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 Class 
 
THE STUDY OF NATURE AND THE VISION 
 
 OF GOD : WITH OTHER ESSAYS 
 
 IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
Then, if that is his motive, he will not be a statesman. 
 
 By the dog of Egypt, he will ! in the city which is his own he 
 certainly will, though in the land of his birth perhaps not, unless he 
 have a divine call. 
 
 I understand ; you mean that he will be a ruler in the city of 
 which we are the founders, and which exists in idea only ; for I do 
 not believe that there is such an one anywhere on earth ? 
 
 In heaven, I replied, there is laid up a pattern of it, methinks, 
 which he who desires may behold, and beholding, may set his ov\n 
 house in order. But whether such an one exists, or ever will exist in 
 fact, is no matter ; for he will live after the manner of thai city, 
 having nothing to do vsdth any other. 
 
 I think so, he said. 
 
 —Plato, Republic, 592 (tr. Jowett). 
 
The Study of Nature and the Vision of God 
 with Other Essays in Philosophy 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE JOHN BLEWETT 
 
 Ryerson Professor of Moral Philosophy in Victoria College, Toronto 
 Sometime Rogers Memorial Fellow of Harvard University 
 
 TORONTO 
 
 WILLIAM BRIGGS 
 M CM VII 
 
6^ 
 
 Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one thousand nine hundred 
 and seven, by Georob John Blewett, at the Department of Agriculture. 
 
MORTVIS MEIS 
 
 229976 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 In the endeavour of man to draw near to that ultimate reality 
 with which it is his salvation to make himself at one — the endeavour 
 which is on its practical side religion, on, its theoretical side philos- 
 ophy and theology — there is an elemental distinction between two 
 tendencies or methods. The one, to find God, denies the world. The 
 other retains the world, but when God is found the world becomes 
 new; or rather, in finding God the world also is found, for the knowl- 
 edge of God is the ultimate truth about the world. To trace these 
 tendencies, in the broad outline of their historical relations of con- 
 flict and of combination, was once the hope of the present writer. 
 Such a stud}^, if it could have been undertaken successfully, would 
 have done two things: would have cast light on the forms which in 
 human history the religious endeavour to be at one with God has 
 assumed ; and would have marked out for students, in an elementary 
 but yet fundamental way, the ground-currents of the history of 
 philosophy and theolog}^ But it is now almost certain that that 
 plan will never, even in briefest outline, be carried through ; and so a 
 number of essays, written at different times and under different 
 circumstances as studies toward it, are published here as separate 
 papers. Each can be read by itself; yet, since there is enough of 
 the original plan in the separate parts to give them a certain unity, 
 it would be better to take them together as forming a single historical 
 discussion. For this reason a short introduction has been prefixed, 
 stating the main point of the discussion and the relation of each of 
 the papers to it. 
 
 The essay on Spinoza is the property of Harvard University', and 
 is published here by permission of President Eliot.^ This is only a 
 single instance of the kindness with which through many years that 
 great university' has treated Canadian students ; though we came to 
 
 1 A few changes have been made. 
 
PEEFACE 
 
 her as strangers, she admitted us ungrudgingly to the use of her wide 
 resources, and by a hospitality more generous than can be told in 
 words bound to herself our hearts. I can scarcely record here the 
 names of all those who at Harvard, whether by mastery in the things 
 of the mind, or by personal kindness, placed me in their debt; but 
 those who have a better right than I can perhaps allow me to refer 
 with a gratitude made deeper by the sense of loss, to the gifted lady 
 who left all the world of Xew England poorer when she was taken 
 in sudden death from the place at the side of Professor Palmer which 
 she filled with such grace and power. 
 
 I am deeply indebted also to several of those who in old-world 
 universities are carrying forward the greater traditions of philosophy ; 
 nor is my sense of obligation lessened by the fact that they would 
 disapprove of many things in these pages. The thoughtfulness of 
 Professor Kulpe, and the charm of his grave sincerity, brightened for 
 me a time at Wiirzburg when work was almost out of question. 
 To the kindness of the Master of Balliol I must refer with the special 
 reverence and gratitude due to one whose venerable primacy in 
 philosophy among English-speaking men makes him " our father Par- 
 menides." And I must mention one other name : that of the late 
 Thomas Hill Green, whose living voice I had never the happiness to 
 hear, but whose Prolegomena to Ethics — since Cudworth's day the 
 greatest single piece of constructive work in the British literature 
 of metaphysic and ethics — was my " introduction " to the study of 
 philosophy. 
 
 But the masters in the schools of philosophy will find no fault 
 with mc, if witli the deepest gratitude of all I mention an influence 
 other than their own, though not alien to it — that of three men who 
 live now in God: Lesslie IMatthew Sweetnam, who bore without 
 flinching a fiery trial of jiain, and went early to death, giving his 
 own life in the attempt to save by operation that of a helpless stranger 
 — being in his death what he had been in life, a prince among the 
 surgeons of his day, and a man whose character was a magnificence 
 of the spirit; John Petch, sometime Professor of French in Victoria 
 College, Toronto, who throughout the long and painful illness which 
 preceded his death, showed to those who waited upon him the same 
 
PKEFACE 
 
 affectionate consideration and gentle courtesy that (joined with the 
 finest sense of honour) had become in the days of his strength the 
 settled habit of his mind; and my father, a brave and gifted man, 
 who endured wrong in silence, and in spite of a frail body and the 
 cruelty of circumstance discharged with fidelity the greater human 
 duties, and to whom at last there came gently the grace of sudden 
 death. To these three men, who were strong enough not to play the 
 rebel's part when their doom was hard, but had their hope in God, 
 and did with their might their work upon the earth, the pages which 
 follow are inscribed; and it is the writer's grief that to their dear 
 and lamented names he is not able to erect a more worthy monument. 
 
 "Victoria College, 
 
 Toronto, January, 1907. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOE 
 
 Introductory ---------- i 
 
 The Study of Nature and the Vision of God - - - 15 
 
 The Metaphysic of Spinoza - - - - - - - 111 
 
 Plato and the Founding of Idealism ----- 201 
 
 The Completing of Idealism ------- 249 
 
 Erigena: The Division of Nature - 269 
 
 flrigena's general position - - - - "71 -80 
 
 The four Forms of Nature - - - - 280—331 
 
 The first Form ----- 281—282 
 
 The procession from the first Form to the second - 282—298 
 
 The procession from the second Form to the third 298—310 
 
 The return of all things— the fourth Form of Nature 310—331 
 
 The Theism of St. Thomas ------- 333 
 
 Conclusion - - " " ' '^^^ 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 When some great Christian kingdom has along its borders no 
 rest from war, many young citizens— the lion being still supreme in 
 them^ — can recognise but one service of the state. The watch upon 
 the frontier, with its discipline of arms and its incessant energies of 
 defense and attack, is to them at once the duty of a man and the 
 meaning of citizenship and the ideal life. But the years bring a 
 graver wisdom; the man who went out eagerly to the tented 
 field — if he has retained the clear sense of devotion to the state, 
 and has not become merely subdued to the trade of war — comes 
 more and more to see that, great as is his present service to the state, 
 there is another, quieter and greater. The ultimate strength of the 
 state lies otherwhere : in patient processes and structures of industry 
 and commerce and legislation ; in unnumbered school-rooms ; in those 
 ancient houses where learning is cherished for its own sake, and for 
 their own sake the sciences are cultivated, and out of piety the memory 
 of far-off benefactors is kept alive ; above all, in the " relations dear " 
 of the homes, with their " charities of father, son, and brother," and 
 their establishment in uprightness and integrity of the characters of 
 those who presently are to do the world's work and shape the world's 
 life; and in those companions of the homes, without which homes 
 are scarcely homes at all, the parish churches that with sacraments 
 and holy observances and the making of habitual prayer lie close to 
 our mortal life from its beginning to its close: — parish churches 
 where the vows of baptism are made for little children; and with 
 Morning Prayer and Evensong the growing life is reminded day by 
 day of the heavenly glory which is its end; and to each relationship 
 of life, with all that is in it of labour or sacred promise or discipline 
 of grief, there is brought by solemn offices the assistance of the 
 heavenly grace; and all, at last, the young with the old, the poor 
 side by side with the great, lay themselves down together to their sleep 
 
 1 Plato, Republic, 5S8. 
 2 1 
 
INTKODUCTOEY 
 
 iu the shadow of the ancient wails. In these things is the strength 
 and true life of the state; nay, these things are the state; and to 
 them the man upon the frontier — if he is a man indeed, and the times 
 are not too grim — makes soon or late his way, leaving the vigil upon 
 the horder to the younger men with whom the inward and spiritual 
 voices of the rational soul have not yet come to mastery and the call 
 of the trumpet remains the one voice of dut}\ 
 
 In our day there has been something similar to this in the com- 
 monwealth of philosophy. It too has had its border-warfare : the 
 strife between those who had, and those who had not, grasped the 
 ancient and cardinal insight of philosophy, that if you would under- 
 stand the nature of the world you must understand the relation of the 
 world to the soul. That insight received its first systematic applica- 
 tion, in a form singularly impressive and splendid, from Plato. And 
 to wan it again and learn how to carry it once more to its systematic 
 application, has been precisely the work of recent philosophy ; a work 
 undertaken upon the impulse and suggestion of Immanuel Kant. 
 Kant compelled us to see that in any attempt to form a view of the 
 world we must remember from the beginning that the facts of the 
 world — all facts that any man of science can in any sense inves- 
 tigate — are facts for self-consciousness. To say that anything is 
 capable of undergoing scientific investigation is to say that it is 
 capable of becoming present to, of being comprehended by, of having 
 its nature and structure expressed in forms of, the self-conscious spirit 
 which is man. To say that material objects can be known is to say 
 that material objects are capable of entering into organic union with 
 self-conscious intelligence. Indeed, it is not doing justice to the 
 facts of the case to say merely that in knowledge there is a union of 
 subject and object. Throughout the whole process of gaining knowl- 
 edge the mind itself is active; active in shaping the impressions 
 which are given to us into that objective order of facts in which we 
 live and which we call the world. So that the subject actually bears 
 a part in constructing its own object and its own objective order. 
 Hence, until you have studied that activity of mind, you do not under- 
 stand how ynur world has come to be what it is ; you do not under- 
 
 2 
 
INTEODUCTOEY 
 
 stand the nature and structure of the world of your actual life. To 
 try to understand the nature of the world without reference to the 
 activity of the self-conscious subject, is like trying to solve a problem 
 in neglect of its central factor or to pronounce final verdict upon a 
 case in forgetfulness of the most immediately relevant part of the 
 evidence. Nothing, that is to say, worthy of being called a scientific 
 view of the world — in technical terms, nothing worthy of being called 
 a metaphysic — is possible to a man until he considers the relation of 
 subject and object; or, to state the case more narrowly, until he 
 considers the fact of knowledge and raises the question of the possi- 
 bility of knowledge.^ 
 
 But in the age immediately preceding our own, philosophy found 
 
 1 The statement, in the above paragraph, of the character of our experience, is simply 
 a statement of fact. It is not metaphysic; but it clears the ground for metaphysic, by 
 describing the object with which the metaphysician begins, and the conditions of whose 
 possibility he seeks to understand. 
 
 In our own day, this clearing of the ground for metaphysical construction has been 
 effected by the psychologists in a way more primary— if such an expression may be 
 allowed— than was possible to Kant, moving painfully as he did under his accumulation 
 of inherited burdens. For the psychologist, as he goes on with his analysis, never comes 
 to any object other than the psychical object ; in other words, the realities of individual 
 experience are always psychical realities. Hence, any one who passes from psychology to 
 metaphysic is at once in position to argue that, since the process to be explained is 
 altogether psychical, that which explains its possibility must likewise be psychical ; and 
 this, in whichever way the individual experience is supposed to be related to the greater 
 (or total) reality whose nature the metaphysician seeks to know— whether as effect to 
 cause, or as part to whole, or as a product or reproduction to a source whose relation to 
 the product is not adequately expressed by the category of cause and etfect. 
 
 The psychologist, as such, has, of course, no concern about metaphysic at all. His 
 business is simply to observe the facts and processes of individual experience as these 
 actually are. But if he performs that task with accuracy, his work— whether he intends 
 it or no— clears the ground for metaphysical construction as it never has been cleared 
 before ; and this puts every department of philosophy under a great debt to him.— In 
 referring to this contribution of the psychologist to metaphysic, I am thinking, of course, 
 not of the older psychology— which was a mixture of metaphysic and psychological 
 observation in which neither component came to its right — but of the psychology which 
 is psychology and nothing else ; the psychology which, in the logical order of the sciences, 
 is the first of the sciences of observation. This is often called the " new," or " experi- 
 mental," psychology. But the adjectives are not needed. When the psychologist applies 
 methods of exact measurement to such psychical phenomena as admit of exact measure- 
 ment, he is doing only what any man of science ought to do. The fact that certain 
 elements and certain processes in our experience admit of fairly exact measurement, does 
 not make experience and the experienced world any the less spiritual or any the more 
 mechanical. — In this connexion I should refer, with warm admiration, to the name of 
 Professor Kirschmann of the University of Toronto. I do this, not as in any sense sug- 
 gesting that Professor Kirschmann would approve of the views expressed in these pages ; 
 but as indicating my own gratitude to him and to his teaching. 
 
INTEODUCTOKY 
 
 itself face to face with views of the world wliich were formed by 
 absolutely the opposite procedure and yet were threatening to dom- 
 inate the world. For there are more metaphysicians in the world 
 than the Platonists and the Kantians. All men are metaphysicians 
 by nature ; and most men impatient and hasty metaphysicians. They 
 rush into metaphysic from whatever scientific ground they happen 
 to have been working upon, and construct metaphysical systems with 
 whatever categories they have been accustomed to use, without con- 
 sidering that there is an intervening question — this question of the 
 possibility of knowledge, and of the relation of the categories to 
 nature. The physicist, for example, when he obeys the human 
 impulse to be metaphysical, is tempted simply to treat the physical 
 point of view as the ultimate one, and the categories of physical 
 science as the ultimate categories — the ultimate principles of explana- 
 tion of the world. Without quite seeing what he is doing — for since 
 he scorns the word " metaphysic," it is easy for him to imagine that 
 he also scorns the thing — he gets a metaphysic of his own at one 
 stroke, by simply taking his physics as metaphysic. That the facts 
 of our experience have relations other than the physical; that an 
 investigation of these might lead to a deeper knowledge of the facts, 
 and even to a re-interpretation of the physical relations themselves; 
 that there is an inquiry (epistemology) which seeks to conduct pre- 
 cisely this investigation : — this he does not see, and, not seeing it, 
 enters boldly and easily upon a world-view which is blind to all 
 aspects of the world bat one ; and so we get that hasty and premature 
 metaphysic which, when it puts the emphasis at one point, is called 
 Materialism; when at another point, the mechanical view of the 
 world. Then come other men of science who see that materialistic 
 and mechanical views are not adequate as explanations of the world 
 of our experience, but who yet will have nothing to do with the 
 epistemological problem ; these, finding the way of advance barred 
 to themselves, assert that it is barred to all men; and thus we get 
 the final development of this type of metaphysic, the development 
 seen in the various forms of Agnosticism.^ 
 
 1 The Agnosticism here meant is that which mav be called Agnosticism for its own 
 sake ; not that which, in ancient and mediieval times, was simply one of the momenta 
 of Mysticism. 
 
 4 
 
INTEODUCTOEY 
 
 These types of nietaphysic have in our day exercised an immense 
 influence. In the first place they have been powerful through a sort 
 of transferred glory: the men who have urged them upon us are in 
 many ways our benefactors ; are members of that great host to whose 
 untiring labour and magnificent achievement in physical and natural 
 science we are all of us — and none of us more than the theologians — 
 profoundly indebted. And in the second place their influence has 
 been wide because the movement of thought already described, the 
 movement of thought by which one drifts into them from the modern 
 scientific consciousness, is so easy and so natural. Certain principles 
 of explanation used upon certain aspects of reality prove splendidly 
 successful; what more easy than to take for granted that these are 
 the supreme principles in the whole arsenal of man's mind? And 
 that view once taken, the conclusions follow directly : either you apply 
 these principles to the explanation of the whole process of the universe, 
 and so gain a materialistic or mechanical view of the world; or you 
 see that there are facts which these principles cannot explain, and then 
 you say that, since these principles are the supreme principles of 
 science, those facts are incapable of scientific explanation and lie 
 beyond the horizon of human knowledge altogether. But, however 
 easy such a movement of thought be, or however attractive to human 
 nature, the present-day student of philosophy who knows his own 
 field — which amounts to saying, who has entered into metaphysic by 
 the gateway -of epistemology — has no choice but to insist that views 
 formed in this way are premature, uncritical, dogmatic; they 
 announce their conclusions without having investigated a great prob- 
 lem which is not merely relevant but fundamental. 
 
 That is to say. to return to the comparison of a moment ago, such 
 a student recognises in views of this sort the hostile encampments 
 upon the frontier; barl)arians having nature's own strength in them 
 and therefore magnificent in intellectual and spiritual potentialities, 
 but seeking to destrov the ancient ci^^lisation of church and state 
 in which alone can the nature in them or in any man come to its true 
 fulfilment. And while he is still young he is likely to feel it his 
 special vocation to take up the conflict with these; always he is 
 devising some new and clearer statement of Platonic or Kantian 
 
IXTEODUCTORY 
 
 epistemology, such as will set out in plain light the immense and yet 
 rudimentary fallacy of which they are habitually guilty, and without 
 which their systems and their outlook upon the world would never 
 have come into being at ail. But as he grows older he finds that he 
 himself has something to learn; not a new lesson exactly, but a new 
 temper. To liim as well as to others that graver wisdom of the years 
 is brought; his heart begins to apprehend, and to respond to, a greater 
 call. If his vocation is to be fulfilled in its integrity, he must pass 
 on to those constructive labours that regard nothing save truth in her 
 eternal form. And to take part in such labours there is but one way : 
 he must turn to the ancient and catholic homes of his great science, 
 must make them the dwelling-place of his mind, in their faith and 
 in the power of their still light must at once look upon and participate 
 in the struggle and fate of man. It is necessary, indeed, that the 
 controversy upon the marches be maintained. But that work of serv- 
 ing God with the sword he may well leave to younger men. In the 
 kingdom of the intellect, the greater service of God is that of those 
 who in peaceful labour draw nearest to His glory; and so, for himself, 
 in the years that are left, he will turn toward that central region 
 where, in their own native and appropriate forms, the greater things 
 of philosophy stand in peace, and the spirits of the masters abide in 
 the temples which they themselves have built. There he will dwell, 
 and will seek, so far as he can, both to live over again in himself the 
 great histories which have been enacted there, and to keep the access 
 to those homes of light open to whatever men may be led by trouble 
 of mind or by an inner vocation to turn their faces that way. 
 
 But this central and catholic region of philosophy — what is it 
 like ? In a moment we shall have to consider the great division which 
 is found in it. But first we must note the distinguishing characters 
 in which all its structures and lal)ours share, and which make it, with 
 all its divisions, still one realm. These characters are, in the main, 
 two; two characters which may seem very broad, very fugitive, very 
 impalpable, to the man who looks upon the matter from the outside; 
 but the opposite of fugitive or impalpable to the man who looks out 
 upon philosophy from its own central point of view. In the first 
 
 6 
 
INTEODUCTORY 
 
 place, the philosophies which belong here, however radically they differ 
 from one another in other respects, agree in this — they are a wisdom 
 of the soul. They remember that reality is the seat and home of the 
 soul, and that, therefore, in forgetfulness of the soul reality can never 
 be understood or rightly interpreted. In the second place, they agree 
 also in this, that to them truth and life are one. With whatever 
 differences among themselves, they constitute that greater philosophy 
 which, at one and the same time and by one and the same impulse, 
 seeks to know reality and to enter into union with it. On the one 
 side, such philosophy is what the Germans call Wissenschaft, what 
 Plato and Aristotle with a still severer exaltation of meaning called 
 anwrtjiAt], and what in these pages (contrary to the ordinary usage 
 of English men of thought) will be called science. On this side, 
 seeking loiowledge for the sake of knowledge, it endeavours to com- 
 prehend intellectually the world of which it is itself a part. But the 
 same impulse and the same passion has as its other side the endeavour 
 to be at one with the reality which it has scientifically apprehended. 
 It seeks to take, as its way, the way of that reality ; seeks to take the 
 nature of that reality as its guide, the law and informing spirit of that 
 reality as its law and its spirit. And so it is a principle of the unity 
 of life; it seeks the unity of life by seeking that union with ultimate 
 reality in which science and religion are one. 
 
 But, as already has been indicated, within the limits of the greater 
 philosophy which has these distinguishing characters, there is a cer- 
 tain profound and thoroughgoing division. In the attempt to appre- 
 hend the true nature of reality, and consequently in the endeavour 
 to bring the life of man into accord with reality, there have been 
 two great methods, two great tendencies, the distinction between 
 which is not broken down by the fact that historically they have 
 entered into the most manifold relations of combination and of con- 
 flict with each other. The division arises, as all great human 
 divisions arise, from the existence of divergent tendencies in human 
 nature itself, and of radical differences in the experience, happy or 
 tragic, which falls to the lot of individuals and races. And since it 
 arises in the effort to apprehend ultimate reality, it is a division 
 elemental and ultimate — the most radical of all the divisions known 
 
 7 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 to human nature and human life, and the one that must always be 
 kept in mind, as a sort of ground-plan, in any attempt to understand 
 the spiritual history of man. The tendencies themselves, however, 
 and the two types of philosophy to which they give rise, we must seek 
 to understand somewhat more fully. 
 
 Each of the two types of philosophy is a movement from the 
 changing and transient facts of the experienced world to a principle 
 which is one and eternal; or, as this would usually be expressed, is 
 a movement from the world to God. But each makes that movement 
 in its own way. The one, in moving from the world to God, jioes not 
 forget the world from which it started. When it finds the explanation 
 of the world in a vision of God, it returns to the world, and seeks to 
 give to the facts of the world their true interpretation in the light 
 of that vision of God. The facts of the world and of our life are to 
 it elements in a divine plan, the history of the world a process in 
 which an eternal purpose is being realised. The nature of God — 
 and therefore, however veiled by cloud and storm, the nature of the 
 world — is that for which human language has no single word,^ but 
 which may be expressed by putting together the three words, reason, 
 righteousness, love. And in unit}' with that true or ultimate nature 
 of the universe lies the way of life for man; in character, unity with 
 the divine character ; in action, unity with the divine purpose. Since, 
 furthermore, the purpose of God is the ultimate law of the world, 
 since the plan of God realises itself in and through the history of the 
 world, that character and action in which man seeks to become at one 
 with God must be character and action in this present world, not out 
 of it. It is in and through the ways of this present life, in and 
 through the " daily round " and the " common task," in and through 
 the regular forms and relationships, the normal duties and affections, 
 of human work and human homes, that a man must make himself at 
 one with the eternal reality. Even as there is "no other genuine 
 enthusiasm for humanity," so also, to extend the late Professor 
 Green's well-known statement, there is on this view no other genuine 
 enthusiasm for God and for the eternal, than one "which has 
 travelled the common highway of reason — the life of the good neigh- 
 
 1 Unless it be the word "spirit," in its concrete sense. 
 8 
 
INTRODUCTOKY 
 
 hour and the houest citizen— and can never forget that it is still only 
 a furtlier stage of the same journey." 
 
 The other tendency follows just the opposite procedure. In 
 moving toward God it leaves the world behind. For the reality, 
 knowledge of which is truth, and union with which is the way of 
 life — is it not something essentially different from these present 
 appearances ? — if not, why are we dissatisfied with these appearances ? 
 ^^'hat, indeed, sets us at all upon that quest which, as thinking, is 
 philosophy, but as a life is religion, save precisely this, that the 
 appearances which constitute our present experience and our present 
 world are profoundly unsatisfactory ? They are transient— they fleet 
 away and leave life empty for the man that trusted in them. 
 Logically, they are self -contradictory. ^^lorally and religiously they 
 are inadequate, if indeed they do not stand absolutely condemned. 
 Then how shall we define reality save by denying of it the characters 
 of the appearances which make up our experience? And so realit}' 
 comes to be conceived, not as that which at once explains and con- 
 tains the things and forms of our present life, the home of them and 
 the truth of them, their law and their informing spirit, but as some- 
 thing which exists purely in itself and cannot be given to us under 
 the ordinary forms of our thinking. On the contrary, it can be 
 described only by denying of it all the characteristics of what can be 
 so given to us. It is true that the men who seek realit}' by this 
 method usually have, explicitly or implicitly, formal definitions of it — 
 definitions of which the ancient and ever-recurring one, that "sub- 
 stance is that which for its existence stands in need of nothing but 
 itself," is a type. But no positive or concrete characterisation is 
 possible — when reality is described as one. eternal, unchangeable, 
 these are not so much positive characters as negations of the multi- 
 plicit\% the diversity, the change and transience, of that which is given 
 to us and is our experience. For, as we have just seen, the very 
 method by which the real is sought to be reached makes impossible 
 any attempt to tell what its positive content or nature is. The forms, 
 the energies, the activities, which are manifest in our experience, 
 and make our world what it is — what you know about reality is that 
 it is not these. There is a reality, indeed — that is your first and 
 
 9" 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 profoimdest conviction as a denier of this false world in the name of 
 the truly real;^ and that reality needs for its existence nothing save 
 itself ; but you are sure that it, as it is in itself, is never given to you, 
 and cannot be given to you, under the ordinary form of your 
 experience. And so, in your search for reality, you must say of any 
 natural or intellectual or moral form known to man's present 
 experience, " It is not that." 
 
 In a word, this philosophy, when it has gained its goal and its 
 rest in God, remembers the world no more, except as a dream and 
 an illusion which, at the coming of the vision of God, has vanished 
 back into its own native and original nothingness. Reality is that 
 which tlie world of our experience is not. And as reality is conceived, 
 so also is the true way of life conceived. All that you can say of the 
 consciousness or experience which is at one with reality, is that it is 
 not our present consciousness; that it has no kinship in form or 
 procedure with the normal consciousness manifest in man's ordinary 
 science and labour, religion and society; that even such terms as 
 " consciousness " or " experience " can be applied to it only by 
 accommodation. 
 
 Of all the divisions or distinctions that are found in human 
 experience and have been influential in shaping the world's history, 
 this is — in the sense of being first and elemental — the most important. 
 Its fullest and most concrete expression of itself has been, of course, 
 in religion. On the one side stand religions like Brahmanism (and, 
 in a modified sense, Buddhism) — the religion of men who deny the 
 world and seek to become one with a reality which is not the changing 
 world ;2 on the other, religions like Christianity, which see that it is 
 only in God and unto God that the world reaches its truth and reality. 
 Indeed, if one were speaking of Christendom — still more, if one were 
 speaking of the church— rather than of Christianity, one would have 
 to say that its history is a history precisely of the conflict of these 
 two tendencies within one body. And naturally, as to some extent 
 
 1 Though you may foci compelled to object to all possible human ways of expressing 
 that conviction. 
 
 2 "You let yonr boat drop quietly down the Ganges to-day, and along its banks the 
 silent figures sit like carved brown statues, hour after hour, day after day, with eyes open 
 and fixed on vacancy, clearing themselves of all thought, emotion, and desire, that, being 
 emptied of self, they may see God."— {I cannot find the reference.] 
 
 10 
 
INTRODUCTOKY 
 
 we have seen already, this deepest distiuction in man's practical life 
 has expressed itself also, in every age and in numberless ways, in 
 his endeavour rationally to comprehend himself and his life, whether 
 that attempt be called philosophy or theology. Indeed, the man who 
 attempts to understand the history of philosophy, or of theology (in 
 the ancient sense of the term), without understanding this distinction 
 and its place in those histories, is like a man of science who should 
 examine the surface of some great current, without penetrating to the 
 forces that actually have determined and actually are determining 
 its nature and its flow. 
 
 Of these two great types of religion, of theology, of philosophy, 
 the one which, in seeking its home in God, follows in the way just 
 indicated the via negativa, is commonly called Mysticism. To it the 
 nature of God is altogether beyond the categories of our intelligence ; 
 the vision of God, which is the light of the soul, is altogether above 
 the ways and activities of our understanding; the rest in God, which 
 is the blessedness of the soul, is altogether apart from the ordinary 
 forms of our experience. Hence the name is quite appropriate. The 
 true, the real, the One,— words cannot utter it nor thought conceive 
 it; how, then, shall the man who seeks it describe himself to the 
 ordinary intelligence ? and how shall the ordinary intelligence express 
 its judgment concerning him ? Obviously there is but one way. He, 
 whether as he attempts to describe himself to it, or as it judges him, 
 is a Mystic ; and his way of life is Mysticism. The other tendency, 
 when formulated as a philosophy, is known historically as Idealism. 
 Its first world-historical master was Plato; from one of his great 
 words the name itself is taken. As a view of the world, it was in 
 part explicitly wrought out by him, in part made possible by him to 
 later men of thought who worked, on the one hand, with more 
 powerful categories and therefore with greater opportunities for self- 
 consistency, but on the other hand with less of inspiration, less of 
 political and moral and religious passion. But Idealism, in this 
 greater sense of the name,^ the modern world has had almost to 
 conquer anew for itself. And he who made the reconquest possible, 
 
 1 As distinct from the Sensationalism of the English School, which also, because it is a 
 " way of ideas " (in the sense of that word so unhappily used by John Locke) has been 
 called Idealism. 
 
 11 
 
INTEODUCTORY 
 
 though he did his work stumblingly and with all possible awkward- 
 ness, was Immanuel Kant. 
 
 This, then, is the first great division — and the most radical of 
 all possible divisions— within the " church catholic " of philosophy. 
 It is the extreme and complete opposition of the via negativa to that 
 positive or synthetic method which insists that the true universal is 
 at once the home and the explanation of the particulars, and which, 
 therefore, when it has gained a vision of God, seeks to use that vision 
 as the light which gives a true vision of the world. But this first 
 division is not all; there is a second and lesser to be considered — one 
 within Idealism. For the via negativa, where it does not secure that 
 full triumph which (as at once a metaphysic and a way of life) is 
 Mysticism, is sometimes able to cross over into the field of its 
 opponent and secure a partial victory there. These are the cases 
 where it cannot win men away from believing that the forms of reason 
 express the nature of reality — that ultimate reality is perfect reason. 
 But it does lead them to believe that you must separate pure reason 
 from sensation and sense-experience, and then accept that pure reason 
 alone as expressing the nature of reality. So that you have reality 
 as a world of abstract pure reason, and pure reason in man appre- 
 hending it; and then you somehow have another world, the sense- 
 world, and corresponding to it, man's sense-experience. And the true 
 way of life is to renounce this lower world and all its ways, and to 
 live only in that upper world. — This way of thinking may, for con- 
 venience of reference, be called Abstract Idealism ; in distinction from 
 it, the fully-developed type may be called Concrete Idealism — Hegel 
 called it Absolute Idealism. 
 
 "We have, then, to sum up, a twofold opposition of the great ten- 
 dencies which we have been considering: first, their extreme oppo- 
 sition, giving us Mysticism and Idealism; secondly, their lesser 
 opposition within the field of Idealism, giving us Abstract and Con- 
 crete Idealism.^ 
 
 1 When the distinction between these two types of philosophy and of religion ie stated 
 —and not only stated, but insisted iipon-a very old question is likely to recur in a new 
 form: Of what value is the distinction between the inner kingdom of philosophy and its 
 borderland contentions, if that inner kingdont itself is rent apart by divisions of the most 
 
 12 
 
INTEODUCTOEY 
 
 It is with this central and catholic region of philosophy, and with 
 this twofold opposition of fundamental tendencies within it, that the 
 following papers are in the main concerned. Most of them were 
 written as separate studies ; a fact which gives to each its own angle 
 of approach, and involves, also, a certain amount of repetition. But 
 they had a common purpose ;i and when taken together have still a 
 certain unity of plan, which may be indicated as follows. — The first 
 two essays deal with the main antithesis itself, that between Idealism 
 and Mysticism :— the first outlining, in simple form, and with refer- 
 ence to the life of our own day, the Idealistic position; while the 
 second, in the historical discussion of what is there called Spinoza's 
 "first metaphysic,", traces the development of Mysticism. The 
 remaining papers are studies in the history of Idealism, with special 
 reference to the conflict of tendencies just described — the lesser con- 
 flict within Idealism, the greater between Idealism and Mysticism. 
 The history is studied, not consecutively, but by turning to those 
 great masters in ancient and mediaeval thought in whom the forces 
 that operate throughout the whole history are seen working with 
 special clearness and intensity. In Plato is seen, for instance, the 
 
 fundamental kind? The doubt implied in such a question is, however, not justified ; its 
 unfairness can be shown— if it is allowable to ride a parable so hard— by turning once 
 more to the comparison suggested earlier in the text. In the country there spoken of, the 
 observer would soon have become aware of the existence Of political parties. And as he 
 looked upon the " fell incensed points " of their stubborn opposition, he might easily be 
 teranted to say that the division between these parties was a far more fundamental 
 one than thfit between citizens within and hardy barbarians without. And yet, in one 
 most important respect, he would be wrong. For, no matter how radical the opposition 
 of those parties, their members have after all the most important things of life in com- 
 mon ; they hive a common speech, a common literature, common arts and education, a 
 common reliaion— in one word, a common citizenship. The two parties are kindred to 
 each other in a sense in which neither of them is kindred to that race of other blood that 
 troubles the marches. And so here. Mysticism and Idealism are certainly as far apart 
 as any types of philosophy or of religion can possibly be. But they agree in this: they 
 know that the quest for the unity of existence and the quest for the true end and home of 
 the soul are one and the same quest. Out of one and the same impulse proceed their 
 effort after the intellectual apprehension of reality, and their efTort, whether by ordinary 
 or extraordinary experience, after the union of the soul with that reality.— Of course, the 
 other side of the matter should not be forgot ten. Barbarian and citizen, though without 
 a common citizenship, have a common human nature ; it lies within the potentialities of 
 the barbarians .soul to become a citizen. So too, the Materialist or the Agnostic need 
 only do justice to himself, and to the intellectual impulses already at work within him, 
 to become an Idealist. 
 
 1 See Preface, p. vii. 
 
 13 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 founding of Idealism as a systematic view of the world and of life. 
 Then, when Greek thought, as one of the constituent elements of the 
 mind of the church, had gone out into the wide world, the strife, or 
 rather the combination, of Idealism with Mysticism is seen in 
 Erigena; and the struggle between the two types of Idealism in St. 
 Thomas. 
 
 14 
 
THE STUDY OF NATURE AND THE 
 VISION OF GOD 
 
THE STUDY OP NATURE AND THE 
 VISION OF GOD. 
 
 Among the leaders of the English people in the nineteenth century 
 there was one strangely devoid of the qualities and habits that we 
 have grown accustomed to look for in a modern leader of modern 
 men, and strangely out of accord with what the world regards as the 
 genius of England. He was no captain of industry. He was the 
 head of no princely merchant house. He was not a statesman; not 
 a Jurist; not one of the proconsuls of England, who establish her 
 peace abroad in seats of ancient anarchy. He had no part in the 
 labours of commerce, of war, of civil administration, by which Britain 
 has done for parts of the modern world what Eome, with more con- 
 tinuous but more selfish energies, did for the whole of the ancient. 
 From all these, the circles in which the leaders of England habitually 
 move and the works at which they habitually labour, he turned 
 deliberately and resolutely away. He made no quest of any sort after 
 personal popularity. His voice was not heard in the streets; and 
 when, from quiet places and chosen retreats, he spoke to the people 
 of England, it was with warning and grave rebuke. Every word 
 revealed a great gulf: on one side that solitary man; on the other, 
 the customary life, the habitual thoughts, the characteristic activities, 
 of his race. And in the presence of that gulf there came to Cardinal 
 Newman's lips no single syllable of concession or of compromise. 
 
 Once, indeed, he had been in more intimate contact with English 
 life and English thought and English institutions. Virtually, though 
 not in name, he had been the leader of the chivalry of the Church 
 of England in its battle with modern Liberalism ; and had guided the 
 first steps of that ecclesiastical revolution which has exercised upon the 
 life of the great body of Englishmen an influence more widely forra- 
 
 5 17 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 ative than they themselves know. But those days were now done. 
 That leadership had been laid aside, and for ever. He had with- 
 drawn from the noises of the world, and had sat him down in the 
 quiet of an institution, itself in its very nature repugnant to the 
 temper of England and alien to her settled thoughts. It seemed as 
 if his influence upon the men of England were shattered for ever and 
 by his own act. But what really came to pass was that that influence 
 gradually took on a new life. It became more impalpable, less obtru- 
 sive, less noticeable; became something which few journalists would 
 have remembered in enumerating the " forces of the day." But it 
 became profounder, instinct with a power more truly essential and 
 therefore more abiding. And it became so, because it became more 
 broadly and simply human, more free from party interests and party 
 accidents, more deeply rooted in the elementary material of life. The 
 change in the character of the influence was due to a change which 
 had come to the man himself who exercised it. ±\. great division had 
 passed out of his life. True, there were still difficulties for him. 
 The policy of the Eoman Curia in the days of Pius might grieve him 
 deeply. But it could never shatter the very foundations of his life, 
 as once the attitude and the decisions of the Anglican bishops had 
 done. In spite of all difficulties the fact remained that the much- 
 tried spirit had found its home. Equably and strongly it moved 
 henceforth on its way, like some star which at its true altitude and 
 in its appointed and established orbit sweeps steadily forward " without 
 haste and without rest." In that deep assurance of soul Newman 
 turned, as was natural, more and more to the things that are truly 
 catholic; more and more to the things that do not belong to parties 
 and do not pass away with parties ; more and more to the things that, 
 being eternal, are, in the words used a moment ago, broadly and 
 simply human. It is true, he remained an uncompromising advocate 
 of the Eoman view of the church and the Eoman interpretation of 
 history. But — though he himself would indignantly have repudiated 
 the distinction — his influence as such an advocate came to be the least 
 important part of his influence; his deepest power upon his genera- 
 tion was not that which he exerted as a prophet of the specifically 
 Eoman ideal in its conflict with the spirit of the time and with the 
 
 18 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 spirit of England. His true significance as a leader and benefactor 
 of the English race came more and more to lie, not in any party 
 advocacy, but in the fact that, in an age devoted to material prosperity 
 and to the objects and interests of a materialised life, he, with no 
 particle of submission to the spirit of the age, was a pilgrim of eternity 
 and a prophet of eternity. 
 
