 Such a notion is attainable only through a tran- 
 scendental analysis of knowledge — an analysis, that is, 
 which shall regard knowledge simply as it is in itself, 
 without any presupposition of existences which give rise 
 to it. An analysis of this sort, so far as it remains true 
 to its transcendental standpoint, will not be tempted to 
 substantiate the conditions of knowledge apart from the 
 synthesis in which it finds them. It will simply relate 
 them to one another as different elements in — or better, 
 perhaps, as different aspects of — the one concrete reality. 
 This is why Kant's treatment of the " I think " is so 
 different from Descartes' procedure with his " Cogito." 
 Kant, like Descartes, finds the presupposition of know- 
 ledge and of intelligible existence in an " I think " ; but
 
 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 333 
 
 he never forgets that it is only in relation to the world,. 
 or as the synthesis of intelligible elements, that the self 
 exists or can have a meaning. A world without this 
 unifying principle would fall asunder into unrelated 
 particulars ; the synthetic principle itself, apart from the 
 world which it unifies, would be no more than the barren 
 identity, 1 = 1. Even this consciousness of self-identity 
 is reached only through the synthesis of objects to which 
 it stands in relation. This necessity of correlation may 
 be treated without injustice as the fundamental feature 
 of the transcendental method. So far is it from being 
 a figure of speech that the self exists only through the 
 world and vice versa, that we might say with equal truth 
 the self is the world and the world is the self. The 
 relation between them is that of subject to predicate 
 when the predication is supposed to be exhaustive. The 
 subject is identical with its completed predicate without 
 remainder. So the self and the world are only two sides 
 of the same reality : they are the same intelligible world 
 looked at from two opposite points of view. But, finally, 
 it must not be forgotten that it is only from the point 
 of view of the self or subject that the identity can l)e 
 grasped : this, therefore, is the ultimate point of view 
 which unifies the whole. 
 
 It will be easily understood that, in speaking thus of 
 the self of knowledge, abstraction is made from any 
 particular self in experience. No one who has mastered 
 Kant's distinction between the transcendental and em- 
 pirical Ego is likely to have any difficulty here. At the 
 same time, the theory of knowledge makes no assertion 
 of the existence of the transcendental self otherwise than 
 as the form of these empirical individuals. To raise the 
 question of existence in this shape is to fall back once- 
 more into mechanical or spatial categories, and to treat
 
 334 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 
 
 the ultimate synthesis of thought as if it were a thing 
 that could exist here or there. Separate facts, however, 
 are the type of reality only to that abstract thought 
 which has faced us in every sphere. The transcendental 
 self, as the implicate of all experience, is, for a theory 
 of knowledge, simply the necessary point of view from 
 which the universe can be unified — that is, from which 
 it becomes an universe. 
 
 Thus the Kantian criticism with its claim to map out 
 knowledge and ignorance has assumed under our hands 
 the less pretentious form of a criticism of categories. 
 The attempt is no longer made to determine the validity 
 of reason as such ; the trustworthiness of knowledge is and 
 must be an assumption. But this does not mean that 
 every reasoned conclusion is true. Knowledge is not a 
 'Collection of facts known as such once for all, and to 
 which we afterwards add other facts, extending our 
 knowledge as we might extend an estate by adding acre 
 to acre. This is not a true picture of the march of 
 knowledge. On the contrary, every advance of science is 
 a partial refutation of what we supposed we knew ; we 
 undertake in every new scientific theory a criticism and 
 rectification of the conceptions on which the old was con- 
 structed. On the largest scale, the advance of knowledge 
 is neither more nor less than a progressive criticism of 
 its own conceptions. And, as we have seen, this is not 
 all. Besides the continual self-criticism carried on by 
 the individual sciences, there is the criticism which one 
 science or department of inquiry passes upon another. 
 The science of life cannot move hand or foot without the 
 category of development which, in its biological con- 
 ception, is foreign to the inorganic world ; and the 
 science of conduct is founded upon the notion of duty, 
 ■of which the whole world of nature knows nothing. But
 