 And this came to be recognised by the men of clearest eyes in 
 England; specially by one sane and wise critic of life who was 
 separated by the whole diameter of human thought from Newman's 
 political and ecclesiastical views, but had long had his finger upon 
 the pulse of England and was grateful for every spiritual benefaction 
 to her stubborn race. " There are deaths yet to come," wrote the 
 late Eichard Holt Hutton in the Spectator when Newman died, 
 " which will agitate the English world more than Cardinal Newman's ; 
 but there has been none, and will be none, so far as I know, that will 
 leave the world that really knew him with so keen a sense of depriva- 
 tion, of a white star extinguished, of a sign vanished, of an age impov- 
 erished, of a grace withdrawn. To many, and to many who are not 
 Eoman Catholics, it will seem the nearest approach in their own 
 experience to what the death of the Apostle John must have been 
 to the Church of the Fathers, when the closing words of his epistle, 
 ' Little children, keep yourselves from idols,' were still ringing in 
 their ears. . . . Though he served and was at rest, the mere '/ 
 knowledge that he was living in the quiet Oratory at Edgbaston 
 helped men to realise that the spiritual world is even more real than 
 the material world, and that in that lonely, austere, and yet gracious 
 figure, God had made a sign to Great Britain that the great purpose 
 of life is a purpose to which this life hardly more than introduces us." 
 
 But it is best of all through his own words that we shall under- 
 stand him. The remarkable description of his own " special Father 
 and Patron," St. Philip Neri, with which he brings to a close his 
 Lectures upon the Idea of a University, is really a revelation of 
 himself. " He lived " — so the great words run — " in an age as traitor- 
 ous to the interests of Catholicism as any that preceded it, or can 
 follow it. He lived at a time when pride mounted high, and the 
 senses held rule; a time when kings and nobles never had more of 
 
 19 
 
THE STUDY OP NATURE 
 
 state and homage, and never less of personal responsibility and peril ; 
 when mediaeval winter was receding, and the summer sun of civilisa- 
 tion was bringing into leaf and flower a thousand forms of luxurious 
 enjoyment; when a new world of thought and beauty had opened 
 upon the human mind, in the discovery of the treasures of classic 
 literature and art. He saw the great and gifted, dazzled by the 
 Enchantress, and drinking in the magic of her song ; he saw the high 
 and wise, the student and the artist, painting, and poetry, and sculp- 
 ture, and music, and architecture, drawn within her range, and 
 circling round the abyss : he saw heathen forms mounting thence, 
 and forming in the thick air : — all this he saw, and he perceived that 
 the mischief was to be met, not with argument, not with science, not 
 with protests and warnings, not by the recluse or the preacher, but 
 by means of the great counter-fascination of purity and truth. 
 And so he contemplated as the idea of his mission, not 
 the propagation of the faith, nor the exposition of doctrine, nor the 
 catechetical schools; whatever was exact and systematic pleased him 
 not; he put from him monastic rule and authoritative speech, as 
 David refused the armour of his king. No; he would be but an 
 ordinary individual priest as others: and his weapons should be but 
 unaffected humility and unpretending love. All he did was to be done 
 by the light, and fervour, and convincing eloquence of his personal 
 character and his easy conversation. He came to the Eternal City 
 and he sat himself down there, and his home and his family gradually 
 grew up around him, by the spontaneous accession of materials from 
 without. He did not so much seek his own as draw them to him. 
 He sat in his small room, and they in their gay worldly dresses, the 
 rich and the well-born, as well as the simple and the illiterate, crowded 
 into it. In the mid-heats of summer, in the frosts of winter, still 
 was he in that low and narrow cell at San Girolamo, reading the 
 hearts of those who came to him, and curing their souls' maladies 
 by the very touch of his hand. It was a vision of the Magi wor- 
 shipping the infant Saviour, so pure and innocent, so sweet and 
 beautiful was he ; and so loyal and so dear to the gracious Virgin 
 Mother. And they who came remained gazing and listening, till at 
 length, first one and then another threw off their bravery, and took 
 
 20 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 his poor cassock and girdle instead: or, if tliey kept it, it was to put 
 haircloth under it, or to take on them a rule of life, while to the world 
 they looked as before." 
 
 Such was St. Philip; and such, with a touch of lofty personal 
 distinction unknown to Philip, was Cardinal Newman. But such 
 character and such influence come to no man by accident. Newman 
 in the Oratory was what he was, because of what his own inner heart 
 had been while he was still an Anglican. And what that was we 
 have earlier words of his own to show us. In his last days as an 
 Anglican, when the pain was heavy upon him of his approaching 
 separation from the friends of his youth and from the Church which 
 he loved and from the University which had been his home,^ the 
 words, " Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the 
 evening," seem to have been often in his mind. Twice he preached 
 from them; and each sermon was a revelation of the inner and 
 supreme principle of his own life. 
 
 " ' Blessed are they,' " — so ran the conclusion of the first — 
 " ' Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have 
 right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the 
 city.' Blessed will they be then, and only they, who with the 
 Apostle have ever had on their lips and in their hearts the question, 
 ' Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ?' whose soul ' hath broken out 
 for the very fervent desire that it hath alway unto His judgments ' ; 
 who have ' made haste and prolonged not the time to keep His com- 
 mandments '; who have not waited to be hired, nor run uncertainly, 
 nor beaten the air, nor taken darkness for light and light for darkness, 
 nor contented themselves with knowing what is right, nor taken com- 
 fort in feeling what is good, nor prided themselves in their privileges, 
 but set themselves vigorously to do God's will. 
 
 " Let us turn from shadows of all kinds — shadows of sense, or 
 shadows of argument and disputation, or shadows addressed to our 
 imagination and tastes. Let us attempt, through God's grace, to 
 advance and sanctify the inner man. We cannot be wrong here. 
 Whatever is right, whatever is wrong, in this perplexing world, we 
 
 1 "Trinity had nerer been unkind to me. There used to be much snap-dragon growing 
 on the walls opposite my freshman's rooms there, and I had for years taken it as the emblem 
 of my own perpetual residence even unto death in my UuiveTBitj."— Apologia, p. 237. 
 
 21 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 must be right in ' doing justly, in loving mercy, in walking humbly 
 with our God,' in denying our wills, in ruling our tongues, in soften- 
 ing and sweetening our tempers, in mortifying our lusts ; in learning 
 patience, meekness, purity, forgiveness of injuries and continuance 
 in well-doing." 
 
 The second was preached just after his resignation of the living 
 of St. Mary's. He himself, and what life meant for him — both stand 
 revealed in the form which his sorrow took as he uttered what was 
 really his farewell to all that had been dear to him upon the earth ; to 
 the Church of England, to his University, to his friends. — ''' mother 
 of saints ! school of the wise ! nurse of the heroic ! of whom 
 went forth, in whom have dwelt, memorable names of old, to spread 
 the truth abroad, or to cherish and illustrate it at home ! thou 
 from whom surrounding nations lit their lamps ! virgin of Israel ! 
 wherefore dost thou now sit on the ground and keep silence, like one 
 of the foolish women who were without oil on the coming of the 
 Bridegroom? AVhere is now the ruler in Sion, and the doctor in the 
 temple, and the ascetic on Carmel, and the herald in the wilderness, 
 and the preacher in the market-place? ... my mother, 
 whence is this unto thee, that thou hast good things poured upon 
 thee and canst not keep them, and bearest children, yet darest not 
 own them? "Why hast thou not the skill to use their services, nor 
 the heart to rejoice in their love? How is it that whatever is generous 
 in purpose, and tender or deep in devotion, thy flower and thy 
 promise, falls from thy bosom and finds no home within thine arms ? 
 Who hath put this note upon thee to have ' a miscarrying womb and 
 dry breasts,' to be strange unto thine own flesh, and thine eye cruel 
 towards thy little ones ? Thine own offspring, the fruit of thy womb, 
 who would toil for thee, thou dost gaze upon with fear as though a 
 portent, or thou dost loathe as an offence — at best thou dost but 
 endure, as if they had no claim but on thy patience, self-possession, 
 and vigilance, to be rid of them as easily as thou mayst. Thou makest 
 them ' stand all the day idle ' as the very condition of thy bearing 
 with them ; or thou biddest them to be gone where they will be more 
 welcome; or thou sellest them for nought to the stranger that passes 
 by. . . . 
 
 22 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 " And, my brethren, kind and affectionate hearts, loving 
 friends, should you Icnow any one whose lot it has been, by writing 
 or by word of mouth, in some degree to help you thus to act; if he 
 has ever told you what you knew about yourselves or what you did 
 not know; has read to you your wants or feelings, and comforted 
 you by the very reading ; has made you feel that there was a higher 
 life than this daily one, and a brighter world than that you see ; or 
 encouraged you, or sobered you, or opened a way to the inquiring, 
 or soothed the perplexed ; if what he has said or done has ever made 
 you take interest in him, and feel well inclmed towards him; 
 remember such a one in time to come, though you hear him not, and 
 pray for him, that in all things he may know God's will, and at all 
 times he may be ready to fulfil it." 
 
 A little earlier than Xewman — in the great and troubled days, 
 fateful for the whole of humanity, which ushered in the century to 
 which Newman belonged— there had stood among the leaders of 
 England another man, whose life moved in another air than 
 Newman's, but in that other air had followed a strangely parallel 
 course. In early manhood he too had undergone a struggle that 
 shook him to the centre of his being, but at the same time unchained 
 and aroused the mighty powers that were sleeping in him — a struggle 
 in which he had mingled his fate with causes and institutions 
 that go beyond the individual and take in the world. And when his 
 soul had found its peace, he too had taken up his dwelling apart 
 from the noises of the world ; not, however, in a cloistral society, but 
 in the company of still lakes and whispering woodland and solemn 
 mountains, above him the alternate gloom and glory of the English 
 sky and round about him the dalesmen's homes and the dalesmen's 
 life. He too, through quiet years, had held like Newman high 
 counsel with his own soul and had lifted up his heart to the powers 
 that inhabit eternity ; nay, in this he had gone beyond Newman : for 
 he held counsel with nature also, and made his communion with her 
 a means toward — or rather, a form of — communion with the eternal. 
 And he too had spoken to the men of his generation; had spoken 
 with a voice that in authority, in loftiness, in austeritv'-, was equal to 
 
 23 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 Newman's own, and far surpassed Newman's in the catholicity of 
 elementary and simple human interest, and in the timeless and ageless 
 power of beauty. True, if you had met him face to face he would 
 not have made such conquest of you as Newman habitually made 
 of all who met him — unless, indeed, you were one of the few that 
 without allurement of external charm can be won to a mighty spirit 
 by its own native greatness. Newman's unfailing distinction, his 
 luminous ease, his unerring sense of fitness, his refined and winning 
 charm, his personal attractiveness, the splendour of his gentleness 
 and the splendour of his austerity — what trace of these was there, or 
 what equivalent for them, in that conversation which (save with 
 Coleridge and one or two others) was no medium of expression either 
 for the peace or for the passion of the intense and brooding soul of 
 Wordsworth ? And yet this gaunt and rugged man, with the " severe, 
 worn pressure of thought about his temples, a fire in his eye (as if 
 he saw something in objects more than the outward appearance), an 
 intense, high, narrow forehead, a Eoman nose, cheeks furrowed by 
 strong purpose and feeling " — this gaunt and rugged man is perhaps 
 the greatest name in the spiritual history of the English race in the 
 nineteenth century. He did that supreme thing which from the 
 beginning of the world until now few men have done : he looked upon 
 the world and upon the life of man with absolute directness and 
 clearness of gaze. The abstractness of the special sciences, the pas- 
 sions of sectarian theology, the limitations which the spirit of the 
 time is able to force upon men — it was as if these things simply were 
 not, when Wordsworth, strong in his solitude at the heart of things, 
 and immovable by the anger of his age, turned his eyes upon man, and 
 upon man's soul, and upon the facts and conditions of human life, 
 and expressed that which he saw in a poetry which fulfilled his own 
 great and most accurate definition and was "the breath and finer 
 spirit of all knowledge — the impassioned expression which is in the 
 countenance of all Science." i 
 
 For Wordsworth's attempt was something quite other than to 
 dream about nature, and to weave beautiful fancies around certain 
 of its more winning aspects, and in those dreams and fancies to find 
 a refuge from life or a solace for life. He sought, in the most 
 
 24 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 genuine sense of the terra, to know nature; sought to penetrate to 
 its real character and to grasp its ultimate meaning. This he sought 
 to do by long watching and resolute thought ; by sympathetic vision ; 
 by that contemplation which is a "revealing agency ";i by a com- 
 munion with nature which was like the friendship of a human heart 
 with a human heart or the companionship of a spirit with a spirit. 
 With a combination of meditation and perception, unparalleled in 
 the history of human insight save by Plato — meditation resolute to 
 the point of stubbornness in its perseverance and laboriousness, per- 
 ception that with the unclouded directness of intuition penetrated to 
 the inner nature of its object — he looked upon nature and looked 
 upon life ; and, looking, saw God in man, and saw nature as the form 
 of a spirit kindred in character to the spirit which is man, and 
 friendly to man in the great purposes of his life. And so, in Words- 
 worth's eyes, man's life, in its ordinary and daily course, in its 
 elemental duties and charities and delights, in its natural relation- 
 ships and natural surroundings, took on beauty and sacredness: — 
 took on the tenderest beauty and the deepest sacredness that God 
 can give or the universe contain. And this beauty and sacredness 
 of the ordinary life, of the ordinary duties and charities of life, of 
 the ordinary natural surroundings of life, Wordsworth felt not merely 
 for himself. He was able to make others feel it. He had (though 
 not continuously, nor without startling variations in degree) that 
 gift which to such high and severe natures is not always given — the 
 gift of artistic beauty, at times in its absolutely highest order of 
 elementary tenderness and elementary simplicity. So that he was 
 able to cast about our ordinary life, and about the nature which is 
 its earthly home, the supreme consecration of poetic light. And this 
 in a way peculiarly his own: not with that lavish prodigality of the 
 poetic imagination which at one stroke puts the object that it beau- 
 tifies out of touch with our ordinary thought and beyond the horizon 
 of our daily life ; but with a '' stern spiritual frugality "^ which at 
 
 1 F. W. H. Myers, Wordsworth, p. 131. Compare the whole chapter, pp. 124-153; and 
 chapters IV.-VI. in Mr. Walter Raleigh's admirable volume {Wordsworth : London, 1903). 
 
 2 R. H. Hutton, Literary Essays (Macmillan, 1896), p. 91. 
 
 25 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUKE 
 
 once beautifies and sanctifies its object, and yet leaves that object 
 a genuine and integral part of our human life upon the human eartli.^ 
 
 These two men stand, then, each in his own way, as the repre- 
 sentatives of one great principle — that a divine presence is the reality 
 of the world, and that the consciousness of that presence is the 
 supreme illumination for a man's soul. 
 
 "Each in his own way," I have said. And indeed, while that 
 truth toward which they turn is one, no two men upon the earth 
 could well be more difl:erent in the way in which they apprehend it, 
 or in the quarters from which they turn their faces toward it. For 
 the ways by which the soul enters into union with greater or with 
 ultimate truth are many; and among those many ways are two which 
 stand radically opposed. If, for instance, you would be face to face 
 with the heavenly splendour of the dawn, you may go out into the 
 free fields, where all the dewdrops are lustrous for very purity and 
 in the absolute stillness of early morning the great trees stand in 
 their solitary and monumental peace unroused to the tumult of the 
 day. There you may take your stand, and there you may front the 
 heavenly glory, and there, looking upon it, you may know yourself 
 for a part of it, and may recognise that a city greater than Siena is 
 opening to you her heart and in speech not alien to your own is 
 declaring to you once more your citizenship in her. That you may 
 do. But you may do something very different. You may have 
 come to distrust yourself utterly and hopelessly; perhaps because 
 others taught you that it is right to do so; perhaps because of long 
 pain and long failure. And hence you may never have dared — or 
 never have learned — to go about in the world with the open heart and 
 the seeing eye and the undaunted step of a son in his father's house. 
 Eather you have withdrawn from the world and have submitted 
 yourself to an authority greater than yourself; and when morning 
 
 1 Wordsworth's poetry wa«? " not properly an augury, but an interpretation. It led 
 man up to the recognition of his own greatness, as universalised by communion with 
 nature and intercourse with his kind. It was conversant, not with subtleties of the 
 imagination, but with the great, the obvious, the habitual, with the common earth, the 
 universal sky, the waters rolling evermore, the abiding social powers that lift man out of 
 his animal i^elf, and render him 'magnanimous to correspond with heaven'; with these 
 restored to the ancient glory that belongs to them in their intelligible relations, but from 
 which the prone and poring gaze of a false philosophy had during a century of conceit 
 been diverted." (T. H. Green, Works, Vol. III., p. 120.) 
 
 26 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 comes it is only through the gateway or the deep window of some 
 monastic enclosure that you can turn your eyes eastward. And the 
 unyielding outline of that cloistral stone it is that then determines 
 and defines what part of that heavenly glory, and how much of it, you 
 shall see. 
 
 The former way of viewing the nature which is in man and in the 
 material order was Wordswortlrs. That, in fact, to the man who 
 looks with intelligent eyes upon the spiritual history of mankind, is 
 what the name "'Wordsworth" stands for. From the beginning 
 until now, he is the supreme instance of it among the r^ces that 
 speak English; if not among all the races of the world. But 
 Newman's method was the other. Himself as an individual he had 
 distrusted; especially had distrusted the power of his owtl individual 
 intellect to reach ultimate truth. And yet there was in him an 
 imperious demand for the very truth which he distrusted his own 
 power of attaining, and for the guidance which such truth alone can 
 give to life. From the beginning it had been his prayer and his 
 passionate desire that his soul might be with the saints ; not standing 
 alone in mere individuality, nor left to its own caprices and mistakes, 
 nor wasted in some blind alley of the world's afEairs, nor lost in some 
 wandering by-path of mistaken thoughts; but with the saints — with 
 the men by whose labours the central path in the history of man has 
 been driven through the midst of the years. And slowly there had 
 dawned upon him that mighty vision which to such a man has the 
 power of absolute compulsion. An institution august with solem- 
 nities of ancient prayer, august with a thousand sanctities and a 
 thousand heroic memories, august -nith mighty names innumerable 
 and mighty deeds, the home of saints and the guardian of belief, 
 drew him to herself and subdued to herself all his heart and made 
 him in humility and obedience her son. To her. with a sense of 
 gladness and of rest, he gave himself and gave the keeping of his 
 life. And so he found rest; and having found rest was able to do, 
 more positively and constructively than before, the work which it lay 
 in him to do for the men of his day. 
 
 But the price was a dear one ; and it was paid still more by those 
 who sat at his feet than by himself. For in precisely that side of 
 
 27 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 his work which most deeply concerned the men of England, his true 
 strength was veiled. The things that he himself had learned so 
 thoroughly, and that all men need to learn — things universal, essen- 
 tial, elemental, catholic — he preferred to base upon the authority of an 
 earthly dogma and an earthly institution ; and to mingle with them, in 
 obedience to that same authority, things not universal, not essential, 
 not elemental, and therefore not catholic. So that those who hear 
 him have always to separate that in his words which belongs to essen- 
 tial eternity from that which belongs to the party interest of a magnifi- 
 cent but sectarian priesthood. 
 
 And to this so radical difference between the two men in their 
 method of apprehending truth, there corresponded a difference in 
 their manner of expressing it. Wordsworth, having " seen into 
 the life of things " by that sort of companionship with them which 
 passes over into a comprehension of their inner and ultimate reality, 
 was, in his expression of what he had thus seen, a poet. And that 
 in the true and most strict sense of the word. He was not a man 
 who wrought out a system of philosophy or of theology, and then 
 gave to it an alien garb of more or less successful rhythmic utterance. 
 He was not even a man who lived — to use Mr. Stopford Brooke's 
 fine metaphor^ — in that " mingled region " of poetry where " its 
 waves and currents near the coast receive the deep streams of religious 
 and philosophic thought." His voyage and his home were upon its 
 " central and lonely deep," where poetry is poetry and nothing else. 
 Hence when Wordsworth is here spoken of as among the greatest 
 of the spiritual leaders of the English race, the Wordsworth that is 
 meant is Wordsworth the poet. He was a captain of the spirit, was 
 among the greatest of all captains of the spirit, because he exercised, 
 and in exercising, supremely a certain supreme function — the function 
 of the sacred poet. But Newman, meeting God in the inner heart, 
 was as characteristically and as inevitably a prophet, in the strictest 
 sense of that great word. To impress — I had almost said, to force — 
 his consciousness of a divine presence and a divine commandment 
 upon the men of his generation, making no slightest particle of con- 
 cession either to their practical or to their theoretical materialism, 
 
 1 Hibbert Journal, No. 1 (October, 1902), p. 62. 
 28 
 
AXD THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 was the supreme business of his life. Kesolutely he set the whole 
 of life in the light of ultimate eternity. Unflinchingly he insisted 
 that every interest, every ambition, every affection, every dominant 
 fashion and accepted tendency, should answer at that bar for its life. 
 Authoritatively, uncompromisingly, in season and out of season, that 
 voice and that pen, and, above all, that solitary and devoted life, 
 declared that we men are living our lives in a divine presence; and 
 that that divine presence is the one essential reality with which in our 
 lives we have to do, and obedience to its purpose and commandment 
 the one business of life which can claim in any sense to be of 
 importance. 
 
 Different enough, then, the two men were: — different in individual 
 habit and personal presence; different in the region and climate of 
 their minds; different in their ways, as of approaching and appre- 
 hending, so also of expressing, truth. But here our main concern 
 is not with these differences but with that in which they agreed; 
 with their consciousness of a divine presence and of that presence 
 as the ultimate reality of the world and of our life. 
 
 11. 
 
 Once, among the men from whom we moderns draw our blood and 
 our speech, and in whose places we now stand, such a consciousness, 
 under the more limited of the two forms just described, dominated life. 
 A "consciousness of a divine presence and of that presence as the 
 ultimate reality of the world and of our life," and a consequent con- 
 sciousness of the supremacy of spiritual interests, were central and 
 determinative among the forces that made the mediaeval world what 
 it was. So far as the religious spirit of their time lived in them, 
 mediaeval men habitually looked upon themselves as members of an 
 eternal order and citizens of an eternal kingdom. They worked " as 
 seeing One who is invisible," and as "not being disobedient to a 
 heavenly vision." They remembered that in order to live we must 
 die, and that in every department of life the divine ordinance is the 
 cross with its principle of self-renunciation and of living "not to be 
 
 29 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 ministered unto, but to minister.'' They lived " under the power of 
 the world to come;" and if this present world showed itself to their 
 understanding as the foe of that world, they did not shrink from the 
 separation, but made strong their souls, and denied the present world 
 and all its love, and walked in it as strangers and pilgrims. This 
 was in their hearts ; and in the great confession of their day, the book 
 De Imitatione Christi, it spoke itself into words for ever; but it 
 was no mere maxim for meditation and confession — it was a genuine 
 principle of unity of life. Eor that generation as truly as any other 
 " went forth unto its work and to its labour until the evening " : — 
 nay, more truly, for the middle age stands as in all the history of the 
 world pre-eminently the age of great workmen ; not of great machines, 
 nor of great financial combinations standing over against sullen and 
 reluctant labourers, but of great workmen and of the delight in 
 craftsmanship which great workmen can feel. And that which was 
 in their hearts and in their confession — that habitual remembrance 
 of God and craving to be at one with Him, that incessant and 
 insistent vision of a world to come and of a divine order which 
 earthly eyes cannot apprehend but which is manifest in the cross — 
 was also in their action and achievement. They worked greatly in 
 the field of the intellect; and the effort was to gather all science 
 into one thoroughly-articulated knowledge of God, which in part 
 should illuminate, but still more should rebuke, the ways of this 
 present world. They worked with equal greatness in the field of art ; 
 and there too — though it is specially in art that the human soul 
 rejoices in its own powers and in the exercise of them for their own 
 sake — they were under the banner of the world to come. For when 
 they painted, it was the judgment, the heaven, the hell, which give to 
 this life its awful significance; or it was the saints in their conflict 
 with the world; or our Lord submitting Himself to the helplessness 
 of infancy, or undergoing the death of the cross, or rising in that 
 resurrection which showed another world triumphant over the ways 
 of this. Or when they built — and they were for the sustained 
 spiritual passion that animated their work the greatest builders in 
 the history of the world — their building culminated in houses 
 of prayer which lift themselves almost out of connexion with the 
 
 30 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 earth and express in the most stately of all man's languages the 
 majesty of heavenly things and the upward movement of the soul 
 in prayer toward that majesty. Even when they sang, romance and 
 folk-song — the delight of the young in earthly love, and the illumina- 
 tion of this present life by the naive imagination — were felt to stand 
 half-unconsecrated without the gate, while within the singing was 
 that of men whose vigil was for another country and whose love was 
 set upon a farther shore. And as were the works so were the men. 
 If a man arose, at once to embody the ideals of the age and to dom- 
 inate its higher imagination, it was Bernard controlling Europe from 
 that lowly cell where as the proper business of his life he sought the 
 mystic vision of God; or it was Francis, with his humility, his self- 
 denial, his pity and tenderness and loving ministration to the poor, 
 his canticle of praise to our Lord for " our sister, the death of the 
 body " and for " all those who forgive one another for His love's 
 sake." Pilgrims of eternity, encamped for one troubled night upon 
 this shore — such the men over whom the spirit of that age had power 
 felt themselves to be. The " lyrical cry " of their life was that of 
 Israel ; but the cry wrung from solitary hearts in Israel by the afflic- 
 tions of the righteous and the measureless prosperity of the wicked 
 and the desperation and disaster of Israel's struggle for racial exist- 
 ence, had become in them a settled conviction and an habitual temper : 
 
 Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel. 
 
 And afterward receive me to glory. 
 
 Whom have I in heaven but thee ? 
 
 And there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. 
 
 My flesh and my heart faileth : 
 
 But God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. 
 
 God was the strength of their heart; God and the world to come 
 were the realities that filled their thought. And precisely from this 
 arose what we have just had to see : though the world was not their 
 home, yet, so far as they looked upon it at all, they were worthy 
 workmen in its affairs. The fact that they viewed the world from a 
 point high above it, gave them alike in thought and in action a 
 double strength : gave them, first, the loftiness of mind which arises 
 out of a great devotion — and the devotion of the unworldly to their 
 
 31 
 
THE STUDY OF NATURE 
 
 causes is, as the inner soul of action, a power unspeakably greater 
 than ambition; gave them, secondly, the spirit of comprehensive 
 unity. Not only did they seek the unity, under a divine idea, of the 
 intellectual outlook upon life; they sought a still greater goal — the 
 unity, in a divine order, of the social organisation of life. The con- 
 scious or unconscious aspiration after that twofold unity was, to their 
 mind its inner power, to their society the highest of its organising 
 principles. 
 
 In this way — a way narrow but profound and masterful — a con- 
 sciousness of the supremacy of the spirit and of spiritual interests 
 once dominated life. And of the men who bore that consciousness 
 we are the children; we stand in the succession of their blood and of 
 their labour. But we view the world and live our life in a temper 
 radically different from theirs. The men amongst us who view life 
 in a way similar to theirs, or in a way kindred to theirs but broader, 
 are not the representative men, the men whose spirit is an expression 
 and epitome of a temper which clearly or unclearly is common to us 
 all — the men who are to our day what Bernard or Francis was to 
 his. It is true (now that the immediate personal conflicts are over) 
 that we are very willing to listen to such men as Newman ; still more 
 willing to listen to such men as Wordsworth. Indeed we listen to 
 them with an urbanity, a completeness of intellectual toleration, which 
 in mediaeval days one at least of them would have looked for in vain. 
 We give them, in fact, everything they ask — except the one supreme 
 thing which they demand most of all. We appreciate the excellence 
 of their literary worlcmanship. We do justice to the height of their 
 characters. We are grateful to them for the grace and the dignity 
 which they have added to our life, and for the honour accruing from 
 their work to the English tongue. We listen gladly to the one as the 
 bearer of a poetic vision. We hearken respectfully to the other as the 
 prophet of what, with the forbearing courtesy of well-bred men but 
 with hearts untouched, we call mystic piety. Only let us view them 
 as a specially noble sort of dreamers, weaving around the hard core 
 of the actual reality of things a garment of fancy and high emotion 
 which adorns and dignifies its surface but can make no claim to 
 
 32 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 express its true nature: — then they are quite intelligible to us; 
 indeed, with our sense of the bareness and hardness of our life, not 
 only intelligible but very estimable. But as soon as we are told that 
 their words are the plain and simple truth about our world, and about 
 the meaning of our life in it, and about our actual everyday affairs; 
 as soon as we are told that their valuation of the things we modern 
 men are all striving for is the true valuation: — at that instant we 
 feel a great gulf fixed between us and them; a gulf so deep as to 
 preclude either mutual understanding or mutual sympathy or a com- 
 mon aim in life. 
 
 So radical is the difference in temper between us and the mediasval 
 men whose children we are. But a glance at the history which lies 
 between us and them will show that the change was inevitable. For 
 in their position there lay a double difficulty. They forgot certain 
 great works of God which cannot be forgotten without shattering 
 soon or late the man or the age or the institution that forgets them. 
 First, they forgot the natural world. With all their understanding 
 of the supremacy of the spirit and of spiritual interests, they did not 
 understand that nature also teaches that supremacy, and is herself, 
 to those who Icnow her as she is, and are able to use her wisely, a 
 means toward it. And because their position thus did injustice to 
 nature and the natural order, the time came when the man of science, 
 the poet, and the ordinary man, had, each in his own way, to rebel 
 against it. Secondly, save to rebuke it, they almost forgot the natural 
 soul of man. But that soul contains powers which soon or late must 
 come to their right: powers of affection and of passion; artistic 
 powers and powers of the systematic intellect; and that power of 
 initiative which makes man, like the God from whom he comes, in 
 his own order a creator and founder. To a few of these capacities 
 of the natural soul, the mediaeval system, it is true, gave magnificent 
 scope — specially in the art of building; but most of them it scorned 
 or repressed; and, by its tendency to change faith from an energy 
 of the divinely illuminated individual soul into a systematic creed 
 laid down by an authoritative institution, it sinned so deeply against 
 human nature as to drive men at last into the modern position that 
 the only illumination worth having is that of a free man, that even 
 
 4 33 
 
THE STUDY OF NATURE 
 
 a heavenly vision is not to be received unless it come as to a free 
 spirit. 
 
 So that the man who studies history, however much he love that 
 age of great workmen and of great workmanship and of great souls 
 whose citizenship was in heaven, has to insist that the age could not 
 continue. And, at first sight, the student of history seems able to 
 go still farther ; seems able to point out the way in which the advance 
 should have been made. It should have been by growth, not by rebel- 
 lion and revolution. The principle should not have been thrown away 
 because it had been practised too narrowly. With the great achieve- 
 ment of mediaeval men a complete break should not have been made. 
 Their light should not have been treated as though it were merely and 
 simply darkness; rather it should have been retained in its integrity 
 but freed from its limitations. Men should live still as citizens of 
 the world to come, but recognising that of the world to come the 
 present world is an organic part. The divine idea should still be 
 seen as the one important reality in human life; but it should be 
 remembered that the stage in the realisation of that idea at which we 
 men can directly and sincerely labour, is the one found in the causes 
 and activities which make up the life of a normal man in this present 
 world — the life of the good neighbour, good citizen, good churchman. 
 Or, to put all this in one word, the true way of advance from the 
 mediaeval position was to pass from the type of insight and of 
 spiritual consciousness represented in modern form by Newman to 
 that represented by Wordsworth. 
 
 But whatever the reason be, the history of the universe — so far, 
 at any rate, as the history of man on this earth is a part of it and 
 an index to its nature — does not go on by any such direct and easy 
 method. The God from whom we come shows Himself in His work 
 a Lord of Hosts. He develops the powers of His creatures and the 
 life of His universe by calling forth the mighty opposites that He has 
 implanted in the natures of things, so that each develops its truth 
 and its power against the other, until at last the very stress and pain 
 of the conflict lead men to that still wider truth in which justice is 
 done to the incomplete truth which each side had and was developing. 
 Fortunately or unfortunately, it is as true in the kingdom of the 
 
 34 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 spirit as il is in tlie physical order that plain daylight is a thing 
 most complex. All the great kinds of light (if one may so speak) 
 have to be discovered and set in their places, by hard labour — some- 
 tuues by hard fighting and many wounds and wanderings — before 
 that day can come in which all the types of light will blend in the 
 illumination which alone in the full sense of the word can be called 
 truth. 
 
 And so it was that the spiritual splendour which in the medieval 
 dawn of our history gleamed through cloud and storm and over the 
 brute earth, was not, in the direct fashion mentioned an instant ago, 
 to deepen into a more inclusive day. Age after age was to come, each 
 in its own way a ver}^ antithesis to the mediaeval. First came the 
 Eenaissance. 3Ien flung themselves with absolute delight upon the 
 resources of this present life, and for the first time after many cen- 
 turies lived as masters and lords of this present world. New worlds 
 they discovered in themselves; new worlds across the sea; and in the 
 products of ancient culture, the most alluring of all their new worlds. 
 They loved the world, and the sorrow in their words was because 
 upon all the objects of their delight they found it written that the 
 world and the fashion of it pass away. Augustine's mourning 
 was that he had lived in the things of the world so long and had 
 found God so late : " I have loved Thee late. Thou Beauty so old 
 and so new ; I have loved Thee late !" But the deep undernote of 
 lament in the greater Eenaissance writings was because the glorious 
 children of the earth, in the midst of their life found themselves to 
 be in death. And yet their love of the world was no ignoble passion ; 
 their delight in the things of the world had in it such a magnificence 
 of mind that it was a religion rather than a slavery; and to-day, it 
 is the better men and not the worse who in hidden places of their 
 souls have still the banner of the Eenaissance flying. But already, 
 unknown to the men of the Eenaissance, profounder and more terrific 
 forces than their view of life comprehended, were " toiling in the 
 gloom," and soon throughout Europe, first in religion and then in 
 political affairs, the trumpets were calling to war. In the end that 
 war exhausted or destroyed nearly all that was noble in the forces 
 which had given rise to it, and left for the close of the seventeenth 
 
 35 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUKE 
 
 century aud liie earlier part of the eighteenth, a world degraded and 
 desolate, a world that slowly regained the solid comforts of life, and 
 acquired a certain hard and polished culture, but in which, probably 
 to a greater extent than in any other Western century since Eome fell, 
 the visible and established elements of society, churches and theo- 
 logians, rulers and ruled, forgot God. And then came our own day. 
 It dawned at Paris; dawned in blood, and with mighty passions — 
 passions social and political and one might almost say religious, 
 which spread their energy throughout the world; but it proved in 
 the end, and not unnaturally, to be the day of the scientific intellect. 
 That intellect had long been held in check: alike in the age of 
 passionate devotion to the humanities, and in the age of war, and 
 in the hard age that had no place either for the enthusiasms of the 
 pure intellect or for the devotion of the mind to nature. But now 
 at last it came to its own; or rather, as is usual in such cases, to 
 more than its own. Without the lofty Eenaissance passion, without 
 the special Eenaissance delight in life, free also from much of the 
 eighteenth-century hardness of spirit, it set itself to master the world. 
 As an investigating intellect, it made itself at home with the facts 
 and laws of nature ; as a contriving intelligence, it reduced the powers 
 of nature to practical uses — bringing in at last the day of which Bacon 
 prophesied with such large magnificence of speech, but which prob- 
 ably he would view with a certain lordly contempt, if, with Eliza- 
 bethan memories, he were suddenly to come to life in it. 
 
 Such an intervening history places more than the mere lapse of 
 time between us and the medieval men who won from chaos, and 
 established with settled forms and laws, that living and thinking 
 which it is now our business to carry on. When we compare our 
 mind, and the world of our life, with their world and their mind, 
 we may sum up the loss and gain in two broad statements. First, 
 while both in spirit and in skill of hand we are poorer workmen than 
 the medieval men were, yet we have a mastery of this present world 
 which they had not. We have explored, as they could not, the possi- 
 bilities of the present life, and have entered, both intellectually and 
 practically, into possession of the two great kingdoms which it con- 
 tains — on the one side, the kingdom of nature with its powers; on 
 
 36 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 the other, the kingdom of humane culture and of the liigher passions 
 and affections. Other men might use the materials which the world 
 affords in building great houses of prayer to testify of another world 
 and by their very majesty to shame into nothingness the vanities of 
 this; we have found that those materials can be used in erecting and 
 adorning mansions for the present habitation of our own souls. And, 
 having such houses for our souls, we cannot regard ourselves, while 
 upon the earth, as strangers and sojourners. Eather we feel ourselves 
 to be citizens of no mean city; a city which we have placed on sure 
 foundations by taking as the servants of our life the powers of nature, 
 and as the tutors of our minds the laws of nature. 
 
 But secondly, in this very conquest of the world we have to a 
 great extent become lost in the world. AVe have made the earth our 
 own; but have become too much confined to it. It goes, indeed, with- 
 out sajdng, that the latter does not follow logically from the former. 
 For the discovery of the greatness of the present life is absolutely 
 no reason for ceasing to live the great present life under the power of 
 some still greater life to come. The connexion, as already has been 
 indicated, is one not of logic in the narrower sense, but of that greater 
 logic which is history. The Eenaissance revolt contributed to it in 
 one M^ay; the Thirty Years' TTar in another; the eighteenth century 
 in still another. And we ourselves managed badly; we flung our- 
 selves so eagerly into the new fields and the new life that our hands 
 became subdued to what they were working in. But here it is with 
 the fact, rather than with the fault, that we are concerned. And 
 the fact may be considered as moving in two spheres, a narrower and 
 a wider. 
 
 (a) 
 
 The narrower sphere is that of thought. Here the new situation 
 consists in a changed view of the field of knowledge. The things 
 that we regard as certain — the things that are the objects of reliable 
 and indisputable insight — are things strictly of this world. We have 
 the knowledge of nature; that is assured and established science. 
 Some of us feel that this assured science permits something farther; 
 something which, if any one so chooses, may be called a knowledge 
 
 37 
 
THE STUDY OF NATURE 
 
 of God, but would more properly be called a faith or a hope. Others 
 of us believe that our science of nature does not permit such farther 
 '• knowledge " or '' faith." But what we all seem agreed upon is 
 that the two are essentially dilt'erent things ; the knowledge of nature 
 and the knowledge of God cannot be regarded as essentially akin, as 
 two stages in one growing insight, or as two levels in one and the 
 same structure. 
 
 In this shattering of the former unity of science, and this limita- 
 tion of knowledge in the strict sense of the term to one of the frag- 
 ments, the leading influence has been the modern study of nature. 
 But we must notice with special care how the exertion of such an 
 influence has been rendered possible. It has been made possible, 
 not from one side but from two : from the side of the men of natural 
 science themselves; and from the side of the theological leaders of 
 the church. 
 
 First, from the side of the men of science. The movement of 
 thought by which many of these passed from their knowledge of 
 nature to a materialistic or agnostic view of the world has already 
 been described.^ It is sufficient here to indicate the result. This 
 was the placing before modern men of a teaching about life and the 
 world, which was not new, indeed, but M'hich now took on a new power. 
 For it was inculcated now by men deservedly of great influence ; men 
 of wide knowledge, of disciplined mind, of undoubted honesty, the 
 leaders in the most striking and most evidently successful of the 
 intellectual labours of modern times. Moreover the movement of 
 thought by which it was now reached (though really involving a 
 great oversight) was so direct that the resultant view seemed to be 
 based immediately upon established and indisputable science. That 
 the physical process is continuous and its sum of energy constant; 
 that it must lead our planet soon or late to a dead eternity in which 
 self-conscious life can have no footing: — these (so that resultant 
 view may be stated) are the things that are beyond dou])t, and upon 
 them anything wliich is to be a sober and relialile wisdom for the 
 conduct of life must base itself. Hence it is no longer open to us 
 to regard ourselves as other than beings of the present world; nor 
 
 1 Sv})rn, pp. 4, 5. 
 
 38 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 to regard as otliei* than visionary any view which makes " the great 
 purpose of life " to be " a purpose to which this life hardly more than 
 introduces us." If you would know the true character and meaning 
 and destiny of human life, there is but one way to gain the knowledge : 
 you must consider the total system of which that life is a part ; that 
 is to say, you must consider the system of natural facts, out of which 
 it arises and in which it is lived. If you ask : But was it not those 
 very facts that Wordsworth considered? the answer comes in very 
 direct words: "His views were a poet's fancies; fancies clad in 
 beauty, but none the less fancies. And the dreams of a poet, or the 
 visions of hearts that cling to life and to love, cannot take precedence 
 of established and disinterested knowledge. Such knowledge it is 
 that we have in the sciences of nature, and it affords no ground for 
 visions and hopes that go beyond this present life. Modern science, 
 in one word, has shattered old religion." 
 
 But as was indicated above, the fact that the modern scientific 
 movement has contributed to the materialisation of thought and of 
 life has been made possible, not only from the side of the men of 
 science, but also from the side of the theological leaders of the church. 
 And the latter is the greater and the sadder story. Theology, upon 
 the older conception of it, included all knowledge. It meant the 
 whole of science brought to the unity of a supreme and ultimate 
 principle; brought to unity in and as a knowledge of God. Hence 
 the theologians were bound by their own conception of their task 
 to be catholic-minded, to be hospitable to all the orders of science. 
 The notion of theology as a single special science standing among 
 the other special sciences, and at war with some of them, was a 
 notion which — if they could have formed it — they would have rejected 
 as monstrous. On the contrary, it was only by taking all the sciences 
 as their "parish," and considering each as part of the knowledge of 
 God, that they could fulfil their function. Hence — inevitable as was 
 their failure to complete their science — they were qualified by the very 
 nature of their attempt to perform one great service for humanity. 
 If there came an intellectual movement — whether the recovery of 
 Aristotelian treatises or the founding of new sciences — bringing with 
 it a body of knowledge new but convincing to th,e age, they, as theo- 
 
 39 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 logians, were the men at once obliged and qualified to receive it, to 
 interpret it, and to set it in its place in the one knowledge of God. 
 
 It was precisely such a work of interpretation that the modern 
 world needed from its theologians. There had come a great, a trium- 
 phantly successful, scientific movement, giving us a better acquaint- 
 ance than ever before with that work of God which is the natural 
 world. The duty of theology was to receive with catholicity of mind 
 that new body of science, to penetrate to its real significance, and so 
 to give it its place in the one body of man's knowledge of God. To 
 have received in that way the sciences of nature, to have viewed suh 
 specie aeternitatis their work, and so to have given to them their 
 " divine interpretation " — this, and this alone, would have given us 
 what we needed. For what we needed was not polemic, but a point 
 of view from which we could look upon both sides of the conflict, and 
 see into the ultimate harmony in one rational world of the great 
 truths which seemed to have come from radically different worlds and 
 to be in death-struggle with each other. 
 
 That we needed; and that the theology of Albert or of Thomas, 
 recognising its high prerogative of being the guide of the human race 
 in those spiritual crises which the revolutions of time bring forth, 
 would have striven with all its might to give. But the greater prin- 
 ciples and greater procedures of those masters had long ceased to 
 obtain; their conception of theology, with its demand for a compre- 
 hensive view of the world and consequently for a catholic attitude 
 toward all sciences that deal with, the world, had long been forgotten ; 
 or if remembered, was remembered with grave dislike. " Systematic 
 theology,'' as it was when the minds were being formed of those who 
 are now doing the world's work, would have beeil remarkable to St. 
 Thomas chiefly for its limitations, for its absent problems and absent 
 provinces; he would have shuddered alike at the narrowness of its 
 scope and at its dread of the greater enginery of the intellect. It is 
 impossible, indeed, to enter here into any lengthy comparison of the 
 new conception and place of theology with the old. But the essential 
 nature of the difference may be very briefly indicated : 
 
 Just as, upon the highest conception of the matter, religion arises 
 from the practical passion after God, so theology arises from the 
 
 40 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 intellectual passion after God. But the knowledge of God means all 
 knowledge; to know God means also to know the world; unless you 
 are a J\lystic, there is no such thing for you as a knowledge of God 
 which is not also science of the world. And if you urge that with 
 you theology is less proud, and renounces so high an endeavour; that 
 the one thing you are intent upon is the salvation of the soul; that 
 your one function as a theologian is to cast intellectual light upon 
 the course of that salvation and thus, even though it be indirectly, 
 to assist in it : — your new definition of your science still does not free 
 you from the obligation to walk in its greater way. For what is the 
 salvation of the soul ? That question you can answer only by raising 
 another: What is the soul? What the salvation of the soul is, 
 depends on what the soul itself is; unless you know what the soul is, 
 you do not know either what its salvation properly consists in, or how 
 wide the scope of that salvation is. But if you would know what 
 the soul is, you are brought by a double road to a demand for the 
 knowledge of God. First, to know what the soul is, you must 
 know the true nature of the world, of which the soul is a part, and 
 in whose order and conditions the soul lives its life and has its place 
 to fill ; and thus to know the world you must know God whose char- 
 acter is the ultimate character of the world, and whose purpose is 
 the ultimate law of its order. Secondly, and directly, if you would 
 know what the soul is, you must apprehend the nature of its source, 
 that is, of God, and the nature of the end for which He made it, the 
 attaining of which is its salvation. So that theology, in order to be 
 a wisdom of salvation, must be a wisdom of the soul, a wisdom of the 
 world, a wisdom of God. And the scientific or constructive order of 
 these should be noted. Wliether the first and impelling interest of 
 the theologian is in the soul or in God; that which is first in the order 
 of scientific construction is God. In anything which is to be a 
 " system " of theology, the knowledge of God — that is to say, the 
 theistic view of the world — must stand as the priiis of the knowledge 
 of salvation. Unless theology is to be blind, unless it is to build its 
 upper structure without giving any attention to its foundations, it 
 must begin by working out, with all the completeness possible to such 
 an intellect as man's, the theistic view of the world ; and in its sub- 
 
 41 
 
THE STUDY OF NATURE 
 
 sequent work, soteriology or eschatology, it must take up no positions 
 inconsistent with the principles of that theistic view. Whichever 
 interest, then, sets us upon the work of theology, with whichever con- 
 ception of it we approach it, we are brought, first or last, to the fact 
 that, in order to discharge any of its functions, it must be that highest 
 and final science which is at once a wisdom of God and of the world — 
 of God as realising His purpose in and through the history of the 
 world; of the world as at once the scene and the process of a divine 
 activity. 
 
 It is in this regard that theology upon the medigeval conception 
 of it, and modern professional theology, are essentially diverse. The 
 view which mediseval theologians took of their work approximated 
 to that just described. Hence they were profoundly in earnest about 
 the theistic view of the world. They may not have succeeded — per- 
 haps no man can succeed — in working out such a view consistently; 
 but at any rate the attempt was made as the first and fundamental 
 labour of theology, and to it was devoted the whole energy of one of 
 the greatest of intellectual generations. By one and the same inten- 
 tion their theology was a wisdom of God and a wisdom of the universe. 
 But modern systematic theolog}^, at the time when the sciences of 
 nature were beginning to dominate the intellectual field, was dis- 
 tinguished by nothing more than by a great timidity about the theistic 
 view of the world; nothing was farther from its thoughts than to be 
 a wisdom of the universe. How anything so contrary to nature as 
 this — for theology afraid of theism is like mathematics afraid of being 
 mathematical — could come to be, is a long story the main outlines 
 of which are easily traceable by the student but cannot except in a 
 brief reference be noted here. In broad terms, the change was simply 
 a part of the general and inevitable breaking up of the mediaeval 
 unity of thought and life. Theology became separated, on the one 
 side from metaphysic and from the metaphysical mind, on the other 
 from the special sciences. And that meant that it lost from both 
 sides its capacity for discharging its older function — its function of 
 receiving scientific knowledge and giving it its divine interpretation. 
 And then too, this tendency of theology to become a smaller thing 
 both in its intellectual soul and in its outward extent, was fostered 
 
 42 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD. 
 
 by another aspect of modern life— the dividedness of the church. 
 Theology no longer had "centre everywhere." In some of the 
 churches " systematic theology " fell into the background altogether, 
 the institution preferring to stand in its own living and continuous 
 strength. While, where it did survive, it was usually with an unhappy 
 procedure. Instead of seeking first the knowledge of God, and then 
 basing upon that its account of salvation, it came more and more to 
 have as its centre of gravity, came more and more to be " built 
 around," a certain forensic scheme of soteriology. That scheme, as 
 a matter of historical fact, was not fairly drawn from any of the 
 chief theological sources. It had almost no connexion with the actual 
 mind of Jesus as shown in the Evangelia. It did no justice to St. 
 Paul's great philosophy of the world and of history, which centres 
 in the views (1) that the supreme principle of the order of the uni- 
 verse is the eternal Christ — in Christ the universe consists — and (2) 
 that God's attitude toward man, as revealed in Christ, is one of grace, 
 not of that requirement of legal satisfaction for wrong done which is 
 the exact opposite of grace. It stood at an unspeakable remove from 
 St. John's view of Jesus — that He is the Word in whom the character 
 of the Father and His attitude toward men and the world stand 
 revealed ; that, in other words, He came into the world not to change 
 the Father's attitude toward men, but came because of it and to reveal 
 it. Eather it had arisen under the influence of Eoman Law and of 
 the Roman legal and political mind (with Jewish law in the back- 
 ground), and had been fostered in the West by ideas and procedures 
 belonging to the primitive jurisprudence of the Germanic peoples. 
 But though so largely heathen in its origin, it had come to be regarded 
 as Christian because it was so tenaciously held by Christians, and 
 because it could be supported by a careful selection of passages from 
 St. Paul. For the men in question, this forensic scheme of soteriology 
 rvas theology; and anything beyond it they were inclined to dread. 
 Of necessity they called themselves theists ; but, while they could be 
 severe upon those w^ho were not called by that name, there was 
 nothing from which they shrank with a deeper repugnance than the 
 bringing out into clear light of the meaning and the implications of 
 the theistic view of the world. But precisely that theistic view it was 
 
 43 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 which, seriously held and seriously developed, would have enabled 
 them to receive the new knowledge of nature and to .make it at home 
 as part of the knowledge of God. Eor what the intelligent theist 
 knows is precisely this: that just because God dwells in eternity, He 
 is the informing spirit, the home and the goal, of the world that now 
 is; that of Him the natural order is a visible Word, and therefore 
 the study of nature the study of a part of his thought; that in the 
 actual history of yesterday and to-day and to-morrow He is at work 
 realising an eternal purpose, and through a thousand channels is call- 
 ing upon men to work along with Him; that He is the nearest of 
 all things to each man's heart, seeking to win each man's heart to 
 Himself and to become its supreme principle and central energy — 
 the Father, in a thousand ways and by a thousand appeals seeking to 
 win the hearts of His prodigal children back to Himself and to 
 engage them in the great works at which He Himself is working. 
 Such theism, however, they could not enter upon, much less develop 
 into clear articulation as a view of nature and of history. It lay too 
 far from that with which their minds were filled — the view of the 
 universe as a court of law; of the divine administration of the uni- 
 verse as consisting in the transactions and expedients of such a court; 
 of the death of Jesus as central in those transactions, greatest among 
 those expedients. 
 
 As was said before, the question is one of fact, not one of fault. 
 Perhaps (though few nowadays care to believe it) it is well for us, 
 when we study history, to carry our hearts — our humanity, not our 
 partisanship — ^back with us to the bygone struggles, and mourn for 
 the mistakes of the dead as for our own sins. But however that be, 
 one thing is clear: we ought, in dealing with the past, to turn as 
 much as possible from the easy work of fault-finding to the more 
 difficult but more honourable task of seeking to trace a wisdom of the 
 ages at work through all the apparent confusion and wrong. And 
 this is specially important in dealing with the present point. For, 
 as was noted a moment ago, the modern disintegration of theolog}^ was 
 part of the general modern disintegration of the mediaeval unity of 
 thought and of life. And that deep and far-reaching disintegration 
 may in tlio end have a good result : the " hidden wisdom of the 
 
 44 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 world/' iu whose service all the generations stand — even those which 
 " know it not " — ^may be, or rather must be, at work in it. Indeed, 
 some at least of the signs of this have long been visible. Many of the 
 sundered factors, forced to stand alone — each erected into a solitary 
 kingdom, and compelled to find a whole world in itself in order to 
 live at all — have entered into deeper possession of themselves and of 
 their own resources; science, for instance, ceasing for a time to look 
 upon God, has entered with a new freedom and a new fulness upon the 
 mastery of nature; while literature, with new powers of sympathy 
 and passion and insight, has recovered and has glorified whole regions 
 of the soul that long had lain in neglect. And of this enriching and 
 deepening of life in its estranged and severed aspects, the result is 
 that if a new integration of thought and of life — a new intellectual 
 and social integration — should in any future be achieved, it would 
 be one vastly richer than the mediaeval. All those powers of human 
 nature — industrial, commercial, political, literary, scientific, humani- 
 tarian — that have swung away from religion, will be seen to have 
 swung out in a great circle which at last will bring man back, with 
 wider life and larger heart, to God. Such a s}Tithesis, indeed, does 
 seem to be drawing nearer on the intellectual side ; being aided, from 
 the one direction, by the Idealistic interpretation of science ; and from 
 the other direction, by the historical study of the Bible — a study 
 which, by setting the mind of Christ in its place of supremacy, makes 
 it possible for virtually every genuine power of human nature and of 
 the world to reconcile itself to God and find its fitting place and its 
 true being in the one world-work of God. But on the social side, if 
 one confine one's self to actual achievement as distinct from beliefs 
 and ideals, one has to say that the struggle is as yet more in evidence 
 than the synthesis; in some regards, indeed, though happily not in 
 all, the gulfs between class and class, interest and interest, seem, if 
 possible, to be growing deeper. 
 
 But we must return to the special point here in question. Whether 
 the fact be regarded with hope and therefore resolutely accepted and 
 even welcomed, or whether it be judged with grief and anger, the fact 
 itself remains that when, through the triumphant advance of the 
 scientific point of view, the time of intellectual crisis came to modem 
 
 45 
 
THE STUDY OF NATURE 
 
 men, the theologians had neither the requisite equipment of ideas, nor 
 the requisite intellectual vision of God, to enable them to perform the 
 function which at such a time they owe the world. It was not in 
 them to receive the modern scientific movement, to view its results 
 sub specie quadam aeternitatis, and thus to give them, so far as is 
 possible to the human intellect, their " divine interpretation." In 
 this situation some of us were able to trust stubbornly to our own 
 hearts and to the religion from which our fathers had drawn their 
 heroic strength; and so were able to steer straight on through the 
 intellectual chaos. Others of us, who could not rest in a division of 
 the heart from the intelligence, obeyed an inward call and made a 
 journey — perilous and beneficent, as all true journeys are — to far-off 
 schools; and there, from the Kantians or from Plato, gained the 
 insights to which those who taught us with authority ought to have 
 brought us. But those are exceptional cases. The important thing 
 is to notice the effect upon the general modern mind. It came to 
 this : that when men of science, whose work compelled us to respect 
 them, drew from their indisputable acquaintance with nature the con- 
 clusion that the religious view of man and of life and of the world could 
 no longer stand, we were in a position where we could not fairly resist 
 them ; in a sense their battle was won before they began the attack. 
 For, in so far as the most of us had a reasoned view of the world at 
 all, a reasoned outlook upon the nature and structure of the cosmos 
 in which we live, a reasoned apprehension of the character of that 
 continuity which runs like fate through its entire history and all its 
 processes, it was precisely from those men of science that we had 
 received it. Who else was there to give it to us? And that was not 
 all. We not only received it from them, but we received it in their 
 sense, and from the point of view of their sciences ; for there was no 
 higher interpretation which showed a genuinely scientific spirit and 
 could therefore be convincing to an age of scientific mind.^ 
 
 1 The wisdom which leads on the apes is greater than our dreams, and we may trust 
 that even in its sternness it is kindlier than our fairest imaginations ; else it might be 
 permissible for a man to dream how well it would have been for us all, if, in the day when 
 the sciences of nature were coming forward, those who guided the thought of the church 
 had been men of Origen's spirit. 
 
 46 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 But if iu the realm of thought there has come to be a gulf between 
 the science that knows the earth and tlie faith that looks to heaven, 
 much more does the separation of earth and heaven find place in the 
 practical conduct of life. There is to be found the true " modern 
 Materialism." We have become materialised in our ambitions and 
 ideals; the ultimate and controlling purpose of life is too little the 
 promotion of a good which is eternal and common to all, too much 
 the attaining of that material good which passes rapidly away and the 
 possession of which by one man frequently involves the exclusion of 
 others from it. To state the case more broadly, we have fallen into 
 bondage to what older men were wont to call " the spirit of the 
 world " — the spirit which always is individualistic and selfish, and 
 usually is earthly and mercenary. It was pointed out above that 
 mediaeval religion, precisely because it set men high above the earth, 
 gave them a spirit of comprehensive unity in dealing with the things 
 of the earth; led them to the idea of the unity, in a divine order, of 
 the whole social organisation of life. But the spirit of the world 
 exerts just the opposite influence. It begins by setting each man 
 upon the search after his own individual good; and ends by leaving 
 him incapable of devoting himself to any good save that which is 
 earthly and material. 
 
 One of the instances of this dominance of practical materialism 
 and of the spirit of the world — the instance that must stand here as 
 representative of all the rest — is perhaps the saddest thing in modern 
 life. Because the leaders of modern industrial society make material 
 interests supreme in their lives, great masses of other men are com- 
 pelled to make material considerations, in their most elementary and 
 most brutal form, supreme in their lives. For while the modern 
 manner of living is more humane than the mediaeval, yet, in the 
 modern industrial organisation of society, the gaining of the liveli- 
 hood itself is, for whole classes of the people, a harder, a more pre- 
 carious, in many cases a more absolutely hopeless, matter than it was 
 in medi.Tval society, and precisely for that reason claims all the 
 energies of life, leaving none for higher things. 
 
 47 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 Such the modern position has come to be. In tlie realm of 
 thought, indeed, as already has been indicated, the last quarter of a 
 century has brought a great improvement. We are looking with wiser 
 eyes upon the sciences of nature — because we ourselves have become 
 more scientific; and because, in growing more scientific, we have 
 found that the spirit of Christ and the spirit of science go naturally 
 together, like love and light. In that sense, the first intensity of the 
 intellectual conflict is past. And one of the signs of this calls for 
 special notice. Of the ways in which the mind of the church has 
 become more scientific, and in becoming so has apprehended the kin- 
 ship of the spirit of Christ and the spirit of science, the most impor- 
 tant (leaving aside the general fact of an increasing spaciousness in 
 thought and therefore in intellectual sympathy) lies in the growth 
 of that scientific study known as Biblical Theology. Biblical Theol- 
 ogy arose when the scientific spirit, by its own natural and legitimate 
 advance, entered into the church and took possession of the key to the 
 whole theological situation — namely, of the sources. And this means 
 that it is from the scientific spirit that modern theology has received 
 its greatest benefaction — the restoration to it of Christ as He actually 
 was, and of His mind as it actually was manifested. It is a thing 
 full of hope for both the church and the world that in theology the 
 dominance of invented systems with their proof-texts — systems which 
 were the expressions and the symbols of schools, and sects, and par- 
 ties, or even of individuals — is slowly passing away, and the mind 
 of Jesus, as gathered from His recorded teaching and action, and 
 from the Christian consciousness, is more and more becoming 
 determinative.^ 
 
 But while the first intensity of the conflict is thus past on the 
 intellectual side, the conflict itself is not yet over. Not only for many 
 individual minds, thinking honestly their own thoughts and seeking as 
 best they can the light necessary to life, but also for many influential 
 groups of teachers and of learners, the two sides are still in antithesis. 
 On the one side religion, not by any commendation of the theologians 
 
 1 In all RHch discussions concerning theology and the mind which is desirable as the 
 mind of the church, it is of course to be remembered that, important as theology is, it is 
 not the supreme thing ; the chosen dwelling-place of the spirit of Christ always has been, 
 always will be, in pure and simple hearts which love Him and live in that love. 
 
 48 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 but by intrinsic power of its own, makes still the appeal which twice 
 at least has mastered the world; and the former wisdom, the wisdom 
 mediiBval and Platonic, whose knowledge was of the soul and whose 
 vision was of the home of the soul, finds still to be its prophets men 
 over whom the spirit of the time has no dominion, a Wordsworth or 
 a Newman. But on the other side the scientific mind and the science 
 which is its work stand over against religion and over against the 
 older wisdom as unreconciled powers, equally resolute, equally mas- 
 terful, and to many minds greater in power of immediate and con- 
 vincing verification. It is a great conflict; and yet it is the lesser 
 half of the spiritual struggle into which every modern man is born; 
 over against it stands its greater counterpart, the conflict in the realm 
 of practice, where, in opposition to the spirit of the cross, there stand 
 the spirit of the world, and that far-reaching materialisation of life 
 which the spirit of the world, working with mightier instruments than 
 ever before, has effected. 
 
 III. 
 
 Men who are in earnest about their citizenship in the world, when 
 they find themselves in the thick of the struggle just referred to, 
 soon learn one thing : the only power that can overcome the spirit of 
 the world is something as practical as itself; is the spirit which has 
 seen and chosen the better part, and lives in the world "not to be 
 ministered unto, but to minister " — the spirit of those who have looked 
 upon their Lord and serve Him by more than speech. So that the 
 only value that can be ascribed to discussion and argument is a sec- 
 ondary value. But that value, though secondary, is by no means 
 slight. For we must remember that thought and practice do not 
 stand apart; they are related as soul and body. And in particular, 
 the practical spirit of religion needs clear eyes. There is no 
 religion — no religion such as can change the world — without vision; 
 to choose the better part men must look beyond the earth and apprehend 
 heavenly realities. And though such apprehension need not be dis- 
 tinctly intellectual in form, yet, in at least some of the members of 
 every society, it ought to rise to the form of that penetrating and 
 
 .^ 49 
 
THE STUDY OF NATURE 
 
 systematic thought which is able to look upon the world and assure 
 itself what the reality of the world actually is — whether it is a mate- 
 rialistic or a spiritual order, whether it is good, or simply indifferent 
 to good, or an eternal dualism of good and evil. And what has 
 already been said will show that in our day the problem for such 
 thought — the problem for " philosophy " — has been brought to a very 
 pointed form : What is the ultimate meaning for life and religion of 
 our scientific knowledge of nature? 
 
 To the apparent conflict, then, between the science which knows 
 nature and the religion which has as its inner impulse a vision of 
 God, we must now turn. The first thing to be noticed is that such 
 a conflict is scarcely a case of truth against falsehood. It is rather 
 a ^ case of divided knowledge and divided insight; a case of truth 
 against truth. Men placed in such circumstances are sure to have 
 recourse to many " working solutions " ; to the faith that dares, or 
 to the stubborn manliness that clings to ancient morality or religion 
 in spite of intellectual confusion. These are measures of war, 
 inevitable upon an obscure and troubled battlefield ; and the men who 
 adopt them often serve greatly their day and society. But the fact 
 remains that such attitudes are not adequate solutions. And what is 
 necessary to such an adequate solution is equally clear. In a division 
 of the sort now in question, where one side is based upon a certain 
 order of science, the only solution which can be finally satisfactory 
 consists in more or higher science; consists, that is to say, in gaming 
 by a genuinely scientific method a point of view high enough to give 
 a comprehensive outlook over hoth the warring sides and over the 
 territory upon which their warfare is waged. For it is unjust to 
 take your stand within one side, as within a closed circle, and then 
 from within that closed circle to pass judgment upon positions which 
 lie outside and are based upon a different order of principles. That 
 is to say, it is unjust to take one's stand within the " natural science 
 consciousness " and in its name summarily to brush aside the con- 
 sciousness of which Worrlswortli is in one way, and ISTewman in another 
 way, a type. And it is equally unjust to call for the flat supersession 
 of the scientific consciousness, on the ground that some other con- 
 sciousness — poetic, moral, religious — has the right of way. Neither 
 
 50 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 of these procedures constitutes a solution of the problem. In neither 
 can a thoughtful and honest mind rest permanently or take up its 
 ultimate abode. The first is the hasty— occasionally the contemp- 
 tuous — evasion of the problem by refusing to recognise the existence 
 and weight of one of the two sides ; and such a procedure contradicts 
 that very spirit of science in the name of which it is undertaken. 
 The second is the makeshift of spiritual desperation.^ By this it is 
 not meant that poetic intuition and religious vision have no place in 
 man's life. On the contrary, his ordinary life in its whole range of 
 daily thought and daily work, is a pitiable thing without them. And 
 even in conflicts such as are here in question, men have more than 
 once or twice done great and genuine service by taking their stand 
 upon poetic intuition and religious vision, and in their name defying 
 both the scientific and the commercial consciousness. How this can 
 be so, we shall a little farther on be in better position to see. In the 
 meantime, what we have to notice is that such an attitude is not a 
 permanent solution. To settle down permanently into such an atti- 
 tude — worse still, to speak authoritatively to the thinking men of 
 your generation and have nothing but such an attitude to commend 
 to them — is simply to set one closed circle against another closed 
 circle; is simply to solidify the opposed ranks in their opposition. 
 What is required for a permanent solution is that the critical and 
 disinterested reason, walking in the way of science and in the spirit 
 of science, should strive forward toward its goal; that is to say, 
 toward a view of the world as one. Such a view, if only it could be 
 gained (and — as we shall see — it can be gained) would enable us to 
 do both of the things which are necessary to an adequate solution. It 
 would enable us, first, to recognise whatever truth there may be on 
 each side; nay, to do more, to give that truth a deeper meaning and 
 a fuller interpretation by setting it in its place in a system of wider 
 truth. And how much this latter consideration means may be seen 
 by remembering one thing: if each side has its truth, if loth of the 
 opposed sides are really elements in one truth and one life, each having 
 
 1 And when employed as a method of theology, is something worse ; is a makeshift of 
 desperation on the part of men who ought to be the masters and kings of the whole 
 intellectual situation, but have allowed themselves to be driven to bay in a corner of their 
 own realm. 
 
 51 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 its owu great place and great right, then we may be sure that each 
 can also contribute to the power and breadth of the other ; for great 
 truths are not self-contained; they answer to one another and con- 
 tribute to one another. Secondly, it would enable us to understand 
 the limitations under which each of the sides apprehended and 
 envisaged its own truth — limitations which shut each side away from 
 the other and made each accuse the other of blindness or even of 
 falsehood. And understanding these limitations means (as Hegel so 
 steadily insisted) a very great deal more than merely stating the 
 fact of their existence. It means understanding how they came to 
 be; how they are inevitably bound up with certain special points of 
 view, so that the men who live habitually at these points of view are 
 subject to the corresponding limitations of outlook upon the world. 
 Such a method would enable us to recognise truth wherever there is 
 truth to be recognised; and not merely to recognise it, but (what is 
 more difficult) to do justice to it. In particular it would enable us 
 to leave the established laws and principles of natural and physical 
 science standing in their full inner integrity and at the same time 
 to take them up as harmonious elements in a system of truth wider 
 than themselves; a system in whose wider light their ultimate sig- 
 nificance for life and for the meaning of life would become manifest. 
 And that would put us in position to correct precisely the order of 
 mistakes with which we are here concerned ; not mistakes in matters 
 of fact (a sort of mistakes which scientific men are not given to 
 making) ; but mistakes in interpretation, mistakes in applying the 
 principles and the points of view of the special sciences to life and to 
 the problem of the meaning of life. 
 
 Indeed, the demand for such a solution might be stated wholly 
 from the side of science itself. For it is the presupposition of all 
 science and of all endeavour after science — it is the presupposition of 
 every step in every scientific investigation — that the world is one. a 
 single system of interrelated facts; and that therefore knowledge is 
 one, a single system of related insights. Hence the ultimate truth 
 about any one part of the world, or about the scientific principles 
 employed in the study of it, becomes manifest only from the centre; 
 only from a point of view which commands the whole field and which 
 
 52 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 is gained, uot so amch by tlie study of fact after fact in detail as by 
 apprehending the inner nature of the total system. And it is pre- 
 cisely when truths appear to conflict that it is most important to 
 remember this; most important of all when the conflict is such as 
 that between the "natural science consciousness" and the religious 
 consciousness, where the two sides appear to stand so far apart, and 
 yet each is so deeply rooted in existing reality. 
 
 The task, then, which faces the man who has taken into his heart 
 that for which Wordsworth and Newman stand, and who at the same 
 time finds himself compelled whether he will or no to be an intel- 
 lectual citizen of the modern world, may be summed up thus. — First 
 he has to attempt to comprehend the ultimate significance for the 
 problem of the meaning of life, of the modern scientific knowledge 
 of nature. Secondly, to do this he must seek to gain a point of view 
 from which, in some genuine sense of the words, the world can be 
 seen as one, life viewed as a whole, facts comprehended sub specie 
 quadam aeternitatis. Thirdly, the quest of that point of view must 
 be carried on in a genuinely scientific temper. Eebuke of science; 
 evasion of the demands of the scientific spirit ; the " flat supersession 
 of the scientific consciousness " in the name of the religious conscious- 
 ness ; the attempt to follow some by-path or "short cut " upon which 
 one hopes to get past the scientific position without the danger of 
 being taken prisoner : — all these are ah initio forbidden.^ In a word, 
 
 1 One of these attempts to "get past the scientific position " is so fundamentally bad 
 as to deserve special mention— the endeavour to justify belief in God by seeking to find 
 gaps in the continuity of nature. It is true that a God thus made manifest— made mani- 
 fest not by the greatness and harmony of nature, not by its abiding \a.w and continuous 
 order, but by its rents and gaps— would be no worthy object of religious devotion. But 
 that is only the beginning of the matter. Once you shatter the continuity of nature, you 
 shatter !more than Materialism. You shatter the possibility of all science whatever. 
 You open up the gulf of universal scepticism, and Materialism disappears in it, it is true, 
 but along with it disappear Theism and theology and the rational basis for every sort of 
 religion except two, between which men will continue to choose according to their 
 individual dispositions— Stoicism (as a practical temper, not as a philosophy) and 
 Epicureanism. 
 
 In a word, in insisting upon the continuity of nature, men of science have been better 
 theologians than the theologians themselves. If God exists at all, He is the God of all 
 nature and of every natural law. There are no gaps in His workmanship, no breaches of 
 continuity in His activity. All nature is an activity of His, and every natural law a 
 principle of that activity. If the theologians would be true to theology, what they have 
 to do is to protest, not against the .principle of continuity, but against too narrow a 
 reading of it and too narrow an application of it to reality. The principle of continuity is 
 
 53 
 
THE STUDY OF NATURE 
 
 the attempt to discover the ultimate significance for life of our knowl- 
 edge of nature should be carried through with fidelity to the scientific 
 spirit; and the view finally gained of the ultimate meaning of our 
 science of nature should be, in a genuine sense of the words, a farther 
 stage of science itself. 
 
 IV. 
 
 But in approaching this task one is approaching no new or purely 
 modern task. To gain insight into the significance, for the problem 
 of the meaning of life, of the fact that man has science of nature; 
 and so to gain that insight that it shall be a farther stage of the same 
 science: — upon this attempt, or upon a greater which includes it, has 
 been directed the longest and most continuous of all the labours of the 
 human mind. Each intellectual era has come to the problem in its 
 o'«Ti way; in its own way has stated the problem, in its own way 
 attempted the solution; and the struggle upward through inadequate 
 categories has been slow and stubborn. Hence the special pleader or 
 the hasty critic can easily arrange a clever argument for the charge 
 that the imagined insight of each age stands in contradiction to that 
 of the others, and that therefore the whole history establishes nothing. 
 But as a matter of fact that history has the unity which arises from 
 a central and catholic line of development. And the man who is 
 willing, and who is able, by historical study, to repeat that develop- 
 ment in his own thinking and live it over again in his own soul — 
 the man who illuminates his soul with the wisdom of the ages, and 
 grows into that illumination as the ages themselves grew into it — is 
 the man who, when the problem here at issue falls upon him, can 
 conduct most intelligently his own wrestle with it, and can best be 
 a guide to others. 
 
 For what the great men of thought who in their succession con- 
 stitute that " central and catholic line " have seen, is precisely that 
 
 unworthily treated if it is limited to certain physical and chemical processes. The true 
 field of tlic principle of continuity is the total history in time, the total evolution, of the 
 universe. And as so viewed, it is simply one way of apprehending the essential ration- 
 ality of God and of the divine action in nature and in history. In this— and I think only 
 in this— lies the basis for a worthy constructive doctrine of miracle. (See the acute 
 discussion in Mr. Balfour's Foundations of Belief, 1897, p. 316 seg.) 
 
 54 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 such a farther stage of science as was referred to above is possible. 
 And not only that it is possible, but also that the human intellect 
 must seek after it unless the human intellect is to live in treason 
 against the scientific spirit. They have seen, in the first place, that 
 man's knowledge of the material order implies a greater whole of 
 knowledge, from whose point of view the world is seen as a whole and 
 man's life in its true meaning; and in the second place, that that 
 greater whole of knowledge is a fulfilment of man's knowledge of 
 nature, not a revolt against it, nor a contradiction of it. 
 
 The age-long labour in which the " masters of them that know " 
 endeavoured to fulfil the scientific demand which they had thus appre- 
 hended, cannot, of course, be described or outlined here. But cer- 
 tain of the outstanding facts of its history, if noted at this point, 
 will enable us to orient ourselves in the courts of philosophy, and to 
 apprehend the nature of the tradition that has grown up there.^ 
 
 That tradition entered, almost at its beginning, into conscious 
 possession of its own true nature as an effort after the unity of life. 
 For the mind which gave rise to philosophy and science, and presided 
 over the beginnings of their tradition, and informed the construction 
 of their first great monuments, was that of the Greeks; and the 
 graver genius of that race — even while its cities, by divisions without 
 and within, were working out for themselves irremediable ruin — 
 sought to rise above the divisions of thought and of practice ; sought 
 to see life "steadily," to see it "whole," and to discover, at 
 once for the individual and the state, the true unity of life. That 
 unity the Greek — ^^so far as the deeper genius of Hellas prevailed in him 
 — sought b}' proportion. He would bring life to unity, not by 
 extirpating all interests save one — driving out religion, for instance, 
 in the name of science, or the good in the name of the beautiful, or 
 the expert in government in the name of democracy — but rather by 
 
 1 For the younger student of philosophy, the historical study that does this has, in 
 addition to the value noted earlier in the text, this special value : it puts him in position 
 to make with more intelligence his estimate of the present-day voices that claim his 
 attention. For in this as in every age, some of the writers in philosophy are so related to 
 the traditional development that their own individual strength is at once rooted in and 
 reinforced by the incalculable strength of the central and catholic past ; while others, who 
 astonish their day with inventions of their own, represent in philosophy the merely 
 individual and therefore the transient. 
 
 55 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 giving to each legitimate interest and capability of the soul, its due 
 and proportionate place — ^primary or secondary, as the case might be — 
 in the single system of an harmoniously ordered life. The life 
 \yhich results when a single limited interest, or a single unbridled 
 tendency of human nature, takes complete possession of a human 
 soul and of a human body, he refused to call a human life; and 
 any social order which would make such life inevitable to the 
 various classes of enfranchised citizens he looked upon as essentially 
 vicious. In the state, according to the ideal of it, each citizen was 
 to perform freely and devotedly the function for which nature fitted 
 him; and so the life, on the one hand of the state, on the other of 
 each individual citizen in it, was to reach completeness both of 
 development and of efficiency. Unity of life; completeness of life; 
 and the securing of these by harmonious co-operation of natural powers 
 in which each helps the others by doing with excellence its own work : — 
 this was at once his ideal of life and his principle for the organisation 
 of the state. 
 
 Furthermore, the Greek mind in its scientific workmanship was 
 thoroughly disinterested. Greek men of science and Greek men of 
 thought were wont to look upon the facts of life and the facts of the 
 world with clear and direct eyes; they saw things just as they are 
 and described them exactly as they found them. The notion that 
 truth — truth in the grave and deep sense of the word — could have ill 
 consequences in the practical life, had no place with them. By the 
 very nature of the mind in them they were free from the vice of doing 
 violence to the scientific conscience in order to conduct special plead- 
 ings for ethical and theological positions. Indeed, it is precisely for 
 that reason that the Greek mind has contributed, as to the cause of 
 science, so also, and even more profoundly, to the cause of goodness. 
 For hostility to science, or even alienation from it, in the interest of 
 morality or religion, is as injurious to these themselves as to science; 
 nay, is even more injurious; for it works them a triple injury. It 
 exposes their fundamental principles to suspicion as fearing the light. 
 It shatters the unity and integrity of life ; and incompleteness of life 
 means incompleteness of morality and oi religion. And — the deepest 
 injury of all — it steals away from them that which is at once their 
 
 56 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 eyesight, their interpreter, and their intellectual soul, and thus leaves 
 them to the mercy of the dogmatic and the priestly mind. 
 