 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 335 
 
 SO long as this mutual criticism is left in the hands of 
 the separate sciences themselves, it tends to degenerate 
 into a strife in which there is no mnpire. Philosophy, 
 as theory of knowledge, can alone arbitrate between the 
 combatants, by showing the relation of the different 
 points of view to one another, and allowing to each a 
 sphere of relative justification. When physical science, 
 for example, begins to formulate its own results and to 
 put them forward as an adequate theory of the universe, 
 it is for philosophy to step in and show how these 
 results depend entirely upon preconceptions drawn from 
 a certain stage of knowledge and found to be refuted 
 in the further progress of thought. Philosophy in the 
 capacity of a science of thought should possess a com- 
 plete survey of its categories and of their dialectical 
 connection ; but this '" Wissenschaf t der Logik " will 
 probably never be completely written. In the mean- 
 time, it is perhaps better if philosophy, as critic of the 
 sciences, is content to derive its matter from them and 
 to prophesy in part. Examples of this progress and 
 connection among' conceptions or points of view have 
 been given in the preceding pages, and whether we 
 apply to them the name of dialectic or not is of little 
 matter. This critical office, in which philosophy acts, 
 as it were, as the watch-dog of knowledge, is important 
 enough not to compromise the dignity even of the 
 queen of the sciences. She is critic not only of the 
 special sciences, but especially of all metaphysics and 
 systems of philosophy. 
 
 Most men of science believe that metaphysics consist 
 in the elaboration of transcendent entities like an 
 extraneous Deity, or Mr Spencer's Unknowable, or the 
 noumena of those who describe our knowledge as 
 " merely " phenomenal. But the theory of knowledge
 
 336 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES. 
 
 teaches us that all such constructions in the void have 
 their genesis in a belief that the substance is some- 
 thing different from all its qualities, or that the cause 
 is not identical with the sum of its effects. We learn, 
 on the contrary, that cause and effect, substance and 
 quality, and all similar conceptions, are not the names 
 of two different things, but necessary aspects of the 
 same object, and that therefore, when we are dealing, 
 not with limited objects, but with the universe as the 
 synthesis of all objects, it is a mere repetition to invent 
 a cause of this synthesis. To be delivered from bad 
 metaphysics is the first step and the most important 
 one towards the true conception of the science. True 
 metaphysic lies, as we have tried to show, in that criti- 
 cism of experience which aims at developing out of the 
 material of science and of life the completed notion of 
 experience itself. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 PRINTED BV WILLIAir BLACKWOOD AND SONS.
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 Second Edition. Eevised and Enlarged. Post 8vo, 6s. net. 
 
 CONTENTS: Man's Place in the Cosmos— The Present Posi- 
 tion of the Philosophical Sciences — The " New '' Psychology and 
 Automatism — A New Theory of the Absolute — Mr Balfour and 
 his Critics — The Venture of Theism — The Life and Opinions of 
 Friedrich Nietzsche. 
 
 SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 A Comparison of the Scottish and German Answers 
 
 TO Hume. 
 
 QSaffour ^^tfo0O|j^tcaf JSecfuvee. 
 
 Third Edition. Crown 8vo, 5s. 
 
 HEGELIANISM AND PERSONALITY. 
 
 (gaffour (p^tfo0op6tcaf Becfuree. 
 Second Series. Second Edition. Crown 8vo, 5s. 
 
 TWO LECTURES ON THEISM. 
 
 Delivered on the Occasion of the Sesquicentennial 
 Celebration of Princeton University. 
 
 Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, Edinburgh and London.
 
 Ml ' l] 
 
 AA 000 253 539 i 
 
 CENTRAL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 University of California, San Diego 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
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 SEP 1 8 1972 
 
 
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 Cl 39 
 
 UCSD Libr. 
 i