 These qualities of the Greek spirit made the interpretation of life 
 which it wrought out a thing of supreme value for ever to the men 
 who, for the business of living life, wish to clear their eyes and clear 
 their Intelligence. That interpretation took two main forms : a more 
 literary, in the work of the tragedians, who in huge and majestic 
 symbols of ancient legend expressed their sense of the operation in 
 man's life of a necessity greater than man, so that the blind choices, 
 the hasty movements of the individual \\ill, bring in their train inex- 
 orable fate — fate clad always in terror, but sometimes dimly seen to 
 the poet's faith to be the form of a great righteousness ; and a more 
 scientific, in the work of certain great men of thought who carried 
 farther than the poets the attempt to understand the nature of that 
 necessity, and found it to be eternal, and, in the highest sense 
 of the words, rational and righteous. By singular good fortune to 
 humanity, this latter interpretation came to share, at its culmination 
 in Plato, in one great feature of the former : came to add to its own 
 intrinsic value as a guide of life a manner of expression fitted to win 
 men's hearts. For while Plato had, in its very highest form, the 
 disinterested scientific temper of the Greeks, and their clearness of 
 intellectual vision, he was more than a great scientific intellect con- 
 templating life. He was one of the most human of men. He knew 
 life by walking in its ways, by sharing in its greater struggles, by 
 enduring its greater sorrows. Yet his vision was driven beyond the 
 horizon of this world; alike by the discovery of his intellect 
 and by the demand of his soul for a home truly appropriate to 
 its nature, he was led to contemplate an eternity and a perfection, 
 which are not of this world, though they are the truth of it and the 
 standard for judging all its affairs. And in this ascent of his soul 
 the characteristic genius of his race did not desert him, though its 
 lighter elements were rebuked and fled. He remained a Greek seeking 
 for integrity of life and delighting in the exercise of all the faculties 
 of the soul ; an artist, with the artist's instinct for apprehending and 
 expressing beauty: a poet, able to find earthly words for realities 
 unspeakable, and for the things of eternity a voice that passes into 
 
 57 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 human hearts " with lightning and with music." So that when in 
 Plato the graver spirit of Hellas entered into full and critical pos- 
 session of itself, and put into words that which it had learned con- 
 cerning the world and concerning life, the words went forth to later 
 generations clad, in addition to their scientific truth, with a threefold 
 power — that of humanity, that of beauty, that of religious passion. 
 
 But though Plato's words were at once the profoundest and the 
 most human of all the words that have been spoken in the schools of 
 philosoph}^, the two world-ages which followed did not take him as 
 their teacher. The mediaeval world, indeed, might have seemed the 
 very world for the reception of Plato. For the men of that world 
 were actually achieving — to them the supreme business of life was 
 to achieve — the very thing which had lain closest of all to Plato's 
 heart, and which he had called for from the Greeks in vain : the sub- 
 jection of the sensuous world to the supersensuous, the making of the 
 whole order of the state, the whole course of individual education, 
 the whole structure and organisation of society, a " service of the 
 invisible world."^ But, for one thing, of the corpus of the Platonic 
 writings little beyond the Timaeus was knowTi. For another thing, 
 the dominant party made religion inseparable from the church, and 
 the men who laboured in the task of giving to the world its divine 
 interpretation were churchmen. And these, when they required an 
 intellectual organon for their immense endeavour, found in Aristotle 
 a system remarkably well adapted to their needs. If it had somehow 
 been possible for them to gain a comprehension of Plato as he truly 
 is, they would probably have found him a very troublesome friend. 
 For a spiritual power, incalculable, unfathomable, not to be fettered 
 or led, is a thing which does not commend itself to the typical church- 
 man. And that is precisely what Plato is. For, in the first place, 
 he is always a dialectician; and his dialectic allows your mind no 
 rest except in ultimate and essential eternity. .And in the second 
 place, as we shall see later,^ although he is not a Mystic, yet Mysticism 
 can be learned from him; and Mysticism makes short work of 
 external organisation, of material symbols, of churchly observances. 
 
 ' Windelband, Plnton, 3tc. Auflagc, S. 1G9. 
 •-' hifra, pp. 214-232. 
 
 58 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 At the same time, there is in mediseval thought much more Platonism 
 than we usually fancy; partly because the media3val temper led inde- 
 pendently to it; partly because, in choosing Aristotle as their master, 
 the medieval theologians chose, next to Plato himself, the best Pla- 
 tonist in the world. And if Aristotle did not reach the height of the 
 Platonic temper, his mediaeval pupils could contribute that directly 
 from their own hearts. 
 
 ^Yitl\ the modern world the ease has been different. It could 
 know Plato if it would ; and from the Eenaissance onward it has had 
 many ardent disciples of Plato. But its temper has in the main 
 been un-Platonic; and in its science it began by breaking radically 
 with the past. The world of Descartes and Bacon, in the extremity 
 of its revolt against the medieval, would have nothing to do with 
 any science but its own; would begin all over again the work of 
 understanding the nature of the world; would fight its scientific 
 battles altogether from its own beginning, altogether in its own 
 fashion. The outcome was remarkable. When one penetrates to 
 the o-reat currents that beneath the troubled surface have driven for- 
 ward as steadily and as irresistibly as if Necessity herself were in 
 them,i what one finds is an almost exact parallelism with the course 
 of Greek thought. The Eleatic and the Sophist are accurately in 
 their places ; the Eleatic (in Spinoza) with much of the old Par- 
 menidean dignity; the Sophist with almost the old procedure in his 
 scepticism. And at last the specifically modern way of approaching 
 and stating the problem was set by a very un-Hellenic Socrates — 
 Immanuel Kant.^ His work was that of a pioneer. It furnished 
 
 1 As a matter of fact, necessity was in them ; the logical necessity which governs the 
 dialectic evolution of the categories. 
 
 2 Whether as a mere fact of history, or an instance of how the inner wisdom of history, 
 working under the form of dialectic development, enlists the individual in its service, 
 this parallelism between the course of Greek thought and that of modern, is very striking. 
 Both began at the beginning ; or rather, Thales actually did, and Descartes tried- 
 Both settled with stubborn resoluteness to the attempt to understand the world from the 
 point of view of the category of substance. With the Greeks this culminated in Par. 
 menides, with the moderns in Spinoza. Finally in each cat^e the lesson was learned (being 
 soundly emphasised by the rise of scepticism- Gorgias and Protagoras and Hume) that an 
 ontology cannot be constructed ofT-hand ; that a trustworthy theory of reality can be 
 gained only through, and in, and as, a theory of knowledge. The learning of this lesson is 
 connected in the one case with the name of Socrates, in the other with that of Kant. 
 And in each case the learning of this lesson meant that philosophy entered auf den 
 sichern Gang der Wissenschaft. With the Greeks Plato and Aristotle followed ; with us, 
 the present period, in which every metaphysician who is in the main course of phHosophy 
 and not in some eddy or side-stream, proceeds from the point of departure set by Kant. 
 
 59 
 
THE STUDY OF NATURE 
 
 little more than a beginning. And in Kant's own writings even that 
 beginning was sadly obscured. It was loaded down with masses of 
 alien material and with needless dualisms; and it suffered especially 
 because Kant dropped his own fundamental insight half-way, and so 
 drew from it almost the opposite of its legitimate conclusions. 
 Indeed, something like this was to be expected ; for that insight was 
 the gain of Kant's old age, the long-delayed reward of a lifetime in 
 which that acute and penetrating intellect worked through the dog- 
 matic and empirical and sceptical and sentimental philosophies of 
 the day and found rest in none of them. But, under whatever weight 
 of alien and obscuring matter, the beginning was there. And the 
 task set for the modern mind by it has been accepted and pushed 
 resolutely through. The carrying of the Kantian beginning — if you 
 will, of the Kantian suggestion — forward to its legitimate conclusion 
 has been the special task of metaphysic in the period of philosophy 
 in which we now live. 
 
 In Germany this was done by a succession of men of thought, the 
 last and greatest of whom was Hegel. Of him it is sufficient to say 
 that each of the great intellectual ages has given to the world an 
 encyclopedic philosopher — a man who, so far as was possible to the 
 human mind, gathered into himself all the science of his day, and 
 interpreted it from the point of view of an insight into the ultimate 
 nature of reality, and so made it in the true sense of the word a 
 system : the Greek age gave Aristotle ; the mediaeval, Aquinas ; the 
 modern, Hegel. 
 
 But though Hegel's is the one name that ranks with Aristotle's 
 and with that of Aquinas; and though he has written very deeply 
 upon many of the more capacious minds of the day his own great 
 conviction that God actually is at work in His world, and that the 
 divine reasonableness actually is present in the structure of the uni- 
 verse, in the laws of nature, in the course of history; yet he is likely 
 never to become a great and familiar teacher of the human race, such 
 as Aristotle and Aquinas have been and are and will be. In par- 
 ticular — and this is what specially concerns ourselves — he will never 
 in any direct sense be the great teacher of what for want of some better 
 name we must call Anglo-Saxondom. For one thing, his writings 
 
 60 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD. 
 
 are often needlessly oljseure and difficult; and the unhappy form in 
 which it was necessary for his editors to issue a great part of them 
 has not helped the matter. For another thing, there is a feature of 
 his work which is peculiarly distasteful to the " Anglo-Saxon " — or 
 at any rate to the specifically English — intellect : the technical appar- 
 atus, useful as it really is, is so enormous that sometimes it smothers 
 the very content for whose expression it was devised; while at other 
 times it carries Hegel, rather than Hegel it — at which times the man 
 of thought appears to be mounted upon a very high horse indeed.^ 
 
 1 At the same time many of us would bring to our work in the world a graver and 
 more comprehensive wisdom if we could avoid one mistake : we let Hegel's high words, 
 his masterful and comprehensive procedure, drive us into rebellion against him and all 
 that he represents ; and so we are blinded to the fact that there are things which we need 
 to learn and which his Idealism has to teach. 
 
 An example will show what is meant. Lotze and Paulsen, the one in an earlier and 
 more irreconcilable way, the other in a later and more moderate, fought the battle of the 
 steady everyday consciousness against the thoroughgoing procedure and vast results of 
 the " speculative philosophy." But in doing this they lost sight of the fact that the very- 
 thing needed in order to give coherence to their own philosophical construction is the 
 Kantian epistemology as clarified and systematised by Hegel. In them philosophy was 
 unnecessarily crippled ; not altogether, but to some extent, philosophy in them defeats 
 itself ; in the name of the ordinary consciousness and of evei'yday interests, of the "solid 
 ground " and of "plain facts," they recoil from precisely those scientific insights which 
 show us what those everyday interests and ordinary facts really are— the body, namely, of 
 an eternal reason, the media through which and in which an eternal purpose is being 
 realised. 
 
 But men such as these bring to their criticism of the " speculative philosophy " a fine 
 and high temper. " Sit ani7?ia mea ciun illo" one has to say of such a man even while 
 arguing against him. But one occasionally meets a very different type of critic : the man 
 who makes it part of his duty to pass in review the "masters of them that know " simply 
 to find a flaw in each and then throw them all aside and return triumphantly within the 
 circle of his own sectarian— or individual— theology. To such a man Hegel is usually 
 the most special of all his bugbears. But with such an attitude the student who in 
 dealing with the worUi of thought seeks its greater wisdom and its greater virtues— and 
 only he who is such a student to-day is worthy to be a leader of the intellect of the church 
 to-morrow— will have nothing to do. Reverently he will approach the world's masters in 
 science and philosophy ; he will keep himself from the ingratitude that in the presence of 
 the great workmen of the intellect seeks only to discover the imperfections of their work ; 
 he will endeavour to make his way through transient, and often inappropriate, forms of 
 expression, to the inner and abiding meanings, and to do justice to the truths that great 
 men of old reached out after but were not able to grasp clearly and express happily; and 
 so from each one— still more from all of them viewed as forming one great history and 
 one great development— he will carry away for himself a worthy harvest of insight 
 worthily gained. 
 
 The fact that in Germany itself there is no " Hegelian school " is often referred to, and 
 various inferences adverse to " Hegelianism " drawn from it. But in the first place the 
 Hegeliau view of the world is not dead ; it has become part of that intellectual air which 
 we all are breathing, and which without Hegel would have been a very different and a 
 much poorer thing. And in the second place, one of the facts of German life should be 
 
 61 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 Hence the most trustworthy of the men of thought who in Eng- 
 lish-speaking countries have bent to the work of carrying Kant's 
 beginning forward to its conclusion, while they have learned much 
 from Hegel and directly or indirectly are under profound debt to 
 him, are not "Hegelians"; are not followers of Hegel in the strict 
 sense of discipleship.^ From the point of departure which Kant set 
 for us all, they have gone forward with the sober caution of their 
 race, and have steadily avoided any such immense technical apparatus 
 
 remembered. In Germany the " great, masters "—those upon whom the young men form 
 their minds— are usually living men : you migrate from university to university, look 
 upon their faces, hear them read. The advantages of this ai-e instantly apparent. But it 
 does not seem to be equally well understood that such a state of affairs has at least some 
 disadvantages. These were never better summed up than once by the young man who 
 later became Dr. Pusey : " There is probably no people among whom the mighty dead are 
 so soon forgotten, or the great names of the present day so unduly exalted, as in Germany, 
 and this because the knowledge of the mass of each generation is derived for the most 
 part exclusively from living sources." (See Liddon's Life of Pusey, 1893, Vol. I., p. 230.) 
 
 For young students it may not be a mistake to enter into Hegel's system by working 
 backwards; that is to say, by beginning with the Philosophy of History (which as 
 Jowett remarked to Tennyson "is just 'the increasing purpose that through the ages 
 runs' buried under a heap of categories ") and the Philosophy of Right. Then,— and all 
 the better if with the help of Mr. Baillie's, and Mr. M'Taggart's, valuable exposition 
 and disoussion^the Logic can be attempted. Of introductox-y statements of Hegel's 
 thought and of its significance, the best remains, and is likely long to remain, that by the 
 Master of Balliol. The handbook by Professor Mackintosh couples with attractive points 
 one grave defect. It is described in the preface as a handbook and evidently was intended 
 to be such. But in a handbook one thing is essential : it must be an exposition, an expla- 
 nation, an interpretation, in the simplest and directest form possible, of the system in 
 hand. To that one purpose all the writer's literary powers and virtues should be subordi- 
 nate and contributory. But Professor Mackintosh's discussion, wliile having any number 
 of incidental virtues— it is most interesting and suggestive, full of bright sayings and 
 happy passages— lacks precisely this essential quality of a handbook. One might almost 
 say that so far from being primarily an exposition of Hegel and of the Hegelian view of 
 the world, it is an exposition of its author's own opinions, and a somewhat unfair criticism 
 of Hegel in the light of them. And the treatment is very unequal. At some points 
 (whether in dealing with Hegel or with the British teachers called, not quite fairly, 
 " Hegelians ") the author writes like a son of the house describing to the public the objects 
 of a long and intimate knowledge ; at others, with a strange hardness and externality, 
 almost (if the comparison may be pardoned) like a sti-anger who stands outside and throws 
 stones at the windows. • 
 
 1 With regard to this. Professor Mackintosh, in the handbook referred to in the 
 preceding note, does not act quite as fairly as in this age, when party names mean so 
 unjustly much, is desirable. To call men "Hegelians" who are Hegelians only in the 
 same sense that they are Platonists and Aristotelians, is not an example of Professor 
 Mackintosh's rule {op. cit. p. 8fi) that " a well-chosen class name is the first step to knowl- 
 edge." The story of Hegel's influence upon British thought might have been written 
 without the application of a party name to men who lived above party. And the unfair- 
 ness is all the graver that the name is applied in the face of protests from the men 
 themselves who are chiefly concerned. 
 
 62 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 as that of Hegel. This has mvolved, it is true, the loss of much that 
 was possible to him; the great sweep of his system, his vast and 
 orderly outlook upon history, upon nature, upon all the departments 
 of man's life and society. But there has been a corresponding gain; 
 and that no mean one; for the fundamental problems, at any rate, 
 have been treated; and treated with a simplicity, an intellectual 
 severity and self-control, which put the discussion within reach of 
 many to whom Hegel himself is ein Buch mit siehen Siegeln. 
 
 Among these men there are several toward whom the present 
 writer cherishes an affectionate gratitude which grows deeper with 
 every year that separates him from the days when he sat at their 
 feet. But it is upon the name of a man whose face he has never 
 seen that he desires at this point specially to dwell. The late Pro- 
 fessor Green had not the special gifts of the men to whom reference 
 has just been made : not the remarkable blending of profundity and 
 subtle keenness which characterises one of them; not that union of 
 philosophic insight with the whole breadth of humane learning which 
 gives charm to all the work of another; not the vast and systematic 
 range of thought which makes a third the representative of philosophy 
 in its true greatness as a rationally articulated view of the world and 
 of life. These things Green had not; for his life was weighted with 
 labour and his day was short. But his life and his teaching had two 
 features which make the mention of his name specially appropriate 
 in the present connexion. In the first place, he cannot fairly be 
 called the prophet of any " school." It is true, he approached the 
 question of the meaning of life from the point which Kant has made 
 inevitable for modern thought. But in the investigation itself, the 
 considerations which he brings forward and the arguments which he 
 employs are elementary, are primary and simple; and just for that 
 reason are fundamental, and hold for all life under all circumstances. 
 So that while in one sense the discussion is Kantian, yet in a still 
 deeper sense to apply party names — Kantian, Neo-Kantian, 
 Hegelian — to it, is as impossible as to apply party names to the first 
 and elementary principles of any great science. And in the second 
 place, while Green was, in life and character, English of the English, 
 and by that character and life spoke with Englishmen heart to heart, 
 
 6S 
 
THE STUDY OF XATURE 
 
 yet there was operative in him precisely the most valuable tendency 
 of the Greek mind — its tendency toward unity and integrity of life. 
 The fragments of writing that he left behind him give, if read intelli- 
 gently, a systematic outlook upon life — they contain both a system of 
 fundamental principles and an application of these to the under- 
 standing of nature and of history. But that is the lesser side of 
 the matter; if he did not, in any finished or technical sense, write 
 a system of philosophy, he lived one. What his biographer has to 
 record is, as Mr. Nettleship so well says,^ " a fact which has never 
 been common and which is especially rare in England, the fact of a 
 life in which philosophy was reconciled with religion on the one side 
 and politics on the other ; the life of a man to whom reason was faith 
 made articulate, and for whom both faith and reason found their 
 highest expression in good citizenship." It is in men such as this 
 that philosophy is most clearly seen doing the work that it ought to 
 do in every age, but specially in an age like our own ; for in such men 
 philosophy becomes the philosophic mind, and the philosophic mind 
 leads to a life and a work in which the contending elements and 
 warring truths of the age are seen reconciled and working with 
 united power. 
 
 V. 
 
 The great argument which thus, from its clear beginnings in 
 Hellas, passed onward through the ages ^^ith all those turns and 
 retreats, and yet with that very real continuity of development, cannot 
 be presented in a few pages. Its full meaning can be gathered only 
 by living through, in one's own soul, the long course of the history 
 in which it struggled into possession of its many insights. But a 
 sense of its import can be conveyed, and an indication of its procedure 
 and conclusions given, by a brief outline of its modern form — the 
 form which it has taken in the school of Kant, ])ut which nevertheless 
 is so simple and elementary as to stand above party affiliations. In 
 attempting to draw up such a statement, one of Green's writings is 
 specially useful; the ensuing outline was suggested by, and in places 
 
 1 In the Memoir prefixed to Vol. III. of the Collected Worls, p. xi. 
 64 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 follows quite closely, the argument worked out with great simplicity 
 but also with great thoroughness in the Prolegomena to Ethics. 
 
 We must begin with something which, as already has been noticed,^ 
 was to the greater masters of philosophy at once a first insight and 
 an impulse to farther insight. In order that our experience of every- 
 day things may be what it actually is, reality must be greater than in 
 our everyday experience it seems to be.- Or, to put this into the 
 narrower and more modern form which exactly meets the problem 
 now before us, the natural and physical sciences, by the very fact of 
 their existence, imply and call for a whole of knowledge wider than 
 themselves. For all science is a tracing out of the relations of the 
 facts and events of the world to one another. The laws of nature 
 which men of science formulate are statements of those abiding rela- 
 tions ; and the total system of such relations is the order of the world. 
 But suppose the natural and physical sciences to have fully accom- 
 plished their work. There would still remain a relation to be investi- 
 gated — the relation of all those facts and events to the knowing 
 intelligence. Every thing, every event, every relation, which a man 
 of science investigates, enters by the very fact of being Icnown and 
 investigated into a relation with intelligence — into that organic union 
 with intelligence which from the side of the intelligence itself is 
 called knowledge or science. To say that such a thing as natural 
 and physical science exists, is to say that mind and the world, subject 
 and object, have entered into organic connexion; the knowing intel- 
 ligence has gone out into the world, has traversed it, penetrated it, 
 made itself at home in it — and in domg so has realised and fulfilled 
 its own nature as intelligence ; or putting it in another way, has taken 
 the world, or parts and beginnings of the world, into itself, and that 
 not as a mere outside article drawn into an empty container, but as 
 an organic part of its own structure. This relation everything in the 
 world that is or ever can be an object of scientific investigation, sus- 
 tains or is capable of sustaining ; and to say this, is to say that science 
 must advance to the investigation of the relation in question. For 
 
 1 Supra, pp. 54, 55. 
 
 2 I have tried to work this out more fully in the paper on Plato, infra, pp. 203-247 
 (especially pp. 208-2141. 
 
 6 65 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 if science be the tracing out of the relations which the constituent 
 parts or factors of the world bear to one another, then it is the flattest 
 of treasons against the scientific spirit to say, "We will investigate 
 certain classes of the relations which make up the world's order; but 
 with the relations that fall outside those classes we will have nothing 
 to do." The existence of science is the existence of this relation — 
 this relation of things to intelligence, of object to subject — and the 
 capacity for this relation is part of the nature of things. And a 
 relation which thus exists and is of the nature of things must be 
 investigated. To refuse to investigate it would be a turning of 
 science aside from its regular and legitimate path of advance in 
 knowing the world ; would be as genuinely a crime against the spirit 
 of science as to refuse to investigate the laws of the tides, or of the 
 planetary orbits, or of the development of organic types. 
 
 The relation, then, involved in that organic connexion of objects 
 and intelligence which is science, must be investigated. And the 
 question with which to begin the investigation is a very simple one: 
 How is such a relation possible ? 
 
 First of all, let us see what as mere matter of fact the relation 
 amounts to. All science and all endeavour after science presuppose, 
 as already has been pointed out, that the world is one, a single system 
 of facts and relations. Furthermore, scientific statements, once they 
 are truly and adequately formulated, are timelessly valid ; can be 
 handed on from generation to generation, and stand firm independently 
 of time and the passage of time. This implies that the ultimate order 
 of that cosmos which it is the business of science to know is an eternal 
 or timeless order, a single system of fixed and unalterable relations. 
 The upbuilding of science is a process wherein man " enters into " or 
 " makes himself at home in " or, more accurately still, " reproduces 
 in and as his own thought," that system of related facts which we 
 call " the world," that system of eternal or timeless relations which 
 we call " the order of the world." And in doing this, man acts the 
 part of a permanent subject who (1) holds many diverse facts in 
 orderly relation in the unity of a single conscious grasp, and (2) in 
 so doing distinguishes himself from the various facts which he thus 
 presents to himself — distinguishes himself from those facts in the 
 
 66 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 very activity of at once distinguishing them from one another and yet 
 relating them all together in the unity of one scientific view. And 
 must so distinguish himself from them; for to carry on such an 
 activity at all — to hold, in and as one conscious experience, a vast 
 variety of facts, keeping each one in its own distinctness, and yet 
 relating them all together with a continually growing accuracy — the 
 subject must, in a certain genuine sense, be above each and every one 
 of the particular facts present to him ; must, to use a metaphor which 
 is not the truth but hints at the truth, be both the Judge to whom, 
 and the court in which, they are all present. 
 
 With this the question we began with is seen to have two sides. 
 First, how is such a world possible ? Secondly, how are we to account 
 for the subject who knows that world — the self-conscious subject, able 
 (partially, indeed, and discursively, but still with ever-growing com- 
 pleteness) to reproduce that order of nature in his own thought? 
 
 First, then, how is such a world possible? The world that men 
 of science investigate is, as every step of their work presupposes and 
 implies, "one connected world." It is a single system. But what 
 does that mean ? It means two things : in the first place each of the 
 facts or constituent parts of the world is related to every other — the 
 total system of those relations being the " order of the world " ; in 
 the second place, each fact or part is maintained in the distinctness 
 and integrity of its own existence, no one of them being in the order 
 of nature fused or confounded with any other. But how can that 
 be ? In the first place, can it be explained by supposing that each of 
 the ultimate constituent parts of the world — atom, monad, or what- 
 ever it is — institutes and maintains the total system of its relations 
 with every other part? Here, indeed, there is no space to discuss 
 such a theory at length. But it is not necessary. Let a man get 
 clear to his mind all that such a theory means — each atom (or elec- 
 tron, or monad, or whatever the ultimate constituent part is supposed 
 to be) from eternity an independent and omniscient consciousness 
 which at each instant (1) knows the movements (or other activities) 
 of all the other atoms in the universe and knows exactly what it should 
 do to adjust itself to those movements, and (2) upon its own initia- 
 tive and in its own power executes the adjustment — let a man get this 
 
 67 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 clear to his mind and he is not likely to continue to hold the theory. 
 The solution given by such a theory has no relation to the problem 
 which is being solved : it seeks to solve the problem of " the Many 
 and the One " (or rather the Many m the One) by giving us a Many 
 without a One at all. The theory which brings to this problem of 
 the " one connected world " a solution that really does solve, and 
 therefore must be accepted, lies in the other direction. We must 
 hold, that is to say, that the existence of such a thing as a " connected 
 world " implies a " principle of union " which does two things. It 
 links all the facts together into the unity of one system. But at the 
 same time and by the same activity it maintains each of them in its 
 distinctness, not fusing or confounding them together. And to do 
 this it must distinguish itself from each and all of those facts or 
 events or elements which it thus hoth relates together and keeps dis- 
 tinct. To it they all are present : and since it is only through that 
 presence to it that they have their places in the one system and so are 
 what they are, it may be said on the one hand that their presence to 
 it is their reality; and on the other hand that it is the source and 
 home alike of them and of their relations to one another.^ 
 
 But can science find anything of which it dare assert such an 
 activity? Are we acquainted, in the whole circle of our experience, 
 with anything which can exercise such an activity and so can be such 
 a " principle of union " ? The answer is that we are. Intelligence, 
 self-consciousness, spirit, — or whatever other name you may wish to 
 apply to that which the man of science himself essentially is — is pre- 
 cisely such a principle of union and exercises precisely such an 
 activity. To hold many facts, many elements, together in the unity 
 of one grasp, to relate them together and yet to keep each in its dis- 
 tinctness — this is precisely what it is the essential nature of self- 
 conscious spirit to do. But in applying this principle to the solution 
 of our problem we must remember tliat in us men self-consciousness 
 or spirit exercises its power of synthesis only imperfectly. Our 
 knowledge is fragmentary; our minds in their advance, though not 
 
 1 This problem of the "one connected world " is, in some form or other, the problem of 
 all metaphysicians— even of David Hume. But it is interesting to note with wh.at special 
 clearness, iind how early, it came forward in Greek thought, as the problem of the Many 
 and the One. 
 
 68 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 in their essential function, discursive. Our world is, in one sense, 
 a world given to us, and in apprehending it we pass from fact to 
 fact; in mastering one part of it we have to leave other parts out of 
 sight. But self-conscious spirit, as the principle of union of the 
 world, cannot be fragmentary or discursive. It must be a single 
 eternal spirit, to which the total system of things is present in one 
 eternally complete grasp ;i and present, not as given to it, but as con- 
 stituted by it — constituted by it in an activity in which it acts alto- 
 gether from itself. 
 
 So, then, the case thus far stands. We came face to face with a 
 problem : How can such a thing as a connected w^orld exist ? Of the 
 two roads along which a solution can be sought we found ourselves 
 absolutely shut up to one — that which demands a "principle of 
 union." And something which by its very nature can act as such a 
 principle we found ourselves to be acquainted with. We have, then, 
 a problem ; we have a principle adequate to its solution ; and we have 
 but one such principle. To the straightforward scientific intellect, 
 when it faces such a situation, there is but one course : to accept the 
 principle and proceed with its farther application. 
 
 We must say, then, that the world, as a single system of facts, is 
 the activity of a single eternal spirit, which by one and the same 
 activity maintains the facts in their distinctness and links them 
 together in one system; and which, to do this, must distinguish 
 itself from each and all of the facts which it thus constitutes — being 
 thus the source and home of the whole order of the world, or (to use 
 the technical language of philosophy), in the sense already indicated 
 the subject of the world. 
 
 But, as we saw, in order to explain how science is possible more 
 is necessary than an account of how the objective world is possible. 
 For science is the coming together of the soul and the world; is the 
 organic union of subject and object. The world, we have been forced 
 to say, is a system of facts present to an eternal spirit; it is the 
 thought or activity of an eternal spirit. What then can man be, who 
 in his science reproduces as his own thought that thinking of the 
 eternal spirit? Here, again, there is no space to do justice to the 
 
 1 Totum simul, as raediBeval men of thought were wont to say. 
 69 
 
THE STUDY OF NATURE 
 
 argument. All that is possible is to sum up in the briefest form 
 its conclusion. The knowing subject cannot be accounted for by 
 reference to any of those objects, of whose very existence as objects 
 of scientific study its own synthetic activity is a necessary condition. 
 Nor can it be " derived " from any of the elements of its own experi- 
 ence (such as feelings or sensations) ; for of the very existence of 
 these as elements of a human experience, its synthetic activity is, once 
 more, a necessary condition. It can be accounted for only upon the 
 view that the eternal subject of the world has reproduced itself — or 
 let us rather say, Himself^ — in and as the human subject; has repro- 
 duced Himself in such a way that, under whatever limitations,^ the 
 constitutive principles of our minds correspond to the constitutive 
 
 ' Will) regard to this verbal usage, it is perhaps worth while to say one thing : the 
 important matter is not what pronoun a man chooses, hut what he really means. When a 
 writer (1) expresses the conclusion that the supreme principle of the world is an eternal 
 spirit— a single self-conscious and self -determining spirit, the eternal subject of the world, 
 perfect in intelligence and reason ; (2) indicates that that eternal subject constitutes the 
 whole order of nature, and that, in order to constitute any fact at all, it must disti7iguish 
 itself from each and all of the facts which it constitutes ; (3) makes clear that he derives 
 that conception, which for him illuminates the world, from a consideration of the nature 
 and essential activity of spirit as found in man ; (4) points out that that spirit is present 
 among men, is active in the whole of history, winning human hearts to itself, and through 
 them leading the race of men onward to an ultimate issue of divine love and divine 
 righteousness:— at such a writer both the Manichpean and the Materialist, each from his 
 own point of view, may have cause to feel enraged ; but the theologian who is a Theist 
 surely should recognise in him a friend, and more than a friend. It is a great pity that 
 men who really are agreed in the principles that lie at the basis both of their thought and 
 of their conduct, should stand apart because they do not understand one another's speech 
 — some using a dogmatic dialect which loves ancient usages of Schools and Councils, 
 others a tongue which has grown up in the atmosphere of science and seeks above all things 
 (often with too violent a forgetfulness of the past) for accuracy. When we are so unhappy 
 as to have to work by words rather than by action and afTection, we ought, for the sake 
 both of one another and of the truth, to do two things : we ought to set down our concep- 
 tions with clearness, articulating them definitely into their constituent elements so as to 
 bring to light those subconscious meanings which we all hold and which shape our con- 
 clusions (and our lives) much more than we think ; and we ought to remember that most 
 words have had histories— the word iierson. for instance, has taken on technical and sharply 
 limited meanings in two great developments, that of Roman Law, and that of the 
 theological doctrine of the Trinity— or to take another instance, the word substance 
 expresses the category which lias revealed itself in history as of all categories the one 
 specially consecrated to Pantheism. Our Lord's was the better way, when, in speaking of 
 the nature of God, He used the word Spirit, and in speaking of the relation of God to 
 men, the word Father. 
 
 2 Limitations wliose character may be suggested by pointing out, for instance, that we 
 live in time ; that an animal body is organic to the process of the development of our 
 spirits; that the appointed conditions of that process of development are such that we 
 enter only by hard labour, and by struggles and sorrows which go beyond all hardness of 
 labour, into our inheritance of knowledge and of character. 
 
 70 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 principles of that thought or activity of His which is the workl. For 
 that reason, and only for that reason, are we men able to make our- 
 selves at home in the nature which He constitutes, whether when, as 
 children, we played amongst its flowers, or when we investigate it 
 scientifically, or when, in times of happiness and still more in times 
 of trouble and of loss, we find in it a companion and stay of our 
 spirits : — just as a reader is able to study a book, and gradually to 
 enter into its meaning, and gradually to have his mind strengthened 
 and uplifted by it, because, and only because, the constitutive prin- 
 ciples of his mind and being are in their essential character the same 
 as those of the writer of the book. 
 
 Such, then, is the account which must be given, on the one hand 
 of the world which is known, on the other hand of the soul which 
 knows. But the two questions to which these are answers were the 
 two sides of the one question: How is knowledge possible? And it 
 is when we come back to that question in its unity, and put our two 
 answers together as the answer to it, that we see the deepest strength 
 of the whole argument and of the conclusion to which it leads. Man 
 is able to know nature — to have science of nature — only because there 
 is an essential likeness between man and nature. The soul is able to 
 go out into the world and make itself intellectually at home in the 
 world — is able to take the world into itself and reproduce in and as 
 its own thought that system of facts and laws which is nature — 
 because, and only because, nature is really what the soul is, a spiritual 
 existence; because, and only because, nature is the thought of God 
 and man is the child of God, able, no matter how imperfectly and 
 gradually, to think his Father's thoughts after Him.^ 
 
 That insight has never been better stated than in words which 
 tradition ascribes to a man of science. Kepler, seeing that the power 
 which carried on the stellar movements was acquainted with, and 
 acted in the most exact accordance with, those mathematical prin- 
 ciples which he himself had worked out in the council-chamber of his 
 own pure reason, turned, it is said, from his telescope with the 
 exclamation, " I think Thy thoughts after Thee, God." Cases of 
 
 1 This is often exprr-ssed by saying that science is spirit finding itself in nature ; and 
 that spirit can find itself in nature, only because nature itself is spirit. 
 
 71 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 this sort, which nowadays occur ever more frequently — cases in which 
 men of science come to conclusions mathematically (i.e., by the way 
 of the pure reason), and then, turning to the telescope or to the labor- 
 atory, find that these conclusions are true of nature — are very marked 
 instances of the community of the intelligence which is nature with 
 the intelligence which is man. But the same view of the world and 
 of the soul which is needed to explain the possibility of these, is 
 needed to explain any knowledge of nature by man at all, even though 
 it be but the little child's knowledge of the flowers among which it 
 plays, or the primitive shepherd's rough acquaintance with the laws of 
 wind and weather or the ways of plant and animal life. 
 
 "What we have seen so far we may, then, sum up in this way : ( 1 ) 
 The system or process of nature is a divine activity; is, if you will, 
 part of the divine thought. (3) Our sciences of nature are the 
 thinking of the thoughts of One who is invisible — a thinking of God's 
 thoughts after Him. The growth of these sciences may be described, 
 from our side, as our gradual entering into, or comprehending of, or 
 making ourselves at home in, the content of the divine mind; and 
 from the divine side, as God's gradual impartation of His thought 
 to us. (3) And this process of thinking God's thoughts after Him, 
 of reading the book which He has written — the book whose syllables 
 are the growth of the flowers, and the ordered march of the stars, and 
 the age-long development of animal organisms — is possible to us 
 because, and only because, God has reproduced Himself in us; 
 because, and only because, we are His children, made, intellectually, 
 in His likeness, having our essential cognitive principles the same as 
 the principles of the divine intelligence; because, and only because, 
 to use an accurate but easily misunderstood expression, the human 
 mind is potentially the divine mind. 
 
 So, then, even if we stopped at this point of the metaphysician's 
 regress upon the conditions of experience, we could affirm at least this 
 much : — In every step and at every stage both of the nature which is 
 known and of man's activity in knowing it, the presence and activity 
 of the Eternal is implied. The whole process of the building up of 
 the natural and physical sciences is a co-working of man with God. 
 of the human mind with the divine mind. It is a participation of 
 
 72 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 niau iu the Eternal lieason; is, for liiin who is willing to see the 
 meaning of his own endeavours after science, part of the process 
 whereby God becomes our dwelling-place and the home of our spirits. 
 So that, even while the movement of history and the growth of mind 
 are stripping away from cleric and priest and altar something of their 
 awful splendour and long-asserted, compelling power, the sciences of 
 nature have a sanctity which is immediate and cannot by any move- 
 ment of history or change of institutions be shaken. Eor the courts 
 of science, whether the men who labour in them recognise it or no, 
 are sacred with the most immediate presence of the ultimate God. 
 And their sanctity is but part of a wider sanctity. To him who is 
 able to see the meaning and significance of science, every ray of light 
 that the man of science flashes from his mirror, every minutest 
 animal cell that he examines under his microscope, together with his 
 o^vn power of knowing these objects, is a witness that the world he 
 dwells in is at once the activity and the temple of the ]\Iost High God. 
 Newman to some extent apprehended this. " Every breath of 
 air/' he somewhere says, " and ray of light and heat, every beautiful 
 prospect, is, as it were, the skirts of their garments, the waving of 
 the robes of those whose faces see God." But this is rather the word 
 of the preacher catching a momentary glimpse of the glory of his 
 God revealed in alien realms, than any assured and thoroughgoing 
 vision of the real being of nature. For, in the first place, Newman 
 the churchman (using that word for a moment as Newman himself 
 would have used it) loyal to the very letter of the dogma of his 
 church, could scarcely look otherwise than askance upon nature, and 
 upon the sciences of nature, and upon the independent endeavour of 
 philosophy to penetrate to the ultimate meaning both of nature and 
 of man's knowledge of nature. And secondly — a worthier reason — 
 he felt so acutely the revelation of God in conscience and in man's 
 inner heart,^ that he tended to overlook the revelation of God in 
 nature, and to have no eyes for the fact that all knowledge of nature 
 is in ultimate analysis knowledge of God, and is possible to man only 
 through and as God's impartation of Himself to man, 
 
 1 See his description of his early religioiis feelings on p. 4 of the new edition of the 
 Apoloqia: . . . "making me rest in the thought of two and two only absolute and 
 luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator, j 
 
 73 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 But in "Wordswortli we find botli adequate vision — I had almost 
 said, adequate comprehension — and adequate expression. The per- 
 ception of what nature truly is; and the companion perception of 
 what the true strength of our human life is : — these are the ani- 
 mating and informing soul of his poetry .^ That the contemplation 
 of nature, the love of nature, the companionship with nature, is a 
 companionship in which we lay aside our mortality, a companionship 
 in which God imparts his mind to man and man's mind comes to 
 dwell in its own proper home, its home in God : — this is the essential 
 principle of Wordsworth's vision of nature. It is in this companion- 
 ship with nature that we become living souls and see into the life of 
 things, and the burthen of the mystery, the heavy and the weary 
 weight of all this unintelligible world, is lightened, and we become 
 aware of a deeper presence than before we had known, something 
 far more deeply interfused than our first rapturous acquaintance with 
 nature, our first delight in her glory of sound and colour, had taught 
 us — 
 
 Something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought. 
 And rolls through all things. 
 
 And it is Wordsworth's special crown of glory that with him this 
 vision of the divinity of nature became also a vision of the sacredness 
 of the ordinary life of man with its natural relationships, its natural 
 duties, its natural charities. For him the heavenly light rested, as 
 upon the lakes and silent hills, so also upon the elemental constituents 
 of the life of man. The two together formed the one object of his 
 work as a poet. For these as for those, he sought — not to bring a 
 consecration of poetic light from without — but to penetrate to, and 
 interpret, the heavenly nature which is their genuine being. 
 
 1 Perhaps one ought rather to say that these are the light of his poetry, the truth and 
 insight which his poetry expresses; while its warmth, the restrained but immense power 
 that is in it, comes from his own English heart— a heart most affectionate, and trained 
 (like Plato's) by long discipline of tragic passion and deep peace. 
 
 74 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 Upon this it is worth while to pause a moment longer. For it 
 explains a fact most significant in itself and, to men of the church, 
 full of instruction. It may appear remarkable in the extreme that 
 men, for religions sake, should take refuge from a prophet with a 
 poet. And yet, when Newman is the prophet and Wordsworth the 
 poet, that is what, to a certain extent and in a certain regard, we 
 ordinary men living the ordinary life have to do. For (even leaving 
 aside the fact that Newman, with all the intensity of his vision of the 
 divine, came at last to look upon a single narrowly defined institu- 
 tion as the one thing in this world directly and distinctly of divine 
 foundation), the very intensit}' of his vision of the unity of this life 
 with the life to come dimmed his eyes to the unity of man with 
 nature, and to the value of nature and of the natural man to God. 
 But the unity of man with nature, and the unity of nature with God, 
 AVordsworth saw with the clear vision of a daily and affectionate 
 friendship. 
 
 Hence it is, too, that while we are still young Newman's lesson is 
 the easier to learn and is the one that specially wins us ; but when we 
 grow older it is more and more to Wordsworth that we turn both for 
 illumination and support. When we are young, and our hearts beat 
 high, and the burden of the daily life has not fully come upon us, 
 it is easy for us to despise the vanities of the world. It is easy to 
 turn away from the noises of the earth, and from the littlenesses of 
 the " practical life," and to enter upon that short and direct road to 
 the heavenly glory which consists in repudiating the earth and all 
 its ways. But when we grow older, and life itself puts us in our 
 places, and we are grappling day by day with the tasks of the 
 ordinary life, and either in them or not at all must fulfil the vocation 
 which we have from God; then we learn with a continually deepen- 
 ing gratitude to receive Wordsworth's lesson of the essential sacred- 
 ness of the natural relationships, of the natural charities and affec- 
 tions, of the natural surroundings, of our daily life. It is not that 
 Newman ever loses his high spiritual majesty in the eyes of any man 
 who has once apprehended it ; it is that Wordsworth comes nearer to 
 us, and dwells with us in our daily cares, and illuminates our daily 
 and natural life with divine and eternal light, showing us nature 
 
 75 
 
THE STUDY OF NATURE 
 
 and natural affection as a work of the grace of God and as a medium 
 for the farther impartation of that grace to us. 
 
 But we must return to the argument itself. For the point 
 reached a moment ago was one at which we cannot stop. The insight 
 so far gained compels us to take a further step. And to that step 
 we are driven whether we view the matter from the divine or from 
 the human side. 
 
 First from the divine side. We have seen that the order of the 
 world in accordance with which the world's history proceeds, is con- 
 stituted by an eternal spirit who is the subject of the world; in a 
 word, we have seen that the world is the thought or activity of God. 
 But spirit, in any activity which has the form of time, proceeds 
 teleologically. It "sees the end from the beginning," and in 
 view of that end it arranges the beginning, arranges the essential 
 conditions, the informing order and constitution of the whole process. 
 It is involved, then, in the position already reached — nay, it is involved 
 in anything that can be called Theism — that that whole activity of God 
 in which He constitutes the order of the world and maintains the world, 
 proceeds in view of an end or TtAos. 
 
 Or if we start from the human side we come to precisely the same 
 point and almost by the same road. For man's life, so far at any rate 
 as he enters into his moral and intellectual heritage, is a process of 
 development ; nature itself, which is at once the beginning, the home, 
 and the stubborn material, of our life, being a medium which God 
 uses in what may be described indifferently as the communication of 
 His mind to us, or as the development of our own minds. And so 
 there arises the question: In a world-order which is rational, which 
 is constituted by an eternal and self-conscious Reason, what can be 
 the significance of such a possibility of human development? what 
 can be the meaning of the fact that the form into which our life is 
 cast is the form of development ? Here also the position already 
 reached leaves us but one possible answer. The eternal subject of the 
 world, who does not act wantonly or blindly or irrationally, who does 
 not make experiments, and to whom it is impossible to institute a 
 beginning that forgets its end, has constituted the world, with its 
 
 76 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 possibility of human development, in view of a Ti'Aoswhich would 
 be a true and genuine fulfilment of the beings and the capacities that 
 are the subjects of the development. 
 
 From both sides, then, we are brought to the conception of an end 
 or Ti'Aob in view of which God proceeds in that activity by which the 
 order of the world is constituted and the process of the world's history 
 made possible. And the next step of the argument whose course and 
 whose conclusions are being noted here, is an attempt to understand 
 more particularly what that r^'Aos can be. Since the order of the 
 world in which we now live is constituted in view of that rtAos, cer- 
 tain conclusions concerning the latter are possible from a considera- 
 tion of the former. Two of these may in the briefest possible form 
 be indicated here. In the first place, that " far-off divine event " 
 consists in a perfect society, a fully realised "kingdom of God," in 
 which the capabilities of men, moral, intellectual, artistic, developed 
 only in part — often scarcely at all, and sometimes worse than not at 
 all — in this world, reach their true and full development; and in 
 which one person does not enter into his good at the expense of 
 another ; but on the contrary the good of all is the good which each one 
 seeks, and therefore the attainment of his good by any individual 
 means to that extent the attainment of the good by all. In the 
 second place, the perfection of personal character which is implied in 
 the perfection of that society, is not only present to the divine mind 
 as an idea; it exists, fully and eternally realised, in the divine char- 
 acter. In moral character, God Himself is, in eternal completeness, 
 that toward which it is the vocation of the sons of God to grow ; such 
 is the End which is at once the promise of our life, and the measure 
 of its genuine value, and the standard which sets in a light more awful 
 than that of any day of wrath its present distance from its goal. So 
 that science, in the last saying which it makes possible, places us 
 among those multitudes of men who, with a sorrow upon which a 
 great hope is dawning, listen to that other saying which is at once the 
 judgment and the inspiration of their lives : " Ye shall be perfect, 
 even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." 
 
 This then is, from the divine side, the reXo; of the world; from 
 the human side, it is man's eternal vocation. And the way of the ful- 
 
 77 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUKE 
 
 filment of that vocation is the way of the cross; the way, as the 
 greatest of modern metaphysicians so steadily insisted, of " dying in 
 order to live " ; the way of that self-surrender in which men yield 
 themselves up to be the organs of the eternal purpose, and become, if 
 one may thus express it, subordinate centres of the activity of the 
 divine will, realising their own true freedom and coming genuinely 
 " to have life in themselves " precisely in the measure that they appre- 
 hend the divine purpose, and obey the vocation which the very 
 existence of that purpose constitutes for man, 
 
 "With this latter insight — the insight that men come truly to be 
 themselves, that they realise their true freedom and come genuinely 
 to have life in themselves, only as they implicitly or explicitly appre- 
 hend the divine purpose and obey the vocation which the existence of 
 such a purpose constitutes — the broad and general argument whose 
 course we have in this section been following, comes full circle. 
 From a problem of human life it began, and now it returns upon 
 human life. On the field of human history — which in the last 
 analysis means on the field of man's daily life — the eternal subject 
 of the world is operating toward the realisation of His purpose ;^ but 
 not by iron assertion and enforcement of sovereignty ; nor by mechan- 
 ical action of the divine will or the divine grace upon man, such as 
 in the common conception of things a physical force exercises upon 
 a physical object. Eather the divine mind operates in human history 
 toward the realisation of its purpose, by imparting to the human mind 
 ideas and strivings which, however imperfect, are in a certain genuine 
 sense "representatives to man" of the eternal ideal, and which, 
 becoming operative powers in men's lives, lead human history on 
 toward its goal. The historical process of the realisation of the divine 
 idea is worked out, that is to say, neither by mechanical action nor by 
 "mere sovereignty" on God's part, but in and through that which 
 when viewed from man's side, is "man's devotion to the highest 
 ideal that he knows," and which when viewed from God's side may 
 be described as " God reconciling the world to Himself. "^ In other 
 
 1 I am stating this from the point of view of philosophy and in the language of 
 philosophy ; and am so stating it because it is a conclusion of philosophy. But it may not 
 be amiss to refer to such passasres of Scripture as John v. 17. 
 
 2 Cf. (under the qualification mentioned in the last note) Col. i. 20 ; 2 Cor. v. 18, 18. 
 
 7S 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 words, the divine idea realises itself in history by an impartation of 
 itself in which it wins men as free spirits to its service. By impulses 
 planted in man's nature ; by the appeal that suffering makes, and by 
 all the efforts undertaken to alleviate it; by natural affection and 
 all "the charities of father, son, and brother"; by the institutions, 
 the needs, the opportunities, of society and social life; by prophetic 
 energies aroused in solitary and burning hearts; by the ideals that 
 under the pressure of some great need arise in men's minds, and 
 move upon the face of a people's life, and win to their service its suc- 
 cessive generations; in a word, in all that can be described as the 
 natural development of morality and the natural growth of society; 
 and in that in which divine revelation culminates — the character and 
 action of Jesus, wherein the ideal for human life, and the constitutive 
 principle, the eternal and ultimate law, of the whole order of the 
 universe,! stand revealed in absolute simplicity for all men's appre- 
 hension: — in all this the divine idea has been at work, and is at 
 work, winning to itself all men that can be won, and through them 
 leading onward the course of history and introducing into time the 
 principles and the powers of eternity .^ 
 
 1 Cf. Col. i. 16, 17 (R.V.). 
 
 2 I may perhaps be allowed a single historical reference. The great deterministic 
 theologies (one hesitates to use party names like " Calvinistic " or " Augustinian ") tended 
 to make the divine purpose execute itself in almost the same way as the force which 
 drives a machine fulfils itself through the various parts of the machine, none of which 
 have "life in themselves " or any will of their own or any energy different from the energy 
 of the one total machine of which they are parts. Against these deterministic theologies, 
 which were really great one-sided philosophies, Arminianism was a protest, not so much 
 of the philosophic intellect of man as of his outraged moral nature. And, as such a 
 protest, it never worked out adequately the great truth which it had felt keenly rather 
 than apprehended rationally. Indeed, it has been almost ostentatiously non-philosophical 
 —seeking for practice without seeking for the reason of practice, and being historically 
 less able to secure that very practice than its grim but convinced opponent. But the 
 philosophy of the matter is clear. And it is one in which Calvinist and Arminian may 
 very well unite. God is certainly supreme in His world ; the divine plan certainly supreme 
 in history. In its resolute and unflinching affirmation of that, Augustinian and Calvin- 
 istic theology had its hands upon a great truth ; and in that fact lies the explanation of its 
 immense practical power and efficiency. But, understood truly, that divine plan prevails, 
 not as the sovereignty of an iron machine over its parts, but by "reconciling men to 
 itself"; by winning to itself the hearts and wills of men so that they devote themselves 
 to it to be its organs, and it has in them the spontaneous and yet subordinate centres of its 
 work of realising itself. 
 
 But the men whose thoughts have lived with the past struggles of the human mind to 
 understand the ways of Ood, even while under the leadership of a modern metaphysician 
 
 79 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 VI. 
 
 Such, then, is the point of view of that " greater whole of knowl- 
 edge " which the natural and physical sciences by their very existence 
 imply and call for. What is gained from that point of view is an 
 insight, not into the complete detail of the system of the world, but 
 into its essential and ultimate nature : in that sense it is a " knowledge 
 of the world as a whole." And such a knowledge of the world as a 
 whole is an interpretation of the meaning of life; for it is an account 
 of the true character of that order of the world by which the condi- 
 tions of our life are set. Whether this knowledge be called theology 
 (as finding the truth of the world in God), or philosophy of nature, 
 or philosophy of mind, matters little. For man is the son of God; 
 and nature is that thought of God which is God's medium in com- 
 municating His mind to man, and thus developing in man man's own 
 mind. So that to know nature, God and man must be known ; and to 
 loiow man, God and nature must be known. Any one of the three — 
 theology; philosophy of mind; philosophy of nature — in order to be 
 itself must be the other two ; and to the extent that it is not, it 
 
 they point out that those antithetic views can be unified in a more comprehensive truth, 
 know that the schools of theology themselves have something better to show than one- 
 sided systems. Among those who have inquired concerning the relation of the world's 
 history— the relation of the wills, the characters, the fates, of individuals and societies — 
 to the divine nature, there is a greater than either Augustine or the Remonstrant against 
 Augustine. If we are to be disciples in the schools of theology at all, the minds that are 
 deepest and the hearts that most love God and live most in that love, will go back, it 
 seems to me, past both these men of the West to that great and undying light which was 
 the soul of Origen. If the word theology be taken in its strict sense as the human 
 scientitic wisdom which socks to know God and to interpret the facts of the world in the 
 light of that knowledge, Origen is the greatest of theologians. Greatest because he saw 
 two things : that the conception of the divine nature is the supreme principle in theology ; 
 and that the divine nature is love. He was not subject to that habit to which the Western 
 mind continually (and very naturally) gave way; the habit of confining God's love, and 
 all the communicative and disciplinary energies of that love, within the barriers of 
 artificial legal requirement. To apprehend the meaning for theology of the love of God, 
 one must one's self live in that love; and live in it with width of heart and spaciousness 
 of mind. And to say that is precisely to describe Origen. In contrast with the spirit of 
 Origen. the tragedy of Western theology lies in the fact that it has been too much the 
 work of the political and legal (indeed of the positively lawyer-like) mind, which in 
 theology tends to view the rectifying of the relation of the sinful human race to God as a 
 matter of mere transactions; transactions carried through by steps which are not ethical 
 realities but rather are forensic conventions, external, artificial, unreal. Not that the 
 West has been without hearts that have lived in the love of God. That which is deepest 
 and most vital in the life of the West has been brought into being precisely by such 
 
 80 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 ceases to have the form of science and becomes the voice of authority. 
 For the world is one; the ultimate order of the world is one; the 
 knowledge of that ultimate order is one; and that one knowledge is 
 at once theology and philosophy of mind and philosophy of nature. 
 With the emphasis at one point, it is theology (in the sense noted a 
 moment ago) ; with the emphasis at another point, it is philosophy 
 of mind (which, in the only useful or respectable sense of the term, 
 means philosophy of history and of society, with all that history and 
 society include of moral and intellectual endeavour) ; with the 
 emphasis at still another point, it is philosophy of nature. 
 
 And this knowledge, by whatever name it is called, is made pos- 
 sible to us by the fact that the " masters of them that know," in their 
 long endeavour to understand nature, have steadily refused to stop 
 half-way in the knowledge of nature; have refused to be contented 
 with a study of the detailed facts of nature as mere facts ; have stub- 
 bornly endeavoured to penetrate to the true character of nature as 
 an order or system ; and have found that the scientific gateway to this 
 knowledge is the gateway of epistemology. For to the insight into 
 the ultimate character of nature they made their way by considering 
 the fact that nature is knowable to man; by dealing (to put the same 
 
 hearts. But they have been mystics, or saints, or laborious parish priests, or sisters of 
 mercy, or, better still, laymen and laywomen living in the daily round and the common 
 task as "friends of God" and therefore as friends of man— seldom theologians as 
 theologians. 
 
 As one contemplates this history one cannot but wish that its sundered elements had 
 somehow been united : the Western church, the Eastern theology ; the Teutonic races, 
 the Greek mind. But with whatever regret one looks upon the past, one must still 
 remember that in its course is a hidden wisdom greater than our own. And though 
 Origen's intellect was one of the most spacious that ever has existed upon the earth ; 
 though he loved much, and his heart was pure, and his theology also was therefore pure— 
 not tainted by human hatreds nor sophisticated by the use of legal conventions ; yet the 
 history decided that the future was to be not with him but with the great African who 
 was passionate in sin, passionate in piety, passionate in devotion to the church, passionate 
 in maintaining the many diverse positions to which his subtle intellect was led, and who 
 mastered the mind of the Western generations to whom it was not given to respond to the 
 unflawed saintliness which was the character of Origen nor to the untroubled and con- 
 sistent light which was his mind. 
 
 But if the theologians of the past are to be of real service to us— and they can be— 
 we must walk with them as their companions, not as their slaves. Hence it is not the 
 need of the day that Origen should be set on Augustine's disputed throne. In theology 
 there has already been too much of human masters and of their schools. The world of 
 to-day ought to be occupying itself— and is coming more and more to occupy itself— 
 with the New Testament, and with that Son of man and of God, of whom, and of whose 
 work upon human hearts, it is the value of the New Testament to be a record. 
 
 7 81 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 thing in other words) with the question, raised naively by Socrates, 
 ahnost solved by Plato, reinstated for modern thinking by Kant, 
 " How is knowledge possible ?" 
 
 But when this point of view is reached, and this insight into the 
 essential character of the world's order gained, the endeavour of 
 reason to know the world is still not at its end. For what we have 
 done is this: we have found man partly possessing, partly striving 
 to possess, science of the detailed facts and laws of the world ; and by 
 inquiring how such science is possible we have gained an insight into 
 the true character of the world and of its order. But that at once 
 puts upon the scientific reason the obligation to turn back to the details 
 of the world and to endeavour to give them, in the light and under the 
 guidance of the insight just referred to, their higher and further 
 interpretation. In other words, if you have seen that there is a divine 
 plan of the world, logically you cannot stop. You have to go on to ask 
 what that plan is : which involves nothing less than to ask what the 
 place is, in that plan, of each of the particular parts of the total 
 system ; of each law of nature ; of each determining condition of man's 
 life; of each great era and decisive event in history; nay, even of 
 each decisive feature and event in each man's individual life. 
 
 To put it epigrammatically, when philosophy reaches its goal its 
 work is still not finished. The movement so far described, the 
 movement from the multiplicity of the facts of the world to the 
 eternal nature and eternal constitution of the world, might be called 
 a movement from the circumference to the centre. But when the 
 centre is gained, philosophy, whether as pure science or as a prac- 
 tical temper, cannot cease from its labour. From the centre it must 
 return to the circumference, but bearing with it the light gained at 
 the centre, and seeking by the aid of that light to comprehend more 
 truly the details of the circumference. It must attempt, that is to 
 say, to give to the particular facts of the world, the particular facts 
 of nature and of history, their " divine interpretation " ; must 
 attempt to view them not only as facts to be described and classified, 
 but also as elements or factors in a divine and rational plan. To 
 use an ancient terminology, the first movement of philosophy is 
 
 82 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 along the upward way — the 666s Ixvoo — but as soon as this move- 
 ment has gained a vision of its goal, philosophy must turn to the 
 downward way — the o(Jo? Kara?— and return to the world, but bring- 
 ing with it a new light for the understanding of the world.^ 
 
 And this demand is intensified from another side. Do not 
 human history and human society themselves contradict this account 
 of the essential constitution of the world and this view of man's his- 
 tory as a process in which an eternal purpose, divine and divinely 
 rational, is being realised? When human society and human history 
 are what they are, so wasteful of life, so filled with oppression of the 
 weak by the strong, so tainted with mean and hideous vices, so con- 
 fused and doubtful in the whole struggle of good with evil, how can 
 they be interpreted as a process in which a divine purpose is being 
 realised and a city of God built up: — a city of God, in which each 
 member becomes all that he has it in him, in virtue of his divine 
 origin, to be; and in which the achieving of the good by one con- 
 tributes to (or rather, in its measure is) the achieving of it by all? 
 
 It is obvious that within the limits of an essay nothing more can 
 be done than to indicate in the most summary fashion the general 
 situation in which the intellect finds itself when it confronts this 
 immense — nay, this infinite — field.^ Such an indication may be 
 given by considering three points. 
 
 (A) To begin with the simplest matter, it may be noted that the 
 main divisions of the field are fairly well marked out. On the one 
 side stands philosophy of nature; not simply in the sense of an 
 
 1 Such a demand for the return of philosophy or theology from God to the world, is 
 binding upon that Idealistic type of philosophy whose central argument was indicated in the 
 preceding section. And it is thus binding because that philosophy, setting out to understand 
 the world, finds in God and in a divine plan at once the explanation of the world and the 
 truth of the world. But the other type of philosophy with which we are concerned in 
 this book— the philosophy (or theology, or religion,— for it is all three) of the via negativa 
 —is, it will be understood, not subject in the same sense to this demand. For the essence 
 of its method is, that it proceeds from the world to God, not by the synthetic movement 
 of Idealism, but by denying the world altogether. Hence for it there can be no return 
 from God to the world in the sense indicated above, but only the ineffable mystic rest in 
 God. (Cf . supra, pp. 9. 10, and infra, pp. 116-150 ; 215 seq. ; 274 seq.) 
 
 2 But it should be understood at the outset that both the intellectual obligation to this 
 task, and the pressure of the cruel problems which intensify it, fall, not merely upon some 
 special type of philosophy, but upon everything that can be called Theism. 
 
 83 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 inquiry into the ultimate and essential character of the physical 
 order ;^ but in the extended sense of an attempt to give to the details 
 of that order their " divine interpretation " — their interpretation as 
 parts or elements in the total divine plan. On the other side stands 
 philosophy of history. And here also the inquiry is not in the simple, 
 but in the extended, sense. That is to say, the question at issue is 
 not simply the question how history is possible; is not simply the 
 question how that process is possible in which man, an intelligent 
 and active spirit, lives in organic union with the material order and 
 its laws, and yet devotes himself through his generations to the 
 realising of spiritual and social ideals, and so makes history.^ It is 
 rather the endeavour to see the stages and events of man's past history 
 in their true meaning and their true light as steps in the divine plan 
 of the world. 
 
 Each of the two may be said to begin with broad and general 
 problems and to advance from these to particular problems. The 
 general problems are closely allied to the elementary and primary 
 argument outlined in the preceding section; and can be pursued by 
 the human intellect with some degree of scientific success and profit. 
 But the particular problems require for their solution a minute knowl- 
 edge of the details of the divine plan, not attainable in any such 
 experience as that of man upon the earth. In the philosophy of 
 nature, for instance, the first and easiest of the more general prob- 
 lems arises from that character of the physical order which more than 
 any other has impressed the modern mind: the unbroken orderliness 
 which prevails in it, the unchangeableness and inviolalnlity of its 
 laws. This problem indeed takes us only a step beyond the general 
 Idealistic argument already outlined ; the conclusions reached in that 
 argument suggest at once both the rational necessity of this " con- 
 tinuity " of the material order, and the possible limitations of it. And 
 that from whichever side one views the spatial world : whether (a) as 
 an expression of the divine nature, or (P) as one of the media by 
 which God communicates to man, and develops in man, man's own 
 
 1 For that inquiry would be simply a special application of the general and elementary 
 argrument outlined above in §V. 
 
 2 For that, once more, would involve simply the argument of §V. 
 
 84 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 mind. From the former point of view, the spatial order is regarded 
 with reference to its source; and appears as necessarily sharing in 
 the absolute orderliness and rationality of that source. From the 
 latter point of view it is regarded with reference to its end. That 
 end is the development of reason in man ; and the medium by which 
 reason is communicated must itself have rationality and the orderli- 
 ness of rationality. The source is reason; the end is the develop- 
 ment of reason ; any medium employed by such a source toward such 
 an end can scarcely be other than a systematic embodiment of reason. 
 It is perfectly true that we men in our best endeavours struggle 
 toward ends imperfectly conceived ; perfectly true that the best means 
 we can fashion for ourselves do not fully express even those imperfect 
 conceptions; for we have to work upon materials of which we are 
 not as yet fully (or even approximately) masters. But God is \mder 
 neither limitation. The divine ends and the divine media and instru- 
 ments, when known as they truly are, are all alike expressions of the 
 divine nature. There is a limitation indeed. But it is not in God. 
 It is in the minds of us men who are seeking to apprehend God. 
 
 In the philosophy of nature, then, general problems of this sort 
 are not hopeless. But beyond them lies that which is almost hope- 
 less: the endless range of particular problems; the task of compre- 
 hending the place and meaning, in the divine plan, of each particular 
 law of nature and each particular stage and event of natural being. 
 In this (for a reason presently to be stated), little is possible to us 
 except conjecture. Such conjectures have indeed been made — from 
 Aristotle's day to Schelling's ; and often they have been both brilliant 
 and happy. But they are always to be ranked as probability or as 
 prophecy, and not as assured insight gained in the court of the 
 philosophic reason by methods appropriate to that court. 
 
 And so in the philosophy of history. We have already seen^ how 
 upon the field of history the divine mind operates upon and in and 
 through the human mind; how to the human mind the divine mind 
 imparts ideas and energies which are in some genuine sense repre- 
 sentatives of the Tf'A OS- eternally present to God; how these become 
 operative powers in human history and lead forward upon its way, 
 
 1 §V, ad fin. 
 85 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 in religion and morality, in art and science, in society and the state, 
 the spiritual development of mankind. The human intellect may 
 work with some success (in Hegel has worked with some success) 
 in tracing broadly this growing impartation of divine ideas through 
 the main stages of history — Oriental, Greek, Koman, Mediaeval, 
 Kenaissance and Reformation, eighteenth century, French Revolu- 
 tion and its era. But when we pass on to ask the exact " divine 
 interpretation^' of each particular event, it must be said (again for 
 a reason to be stated presently) that we are going beyond the limits 
 of the knowledge that is possible upon the earth. In such matters 
 we must be content for the present to live by faith, and by that illu- 
 mination, poetic or prophetic, which to men of faith is not denied. 
 
 (B) But when this statement has been made, it is necessary as 
 a matter of fairness to remind ourselves of the fact which was stated 
 near the beginning of the present section : namely, that the endeavour 
 itself is a legitimate endeavour of the scientific reason. And that 
 not merely in the sense that its problem can be stated without 
 absurdity or self-contradiction; but in the sense that science must 
 advance to it or remain radically incomplete. It lies directly upon 
 the road along which science advances to the knowledge of the world ; 
 it not only forms an integral stage of the journey of science, it is the 
 last and culminating stage. It is absolutely necessary to the com- 
 pleteness of the scientific knowledge of the world, absolutely necessary 
 to that penetrating and thoroughly articulated knowledge of the world 
 which it is part of the business of reason to acquire. And this last and 
 culminating stage the scientific intellect must somewhere and some- 
 time enter upon, unless it is to turn aside from its work of knowing 
 the world as the world truly is. Nay, more than this must be said. 
 Not the scientific intellect merely, but the total soul of man must 
 sometime and somewhere enter upon (or at any rate progress for ever 
 toward) an experience of this type, unless it is to turn away from its 
 true goal — that union with reality, that union with God, in which 
 faith becomes one with reason, and perfect activity is guided by 
 perfect science. 
 
 And however remote such a consideration as that may appear, 
 any philosophical writer whose speech is English ought resolutely to 
 
 86 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 insist upon it. For, at the point now in question, the sober and prac- 
 tical genius of the Anglo-Saxon race turns instinctively away from 
 the further investigations of philosophy to the practical life. 
 " Enough/' the men of that race instinctively say, " of this too proud 
 and too daring journeying of the reason into eternity. Once we are 
 assured that modern science of nature does not take away from us 
 the vision of God and of the ' far-off divine event ' which is His pur- 
 pose, but on the contrary confirms by its very existence that vision, 
 we will turn again to the field to which we properly belong, to the 
 practical life." This is the native and characteristic attitude toward 
 philosophy of the genius of England, as it speaks through those of 
 her sons who, for the solution of the intellectual difficulties that beset 
 their moral and religious devotion, have found themselves compelled 
 to go to the schools of philosophy. In one sense, indeed, the men 
 who embody that genius have no philosophy; their traditional 
 " school," the school of Locke and the Mills, stands, as a philosophy, 
 at no great remove from being the sorriest thing under heaven. But 
 in a greater sense, they have philosophy : they have the philosophic 
 mind— the feeling for eternity, the sense for the reasonableness of 
 things and for ordering life in accordance with that reasonableness. 
 But this philosophic mind they have expressed in their own way: 
 not in technical writings, nor in system-making; but in something 
 better, in customs and institutions, in the concrete deed rather than 
 in the abstract word. The majestic, yet reserved and moderate, eleva- 
 tion of the prayers of their great church; the ancient peace of their 
 churchyards ; the mingled dignity- and simplicity of their family life ; 
 their mighty works of war and of peace, of commerce and of justice, 
 done throughout all the world:— these are the works of their 
 philosophy. 
 
 Such a national character is not a thing to be lamented. On the 
 contrary, no man can live his life with integrity— the inchoate integ- 
 rity possible upon the earth— without to a very great degree turning 
 in that fashion from those "further investigations of philosophy." 
 Yet such a national character makes it all the more necessary to 
 insist upon the statement just made, that whether with reference to 
 the scientific intellect merely, or to the whole nature of man, that 
 
 87 
 
THE STUDY OP NATUEE 
 
 further stage of philosophy must somewhere and sometime be entered 
 upon. For while the English are right in feeling that reason 
 embodied in institutions is a greater thing than rational insight 
 expressed in words, yet — if for the moment a Canadian may lay aside 
 the restraint due from him and speak with the freedom of an Eng- 
 lishman at home — they run a double danger. In the first place, they 
 are in continual danger of sinning against the spirit of science. 
 And no power upon the earth — whether it be the genius and charac- 
 teristic temper of a great people, or the proud spirit of ecclesiastical 
 theology — can, without self-destruction, permanently repudiate the 
 scientific spirit, or permanently oppose it, or permanently draw a 
 line and say that thus far it shall come and no further.^ But in the 
 second place, they are exposed to a still greater danger in the very 
 field of their strength — the field of the practical life. Alike in their 
 institutions and in their conduct, obstinate unreason and authority 
 without intelligence too easily secure a footing; even when they are 
 saved by the stubborn and half-instinctive devotion to righteousness 
 which is their better angel, they are almost lost again for lack of 
 devotion to wisdom. They labour hard in all quarters of the earth, 
 performing the tasks laid upon them by that wisdom of the world 
 which compels all the peoples to its service. But they labour blindly, 
 in obedience rather to practical instincts and to their tenacious and 
 masterful hearts, than to clear visions of the enlightened intelligence ; 
 and so they achieve great things, but in their greatest works make 
 themselves often the fools of fate rather than its intelligent servants. 
 They load upon their shoulders burdens from all the ends of the 
 earth, and so accomplish the works of the world-spirit; but seldom is 
 any vision of its purpose in their eyes, seldom the joy of its free 
 service in their hearts. Doggedly and masterfully and blindly they 
 struggle forward, animated by a spirit that is mixing itself with time 
 and leading the centuries to a goal beyond the horizon; but even in 
 thus playing their part and fulfilling their great vocation, they too 
 often forget to be the sons of the hidden wisdom and remain only its 
 strong slaves. They serve God, but " know it not " ; they work His 
 
 1 The intellectual spirit that England needs, if her genius is to do justice to itself, is 
 the intellectual spirit of Origen— or of her own forgotten son, Cudworth. 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 works, but look not upon His face. God fulfils Himself through 
 their labours ; but they themselves stand in constant danger of being 
 exiles from God. 
 
 (C) But, this being once for all understood, we can return with 
 clear consciences to the fact with which we are at this point specially 
 concerned: namely, that the achievement of this ultimate goal of 
 science is beyond our present powers, and beyond the horizon of our 
 present life. If achieved by us at all, it must be through some such 
 development of our capacities of reason as only a life to come can 
 afford. Why this is, and what the loss or gain of it for us men is, 
 may be seen by considering two points. 
 
 (1) The inquiry whose course was outlined in the preceding sec- 
 tion was an inquiry into the ultimate nature, the true character, of 
 the world. The conclusion was that the "material order ^' is 
 really a spiritual system, or rather a factor in a spiritual system; 
 that the world has its source in a divine and eternal reason; that 
 there is a divine plan of the world. That conclusion was gained by 
 the reason moving easily and securely through an elementary and 
 absolutely simple argument. So that it is a conclusion both easy and 
 safe ; no man who has once really comprehended the facts and argu- 
 ments which lead to it can well cease from holding it in some form. 
 But what we have now come face to face with is something very 
 different. It is no longer the question, What is the true nature of 
 the world ? It is rather the question. The truth of the world con- 
 sisting in a divine plan, how are we to interpret each of the facts and 
 events of our present world as elements in that plan? And that is a 
 problem as difficult to the human intellect in its present condition 
 as the other is easy. For let it be considered what it involves to state 
 the exact place and meaning of any one element of a great system in 
 the total plan of that system. It involves knowing the system in all 
 the completeness of its detail. Only so can you exactly estimate the 
 place of any one detail among all the others. And to the extent that 
 your knowledge falls short of that kind of completeness, to that 
 extent is your interpretation of the place and meaning of particular 
 facts and events conjecture rather then science, faith rather than 
 knowledge. It may be most brilliant and most happy conjecture; 
 
 89 
 
THE STUDY OF NATURE 
 
 the soul of man may apprehend the meaning of the soul of the world, 
 even as some most fragmentary mirror in the remotest of the stellar 
 spaces may receive and reflect the ray of the central sun; and so the 
 conjecture may even rise to the level of such a faith, of such a 
 prophetic interpretation of history, as a wise and good man might 
 very rightly be willing to build his life upon. But for all that, to the 
 extent to which the total plan in the particularity of its detail is not 
 known, such interpretation of particular facts remains, as was said, 
 probability rather than certainty, conjecture rather than science, faith 
 rather than knowledge. And the extent to which, upon the earth, 
 we are thus ignorant of the " total plan in the particularity of its 
 detail," may be seen by considering a single fact: in the present life 
 we move among beginnings; that which is to come after, only in the 
 light of which can these beginnings be seen in their full significance, 
 is hidden from our direct acquaintance. 
 
 But if this is so, what ought we to do with regard to philosophy of 
 nature and philosophy of history in this more extended sense? Shall 
 we throw them summarily overboard as endeavours merely and simply 
 hopeless? To a question of this sort many will give, instantly and 
 decidedly, an affirmative reply. But the men whose opinion in such 
 a matter is best worth having will be held back from that summary 
 procedure by one consideration. It is well for the human race to be 
 kept mindful how great a thing' its endeavour to know the world 
 really is. Hence it is well that in each great intellectual era there 
 should be men leading the forlorn hope of science into the field now 
 in question; men great enough to compel respect for themselves and 
 their work. Indeed, each of the three great intellectual eras has had 
 such men. In particular, the three men whose names have already 
 been mentioned together — Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel — were such men. 
 Each worked his way to ultimate principles, and then in the light of 
 those principles proceeded to survey all the provinces of experience; 
 and thus attempted to form all the science of his day into its " encyclo- 
 paedia." And in connection with this there is one specially notable 
 point. One of the three — Aquinas — was no solitary prophet of the 
 comprehensive spirit of philosophy to a gainsaying age. He was a 
 philosopher because of his age, and in his philosophy reflected the 
 
 90 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 temper of it. And the instructive thing is that the same compre- 
 hensive and organising spirit which led the thinking of the age to its 
 cuhnination in an encyclopedic philosophy, led to something equally 
 great on the practical side. It led to a partial success — partial of 
 necessity, but probably greater than at any time since has been 
 achieved — in dealing with that practical problem with which the 
 whole life of humanity upon the earth is a wrestle; the problem, 
 namely, of working out a social order in which every man has a place 
 — a definite station with definite duties. Just because from this 
 questing of the intellect into eternity we are about to turn back to the 
 " every-day practical life," we ought all the more keenly to remember 
 that the age in which men walked most confidently in those fields of 
 philosophy from which we are here turning away, was an age in 
 several most important respects greater than our own in this very 
 matter of practical achievement. 
 
 (2) But, in the second place, if reason enters here upon a field 
 where for most of us the footing is precarious and where only an 
 elect few can do work which compels respect ; if the work of philosophy 
 changes at this point from the gaining of assured insight by an argu- 
 ment of absolute simplicity, to the laborious and uncertain work of 
 interpreting details whose total scheme is not open to our vision : — so 
 also at this point does man's need of rational insight change. If we 
 may believe that there is a divine plan of the world, a plan rational 
 and righteous, then it is no long step and no illogical step to the 
 belief that if we organise our lives according to the best reason and 
 the best righteousness open to our vision upon the earth, we shall be 
 putting ourselves upon a pathway whose end will be the organisation 
 of our lives according to the reason and the righteousness of the city 
 " whose pattern is laid up in heaven." For, as already we have seen, 
 the divine idea does not dwell apart from human history. The 
 supreme principle of the divine mind is, and must be, the supreme 
 law of that whole activity of God which is the world and the history 
 of the world. But that divine idea, as also we have seen, does not 
 act upon human history like a mechanical power upon material bodies. 
 It acts by imparting itself to men, and shaping their spirits, and 
 winning them to itself; thus it becomes at once the source and the 
 
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THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 nourishment of all development of reason among men and of all 
 human effort after righteousness. And so the reason and the 
 righteousness that men have so far been able to grow into must be 
 looked upon as at once the result of, and the representative of, and 
 the pathway toward, the reason and the righteousness that are perfect 
 and eternal. And if this be true, we need not mourn greatly that the 
 exact " divine interpretation " of the particular events of history and 
 the particular facts of nature is hidden from us. The life of faith is 
 justified. " Assure us," so we may say, " assure us that there is a 
 divine plan of the world; that over all things rules, and through all 
 history operates supremely, an eternal spirit who is living reason and 
 living righteousness. Assure us that the ultimate power of the world 
 is the perfection of that goodness after which we struggle so imper- 
 fectly; and that, therefore, the goodness which is to us a goal far-off 
 and dimly understood is in truth both the ultimate reality of the 
 world and the immanent law and ' hidden wisdom ' of the world's 
 process — a 'wisdom' which may indeed be veiled under forms hard 
 in the extreme for such a creature as man to read, and may indeed, 
 in its clashes with the * creative will '^ of man, seem cruel to its own 
 servants, but none the less is working effectually and lovingly toward 
 its goal. Assure us that the world is not in its real constitution a 
 non-moral order which cares nothing for moral and rational ends and 
 awaits with nature's stern patience the day when we men shall have 
 perished and ' all things shall be once more as if we and all the 
 labours of our morality and of our religion never had been ' ; but that, 
 on the contrary, the eternal power which constitutes the conditions of 
 our life is more interested than even we ourselves can be in the causes 
 of human goodness ; so that when a man sets himself about that work 
 to which the present state of the human race incessantly calls everyone 
 who is willing to hear — the work of saving men from the evils 
 without them and within them, and of rousing in their hearts devotion 
 to the causes of goodness — he is not dashing himself against an 
 eternal and hopeless barrier, either in God or in nature, but rather is 
 in line with the supreme power, the supreme law, the supreme pur- 
 pose, of the world. — Assure us of these things and we will fight the 
 
 1 T. H. Green, Works, Vol. III., p. 278. 
 92 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 battle of life, if not in the strength of complete knowledge, at any 
 rate in the strength of hope and of faith. We will not lament that 
 after a certain point the journeying of the reason into eternity 
 becomes perilous or even impossible. At whatever point the check 
 comes, we have at any rate learned enough to enable us to labour in 
 faith, devoting ourselves to the causes of present-day reason and 
 present-day righteousness, and trusting that in so doing we are making 
 ourselves organs and instruments — nay, sons and fellow-workers — of 
 the eternal righteousness. It matters little — at any rate it will not 
 drive us to rebellion or to despair — that concerning the exact and 
 eternal meaning of each detail we are for the present in the dark. 
 We are willing enough to fight for a time in the dark, or on a border- 
 ground between light and dark, if only we can assuredly believe that 
 the order of the world which sets all these conditions of our life is 
 in ultimate analysis a reasonable order, and that the supreme power 
 of the world is really favourable to us in our struggle after the good- 
 ness of ourselves and of our fellows. If only we can know that 
 nature and history have a ' divine interpretation,' we will turn back 
 to the labours and the battles of the practical life, willing enough that 
 the full details of that interpretation should for a time be hidden 
 from our eyes." 
 
 VII. 
 
 Such, then, in a brief outline of its elements, are the stages and 
 conclusions of the greatest and safest argument which man has been 
 able to work out concerning the nature of the world and the meaning 
 of his life in it; an argument which had for the first of its world- 
 prophets Plato, but owes its specifically modern formulation and con- 
 duct to an insight won partially and laboriously in old age by 
 Immanuel Kant. The ultimate explanation of the world and of our 
 life (so it finds) is an eternal spirit and an idea or purpose — the 
 Good — which that spirit is realising in the process of the world. 
 Eeality — the universe — is a society of spirits; that eternal spirit and 
 the lesser spirits in whom the eternal spirit reproduces himself. The 
 existence of " material " objects means their being present to that 
 
 93 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 eternal self-consciousness and their having a place in the system of 
 that divine thought. Our sciences of nature, with the mathematical 
 and physical sciences which logically precede the "natural sciences/' 
 are, when viewed from below, an entry of ours into the content of 
 the eternal mind; when viewed from above, an impartation of that 
 mind to us, by which our own minds are developed ; are, in one word, 
 a divine impartation meeting a human effort. Morality, in the true 
 form of its idea, is the devotion of us men to the service of that divine 
 idea or purpose which is being realised in the history of the world, 
 but which, as we have seen, makes its way toward its own realisation 
 not by acting mechanically upon men, but by winning them as free 
 spirits to its service. And religion, when it becomes truly itself, is 
 the greater whole of which such morality is a part; is the effort after 
 unity, in affection, in character, in activity, with the eternal spirit 
 who is the subject of the world. So that the history in time of the 
 universe, when seen as it truly is, is a process in which an eternal 
 spirit realises an eternal purpose by imparting himself : — reproducing 
 himself in spirits that are finite, and free in so far as their finitude 
 permits; and winning those spirits to himself; and communicating 
 himself to them both intellectually and morally, not only through 
 the visions of poets and prophets, but also through every effort of the 
 man of science after knowledge and of the good man after goodness; 
 and so making possible the attainment of that City of God which is 
 the TsXos of all his action and therefore the supreme law and imma- 
 nent principle of the whole process.^ 
 
 These are conclusions of philosophy; and therefore, in stating 
 them the language of philosophy has been used. But it, like all tech- 
 nical language, has a certain reticence ; so that it may be advisable to 
 re-state in one or two sentences of more familiar tone, the conclusion 
 which has just been summed up. To say, then, that the universe is 
 a society of spirits, an eternal spirit and the lesser spirits in whom 
 he has under limitations reproduced himself, is to say that the 
 
 1 This might be summed up technically by saying that one and the same thing is the 
 supreme principle alike of Being, and of Knowledge, and of Morality and Religion. It is 
 his clear insight into this and his steady insistence upon it, that make Plato the greatest 
 teacher in the schools of philosophy ; and the one most salutary to the divided and dis- 
 tracted modern mind. (Cf. Philosophical Lectures and Remains of Richard Lewis 
 Nettleship, 1st ed., Vol. II., p. 218 seq.) 
 
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AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 universe is a family, and that the relation between its members and 
 the eternal spirit who is at once their source and their home is the 
 relation of sonship and fatherhood. And that Father is — not merely 
 has, but is — all rational and moral perfection. That is to say, reason, 
 righteousness, and love, are at the heart of things ; are the immanent 
 law both of the constitution of the world and of the process of the 
 world. And the reason, the righteousness, and the love, which are 
 thus at the heart of the world, are one thing and not three things ; for 
 each in order to be itself has to be the other two. Eeason without 
 love and righteousness would be merely a hard logic. Eighteousness 
 devoid of reason and love would be but an arbitrary and iron-clad 
 law, such as would intensify all evil and thus defeat its own aim. And 
 love without righteousness and reason would be no love at all, but some- 
 thing quite contrary to love — a weak and foolish indulgence working 
 continual injury to its own object. In God reason, righteousness, and 
 love, are one thing •} and in their undivided unity they are at once the 
 
 1 When one has apprehended this, it is at first with anger, hut presently— when the 
 long iipward struggle of humanity through many different levels of thinking toward the 
 light, has made its appeal to one's heart— with a feeling very different from anger, that 
 one rememhers the way in which Western theology, after the Reformation as well as 
 before, frequently dealt with the divine attributes. That theology was developed in a 
 legal and political atmosphere. Naturally enough it took for granted the legal view of 
 the relation of God to the world ; it used many specific legal conceptions, taken from 
 Roman or Teutonic law ; what is still more, in thinking about God it retained the habits 
 of the lawyer's mind— its acuteness, its argumentativeness, its delight in convenient but 
 unreal distinctions, its tendency to rely upon serviceable arbitrary conventions instead of 
 seeking pure truth for its own sake. Hence it was easy for this theology to rend apart the 
 unity of the divine nature ; easy for it almost to view the divine nature as a battle-ground 
 of conflicting attributes— separating sharply the righteousness from the love of God, 
 then virtually hypostatising these abstractions, so as to set them over against each other 
 and thus make an opening for a forensic theory of atonement. But theology, so far as it 
 imprisons itself in this framework of abstractions, does not know God ; though the men 
 who made the theology may have loved Him. To come at the matter from another angle 
 —one very relevant to the mind of the church at the present hour— such theology, though 
 it held the Bible in great reverence, did not know the Bible. It was, in the correct though 
 not in the sectarian use of the term, un-Evangelical ; it did not know, and was not based 
 upon, the mind of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels. For in the Gospels what Jesus 
 continually insists upon, throughout His work of revealing and establishing the Kingdom of 
 God, whose King is a Father, is His own unity with the Father. In His whole mission to 
 the world. He is one with the Father ; that mission and that work, therefore, express the 
 mind and attitude of the Father ; they are not a forensic expedient for changing that 
 mind and attitude. Jesus, to use St. John's great expression, is the Word, in whom the 
 character of God and His mind toward man are spoken forth : and that puts out of court 
 for ever the idea that the mission of Jesus to the world either represented or made possible 
 a change in the mind of the Father toward men. Hence it is, that as Biblical Theology— 
 
 95 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 nature of God and the law of every divine act; and therefore the 
 immanent principle of that order of the universe which the divine 
 activity constitutes. 
 
 These conclusions and the argument which leads to them have in 
 the preceding sections been stated as matters that belong simply to the 
 courts of the reflective reason. As such, they represent what any 
 scientific inquiry represents — the intellect of man at its legitimate 
 work of trying to understand the world it lives in. And that attempt 
 needs no special defense or apology. To the endeavour to understand 
 his world man is called by the laws and powers of his own nature ; so 
 that the effort itself is not merely a legitimate one, but is an integral 
 and essential part of that activity by which man develops his own 
 being, and comes truly to be man, and so fulfils his divine vocation. 
 
 But the greatest of all the masters who have worked in those 
 courts of the reflective reason would not have left the matter upon 
 that footing. To Plato, as his whole life and the whole body of his 
 writings at every point make manifest, philosophy meant a temper 
 and a character as well as an activity of the scientific intelligence. 
 And it meant these three, not as standing apart, but as joined 
 together in that indissoluble unity in which each shares the nature 
 of the others and each contributes to the perfection of the others. It 
 meant a life in which philosophy, as an activity and a vision of the 
 intellect, has passed over into the " philosophic mind," and that mind 
 has become the guide of conduct. "Wliether with Greeks or with 
 moderns, the sounder any man is in character, the more unwilling he 
 is that truth and life should stand apart. The integrity of his charac- 
 ter compels him to seek for unity in his life ; compels him, if he has 
 apprehended a profound view of life, to seek to transmute that view of 
 life into life itself .^ 
 
 the science which studies the types of Biblical teaching from their own point of view and 
 upon their own scale of internal proportion— makes its way in the thought of the church, 
 and compels the church more and more to return to the mind of its Founder, those 
 forensic structures which it was the delight of the political and legal mind of the West to 
 build in the courts of theology cease to be either the home or the prison-house of the souls 
 that seek to enter upon their true relationship to God. 
 
 1 In this no name can rank with Plato's. Yet we men of the West ought with piety to 
 recall the name of one who helped to found philosophy among ourselves— the brave 
 Roman to whom philosophy meant not only knowledge, but uprightness in action and 
 
 96 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 And not only is this essential to integrity of personal character. 
 It is demanded also by the nature of truth simply as truth. Here, 
 indeed, we are brought to a point about which misapprehensions 
 cluster ; misapprehensions so passionate that it is advisable to set down 
 both sides of the question. — (1) Philosophy does not create life. For 
 philosophy is primarily science. It is an effort to understand. It no 
 more professes to create the world whose ultimate nature it seeks to 
 apprehend, or the life whose meaning it inquires after, than (for 
 instance) chemistry professes to create those elements and those rela- 
 tions of elements which are the object of its investigations. The soul 
 of man is by its original nature scientific, artistic, practical; and in 
 its practice capable of morality and religion. Hence the life of man 
 is a life scientific, a life artistic, a life practical, a life moral, a life 
 religious. This is the given object, and what philosophy does is to 
 attempt to understand it; is to attempt to apprehend the meaning of 
 that life, and the nature of the world in which it is lived and by 
 which its conditions are set. The man who urges that philosophy 
 cannot create religion, and then finds in that the ground for an 
 habitual dislike of philosophy or a passionate warfare against it, 
 simply misapprehends the whole situation. And such a misappre- 
 hension, it ought to be understood, is a revelation of the man himself. 
 But (2) philosophy can be of use in guiding life where life already 
 exists. For truth, simply by being itself, has power over the soul. 
 To make truth merely cold and dead; to deny that the visions of 
 reason can afford any awakening or inspiration to the moral and 
 religious nature; to regard light as nothing and heat as everything; 
 to set science and life, knowledge and goodness, truth and religion, 
 radically apart : — this is to shiver man's nature into blind and crippled 
 
 fortitude in affliction, and who handed on his lesson to be a consolation to many a saddened 
 heart in the troubled West. Philosophy, so Boethius learned and taught, is the love and 
 pursuit of that wisdom which is the quickening mind and primeval principle of things ; 
 is in some sort a fellowship with it, so that the intelligent mind is at once illuminated by 
 it and drawn back into it. So that philosophy, in being the pursuit of wisdom, is a pursuit 
 of divinity. For that wisdom which is the eternal principle of the world imposes the 
 worthiness of its own divinity upon all the souls that occupy themselves with it, and 
 brings them to the force and purity of their own true nature ; and thus arises not only 
 a truth of speculations and thoughts, but also a holy chastity of acts. (See the finely 
 sympathetic account, and specially the analysis of the De Consolatione, in Maurice. The 
 foregoing sentences are from Maurice's statement of the conception of philosophy found 
 in the first dialogue In Porphyrium.) 
 
 8 97 
 
THE STUDY OF NATURE 
 
 fragments, instead of recognising that the true power and perfection 
 of that nature consist in a unity in which each part contributes to all 
 the others. The man who habitually does it, and imagines that he is 
 serving religion thereby, may mean well. But it ought to be pointed 
 out to him that, to the extent to which this tendency dominates him 
 and is not counteracted by other and sounder things in his work, to 
 that extent he is making himself really a valuable servant to only one 
 kind of religion — that which, having no truth in it, wishes to have 
 nothing to do with truth.^ 
 
 We can see then, to return to a statement of a moment ago, how 
 from both sides — from philosophy as intellectual truth, from the 
 integrity of character which forbids men to let truth and life stand 
 apart — there is a compulsion to the attempt " to transmute one's 
 view of life into life itself." Indeed it is only for the men who 
 recognise that compulsion, or rather it is only in such men, that 
 philosophy does its true and full work. And to attempt to gain some 
 hint or glimpse of how in such men philosophy turns, through the 
 " philosophic mind," back into life, is the last thing that we have here 
 to do. 
 
 It can, indeed, be only a glimpse. But it is worth while to try to 
 gain even a glimpse. For what the philosophic mind brings to our 
 life, is the habit of regarding and valuing the goods of life from the 
 point of view of that eternal purpose which man's life is intended to 
 realise. And never was the need of that habit so great, whether on 
 the part of the leaders of society or on the part of the general body 
 of its members, as now. For the resources of society, both intellectu- 
 ally and still more in the subjection of natural powers to man's use, 
 are greater than ever before. But owing to the assertion, throughout 
 the whole of society, of the individual in his private and selfish 
 interests, those resources are most wastefully used. A few specially 
 
 1 Of course, in thinking of truth as a guide of life and an inspiration for life, the fact 
 noted in the introduction must he kept in mind. There is a tendency in us all to overlook 
 the radically important distinction between abstract and concrete truth. A man of 
 science, for instance, who deals with some one aspect of reality in strict isolation from the 
 others, easily forgets the abstractness of his own special science ; easily is tempted to 
 think that its principles give the final account of the world and of our life. Thus we get 
 those " premature and hasty " world-views of which Materialism and the mechanical 
 view of the world are examples. (Cf. supra, pp. i, 5.) 
 
 98 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 skilful or fortunate men possess them— frequently to their own inner 
 evil — in large measures; while to many they are only very scantily 
 available, or not at all. And the solutions so far wrought out are 
 tainted by the evil itself which they seek to cure; for they are only 
 those partial and bitter solutions which separately organised classes 
 are able to win and to maintain at the point of the sword. 
 
 In the first place, then, the men in whom philosophy has become 
 the philosophic mind have learned the first and most fundamental of 
 all practical lessons. They have learned what the true business of 
 life is. Stated on its positive side, it is the winning of men's hearts 
 to those causes of goodness (goodness as including " all science, all 
 art, every virtue and all perfection") which are- the causes of God, 
 and in the service of which men at one and the same time fulfil their 
 divine vocation and come to be truly themselves. It is only as taking 
 its appropriate place in that endeavour that any resource of nature 
 which man has mastered, or any power of his own mind or heart or 
 hand, is rightly used. 
 
 But secondly, in what they have learned concerning the world, such 
 men have not only an illumination with regard to what the business 
 of life is. They have also in it certain great sources of strength and 
 of steadiness as they turn to the actual performance of that business 
 of life. To begin with, they have what for want of some better name 
 one must call the strength of hope— the strength of a faith which 
 reason justifies. For they have learned that however Manichgean the 
 present appearance of our life may be, there is no Manichgeism at the 
 eternal heart of things. They have learned that there is no eternal 
 moral dualism in the universe, such as can set to the endeavour of 
 good men after goodness (not their own individual goodness merely, 
 but the goodness of all their race) a hopeless limit or a final defeat. 
 For what they have seen is this: that the legitimate and inevitable 
 onward course of the scientific reason, the legitimate and inevitable 
 onward course of that attempt to know the world, of which physical 
 and natural science is one stage, ethical and social science another 
 stage, brings us at last to the vision of a God who is over all and in 
 all, and by union with whom men may enter upon courses of minis- 
 tration to their fellows, which shall be checked by no eternal limit 
 
 99 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 nor defeated by any eternal barrier. For to Him goodness is of 
 absolute value; it is the end for which He constituted and keeps in 
 existence all His worlds. And as His end can be defeated by no other 
 god greater than He, still less can it be defeated by any change in 
 Himself or in His attitude toward men. At no point whether in 
 this world or in any world, can He either forget the end for which 
 He made the world, or lay aside the character which makes Him love 
 and welcome the effort of His creature after goodness. He cannot 
 at any point lay aside the character in which reason and righteousness 
 and love are one; cannot at any point turn away for ever from good 
 men in their struggle for the world's goodness, and thenceforward 
 return to them for ever the answer : Hitherto shall you come, but no 
 further; and here shall all power of self-sacrifice, and all passionate 
 striving of love, and all devotion to the extension of the Kingdom of 
 God and of good, eternally be stayed. On the contrary, it is His very 
 nature, as the source and home and end and ultimate power of the 
 world, at once to make possible and to respond to for ever, that 
 prayer which not only ascends from the depths of man's sin and from 
 his extremities of conflict and of defeat, but is also the normal and 
 habitual " human cry " : 
 
 Cast me not away from thy presence; 
 And take not thy holy spirit from me. 
 
 So that these men go forward into life — into life as life is, with its 
 anguish of burdened and fragmentary and broken labours, its still 
 profounder anguish of evil triumphant and good causes beaten back — 
 knowing that even if the worst come to the worst the ultimate truth 
 of the world still forbids any paralysis of despair. They have that 
 same source of unfathomable strength which the Stoics and the men 
 of Geneva had : they know that they are devoted to the cause which in 
 all history is supreme and final, that they are in line with the ultimate 
 law, the eternal and present purpose, of the world; so that even 
 though they seem to the view of this world to be defeated and to 
 perish, yet really the universe is with them and the stars in their 
 courses are fighting for them.^ And in addition to this, they have 
 
 1 As Wordsworth knew ; and the knowledge was part of his poetical being. The 
 sonnet to Toussaint L'Ouverture brings it to very pointed expression ; but it is always in 
 Wordsworth's mind. 
 
 100 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 %yhat the Stoics had only in part and the men of Geneva scarcely 
 allowed themselves at all— a vision of the essential rationality of the 
 supreme power. And with essential rationality, essential kindliness; 
 for while eternal reason may seem to us men an austere thing, 
 teaching by the discipline of changeless laws, and bringing without 
 fail to every human soul the consequences of its own deeds, yet in the 
 ultimate truth of things such reason is with love, and love with such 
 reason, interchangeable; and the form of their co-operant action is 
 righteousness. 
 
 And so these men, in so far as they are able to make their way of 
 life respond to what they know about the world, bring to the battle of 
 life a certain grave and unyielding courage, a certain patient steadi- 
 ness. They have looked upon eternal ideas, which are greater realities 
 than all the " hard facts '' and aU the " actualities " of to-day, and 
 which are at last to subdue to themselves these facts, and all facts, 
 and to make them obedient servants in a realm where the eternal ideal 
 is at once the real and the soul of all realit}^ Men who have seen such 
 things, and are able to rejoice in them, are not likely to be cowards. 
 And eyes that gaze habitually into eternity are wont to be steady eyes 
 and to impart to the soul behind them the steadiness of the eternal 
 objects upon which habitually they are fixed. " God is patient," so a 
 great saying runs, '' because He is eternal." The things that drive us 
 to the edge of despair — the good that we see so clearly, but cannot 
 bring to pass ; the warfare of the brute facts of the world against that 
 in us and in our fellows which is gentlest and touched most with 
 heavenly light; the strange failures and defeats that here shatter a 
 good cause or' yonder blast Into deformity an individual life; the 
 unspeakable meannesses and cruelties that are practised by the strong 
 and the fortunate against the weak and the defenseless — meannesses 
 and cruelties of which the world is full, and in presence of which a 
 man's indignation scarcely can keep itself from falling to wild anger ; 
 above all, the lives that are bom in evil, and pass to the life to come 
 never having known anything but evil: — these things do not mean 
 that God and the good have a power over against them able to defeat 
 them. Xor do they mean that God is absent from the world, and 
 that we must give up the ancient teaching that " God worketh until 
 
 101 
 
THE STUDY OF NATURE 
 
 now." They mean the patience of a vast design. In presence of them 
 the man who is devoted to goodness has to remember that in all such 
 things there is ultimately but one question; it is not a question of 
 death or of time ; it is a question of God. And with God there is no 
 failure ; it would be easier for the heavens and the earth to pass away 
 and all things to come to nothingness, than for any single act, done 
 in any age for righteousness' sake or for love's, to fail of its due 
 result. 
 
 Such a " philosophic mind " is not the first power of life. Love 
 a*nd devotion are the first powers of life — and the last. And love and 
 devotion can work in the dark ; with blind eyes they have done their 
 most heroic deeds. But soon or late their very nature leads them to 
 this calmness and patience of minds that see present things in the light 
 of the eternal. For soon or late their nature leads them to look upon 
 God; and, looking upon Him, they learn to see things under the 
 form of eternity. And then their "last enemy" is overcome; for 
 from the point of view of eternity our enemies and our tyrants are 
 seen to be our friends. But the best way to understand this is to 
 state it in the terms of a more ancient conception. Our life is a 
 wrestle with a power not ourselves ; a stern and unf aUing power that 
 with no shadow of weakness goes straight onward in its way, over 
 the hearts of men, over the plans of men, over the prayers of men. 
 Men of science are content nowadays to call it Law, but in their older 
 language they called it Necessity; ancient poets called it Fate. To 
 human life it is present in many forms : sometimes as an iron limita- 
 tion ; sometimes as a foundation to be built upon ; sometimes as a task- 
 master bringing to men labours that they would not have chosen and 
 responsibilities such as appall the soul; always as a law to be obeyed 
 and fulfilling itself with absolute exactness upon the disobedient. It 
 can never be evaded ; nor can any man overcome it save by submitting 
 to it and taking it as the law of his own being. But such unity of the 
 individual soul -with the necessity that operates in the world and in 
 the history of the race, is doubly difficult to attain. The very capaci- 
 ties that make us human set us beyond that easy and perfect obedience 
 to necessity which is within the power of the leaf or the tide or the 
 star; and furthermore, however willing our hearts might be, its 
 
 102 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 operation in history proceeds with so vast a movement that as it 
 works upon the individual life it manifests rather its crushing power 
 than its law or its goal. And so we dasli ourselves against it with that 
 pain, that blind and hopeless agony, that mad indignation as against a 
 fundamental injustice in things, which has made its cry heard in 
 human literature from the beginning until now.^ 
 
 But in so far as a man is able to see the world and our life " under 
 the aspect, as it were, of eternity," he looks upon necessity at its 
 source; and looking upon it there, sees it in its true nature. It is 
 eternal and rational and righteous ; for it is the earthward aspect of the 
 divine reason, the form which the divine action takes on to eyes that 
 are not yet able to read it clearly. Unfailingly and unfalteringly it 
 " reaches from end to end, sweetly and strongly ordering all things." 
 Only when viewed from below does it appear mechanical and without 
 a soul. Its vast plan we cannot, indeed, grasp in detail. But we can 
 know its nature; we can know that Fate is the wisest of all things, 
 and that in that " history of the world " which is " the world's court 
 of judgment " the decisions which ultimately are given need no 
 reversal. 
 
 And the man who knows this, knows that necessity is the disciplin- 
 arian of the soul, and is therefore his friend. He knows that necessity 
 is the source at once of the greatness, the c^ifSculty, and the security, 
 of the good man's life. It is the source of the difl&culty of that life; 
 for it brings the soul to desperate passes — it makes its journey long 
 and stern and its conversion a lifelong process in which each upward 
 step leads to the unveiling of greater issues and the opening of wider 
 struggles. It is the source of the greatness of that life; for it 
 is by his long struggle with necessity — the struggle in which 
 victory is won only by apprehending the wisdom behind that inexorable 
 face, and submitting to it, or rather growing up into it — that man 
 comes to be man, that the greater powers of his nature are developed, 
 the greater achievements of his spirit wrought out. For it is upon a 
 system of necessity which no individual will can break down or throw 
 into confusion, that all orderly labour, mental or physical, is based ; 
 of such necessity literature, in its higher forms, strives to picture the 
 
 1 Cf., forinstance, Butcher, Some .ispeffv nf the Greek Gevi7i.'>, 2nd ed., p. Moacq. 
 
 103 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 incidence upon life ; science is a study of its ways in nature, philosophy 
 an attempt to penetrate to its real character ; the theology which does 
 not deal with it may indeed be happy, but is happy because it is still 
 a child. The necessity which lies beyond the control of the individual 
 will and is " the hidden wisdom of the world " is, in fact, the form 
 which the love that works throughout the whole process of the universe 
 assumes in order to become the schoolmaster of the human soul.^ And 
 as necessity is thus the source of the difficulty and the greatness of 
 the good man's life, so is it also the source of its security. For it is the 
 last law — and the first — of necessity, that ultimately the fate of every 
 soul shall be an absolutely righteous and rational fate — righteous and 
 rational as righteousness and reason are in God. In the end no soul 
 that lives will have anything of which it can rightly complain ; without 
 possibility of error every man will come at last to his own place. 
 
 And in addition to the necessity which thus is present in nature 
 and history, and shapes for the individual the unchangeable conditions 
 of his life, there acts upon the good man a necessity of a different 
 order. It is that moral necessity which arises out of the very char- 
 acter of human life. We are citizens in a temporal and earthly order. 
 But our vocation has its home in eternity, and in its demands knows 
 nothing of the limitations of time. So that to the good man — to 
 every man who is not a coward, evading the demands of the world 
 upon him — life itself is a continual call to the bearing of a burden 
 impossible to be borne, to the performance of duties that are beyond 
 man's power. Wliat ought to be done, again and again we cannot do, 
 or more often can do only in part; and we come down to the grave 
 weary men who have struggled hard and at the last are but unprofitable 
 servants. But the insight into the nature of that other necessity sets 
 this also in the true light ; like the other, it is in its very sternness and 
 oppression the ally of the man whose soul is turned toward goodness. 
 Here, as there, when we enter into the heart of what seemed a power 
 inexorable and indifferent, what we find is the deep heart of a friend 
 — a friend too wise to make any mistake, too land to admit even the 
 slightest particle of weakness or indulgence into that system of things 
 
 1 One cannot pass on without referring to the noblest of the modern expressions of 
 this— that contained in Tennyson's In Mevioriam. 
 
 104 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 which is the framework of our life. If man's vocation goes beyond 
 his opportunities, if his "ought" stretches on infinitely beyond his 
 powers, so that after a long struggle he finds himself still an unprofit- 
 able servant, there is even in this no cause for lament or for complaint 
 of injustice. That life should be an endeavour to overtake a vocation 
 which runs beyond human powers and human opportunities is better 
 for us, is infinitely more worthy both of God and of man, than that 
 we should remain untroubled children for ever, with only such duties 
 laid upon us as our powers are adequate to perform. Only through a 
 life so constituted and through such struggle can children of time and. 
 of the earth rise out of their childhood, and enter upon their inherit- 
 ance and their true being as citizens of eternity; and better the 
 breaking of the heart than failure from that citizenship. 
 
 So that, in the presence of evil and of necessity, the men who have 
 passed from philosophy to the philosophic mind are like soldiers who, 
 in the midst of some long struggle, have looked through the struggle 
 and have seen behind it eternal powers and eternal destiny. And with 
 that, so far as their character responds to their knowledge, their 
 courage takes on a new character; to the old stubborn tenacity which 
 out of mere manliness could not yield, there comes a lofty intellectual 
 soul of vision and of hope. 
 
 But this new order of courage in the presence of evil and of 
 necessity is only a single aspect of what the soul comes to be, as truth 
 and life become one. Along with it goes another quality of the soul ; 
 a quality less stern and therefore apparently less high. But really it 
 is both higher and more difficult. For it is one of those virtues of 
 comprehension which always are harder of attainment than the virtues 
 of conflict. It is what may be called the virtue of catholicity; the 
 strength and steadiness which catholicity of mind gives to a man in 
 presence of the contending parties, contending interests, contending 
 solicitations, of the world. For let us remember once more what the 
 philosophy here in question has to teach us, both about the business of 
 our lives, and about the world we are living in. The constitutive 
 principle of reality — so it teaches — and therefore the condition of all 
 knowledge and the regulative principle for all conduct, is the good. 
 And the o-ood is one ; it consists in a perfect society, a civitas Dei, the 
 
 105 
 
THE STUDY OF NATURE 
 
 character of whose individual members is that character which is 
 already and eternally real in God. Furthermore, it is (as the ultimate 
 principle of the divine activity) at once the animating purpose and 
 the inner unity and the "hidden wisdom" of the world. The 
 troubled process which is life and history is a field wherein it wins 
 men to itself, and, by imparting itself to them and so making them 
 truly men, works out its own realisation. So that there is in all life 
 and in all history one supreme object for the devotion of all men. 
 It is only as being a stage in the realisation of that divine idea, it is 
 only as being a step toward the bringing into being of that civitas Dei, 
 that any duty is a duty at all, or any labour worthy of being done, or 
 any cause deserving of support, or any institution worthy of loyalty. 
 At all times and in all places and for all men that divine idea is the 
 one determination of the path of duty. It therefore is the one object 
 of endeavour that is truly catholic; the causes that make for it are 
 the only truly catholic causes ; devotion to it and to those its causes is 
 the one true catholicity; and the man to whom such devotion is the 
 supreme and organising principle of life is the one true catholic. 
 
 This does not mean any aloofness from life. ISTor does it mean that 
 life is to l)e reduced to a flat monotony of devotion to an indivisible 
 One. On the contrary, as many as are the capabilities of human nature, 
 so many are the pathways of the divine idea' toward its realisation. 
 But it does mean that there is eternally in God an end or good, as wide 
 as life, which is at once the constitutive principle of the world's order, 
 and the true guide and goal of human action: and, as such, is the 
 standard of judgment for all human causes and purposes and enthusi- 
 asms ; for all subjection of the immortal spirit to the body ; for all use 
 of the resources of life in vain display ; for all sectarian divisions ; for 
 all that political and social selfishness which puts individual interest 
 before general welfare ; for all those ideals and passions and ambitions 
 which set men apart from one another, and break the unity of society 
 in church and state, and lead to the oppression of man by man or 
 class by class. 
 
 Something, then, such as this, is what philosophy means when it 
 becomes the philosophic mind. But what has been said is only a hint. 
 
 106 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 Other qualities of that mind might liave heen spoken of; its willing- 
 ness, for instance, to recognise the presence of God — in nature, in the 
 movement of history, in those great lay activities and virtues which 
 sometimes the religious despise. But in particular one thing — and 
 that the most important of all— which might have been dwelt upon, 
 has not been dwelt upon. We saw that the universe is really a great 
 family — a society composed of an eternal spirit and the lesser spirits 
 in whom the eternal spirit reproduces himself, for whom he sets a 
 vocation, and to whom, in science and in art, in morality and in 
 religion, he more and more imparts himself, reconciling them to 
 himself, winning their hearts back to himself, and by that 
 reconcilement and that impartation enabling them to become 
 truly themselves. But such a view of the universe is a call to 
 personal affection and personal devotion, and to all the energies and 
 powers, to all the passion and all the achievement, of such devotion 
 and such affection. And if that view of the universe be philosophy, 
 the philosophic mind must in the true form of its idea be the same as 
 the religious mind — the mind which in the activities and energies of 
 a supreme affection seeks to become more and more at one with God 
 and with that purpose of God which is the ultimate law alike of the 
 world and of man's being. But of that no mention has been made, in 
 the attempt to give the reader some glimpse of what philosophy is 
 when it passes over into the philosophic mind, and transmutes itself 
 into life and temper and character, and so does its full work. And 
 for that silence there was a reason. It is only in some world to come, 
 when the philosophic mind, and the moral mind, and the religious 
 mind, have all risen to the true form of their idea, that we shall be 
 able to see them as one and the same. For our present world the fact 
 stands that such affection as is here in question is commonly roused 
 in men in a way which does not begin in intellectual vision. Speaking 
 broadly and allowing for a few striking exceptions, the work of 
 philosophy in this respect has been, not so much to rouse in men the 
 love of God, as to do a certain work for those who already, and by 
 other of the divine agencies of reconciliation, have been led to make 
 that love the supreme principle of the practical life: — namely, to 
 clear their eyes, and to give an intellectual soul to the vision of their 
 
 107 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE 
 
 faith, and to cast upon their world and upon their path through it a 
 broad illumination of rational light. 
 
 We must say, then, that philosophy, in its greater and clearer 
 forms, leads us to see that the love of God should be the supreme 
 principle of life. But we must also say that philosophy in those 
 greater and clearer forms is the possession of a few. What is needed 
 for the whole wide race is something that in human form and human 
 affection can lie close at man's heart, that can illuminate with personal 
 example all the events and relations of his life, that can be received 
 by the simplest and the weakest, in a way not possible to that which is 
 primarily an endeavour of the intellect and a construction of the 
 scientific reason. 
 
 And in this connexion there is in the history of philosophy a most 
 remarkable fact. There came an age in which, for many high and 
 pure souls, philosophy had no choice but to undertake the guidance of 
 life ; in fact the need was so profound that philosophy, for the sake of 
 the practical life, had even to set about the task of purifying religion.^ 
 In the greatest of her masters philosophy rose to meet the call. The 
 intellectual and moral splendour with which the task was discharged, 
 they most admire who know the story best. Indeed the man must be 
 very narrow in sympathies, or very ungrateful, who can look with 
 merely fault-finding eyes upon what philosophy was, and upon what 
 philosophy did, as she tried to meet that awful need of the spirit 
 which already in Plato's day was descending over Greece. But pre- 
 cisely in that day, precisely when philosophy, called to bear a burden 
 too great for her, summoned all her powers and rose to her most starry 
 splendour, with the genius of prophecy, the genius of art, the genius 
 of science, labouring together in her courts and at her command — 
 precisely then it was that her spokesmen wrote in her records a double 
 cry : the cry for a revelation beyond his own ; and the high resolve of 
 the natural soul to make the best of the stern situation, so long as that 
 higher revelation was denied by heaven to men. " I will tell you my 
 difficulty," — so Plato makes Simmias to speak in the Phaedo^ — " and 
 Cebes will tell you his. I feel myself (and I daresay that you have 
 
 1 Cf. Republic, 377 E seq. 
 2 85 C. (tr. Jowett).— Socrates, it will be remembered, is about to die. 
 
 108 
 
AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 the same feeling) how hard or rather impossible is the attainment of 
 any certainty about questions such as these in the present life. And 
 yet I should deem him a coward who did not prove what is said about 
 them to the uttermost, or whose heart failed him before he had 
 examined them on every side. For he should persevere until he has 
 achieved one of two things : either he should discover, or be taught the 
 truth about them; or, if this be impossible I would have him take the 
 best and most irrefragable of human theories, and let this be the raft 
 upon which he sails through life — not without risk, as I admit, if he 
 cannot find some word of God which will more surely and safely carry 
 him." 
 
 Plato did not know that for the desire of which he had been a 
 prophet, there was to come a fulfilment more genuine than he had 
 dreamed : not in a great argument, sounding onward in a voyage that 
 few could follow; but in a life that had dwelled where Plato desired 
 the philosophic soul to dwell — in the bosom of eternity — and came to 
 man with a kindliness, with a simplicity and directness of humanity, 
 with a " loveliness of perfect deeds," which every burdened man, and 
 every little child. 
 
 And those wild eyes that watch the wave 
 In roarings round the coral reef, 
 
 can apprehend. And Plato did not know that, soon after that life 
 passed from among men. He who had lived it was to be apprehended 
 " under the form as it were of eternity " by two great masters of 
 life and of thought. The one declared that in Him the universe 
 consists; that He is the supreme law of the whole history of man 
 and of the whole system and process of the world. The other, using 
 the same word that Plato had used, declared that He was the Word, 
 the divine Word, which reveals the eternal to men and gives them 
 such vision as man needs of that divine idea which is at once the law 
 of the world's order, and the condition of all knowledge, and the good 
 for all human endeavour. He is the manifestation of the ultimate 
 God; and in Him is summed up the law of the world; for these two 
 things are one, each involving the other. But these great offices He 
 discharged upon the earth, not in the form of some blinding 
 
 109 
 
THE STUDY OF NATUEE AND THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 majesty which could have taught us only our o^vn nothingness, but as 
 a man, who in purity of heart and in simplicity lived for others ; lived 
 for us all, and from the Galilaean fields and from His cross speaks 
 still to the hearts of those for whom He lived. And as His appeal 
 comes to us, some of us look upon Him early, and love Him, and 
 walk in His way. But others of us go out proudly and in strength 
 to our work, and suddenly, we know not how, are in the grasp of 
 powers greater than ourselves, and come to the end of the day broken 
 men ; and beneath the gathering shadow, with the house of life in 
 ruins about us, turn to Him, and receive from Him hope that rises 
 above the scene of our defeat, and the gift of peace, and power at last 
 to overcome the world. 
 
 110 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA. 
 I. 
 
 In our effort to apprehend that reality of things which is also the 
 truth of our life, new insights come but slowly to full possession of 
 themselves. A new method, a new category, a new point of view, 
 seldom comes to its right in a single man or a single generation. 
 Through many men a school labours toward a goal not clearly appre- 
 hended at the beginning ; a goal from which the founders, could they 
 have seen it, might have turned in dismay. But the method more and 
 more does Justice to itself; the tendency enters more and more fully 
 into its own meaning ; and at last the man arises in whom the school 
 finds at once its culmination and its end. The system of thought 
 which such a man leaves behind him has more than the purely 
 scientific interest. It marks a finished stage in one great side of that 
 human pilgrimage through time which is history; it takes on the 
 dignity, the grave and moving interest, of a concluded chapter of 
 human fate. A given tendency in man's long endeavour to know 
 himself for the thing he is and to shape his life according to that 
 knowledge, has been carried to its utmost limit; a given method 
 employed to its utmost power. All that this tendency, all that this 
 method, can do, it has done. It began as best it could. It worked 
 its way forward through its stages, clarifying itself and learning to 
 be true to itself as it advanced. And now it has assumed its final 
 shape; has made manifest at last the meaning which was in it. 
 Henceforward, in that " history of the world " which is " the world's 
 court of judgment," it abides, an achieved fact, standing face to face 
 with its opponents and awaiting verdict. 
 
 There have been three chief instances of this in modern thought. 
 One stands strangely in the midst of its school. David Hume carried 
 to their logical conclusion the point of view and the method of 
 
 113 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 English empiricism; and by doing so showed their hopeless inade- 
 quacy to the task of understanding how our experience can be what 
 it actually is. But Hume, with all his acuteness of intelligence, did 
 his work as a man whose first love was fame, not as a man who had 
 devoted himself to the service of ultimate truth; and after his day 
 the school, unable to learn the lesson that looks out from his pages, 
 went on with the old watchwords, the old point of view, the old 
 method. The second instance is a work vaster in design, nobler in 
 spirit. In his encyclopsedic view of the embodied reason which is the 
 structure and the history of the world, Hegel carried forward to its 
 due use as a world-principle that synthetic character and activity of 
 intelligence which Kant in his own rigid and cramped way had 
 brought forward in inquiring into the possibility of human knowl- 
 edge. But the third — earliest of the three in time and moving in 
 the atmosphere of a more primitive type of thought — was in many 
 respects the most strilcing of all. Once in the history of the Western 
 world, and once only, the leaders in thought and science broke delib- 
 erately through the continuity that links together the successive 
 generations, and turned with disgust and anger from the results 
 accumulated by the labour of the ages gone. In dealing with the 
 highest problem of science, they would return to the very beginning 
 and by the use of a new method would comprehend nature and pene- 
 trate to the truth concerning man.^ Such was the Cartesian attempt. 
 But the full significance of the Cartesian method and the Cartesian 
 categories was not worked out by Descartes himself. Geulincx, and' 
 the great name of Malebranche, mark further stages in the process 
 by which the endeavour initiated by Descartes entered into possession 
 of its own meaning. But the man to whom it was given to complete 
 this process — ^the man who spoke the last word of this philosophical 
 school, and made clear to the world for ever the final outcome and 
 meaning of the Cartesian way of attacking the ultimate problems of 
 science — was Benedict de Spinoza, a solitary man who was pure in 
 heart and cared nothing for wealth, or social position, or fame, but 
 loved truth, and for its sake was willing to be driven from his 
 father's house and to earn a sternly simple fare by grinding lenses. 
 
 1 Cf. svpra, p. 59. 
 114 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 It is true that the Cartesians were not aware of this relation of 
 Spinoza to their school ; true that Spinoza himself was scarcely aware 
 of it. Malebranche is ready to anathematise Spinoza; and Spinoza 
 occasionally protests in very sharp terms against this or that particu- 
 lar doctrine of Descartes. But that does not alter the case. All 
 .these men of thought were seized, as Kuno Fischer so aptly reminds 
 us, " by the powers of whom it is said nolentem trahunt " ; though 
 they themselves did not know it, they were all labouring at a single 
 task, and moving through the different stages of a single journey. 
 
 II. 
 
 This lonely man it was, then, who spoke the last word of that type 
 of thinking with which the modern world began when it revolted 
 from the medigeval and proceeded to build anew the house of life and 
 of thought. That last word he spoke so resolutely that the world was 
 enabled — or rather compelled — to pass on to those other thoughts in 
 the midst of which we men of to-day live. So that Spinoza is one of 
 the founders of the present-day world ; and yet he stands far from our 
 daily companionship. He helped to make us what we are; and yet 
 to most of us he seems unspeakably remote, a solitary and monu- 
 mental name, a vast but far-off power. 
 
 But there is another interest, if possible one still deeper, connected 
 with the name of Spinoza. In thought — and in life — there is, as 
 already we have seen,i a division profounder than that into historical 
 stages and schools; there is a distinction of fundamental tendencies, 
 an antithesis, simple, radical, primitive, which at once underlies, 
 and expresses itself through, the differences of the schools; the dis- 
 tinction, namely, between the thought (and the religion) which in 
 finding God finds the light and truth of the world, and that which, to 
 find God, leaves the world behind. And what gives to Spinoza this 
 second and profounder interest is a twofold relation which he bears 
 to that elemental and radical antithesis. On the one hand, he is the 
 last of the very few supremely great voices through whom that side 
 of the antithesis for which the modern world thinks it has no place 
 
 1 Supra, p. 7 seq. 
 115 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 has found express, and at the same time orginal/ formulation for 
 itself. But, on the other hand, while the tendency in question secures 
 in him this express and unmistakable utterance for itself, he is forced 
 to go beyond it, and so in his system it is seen standing face to face 
 with its great and age-long opponents. 
 
 Such is the historical position of Spinoza. Of the two relations 
 which make up that position — the relation to the Cartesian philoso- 
 phy, the relation to Mysticism — the one mentioned last is logically 
 the first, in the sense that that elemental antithesis is deeper than 
 the division into historical periods and schools. So that, in seeking 
 to view Spinoza in his historical position, it is to that fundamental 
 distinction that we must turn first. And to understand it as it appears 
 in Spinoza, we must first endeavour to understand it as it is in itself 
 and for its own sake. To do that, we must consider two things : first 
 how it arises; secondly, its chief appearances in history. 
 
 III. 
 
 In attempting to understand how that distinction arises we have 
 to consider, first what the fundamental instinct and presupposition 
 of all scientific work is, secondly the two ways in which that instinct 
 may fulfil itself when science reaches its final or metaphysical stage. 
 First, then, the endeavour of any particular " special science " is to 
 find unity of principle in the phenomena with which it deals. And 
 the endeavour of science as a whole — or, in the words just used, the 
 endeavour of science in its metaphysical stage — is to see the world 
 as one. It is true that in this, its last and highest task, science some- 
 times falls by the way; and falls with so decided a motion that it 
 remains fixed where it has fallen. That is to say, certain meta- 
 physicians and certain schools of metaphysic, regard their work as 
 
 1 Original, not as standing out of relation to earlier men of thought— that were to deny 
 ■what has just been affirmed— but as being the outcome of the independent working of 
 Spinoza's own mind upon the material furnished to it, whether by previous thinkers or by 
 his own experience of life. The word is inserted to exclude teachers such as Schopenhauer, 
 whose formulation of this same tendency can scarcely be called an original movement, 
 but is rather a revival of an ancient system and a delivering over of the Kantian episte- 
 mology to it to be its handmaid. 
 
 116 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 completed before they have reached a One at all. They remain to 
 the end with a multitude of eternal " distinct existences " on their 
 hands. It is true, too, that systems formed in this way — monad- 
 ologies, sensationalisms, atomisms — ^have taken a very great place 
 in the history of philosophy. And still farther, they have been very 
 useful there. But the true nature of that usefulness should be recog- 
 nised. The man who understands that the search of science, from 
 its lowest stage to its highest, is a search after unity, will also 
 understand what the genuine significance is, of a pluralistic termina- 
 tion of the scientific endeavour; namely, that the science which so 
 terminates has taken as a highest and ultimate category some 
 principle which is not powerful enough to link together the stubbornly 
 diverse factors of the world. That is to say, the pluralistic systems 
 are reductiones ad absurdum of the methods which have produced 
 them. And it is for this very reason that the usefulness of these 
 systems in the history of philosophy has been so great. They have 
 been stages on the way to insight. At certaiu times they have made 
 clear — to those who could understand — the inadequacy and inner 
 hollowness of some popular school or of some trusted method. At 
 other times they have deepened the problem for some too hasty 
 monism, setting over against its thesis a stubborn and resolute 
 antithesis. In a word, they have been steps, worked out often with 
 great keenness and acuteness, in that long dialectic process which is 
 the history of philosophy. 
 
 But, as already has been noted, the very nature of the attempt of 
 science — the very nature of such a thing as a search after law in the 
 diversities of the world — involves that, unless that scientific attempt 
 is to be false to itself, its last and highest view of the world must be 
 a view in which the world is seen as one. So that, granting to the 
 full the usefulness of the pluralistic systems in the dialectic develop- 
 ment of philosophical insight, it remains that in them, as was said 
 above, the scientific endeavour is seen "falling by the way and 
 remaining fixed where it falls." But the radical and elemental dis- 
 tinction which we are now concerned to imderstand, is a distinction 
 between the systems of philosophy which, with all their errors, have 
 not erred in that fashion, but have pushed their way through to a 
 
 117 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OE SPINOZA 
 
 unitary view of the world. And the distinction consists precisely in 
 the way in which they do thus push their way through to a One. 
 
 For both sides take their rise in a profound discontent — sometimes 
 almost purely intellectual, sometimes moral or religious as well — with 
 the manifoldness, the changeableness, the dividedness, the imperfec- 
 tion and disorder, of our everyday experience. But the one side 
 proceeds from the unsatisfactory Many to a One whose distinctive 
 character is simply this — that it is not the Many. While the other 
 side proceeds from the unsatisfactory Many to a One which is the 
 Many over again — Tjut the Many as truly or adequately known, and 
 in the light of that adequate interpretation seen to be no longer 
 unsatisfactory. On the former view, manifoldness and dividedness 
 are inconsistent with the One ; on the latter, they are necessary to it. 
 To the former, the infinite excludes finitude ; to the latter, it mediates 
 itself through finitude — is an infinity of determinations. To the 
 former, again, the eternal is no home of change and of time; to the 
 latter, it is at once the home and the law and the informing spirit of 
 time and of the changing things of time. To the former, God is all 
 in all ; the world can be only a shadow, from which the wise man will 
 set himself free in order that in God he may become at one with 
 reality. But to the latter, the world is the process of the realisation of 
 divine ends, and thus is in organic connexion with God and is a true 
 field of labour to the sons of God. 
 
 Philosophy, in a word, is the apprehension of the unity and 
 eternity of all true existence. But men differ in the way in which 
 they pass from the diverse and changing elements of their daily 
 experience to their vision of that unity. To some it is a One which 
 is not the world, and in whose presence the world fades away. To 
 others it is a One which fulfils itself through the whole system of 
 the changes and diversities of the world ; it is the light and the life 
 of men, and of the whole universe of experience. In both cases the 
 effort of man is to see truly; and to see truly by seeing under the 
 form of eternity. But upon the one view, the things of to-day and 
 to-morrow cannot endure the light of eternity ; they vanish as dreams 
 vanish, when the soul is aroused from troubled sleep and the delusions 
 of the night fall from it and are gone. "Wliile to the other view the 
 
 118 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 things and interests of time lose indeed their fleeting and self-centred 
 individuality; but only to be seen in their truth as elements of 
 eternity. They die, but in dying find a life over which death has no 
 power ; for now they live not unto themselves, but in the eternal and 
 unto the eternal. To this type of philosophy, the particular things 
 and interests of our experience, so far from being mere appearances 
 professing a reality to which they have no claim, are in truth more 
 real even than they seem to be. So that this philosophy is a 
 philosophy humane and kindly. It is hospitable to all forms of being 
 — though it has its sternness in insisting that each shall recognise 
 its place and devote itself to its own function. Every lineament in 
 the face of nature is dear to it; but its special delight is with man 
 and his history. The labour of man, the achievement of man, the 
 glory and the tragedy which are never far from any man's heart — it 
 is never weary of attempting to set these in the light of eternity and 
 to show them transfigured by that light. But the philosophy which 
 stands over against this can give no such welcome to all the half- 
 earthly half-heavenly content of our life. Not that it does not love 
 men. In its greater historical forms it has loved men with the 
 profoundest and most passionate of all the forms of love — that over- 
 whelmed with the sense of tragedy ; its love being not that of delight, 
 but that of a great pity for the hapless creature whom it saw losing 
 himself in things which, not being God, are nothing and worse than 
 nothing. But the very principle which gave such passion to its love 
 for man made it stand aloof from man's ordinary life. It made its 
 home neither with his daily affairs, nor with the humanities, nor 
 with nature. To pass from its great opponent to it is as if one passed 
 from Athens — from the thronged harbours of the Piraeus, from the 
 voices of statesmen and sophists and tragedians, from the gatherings 
 of men who delighted in life and in one another and in the exercise 
 of all the powers that their natures included — to some solemn temple 
 of Lacedsemon, standing apart in grave strength and austere majesty, 
 changeless from age to age, while in hollow Sparta the generations of 
 mortal men hastened to death. 
 
 This, then, is the deepest of those divisions that have sundered 
 
 119 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 into diverse schools and tendencies the long attempt of man to under- 
 stand himself and his world. It is a first and fundamental distinction 
 which the student must understand if he is to understand the history 
 of philosophy at all. That history seems crowded with a multitude of 
 structures; and the difference of these from one another seems as 
 great as their internal complexity. But when the investigator digs 
 down into them, what he comes upon at last is one or other — more 
 often both — of the two great tendencies now before us. These are 
 elemental in character, primitive, simple; and they are of immeasur- 
 able antiquity ; for they are as old as the dissatisfaction of the human 
 soul with its imperfect being and with its momentary and transient 
 experiences. Their opposition has moulded the whole dialectical 
 evolution of man's endeavour to understand his life. From the 
 beginnings alike of religion and of reflective thought they, like inner 
 forces, have guided the main currents; and have determined the 
 proportions of the greater systems. The history of their warfare — 
 and of their combinations with each other — is, on its practical side, 
 the history of the religious life; and, on its theoretical side, the 
 history of philosophy. 
 
 So long as we understand the essential movement of these two 
 tendencies, it matters little what names we give them. Some designa- 
 tions, however, we must have, if only for convenience of reference. 
 The broad contrast between the two, as tendencies or methods, may 
 be indicated by the terms " abstract " and " concrete " ; or by the 
 terms " analytic " and " synthetic " ; or we may borrow terms from 
 the older theologians, and call the one the via negativa, the other the 
 via afftrmativa. To find names for the views of the world which arise 
 from these tendencies is on the one side fairly easy, on the other some- 
 what difficult. The philosophy of the via negativa — that which in 
 moving toward the One denies the Many — may, when it confines itself 
 to pure theory, be called " abstract pantheism," or from another point 
 of view " acosmism."^ But when it goes beyond pure theory, and is 
 
 1 A term accurate in the sense of giving a negative name to a negative movement of 
 thought. Yet (leaving aside Hegel's appropriate use of it in replying to those who accused 
 Spino7-a of Atheism) it jars upon one who remembers how exceedingly positive is the 
 impulse— the impulse after reality— out of which this negative movement of thought has 
 so often arisen. 
 
 120 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 at once a view of reality and a way of life, it is Mysticism — the pan- 
 theistische Mystik of that saying of Kothe which Dr. Martineau put 
 upon the title-page of his Spinoza, 
 
 Der pantheistischen Mystik ist wirklich Gott alles, 
 Dem gemeinen Pantheismus ist alles Gott. 
 
 And having the general name of Mysticism, we need scarcely, for our 
 present purpose, concern ourselves with names for its various types. 
 For while it is true that the points of departure from which men have 
 proceeded to an abstract One are very various, yet the conclusion 
 itself, when reached, can scarcely be said to have diverse forms. To 
 that "lion's den" many paths may lead — some purely theoretical, 
 some religious — but to all of them it is a lion's den. There are differ- 
 ent kinds of Mysticism only in the sense that men come to Mysticism 
 along different ways, under different impulses, in different tempers. 
 But on the other side the subdivisions are numerous and of the 
 utmost importance. For here the Many a^e not lost in the One, but 
 preserved in the One. The One is the source and constitutive 
 principle of the world — the principle of connexion which links its 
 many factors and elements together into one orderly system. Hence, 
 what the nature of that connexion is (and consequently what the 
 nature of the world, and what the nature of our life in it) depends on 
 the nature of the One. And that nature may be apprehended upon 
 many different intellectual levels — i.e., by many different categories. 
 For reflective thought began with simple categories which could not 
 do justice to the positive relation between the details of the world and 
 their supreme and eternal principle ; and from these, advanced to cate- 
 gories more concrete and therefore at once more comprehensive and 
 more penetrating. AYe thus get an ascending series of views, less or more 
 adequate according as the category employed is less or more adequate 
 to that which is to be apprehended. It may be broadly stated that the 
 lower forms of these are dominated by the idea of necessity a tergo — 
 there is somehow a beg^'nning, or cause, or substance, and from 
 it things " follow " or " flow down." the course of the flow being abso- 
 lutely determined by the nature of the cause or source : while the higher 
 are dominated by the conception of spirit, and the consequent 
 
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 conceptions of teleology, and of a rational necessity union with which 
 is true freedom. To those lower forms — since in the last analysis they 
 must regard all particular things as the modes which in their totality 
 make up the eternal One — we might apply Eothe's term, gemeiner 
 Pantlieismus; or we might use some such name as " naturalistic Pan- 
 theism/' The higher forms are usually denoted by the name Ideal- 
 ism, in its greater sense as defined on a previous page;^ though, as 
 there noted, even in Idealism we have to remember the distinction 
 between a more concrete form which believes that the eternal, rational 
 spirit fulfils its purpose through the whole process of the world, and a 
 more abstract form which can see Ood only in pure reason, and is 
 obliged, therefore, to condemn the world of the senses.^ With these 
 subdivisions, however, we are not directly concerned at this point. 
 What we must do here is to fix firmly in our minds the original and 
 fundamental distinction itself between the tendency which is abstract 
 and negative, and that which is affirmative and concrete. 
 
 1 Supra, p. 11. Cf. infra, pp. 209, 210. 
 
 2 To the student of " Logik "—the science whose business it is (or was) to deal with the 
 categories and hence to arrange the various types of philosophy in the order of their 
 advance from abstractness toward concreteness— this matter of classification will of 
 course ofTer no difficulties. All these tendencies and types can be arranged as stages in a 
 single process of logical evolution. The first— the thorough carrying out of the via 
 negativa— stands at the beginning where the categories employed are altogether abstract 
 (the categories of pure Being). The third stands at the end, where a highest category has 
 been gained which is altogether concrete (Absolute Idealism). While the remaining 
 forms are the stages which constitute the long road between— one of the most striking of 
 these being that which, as its highest category, iises the conception of causation (whether 
 physical or logical) in such a way as to give us a view of the universe as a great process of 
 necessity a tergo. Those intermediate types have the common characteristic that they 
 have not felt the pressure of the problem of the self ; they have not grasped the fact that 
 " things " (extended things as much as any other) are objects existing for and through a 
 self which holds together many "experiences" in the unity of one experience; to them, 
 in other words, man is simply a part of nature ; whatever principles are adopted aa 
 explaining the things which seem to exist in their own right in space and time, are ipso 
 facto adopted as explaining man. And it is when the pressure of the problem of the self 
 (usually in a special form— the problem of the possibility of knowledge) is felt, that 
 philosophy passes upward from those intermediate types to the Idealistic. In the exam- 
 ination of human experience a synthetic principle, self-conscious, self-distinguishing, 
 self -determining, is found ; and such a principle furnishes the key for the solution of the 
 problem how the many facts and beings of the world, without losing their particularity, 
 can be linked together into one reality. Self-distinguishing and self -determining spirit- 
 so science finds at the end of its long ascent— is the principle of unity-in-diversity which 
 enables us to view the universe as one, without abstracting from, or condemning aa 
 illusion, that manifoldness of existence which is found, not only in the multiplex life of 
 nature, but also in the divisions of the intellectual and moral and religious life of man. 
 
 122 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 In the thought of Spinoza both these tendencies are present. The 
 former — the tendency to the via negaiiva — is not only present in him, 
 but is that first and fundamental thing in his thinking with which 
 the student must begin if he is at all to understand Spinoza as Spinoza 
 actually was. But in that large and sincere and open mind, the 
 unquestioned domination of the negative tendency was impossible. To 
 such forms of the other tendency as could enter his field of thought 
 he gave fair hearing, and dealt as he was able with the problems which 
 these forced upon him. Of this, the result was not so much the 
 renunciation of the negative tendency, as the setting of the other beside 
 it; or rather the setting of two forms of the other beside it. For, as 
 we shall see, he set beside it, in fully articulated form, what on the 
 classification noted a moment ago would be called a lower type of the 
 positive or sjoithetic view. But then in certain connexions he was 
 driven even beyond that, and worked out doctrines which cannot 
 indeed be called a system, but are prophetic hints and glimpses calling 
 for the highest type of the concrete view, i.e., for Idealism. In order, 
 then, to understand him as he was and to follow his thinking along 
 the line of its own journey, we shall study first how he was led toward 
 the negative or mystic conception of reality, and then his advance 
 from it to the other points of view just spoken of. But — as was noted 
 a moment ago — to study intelligently the negative tendency as it is in 
 Spinoza, it will be wise first to study it on its own merits and for its 
 own sake. And that can best be done historically. 
 
 IV. 
 
 In the age-long effort of man to find out what he is, and what his 
 experience means, and what the true way of life for him is, this 
 abstract or negative way of thinking has shown itself times innumer- 
 able. In some cases it has played the part of a Nemesis of thought, 
 appearing unbidden in the systems of those who face with inadequate 
 categories the ultimate problem of science.^ But these cases need not 
 be dwelt upon here. For, in the history of man, it has had a greater 
 
 I A remarkable instance is the case of the development from Sir William Hamilton 
 through Dean Mansel to Mr. Spencer. 
 
 123 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 part than that to play. Strange as the fact may seem, this austere 
 and abstract tendency, which has for its goal a formless Absolute and 
 an eternity devoid of time, has not only dominated the thought, but 
 has governed the life, of whole races and nations. Stranger still, it 
 has at times regenerated religion, and broken up spiritual stagnation. 
 It has even helped to shatter political tyrannies. And as one might 
 conjecture beforehand, a tendency that has taken so great a place in 
 the life of man has not wanted for expression in the works of the great 
 masters of systematic thought. Sometimes it has ruled half the 
 divided heart of a supreme teacher. Sometimes, on the other hand, 
 from a method or a point of departure in which it lay latent, it has 
 worked its way, with a logic as inevitable as the decrees of fate, to its 
 full meaning ; and then has shown itself as the fundamental and con- 
 trolling factor in the thought of some great man, or some great school, 
 or some remarkable age. 
 
 The cases of the former kind are of the very deepest interest. 
 They stand central in the historical development of philosophy; one 
 might almost call them its great ganglia. Here, however, it is possible 
 to refer only to two of these. The first is the greater. In the thought 
 of Plato the negative tendency is present, confronting the affirmative ; 
 and there, in the presence of its opponent, it takes on, more than ever 
 before in the history of man and more than ever after, the characters 
 which are native to it — the solemnity, the imearthly splendour, the 
 austere Laceda-monian grace, appropriate to the vision of an eternal 
 being in whose presence the weaker things of time pass away and are 
 not. But while it is present, and knows itself, it cannot prevail. For 
 in Plato, as in all the great cases of its occurrence, the negative tend- 
 ency takes its rise in that which is the genuine beginning and the 
 genuine inspiration of all science, and of all philosophy, and in one 
 sense of all religion ; namely, in the instinctive search of the spirit 
 which is man for the abiding and the unchangeable ; in the passion for 
 the eternal. But of the men who are thus animated by the passion for 
 the eternal — the men who, as we are wont to say, are " not of this 
 world " — there are two classes. Some who are " not of this world " 
 are so in the literal sense. So far as they can, they walk without 
 transgression in the way of the negative theology. Their journey 
 
 124 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 toward their home in God, is a journey away from this world. But 
 others, who are " not of this world," are for that very reason all the 
 more truly citizens of this world. Their knowledge that their 
 dwelling-place is in the eternal makes all the profounder and all the 
 more genuine their citizenship in that temporal order which is " a 
 moving image of eternity."^ And as between these alternatives 
 Plato's position was peculiar. A certain Dorian quality of soul 
 struggled in him with an Ionian intellect and with Athenian training 
 and tastes and interests. And the practical tragedy in his life- partly 
 withdrew him from the world, partly made him all the more passion- 
 ately earnest about the reformation of the world within the forms of 
 its present order. The negative tendency lay very close at his heart; 
 yet, upon the whole, it is the other that prevails in his philosophy. 
 The Ideas remain determinate forms — and determinate rational forms. 
 The One (i.e., the Idea of Good) does not by its presence condemn to 
 unreality the lower Ideas in their individual distinctness; nor for the 
 apprehension of it is a t}'pe of consciousness above the rational 
 required. And even more than that can be said. Of the two inter- 
 pretations of Plato, that which sees the Ideas as in organic union with 
 man's present world and present experience, is really more true to 
 Plato than that which sees the Ideas as dwelling altogether apart from 
 the world. What Mysticism does for Plato is, not to overcome him, 
 but rather to give loftiness of soul, and a certain undernote of tragedy, 
 to his Idealism. Indeed his thought as a whole is an example of the 
 fact that a great and complex process often takes on a wider move- 
 ment, a new and higher order of power, when a negative element 
 enters among its constituents. 
 
 The other case lies close to ourselves. A negative movement of 
 thought is present in the very system in which the metaphysic of the 
 present day recognises its proximate fountain-head — in the critical 
 philosophy of Immanuel Kant. But, although more than twenty 
 centuries had intervened — some of them filled with hard thinking, 
 others given to eager conquest of the world — yet the negative tendency 
 is in Kant far less aware than in Plato of its own true nature. 
 
 1 Timaeus, 37 DE. 2 See pp. 222, 223, infra. 
 
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THE METAPHYSIC OP SPINOZA 
 
 Appearing first as a gulf between the categories and the materials given 
 in sense — and then going on through other dualisms to that final one 
 between the phenomena given to the understanding, and the real world 
 which is the field of the rational will — it operates mainly as a potent 
 source of difficulty and confusion ; and the first labour of the followers 
 of Kant was to overcome it, so that Kant's synthetic view might be 
 developed to its full significance. 
 
 It is hard to turn away from a more detailed study of these two 
 cases. But they do not give us exactly what we want here at the 
 beginning. What we need here is to see the negative tendency, as far 
 as possible, in the purity of its type ; to see it as it is in itself. What 
 we must do is to turn to the other great class of its appearances — those 
 in which, from the method or the point of departure wherein it is 
 latent, it advances with uninterrupted logic, moving with its own 
 motion, working out its own dialectic, until, as one may say, it 
 possesses the whole field. 
 
 Of such cases there are three in particular, which (specially when 
 compared with one another) show what this tendency is; show what 
 that meaning is, which it has in it at its beginning and develops in its 
 course. One of these is found in G-reek thought before the problem of 
 the self had come clearly to view. Here the tendency shows itself in a 
 strictly theoretical form. It gives, as one may say, a sketch of itself 
 in its purely logical outline. But it did not — in that land and at that 
 age, it could not — enter upon the full work of a philosophy. It neither 
 became a guide of life, nor faced the full weight and power of its own 
 theoretical shortcoming. The second is much earlier in date; but 
 much fuller in articulation. Among the Hindus the negative tendency 
 not only works itself out with a singular completeness of logical 
 development, but also undertakes what has just been called " the full 
 work of a philosophy." It puts its shoulder to the wheel. It acts as 
 a guide of life, and builds up an ethic and a philosophy of religion. 
 While in the third case — the IsTeo-Platonic — it is seen at last recognis- 
 ing its great theoretical difficulty, and erecting, in the effort to over- 
 come that difficulty, a structure of almost monstrous vastness. — And, as 
 we shall see, there is a fourth case, which scarcely adds any new logical 
 factor, but which so well sums up in itself the main features of the 
 
 126 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 three cases just mentioned, that it will be worth our while to take 
 note of it as we pass from these historical references to the direct 
 study of Spinoza. 
 
 (a) 
 
 What we are to see in the Greek case is the pure science, the pure 
 logic, of the matter, given in a very brief and elementary form, but 
 with perfect clearness. This case we shall best understand by consider- 
 ing the logical position in which men inevitably found themselves when 
 they first attempted to be scientific in their thinking about the world. 
 First, the instinct after unity, the sense of the oneness of all existence, 
 is present ; present at the very beginning, for without it there could be 
 no such beginning. It may be unrecognised and unreflected upon ; but 
 without its implicit operation there would be no such thing as the 
 search after scientific explanation at all. The mind would simply rest 
 each instant in the particulars of that instant. But, secondly, the 
 category that can affect the unification of this most complex world, 
 must be a very complex and difficult category. But such a category is 
 not present at the beginning. Or rather, it is present only potentially 
 and shows itself only in flashes of prophetic intuition. As a clear 
 instrument of the reason, employed in building up systematic and 
 assured science, it is gained only as the result of a long dialectic labour 
 in which category after category is entered upon, used to the utmost of 
 its power, and finally taken up into a higher : — until at last a category 
 is reached by which the Many are shown as a One, with no rebels 
 remaining outside to prove, by the very fact of their rebellion, the 
 inadequacy of the category for its work of unification. 
 
 So then, at the beginning the demand for imity is present. But 
 the category by which the Many can be seen as One, is, in the sense just 
 mentioned, not present. What almost inevitably results is a stage of 
 thinking in which the One runs away with the Many — or to speak more 
 decorously, in which the Many are lost in the One. This whelming of 
 the Many in the One is likely, indeed, to take place near the beginning 
 rather than at the beginning. Near the beginning; for there the 
 categories are simple, abstract, inadequate. But not precisely at the 
 beginning. For the denial of the manifold involves two things which 
 
 127 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 at the very beginning can scarcely be present; first, as we shall see 
 presently, an unflinching, uninterrupted consistency in carrying a 
 given category to its extreme and absolute application; and secondly, 
 a high degree of speculative courage. But as soon as the scientific 
 intellect has taken on some considerable impetus and has come to 
 feel tolerably sure of itself, then we may look for such an affirmation 
 of the unity of being as makes its manifoldness a mere illusion. 
 
 Among the Greeks — in whose early men of thought the pure 
 intellect, serene and undistracted, enslaved neither by force from 
 without nor by superstitious fears within, stood free to work its way 
 without interruption through the dialectic of its categories — this 
 tendency came to the forefront just in the place indicated. The name 
 connected with its clear and full emergence is the great name of 
 Parmenides. 
 
 If we consider the exact situation which Parmenides faced, we 
 shall see both how clear his logic was, and how absolutely inevitable 
 wii'' the conclusion to which he came. He stood face to face with the 
 particular things of the world, and these were not self-intelligible. 
 Of this plant, this cloud, this cliff that the sea is wearing down, one 
 has to say, " It is." But there was a time, and there will again be a 
 time, when one, if present, would have to say, " It is not." But 
 there is no rest for the intellect in such things. They do not stand 
 upon their own feet. They are and they are not. T^Tiat is wanted is 
 something which will supply a footing to these things, and which at 
 the same time will itself have at least two characters. First, it must 
 be something of which you can in the fullest sense of the words say 
 that it is : — at no time, in no place, under no circumstances, must you 
 be able to say that it is not. Secondly, it must be something which is 
 one with itself. That is, it must always remain itself throughout all 
 its work of making possible these particular and transient " tilings " 
 and this changing order of "nature." If, for instance, it be some- 
 thing which condenses itself into these stones and rarifies itself into 
 that vapour, it must still remain itself throughout all those trans- 
 formations. And this second character follows directly from the 
 first; the "It remains itself," from the absolute "It is." 
 
 The first Greek men of science faced this problem as well as they 
 
 128 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OP SPINOZA 
 
 could. They used such intellectual instruments, such categories, as 
 they had. And the category which they had was the first and simplest 
 of all our categories — that of Being. This category they used in 
 specific and very naive forms. But its essential character was always 
 the same: — Being is that of which you can simply affirm that it is. 
 Soon, however, these men of science found themselves in difficulties 
 of a most serious character. Their category turned a very unkindly 
 and very uncompromising face toward the actual existeace? of the 
 world. They were — if the illustration be not too profane — somewhat 
 in the position of a man who has discovered that space is two-dimen- 
 sional. If you have found that space has but two dimensions — that aU. 
 spatial reality exists in a plane — you must leave off tying sailors' knots 
 and must have nothing more to do with the various gymnastic feats 
 which involve motion in the third dimension. And if you find your- 
 self still doing these things you must declare that really you do not do 
 them; that in truth they are but illusions. For any motion is either 
 in that plane, or out of it ; and if it is out of it, it is unreal. Just so 
 it turned out to be with the category of Being, These things of time 
 and of sense are continually changing, continually swaying back and 
 forth between " is " and " is not." But Being is. In it there is no 
 " is not." In a word, there is no place in it for change and for things 
 that are subject to change. And if you try to escape the difficulty by 
 making the conception of Being into the conception of Substance; if 
 you try to keep both the Being and the things, by viewing the Being 
 as the substrate of the things : you help yourself not one whit. The 
 old difficulty simply recurs. Here is this particular thing. It either 
 has Being or else it has not Being. If it has Being, then it cannot 
 have any sort of " is not " about it — for how can " is not " get into 
 the pure and absolute " is " ? That is to say, it cannot, among other 
 things, have any change in it. But it changes even while we are 
 speaking about it. Therefore it has not Being. It is nothing at all. 
 If you appeal to your sense-experience, your sense-experience must be 
 declared to be at once an absurdity and an illusion. Nor can you be 
 permitted to attempt an escape by setting up a distinction in the thing 
 between Substance and Accidents. For precisely the same test 
 banishes the Accidents into nothingness. 
 
 10 129 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 So that when these early men of science attempt to understand 
 the world by means of the only categories they have securely grasped 
 — those of Being or of Substance — the solution, as soon as its logic is 
 worked out, swallows up the original problem. On the level of those 
 categories, the assertion that Eeality is, involves the assertion that it 
 is One, and that the Many and the Finite and the Changeable are not. 
 
 The foregoing is simply the argument of Parmenides stated in 
 general terms ;^ and of course with this difference that Parmenides 
 neither had, nor could be expected to have, any suspicion of the 
 possible inadequacy of his categories. He used his categories in all 
 good faith. He saw that from their point of view the disjunction of 
 being and non-being, of " is " and " is not," is absolute. He saw that 
 this again involved that reality is One, and its apparent manifoldness 
 an illusion. And this he stated in a way which is not merely clear 
 and convincing, but is absolutely final : 
 
 . . . " One path only is left for us to speak of, namely, 
 that It is. In it are very many tokens that what is, is uncreated and 
 indestructible, alone, complete, immovable, and without end. Nor 
 was it ever, nor will it be ; for now it is, all at once, a continuous one. 
 For what kind of origin for it will you look for? In what way and 
 from what source could it have drawn its increase? I shall not let 
 thee say nor think that it came from what is not ; for it can neither be 
 thought nor uttered that what is not is. And if it came from nothing 
 what need could have made it arise later rather than sooner? There- 
 fore must it either be altogether or be not at all. Nor will the force of 
 truth suffer aught to arise besides itself from that which in any way is. 
 Wherefore, Justice does not loose her fetters and let anything come 
 into being or pass away, but holds it fast. . . . How then 
 can what is be going to be in the future ? Or how could it come into 
 being ? If it came into being, it is not ; nor is it if it is going to be 
 in the future. Thus is becoming extinguished and passing away 
 not to be heard of. . . . Nor is it divisible. . . . More- 
 over it is immovable. . , . without beginning and without end; 
 since coming into being and passing away have been driven afar off, 
 and true belief has cast them away. It is the same, and it rests in the 
 
 1 " In general terms "—for Parmenides envisaged reaiity spatially. Cf. p. 131, note, 
 
 130 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 self-same place, abiding in itself. . . . And there is not, and 
 never shall be, any time other than that which is present, since fate 
 has chained it so as to be whole and immovable. Wherefore all these 
 things are but the names wliich mortals have given, believing them to 
 be true — coming into being and passing away, being and not being, 
 change of place and alteration of bright colour."^ 
 
 "Being is One and is self-identical; the many are not." So 
 stands the conclusion of Parmenides. But the important point for 
 our purpose is to note how absolutely logical, how absolutely consist- 
 ent and consequent, is the argument by which he reaches this conclu- 
 sion. He stood within the science of his day and accepted its 
 procedure. But he saw with thorough clearness what the ultimate 
 meaning of that procedure was. And this he stated in a form 
 impressive, complete, valid for ever.^ Little was left for his younger 
 followers to do, save to round out the system on its polemic side by 
 showing into what absurd positions men get themselves when they 
 hold to the reality of the Many, and to the truthfulness of the senses. 
 
 Early in the course of Greek thought, then, the negative tendency 
 staled itself with intellectual completeness and finality. And yet it 
 did not do among the Greeks the full work of a philosophy. It did 
 not enter upon the guidance of life. From the day of Parmenides 
 onward one does not find the most earnest men among the Greeks 
 being led by it to have done with the illusion of the Many, and to 
 seek the true fulfilment of their being in a changeless and ineffable 
 One. And the reason is plain. It consists partly in the fact that this 
 philosophy, as a philosophy, was outgrown at last by the bringing 
 forward of more adequate categories; and partly in the character of 
 
 1 Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (1892), pp. 185-187. 
 
 2 The statement in the text deals with the abiding significance of Parmenides' 
 argument, as a purely intellectual form of the logic of Mysticism. Of course, with 
 Parmenides, as with most men who stand early in great histories, we must distinguish 
 between the atmosphere in which an argument moves, and the essential significance of 
 the argument which moves in that atmosphere. The atmosphere in which Parmenides' 
 argument moved, was one of naive Realism ; he envisaged his One as a corporeal sphere ; 
 and in doing so, did not quite carry out his own principle (v. Burnet.pp. 342, 343, § 141). But 
 his argument itself, in its use of categories, in its movement from conception to conception, 
 goes beyond all naive Realism ; goes beyond all Realism of any sort, and leads straight 
 toward Mysticism. 
 
 131 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 Greek life. In the life of the Hellenes, perfection of body and power 
 of soul answered to fulness of opportunity. They lived under the 
 clearest of skies. They were served generously by their land and by 
 their sea. They had, among their inherited treasures, the "greatest 
 births of time " in literature and in art, and they were engaged almost 
 daily in placing beside these, companion-pieces that were worthy of 
 them. Life they knew and the joy of life, and over its resources 
 exercised a supreme and easy mastery. Nor did they esteem their 
 life the less, that the Mede and the Canaanite had appeared among 
 them, and Marathon and Salamis and Himera had become names 
 for ever. Such a race, living such a life, was not likely, till its greater 
 day was done, to furnish apt pupils for the lesson that the thronging 
 interests of life are vanity and illusion, and that wisdom lies in with- 
 drawing from them and seeking rest in a reality which knows neither 
 change nor manifold. 
 
 But there was a race whose life had come to be burdened by the 
 weight of an immeasurable and hopeless, pain. And there the thinking 
 that walks in the via negativa entered upon the full function of a 
 philosophy. It gave to the generations of a great race their theoretical 
 view of reality; it shaped — and it shapes — their morality and their 
 religion. Hegel, thinking of the spirits of the nations as existent and 
 particular individuals, tells us that they stand around the throne of 
 the universal spirit, the spirit of the world, as perfecters of its 
 actuality and witnesses and ornaments of its splendour.^ Each race, 
 like an attendant spirit, fulfils by its intellectual and by its moral 
 labours, its part in the one work of world-history. In this great 
 division and delegation of the tasks of world-history, it would almost 
 seem as if the one specially committed to the Hindu race was the full 
 development through all its stages — was the full articulation both as 
 an intellectual and as a moral system — of the philosophy of the 
 negative way. The steps in that long labour of thought by which this 
 was accomplished we have now to trace. 
 
 1 Philosophy of Right, § 352 ; cf . § 340. 
 
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 The first step takes us back to the very fountain-head of the 
 science of the Aryan peoples. The Vedic poet stands where all orderly 
 human science stood at its beginning. He stands face to face with 
 the facts and forces of nature— with sky and sun, storm-wind and 
 dawn; and he feels that these, as he finds them, are not "self-intelli- 
 gible ; he feels that, as they stand, they do not exist in their own right. 
 And the first step which he takes in healing this unsatisfactoriness of 
 the facts present to him, is one in which the scientific instinct and the 
 religious instinct go hand in hand. He personifies those facts and 
 gives to them, as thus personified, the attributes of deity. 
 
 But in connexion with this, the Vedic poets did one of the most 
 remarkable things in human history. What this was, can best 
 be shown by contrasting the two great lines of thought that took their 
 rise from the original homeland of the Aryans — the Greek and the 
 Vedic. The Greeks very early separated their gods from the natural 
 phenomena of which they were personifications, and himianised them 
 — gLve to them abiding individualities, clear, definite, characteristic, 
 personal.! ^Tiile this remains the case, the gods, whatever they may 
 be to the religious consciousness, are of little value to the scientific or 
 philosophic consciousness — the consciousness which seeks to make 
 the world intelligible and needs principles of explanation for doing 
 so. If indeed an advance toward unity were to be made, by making 
 some god supreme — whether Zeus or 'Ayayuy] orErinys — then there 
 would be at least a possibility of the scientific consciousness finding 
 the principle of unity that it needs. But such an advance the early 
 Greeks can scarcely be said to have made. The consequence was that 
 the scientific consciousness had to wait for long ages, and finally, 
 with the Ionic physicists, to make an altogether new beginning on its 
 own account. 
 
 But when we turn back to the Vedic line, we find something quite 
 different. It has been pointed out times innumerable that in the Vedic 
 hymns whatsoever deity the poet addresses is viewed for the time 
 being as God, supreme, unlimited, absolute ; and this even when other 
 
 1 E. Caird, Evolution of Religion (1893), vol. I., p. 264 seq. 
 133 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 deities are being at the same time mentioned by name. Varuna, for 
 instance, is addressed as Lord of all, Lord of heaven and earth, 
 upholding the whole order of nature, and guardian too of the moral 
 order of the world. The breaking of his laws is sin. The penitent 
 sinner is to pray for mercy to him. But presently Indra or Agni is 
 addressed in the same way. 
 
 This fact is one of the commonplaces of present-day knowledge. 
 But what has not always been made so clear is the mental condition 
 out of which it arises. What it means is this: the Vedic poet, how- 
 ever religious he may be, has never ceased to have that in him which 
 is nothing other than the genuine spirit of philosophy, nothing other 
 than the genuine movement of the scientific consciousness. He feels, 
 no matter how dimly, the oneness of nature. Some one principle, he 
 feels, some one power, is expressing itself through all this variety of 
 wonderful and appalling phenomena. But the onl}^ forms which he 
 had at his command for purposes of scientific expression, were those 
 forms which he had struck out for himself by personifying those very 
 phenomena — Indra and Agni and Varuna, Ushas and the Maruts, 
 and the rest of Ya^navalkya's " three and three hundred, three and 
 three thousand " gods.^ But then comes the trouble that no one of all 
 these forms is adequate to the expression of the principle or power 
 which the Vedic thinker, dimly enough at first, but with a demand 
 that grows continually clearer, is groping after. ISTo one of them — for 
 it expresses itself in them all; of all of them it is the source. And 
 so the first expedient is to use all those forms, now one, now another. 
 A sage, Yaska by name, who lived many centuries later, puts the logic 
 of the case into a sentence — It is owing to the greatness of the deity 
 that the Divine Self is celebrated as if it were many.^ 
 
 But such a procedure has an almost inevitable logical outcome. 
 As time goes by and reflective thought comes forward, while poetic 
 intuition and poetic nature-worship recede, two things come into ever 
 
 1 "How many gods are there?" asks Vidagdha SAkalya of Yagrn-avalkya. The first 
 answer is "three and three hundred, three and three thousand." But this number is 
 steadily reduced— to thirty-three— to one and a half— finally to on*. This one is Brahman 
 and his name is " That. "— Brth. Upanishad, III. 9. 1-9. {Sacred \Books of the East, vol. 
 XV., pp. 139-142.) 
 
 2 Max Mtiller, Three Lectures on the Veddnta Philosophy, (London, 1894), p. 27.— 
 Yiska lived circa 500 B.C. 
 
 134 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 clearer consciousness. First, tliat what is really being sought for is 
 One. Secondly, that this One is not to be identified with any of the 
 forms just referred to — not with Varuna the Heaven, nor with Indra 
 the giver of rain, nor with Agni the fire, nor with the appalling 
 Maruts, the storm-winds. The oneness will be ever more strongly and 
 clearly insisted upon. But to any definite determination or qualifica- 
 tion of it, the answer will come to be — and did come to be — " Neti, 
 neti."i In a word, the goal that lay straight ahead was an abstract 
 One and an illusory manifold. And to this goal the thinkers of India 
 advanced with a logic that neither flinched nor failed. " Sir, tell me 
 Brahman," said Vashkalin. Thereupon Bahva became quite still. 
 When Vashkalin had asked a second and a third time, Bahva replied : 
 "I am teaching you indeed, but you do not understand. Silent is 
 that Self."2 
 
 Such was the first great step taken by the thought of India, Its 
 inner movement is not greatly different from that which we met with 
 in the case of Parmenides. Its search after the One moves in the 
 logical region of the category of Being. And it does what on the level 
 of that category is inevitable. It absolutely disjoins " is " and " is 
 not,"2 And it is thereupon obliged to exclude from reality the deter- 
 minations which involve an element of " is not." But the next great 
 step which the thought of India took, goes far beyond this, and is of 
 incalculable importance. It builds the bridge which the metaphysic 
 of the via negativa needs, to enable it to advance to the work of con- 
 structing an ethic and a theory of religion. In dealing with Par- 
 
 1 "N6ti"— it is not thus. See B7-ih. Up. II. 3. 6. (Sacred Books of the East, vol. 
 XV., p. 108): III. 9. 26 {ib. pp. 148, 149) : IV. 2. 4 {t&. p. 160) : IV. 4. 22 {ib. p. 180) : IV. 5. 15 (r&. 
 p. 185). 
 
 2 Sacred Books of the East, vol. XXXVIII., p. 157.-Cf. Max Muller, Three Lectures 
 on the Veddnta Philosophy, p. 84. 
 
 3 " ' In the beginning, my dear, there was that only which is {to bv) one only, without 
 a second. Others say, in the beginning there was that only which is not (jb fxtj bv) one 
 only, without a second ; and from that which is not, that which is was born. 
 
 ' But ho w could it be thus, my dear ? ' the father continued. ' How could that which is 
 be born of that which is not ? No, my dear, only that which is, was in the beginning, one 
 only, without a second. 
 
 ' It thought, may I be many . . .' " 
 
 — .Kftftnd. Up. VI. 2. 1, 2, 3. {Sacred Books of the East, vol. I., p. 93.— Cf. Max MiUler, 
 Three Lectures on the Veddnta Philosophy, p. 35.) 
 
 135 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 menides two reasons were pointed out which prevented his philosophy 
 from becoming to the Greek race a guide of life. Those were both, 
 in a sense, external to his philosophy. They barred the way against 
 it from without. But if these had both been absent, there was still 
 a third reason, internal to the system of Parmenides, which would 
 have tended to hold it back from becoming a guide of life. If I am 
 convinced that the changing and the manifold are illusion ; and if by 
 actual experience I have found the life which involves these to be very 
 evil — so evil that life and sorrow are one same thing; and if from 
 that illusion and that evil I wish to be delivered by finding rest in the 
 One; then, whether the logic of my philosophy allows it or not, I 
 must believe in, some sort of organic connexion between myself and the 
 One by withdrawal into which or absorption into which I am to find 
 rest. But such a connexion Parmenides could not assert. For, as we 
 have seen, the problem of the self simply did not exist for him at all. 
 To the teachers of India, however, the problem of the self became a 
 keen and pressing one. And so they were able to make the great 
 advance which rendered possible the application of the negative 
 metaphysic to the burdened life of India : — they asserted a connexion, 
 nay they asserted an identity, between the self in man and the One 
 which is the true and only reality. 
 
 The expedient by which this identification of the self of man with 
 the One — with Brahman — was effected, was very violent. But it was 
 closely in line with the general procedure of the negative meta- 
 physic. And not only that ; but when once a race of thinkers to whom 
 the problem of the self is present, have taken the first great step in 
 the via negativa — have made the advance to an indeterminate One — 
 then this second step is demanded by an inexorable necessity. This 
 necessity the clear-eyed dialecticians of India were neither unable to 
 see, nor afraid to face. On the level of the categories which abso- 
 lutely disjoin " is " and " is not," Being must be One ; no sort of 
 exception or division could in any way be admitted. Yet the self had 
 taken such a place in their thinking that it could not be summarily 
 dismissed as this fleeting cloud, or that fading plant, could be dis- 
 missed — ^namely, as illusion. So that the situation had come to be 
 this. — Being is One, without division. Yet the self in man cannot 
 
 136 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 be dismissed. Then what can that self be ? It cannot be considered 
 either as a part, or as a modification, of the One. That would be to 
 attribute finitude and division to Brahman. Xor can the human self 
 be anything different from Brahman ; for Brahman is all in all, " one 
 without a second." In a word, there is no alternative but to identify 
 the two. And that, moreover, not in the sense of calling the human 
 self a part of Brahman ; but in the sense of an absolute identification 
 — the whole of Brahman is the human self.^ 
 
 But do not the manifest finitude and dividedness of our human 
 experience recalcitrate against such an identification? Yet the 
 identification must be made; and the thinkers w^ho lead the way from 
 Veda to Yedanta cut through the difficult}' by a piece of that resolute 
 surgery which the metaphysic of the via negativa knows so well how to 
 practise. They conceive the soul as they conceive the ultimate and 
 only reality with which it is to be identified — namely, in an abstract 
 way. The manifold experiences of the soul, its manifold activities of 
 thought and of sense, of memory and of imagination — these are but 
 a veil, and behind this veil dwells the true self of which we can say 
 nothing except that it is. The apparent dualism of the relation of 
 subject and object, whether in sense-experience or in self-conscious- 
 ness, is ruled out altogether from the true Self. "... When 
 the Self only is all this, how should he see another, how should he 
 smell another, how should he taste another, how should he salute 
 another, how should he hear another, how should he touch another, 
 how should he know another? How should he know Him by whom 
 he knows all this ? That Self is to be described by No, no ! He is 
 incomprehensible for he cannot be comprehended ; he is imperishable 
 for he cannot perish ; he is unattached for he does not attach himself ; 
 unfettered, he does not suffer, he does not fail. How, beloved, 
 should he know the Knower ?"^ 
 
 This, too, was made all the easier by the very term which was used 
 to denote the self or soul. The term atman which was used to denote 
 the soul of man, had been originally, as Max Miiller tells us, " a mere 
 pronoun free from any metaphorical taint, and asserting nothing 
 
 1 Max Miiller, Three Lectures on the Veddnta Philosophy, pp. 90-92. 
 2 Brth. Up. IV. 6. 15. (Sacred Books of the East, vol. XV., p. 185.) 
 
 137 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 beyond existence or self-existence." It meant ipse, and as used to 
 express the essence of man or of God, its idea was simply ipseitas. 
 Man was Giv atman, the living, and God was Parama-atman, the 
 highest ipse. And the absolute identity of these two abstract essences 
 was not hard to affirm. 
 
 Thus, then, the great identification was made, and the " Tat tvam 
 asi " — " Thou art it " — and the "Aham hrahmdsmi " — "I am Brah- 
 man " — become the watchwords of this second main step in the logical 
 evolution of the negative metaphysic in India. "... There- 
 fore now also, he who thus knows that he is Brahman, becomes all 
 this, and even the Devas cannot prevent it, for he himself is their Self. 
 Now if a man worships another deity \i.e., a Deity external to the 
 Self in him] thinking the deity is one and he another, he does not 
 know.i ... He who perceives therein [in the " ancient, 
 primeval Brahman"] any diversity, goes from death to death."^ 
 
 And with this the way was prepared for the advance to ethics and 
 to religion. A self which could be called God, but which could also 
 be called man, was left standing. But the finite, the manifold, the 
 changeable, were expelled from reality and cast into the limbo of 
 vanity and nothingness. " In one half verse," says the Vedantist, " I 
 shall tell you what has been told in thousands of volumes : — Brahman 
 is true, the world is false, man's soul is Brahman and nothing else. 
 There is nothing worth gaining, there is nothing worth enjoying, 
 there is nothing worth knowing but Brahman alone; for he who 
 Tcnows Brahman, is Brahman."^ 
 
 With this, then, the thought of the Vedantists went forward on its 
 great way, to be the guide of life and of religion, not to India alone 
 but to lands even more populous. Upon that, however, as we are 
 chiefly concerned with the inner logical movement of the metaphysic 
 of the negative tendency, we cannot here dwell at any length. But a 
 hint at the vast width of that guidance and at its profound signifi- 
 cance in human history, may be given by a brief reference to two 
 
 1 Brih. Up. I. 4. 10. (Sacred Books of the East, vol. XV., p. 88.) 
 
 2 Brih. Up. IV. 4. 19 (cf. IS— Sacred Books of the East, vol. XV., p. 179). 
 
 3 Max Miiller, Three Lectures on the Veddnta Philosophy, pp. 172, 173. Cf. the King's 
 statement of the vanity of life, in the beginning of the Maitrdyana-Brahmana- 
 Upanishad. (Sacred Books of the East, vol. XV., p. 288 seq.) 
 
 138 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPIXOZA 
 
 things. The first of these is seen in the " Forest Schools " of Brah- 
 manism. When a man's hair had become white and he saw his 
 children's children, then he withdrew to the forest. The Vedic hymns 
 which hitherto had been to him so absolutely sacred and so absolutely 
 unquestioned, were replaced by the negative and abstract theology of 
 the Upanishads. And instead of the careful ceremonial observances 
 of his earlier life, and its performance of civic and domestic duties, 
 he sought only to free himself from the personal and the individual, 
 and thus to find his true self in the Eternal Self, in the One, in 
 Brahman ;i sought, in a word, to verify in life that which the 
 Upanishads taught him as theory — Tat tvam asi, thou art it. The 
 second is seen in an ethical teaching which went far beyond the 
 bounds of India. Gautama had been trained in the negative meta- 
 physic of Hinduism. And though he spoke later lOve one who has 
 repudiated all metaphysic, yet it is fair to say that his doctrme of 
 Nirvana expresses the ultimate ethical implication of the metaphysic 
 of the Vedanta. The very intensity of his compassion for a life 
 which is essentially vain led him to make his moral teaching as abso- 
 lutely negative as a moral teaching inspired by compassion well can 
 be. Indeed the morality whose goal is Nirvana is so negative that 
 there is no place in it even for asceticism; or if there is, it is only 
 as a means in subduing Trishna.^ For the extirpation of Trishna is 
 the cessation of the formation of Karma. And with that Nirvana is 
 gained. 
 
 Thus in India the negative tendency worked through the process 
 of its logical evolution and entered upon the full work of a 
 philosophy. It seems indeed a far cry from Veda to Vedanta. The 
 brightness of the early Aryan hymns which rejoice to watch Indra 
 " cleaning the mountains " or " rousing his strength in a moment like 
 the whirlwind rushing along with thundering clouds," and are glad 
 at the presence of the Dawn, "the mother of the morning clouds, 
 clad in her garments of light," " shining on us like a young wife, rous- 
 
 1 See Max Miiller, Oriain and Growth of Religion, (Hibbert Lectures), p. 3&1 seq. 
 Cf. Three Lectures on the Veddnta Philosophy, pp. 19, 20. 
 
 2 Trishna — desire, yearning, thirst ; whatev^er causes life to be a process of activity. 
 
 139 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OP SPINOZA 
 
 ing every living being to go to his work/'^ — this seems far separated 
 from the grey, worn thought of the Upanishads. Yet we have seen 
 that the process which led from the one to the other was a process of 
 thorough logical continuity. When, in a Hindu family, the young 
 son was being trained in the strictest Yedic orthodoxy while the 
 grandfather dwelt apart in the forest meditating upon a theology in 
 which the Vedic deities could find no place, this was not mere incon- 
 sistency or contradiction. It was the symbol of the connexion 
 between the early and the late stages of a single development. 
 Indeed the Yedantists and the Eleatics are alike proofs that in all 
 the history of thought there are few logicians so consequent, few 
 dialecticians so strict, as those whose fate it is to conduct from its 
 premisses to its conclusion the ratiocination of the negative 
 philosophy. 
 
 And yet for Yedantist and Eleatic alike there remained a great 
 problem. Each regarded reality from a given point of view — that of 
 the categories of Being. Each developed the ultimate consequence of 
 that point of view: the Eleatic by a curt intellectual argument of 
 incisive and summary completeness; the Vedantist by a vaster and 
 more commanding process which touched the whole of life. Each 
 came to the inevitable conclusion: reality is an indivisible and 
 changeless One; the Many, an illusion. But that at once raises the 
 question : " If reality is a changeless and indivisible One, how can it 
 give rise to even an illusory appearance of a manifold?" 
 
 And that question received no satisfactory answer from either 
 school. Zeno, to whom the matter was a purely intellectual one, 
 replies cheerfully enough : " Your experience of a manifold and of 
 change must be an illusion; for, as I can show you, such an experi- 
 ence involves the most absurd contradictions." But that does not 
 meet the case. Granted that my experience is an illusion, stni how 
 does even an illusory experience of change and of manifoldness come 
 to be at all, when reality is a One, unchanging and indivisible? 
 
 1 See the hymn to Indra, translated by Max Miiller, Origin and Growth of Religion 
 (Hibbert Lectures), pp. 287-289; and the hymn to the Dawn in the second edition 
 (London, 1868) of his Chips from a German Workshop, vol. I., pp. 36, 37. These may also 
 be found in " The Hymns of the Rigveda translated with a popular commentary" by 
 Ralph T. H. Griffith ; the hymn to Indra (R-V. IV. 17) in vol. II. (Benares, 1890), pp. 118, 
 119 ; the hymn to the Dawn (R-V. VII. 77) in vol. III. (Benares, 1891), p. 97. 
 
 140 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 ISTor can the Vedantist find any satisfactory way of escape. 
 " Aliam Iralimasmi," he says, "I am Brahman." But if so, whence 
 come the limitations under which the self in man labours? The 
 answer is, that they are due to the Upadhis — the obstructions.^ But 
 whence come these? The answer is, once more, from Avidya, 
 nescience. And Avidya comes to be conceived, not merely as 
 personal ignorance, but a great independent cosmical power, which 
 is able for a time to overshadow Brahman itself.^ But how can 
 Avidya thus affect Brahman, who is all in all, " one without a 
 second," subject to nothing outside it, because there is nothing outside 
 it?^ The Vedantist can only answer that it is so.* And when 
 pressed as to how such a thing can be so, he can only fall back on the 
 plan of Zeno; he can only attempt to involve his adversary in a self- 
 contradiction. It is self-contradictory, he urges, to seek to know what 
 Avidya is. It is as though a man should endeavour to see darkness by 
 means of a far-shining torch.^ 
 
 Here, then, is the great theoretical or scientific difficulty of the 
 metaphysic of the via negativa. The world of manifoldness and 
 change refuses to be driven out of court. Whether as real or as 
 illusory, it demands to be accounted for. 
 
 And this indicates to us what we must next do. "We are attempt- 
 ing to see how this metaphysic has behaved in the field of the history 
 of philosophy, in order that thereby we may get at its inner move- 
 ment and genuine significance. We must, then, turn next to some 
 instance where it felt the full weight of the problem just noticed, 
 and put forth its whole power in the endeavour to solve it. 
 
 1 These are, as Deussen says (On the Philosophy of the Veddnta, Bombaj-, 1893, p. 12), 
 "our whole psychological apparatus." Cf. the same author's System des Veddnta (Leip- 
 zig, 1883), S. 326 seq. 
 
 - Max Miiller, Three Lectures on the Veddnta Philosophy, p. 97. Avidya in this sense 
 came later to be called Maya (ibid. p. 128). 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 97. 
 
 * Ibid. p. 97. 
 
 5 Ibid. p. 99.— Cf. Deussen's "... bleibet nichts iibrig, als an die Negativitat de 
 Begriffes der Avidya zu erinnern. "—Z>as Systein des Veddnta (Leipzig, 1883), S. 326. 
 
 141 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 (r) 
 
 Such an instance we shall find by turning to one of those sad 
 periods in our history, where the student, for the pity and the anger 
 which gather at his heart, scarcely can keep his way. The great age 
 of Greece was past. The work of the Greek race, as a race, had long been 
 accomplished in East and in "West. Eome herself was coming to the 
 worst hours of her evil day. Life was a burden; a burden met by 
 the few with the last wantonness of luxury, by the many with the 
 dumb and hopeless patience which is the only refuge of the oppressed 
 when the methods of revolutionary madness are not possible. The 
 religious instinct was coming forward in its most negative form; 
 namely, as a profound and passionate craving for deliverance from 
 the evils and vicissitudes of life, from the perils and changes and 
 agonies of the world. And along with this, science had entered upon 
 a decrepid and decadent old age. Its instruments for carrying the 
 manifold and the changing back into unity and eternity were as weak 
 as the religious yearning for the One and the Eternal was strong. 
 Under such circumstances it is no wonder that the metaphysic of the 
 via negativa once more became dominant among men. 
 
 But with all this there went another fact. The manifold world 
 could scarcely be dismissed as Zeno and the Vedantists had dismissed 
 it. For the period now in question was the old age of a great 
 civilisation. Many generations of labour, of culture, of splendid 
 achievement, of orderly polity and developing institutions, had fixed 
 and confirmed the hold of the world upon the minds of men. And so 
 it is just here, in this troubled battle-ground upon the edge of dark- 
 ness, where the religion and the science of the ancient world were 
 going down to death together, clad in monstrous garments of the 
 East — just here in the spiritual confusions which centred in Alexan- 
 dria and in Syria but whose echoes were heard even in Eome and in 
 Athens — that we shall find the negative philosophy in full struggle 
 with its own great theoretical crux. This indeed is seen within the 
 Christian Church as well as without it — in the Gnostics as well as 
 in the Neo-Platonists. But it is with the latter, whose thought is 
 seen at its greatest in the system of Plotinus, that we shall find the 
 logic of the situation most conveniently shown. 
 
 142 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 On the one hand, Plotiniis holds firmly to the negative or 
 abstract view of the One. The One is unity without multiplicity, 
 pure Being without change or becoming ; nay, indeed, it is " beyond " 
 even the category of Being. " It neither is," he says, " nor is it 
 something, nor is it amihing, but it is over all. All the categories 
 are negatived; it has no magnitude, is not infinite."^ 
 
 And yet, in the very next sentences, he goes on to say that the 
 One is "the eternal source of virtue and the source of divine love, 
 around which all moves, by which everything directs its course, in 
 which vov?: and self-consciousness ever have their beginning and 
 their end." In a word he allows a place for the manifold world ; and 
 views it as in some way having its source in the One. 
 
 Here, then, is the very situation which we wished to find — an 
 instance in which the negative metaphysic, while holding to its view 
 of the One, nevertheless finds a place for the world of manifoldness 
 and change. Let us ask, then, by what means Plotinus accomplished 
 this. What were his fundamental logical expedients? 
 
 They were mainly two. One was the theory of emanation. This, 
 however, in spite of the great place which it took in the thinking of 
 that age, is little more than a metaphor; and indeed only by meta- 
 phors- was it made to convey any intelligible meaning. 
 
 But the other was one of the most ingenious logical devices ever 
 hit upon by the contriving intellect of man. Plotinus sets up the 
 idea of a sort of one-ended relation — or rather of a relation, all of 
 whose motion is in one direction. As between the two terms of the 
 relation, it is a relation when you go from the lower to the upper. 
 But when you go from the upper to the lower, it is no relation at all. 
 
 1 Enn. VI. Bk. IX.— To deal systematically with Plotinus, one would have to ask first 
 how he came to his view of the One as indeterminate. The answer would show us some- 
 thing new in the history of the negative tendency ; new, however, not in character, but 
 only in swiftness of movement. For Plotinus reached his -tiew of the One, not by an 
 unsparing dialectic argument working out the implications of a realistic beginning, but 
 by concentrating such argument into the immediate affirmation of an intellectual 
 intuition which apprehends the unity of experience and sets that unity, as the true reality 
 over against the particular and finite. (See Erdmann, Hist. Philos. Eng. tr., vol. I., p. 
 239, and compare the excellent discussion in Caird's Evolution of Theology in the Greek 
 Philosophers.) For our present purpose, however, it is not necessary to go into this. 
 
 -E.g., the snow emits cold : and yet the snow remains itself, identical, undiminished. 
 So, too, a luminous body with its light, or a flower with its fragrance. 
 
 143 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 To the lower term or member it is a relation, the lower being 
 dependent upon the higher for its whole existence and meaning. But 
 to the higher it is not a relation at all, in any sense which imposes 
 metaphysical obligation or responsibility. " It is that," says Plotinus, 
 of the One conceived as the Good, " on which all depends, and which 
 all things desire and have as principle, and which they are all in want 
 of, while it itself has lack of nothing, is sufficient for itself, and is 
 the measure and limit of all; which out of itself gives the rovs, and 
 essence, and soul, and life, and the activity of reason. . . . But 
 it is itself l)y no means that of which it is the principle."'^ 
 
 Thus, in Plotinus, the negative tendency wrestles with its own 
 great theoretical shortcoming. A sort of reality is given to the 
 manifold world. And at the same time the One remains nearly, 
 though not quite, in accord with the negative conception of it. It 
 has ceased, indeed, to be " all in all." But at any rate it remains a 
 One which excludes all multiplicity, and is changeless and self- 
 sufficient. 
 
 It is easy enough to point out the inadequacy of this solution. 
 Metaphors, as such, are not metaphysic. And the idea of something 
 which is a relation of B to A, but not of A to B, can only be called 
 self-contradictory. With such criticism, however, we are not at this 
 point concerned. Our business here is to learn what the negative 
 tendency really is and really means; and to learn this by observing 
 how it has behaved in the field of history. 
 
 The three great cases so far examined have shown us what the 
 inner movement, and the genuine meaning, of this tendency are. 
 "With this we can pass on intelligently to Spinoza. But first we 
 should turn for a moment to the period between Plotinus and the 
 beginnings of specifically modern philosophy. For among the various 
 appearances of the negative tendency in that period, there is one, the 
 outline of which will give us a convenient summary of the chief 
 points so far brought to light. 
 
 1 Enn. I. Bk. 8. 
 
 144 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 U) 
 
 The whole medieval period, indeed, is one vast illustration of 
 this last and deepest of the distinctions that have arisen in thought 
 and life as men seek to make themselves at one with ultimate and 
 eternal reality. And that whether we regard the men of thought, or 
 their methods of thinking, or the practical life which in part they 
 shaped and which in part shaped them— a life half control of the 
 world, half renunciation of the world. In the intense and passionate 
 reasonings of Augustine which set the problems and laid the basis for 
 medigeval thought ; in the penetrating and radical insights of Erigena ; 
 in the massive thought of St. Thomas, where the doctrine of the 
 simpUcitas^ of the Divine nature crosses and thwarts the insight 
 that all things, and all the determinations of things, have their being 
 and their home in God;2 in Nicolas of Cusa, whose view of the world 
 may be taken as the last great expression of the mediseval spirit : — in 
 all these the negative tendency is seen, one hardly knows whether to 
 say in conflict or in combination with its opponents. These men all 
 knew that the universal is the principle of reality; and that there- 
 fore the universal of universals is the ultimate object of all science 
 and the true end of all conduct. Nor were they blind to the fact 
 that that highest universal, that final unity of all things, must be a 
 concrete and synthetic principle, the source and home and law of all 
 the particulars of the world. But in attempting to reach that highest 
 universal they were exposed — for reasons which we shall see later,^ 
 
 1 This siviplicitas is a oneness which excludes diversity. Diversity must he excluded 
 from the Divine nature ; for else the Divine nature would he a " compositum," and " 07nne 
 compositum posterius est suis componentibus et dependens ex eis." Moreover " omne 
 compositum causam habet." (See Smmna Theol. I. 3. 7; and cf. I. 11. 1.— "wnw/i non 
 addit supra ens rem aliquam, sed tantum negationem divisionis" ; cf. also Contra 
 Gentiles, Bk. I. cap. 18.) 
 
 2 This may fairly he called the deepest insight in the philosophy of St. Thomas. It 
 may be seen, for instance, by taking together the following doctrines and considering the 
 consequences of their synthesis.-(l) God has " propriam cognitionem de omnibus rebus" 
 (Contra Gentiles, I. 50.— cf. 67-71— and cf. also the parallel passages in the Summa Theol. 
 e.g., I. 14. 9-13.) (2^ Scientin Dei est causa rerum. (Summa Theol. I. 14. 8.) (3) But 
 "intelligere" is "the activity or energising {actus) of an intelligence which exists in 
 itself and does not pass over into anything extrinsic to it, as, for instance, heating passes 
 over into that which is heated." (Contra Gentiles, I. 45. 1.)— I have attempted at a later 
 page to work this out more fully (infra, pp. 336-341). 
 
 3 Infra, pp. 218, 219. 
 
 11 145 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OP SPINOZA 
 
 were specially exposed — to the temptation which always waits upon 
 that endeavour : the temptation to have recourse to the simple and 
 easy expedient of stripping away from the given particulars their 
 differentiating peculiarities and retaining only the common element. 
 Such a process, as it ascends through the stages of widening univer- 
 sality, strips away all determinations, and leaves us at the end with 
 an altogether abstract and empty Absolute. In the presence of such 
 an Absolute, if you are possessed by the instinct and passion of 
 religion, there is but one type of religion still open to you — the 
 mystical. And if you have felt keenly the imperfection and the 
 sorrows of the world, you may refuse to grieve that your logic calls 
 you and your fellows to such a goal; indeed, in bringing you to that 
 goal, your sense of the evil of the world has probably been more 
 influential than your logic. 
 
 But over those great names we must pass. To two of them we 
 shall return later, but here we must confine ourselves to a single 
 mediaeval instance; one, however, which in interest and attraction 
 yields not even to those. In the thinking of those " dear friends of 
 God,'' the mediaeval Mystics, the philosophy of the via negativa 
 assumes the most winning form which it has ever had in the history 
 of man. In its logical movement it remains true to type. It shows 
 that keen dialectical development from realistic grounds and 
 methods, which has characterised so many of its great historical 
 appearances. But to this it added a grace that has won the reluctant 
 hearts of later and more earthly generations. And the height of its 
 moral passion made it a power effective for the regeneration of the 
 religious life of the day — a religious life externalised, hardened, 
 tending, by that tragedy which waits upon priestly churches, to lose 
 itself in the vast forms of the very structure which it had been 
 building up through long centuries to be its home. 
 
 So complete, indeed, is the evolution of the negative philosophy 
 in the hands of the Mystics within the mediasval church, that we shall 
 find united in their thinking nearly all those main features and 
 characters which so far we ^ave discovered by studying widely diverse 
 cases. A rapid enumeration of the main points in their teaching 
 
 146 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 will thus afford us that brief summing up of the whole position which 
 we wish to make before passing on to Spinoza. 
 
 (1) As they make their way from the particulars given in 
 experience to a vision of the highest universal, they do not take the 
 particulars along with them so that when the universal is gained 
 the particulars are seen transformed in its light and displayed as 
 genuine elements of the eternal. Eather they gain their One as did 
 Parmenides and the Vedantists, by being fully in earnest with the 
 category, or point of view, of Pure Being, and by rigorously carrying 
 that point of view to its last conclusions. Eckhart was a master of 
 the Scholastic learning; what he did, as a man of thought, was to 
 give complete right of way to tendencies and methods already 
 present in Scholastic Eealism,^ until at last he passes beyond the 
 distinction between the God who knows and the begotten or created 
 world which He knows to that ultimate and purely unitary Godhead 
 in which there is neither knowledge nor action ("never did it look 
 upon deed''), neither Father nor Son nor Holy Ghost. "Windelband 
 has pointed out that what held the great Schoolmen back from work- 
 ing out this development themselves, was the high value which 
 Augustine had taught them to set upon personality.^ But with 
 teachers who were led, by just their keen feeling for personalit}' and 
 for the sorrows and evils which it brings, to "ndsh for its suppression 
 rather than for its encouragement, this check was taken away, and 
 the realistic logic, hastening forward to its conclusion, came to the 
 goal where all logic is hushed. The ultimate reality has no deter- 
 mination or quality; is, in Philo's word, anoio^. Not merely is it 
 above reason ; but even Being, the emptiest of all categories, is regarded 
 as too particularised a conception for it, and it is declared to be 
 beyond Being. It is not " Icht " but " Nicht." "... There- 
 fore," says the author of the Theologia Germanica, "we do not give 
 a name to the Perfect, for it is none of these. The creature as 
 creature cannot know nor apprehend it, name or conceive 
 it. . . . In what measure we put off the creature, in the same 
 measure are we able to put on the Creator; neither more nor less."^ 
 
 1 Cf. 145, lie, supra ; and 218, 219, infra. 2 Hist. Philos. tr. Tufts (1893), p. 340. 
 
 3 Theologia Germanica, tr. Miss Winkworth, chap. I. 
 
 147 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 And again "... He who findeth satisfaction in aught which 
 is this and that, findeth it not in God; and he who findeth it in God, 
 findeth it in nothing else, but in that which is neither this nor that, 
 but is All. For God is One, and must be One, and God is All and 
 must be All. And now what is, and is not One, is not God; and 
 what is and is not All and above All, is also not God, for God is One 
 and above One, and All and above All. Now he who findeth full 
 satisfaction in God, receiveth all his satisfaction from One source, 
 and from One only, as One. And a man cannot find all satisfaction 
 in God, unless all things are One to hun, and One is All, and some- 
 thing [some particular thing] and nothing {icht und nicJit) are alike."^ 
 (2) But no sooner has this point been reached than they are 
 face to face with their great problem — the problem set by the mani- 
 fold and determinate world, whose divine and angelic orders are 
 declared by theology, and whose earthly facts are given in experi- 
 ence. This they see clearly, and set themselves to the task of deriving 
 the universe of particular existences from that ultimate which cannot 
 even be described as Being, which can as well be called non-Being 
 as Being. In that still and formless quiet, a movement of self- 
 apprehension and self-utterance is declared to take place. Thus arises 
 a double outflowing. First, there is an outflowing of that which is 
 God, and in this the Godhead of the Christian religion comes to be. 
 Secondly, there is an outflowing of that which is not God (and there- 
 fore is mere nothing) ; by this all the world of creatures arises.^ Into 
 the details of this account we are, however, not obliged to go.^ What 
 concerns us is the fact that the situation itself was understood, and 
 was deliberately faced. It should be noted, however, that the very 
 first step in the solution — the postulated self-apprehension and self- 
 
 1 Thcolopia Germanica, tr. Miss ^Vinkworth, chap. XLVI.— Of course, in the Theologia 
 Germanica, an intensely practical book written in the Western Church, one must not look 
 for the negative view in an uncontradicted form. The same is to be said of the De 
 Imitatione Christi. 
 
 2 If we overlap three centuries, and the sundering gulf of the Reformation, we find the 
 same attempt on a still more Titanic scale in the vast imaginations of Bohme's cosmogony 
 and cosmology. But one must note how, in Bohme's hostility to the doctrine of a creation 
 out of nothing, there comes forward the desire for a positive or concrete doctrine of 
 creation— i.e., a doctrine that will show an organic relation between the creature and the 
 very nature of God. 
 
 3 References to Pfeiffer are given by Erdmann, Hist. Philos. Eng. tr. vol. I., p. 549. 
 
 148 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 utterance — contradicts the original account of tlie ultimate reality. 
 It is a salto mortale; the gulf is impassable, but it is to be taken as 
 crossed. 
 
 (3) And this account of the origin of the world of creatures 
 involves a view of the self in man similar to that worked out by the 
 Vedantists. For the account given of that outflowing from God by 
 which the creature comes to be, implies that what makes the creature 
 a creature — what distinguishes him, or it, from God — is really 
 nothing at all. If we could strip away these nothingnesses and get 
 at the genuine reality of the creature — what Eckhart called the 
 " Sparl," the point or apex of the soul which is divine and makes 
 salvation possible — that reality would be nothing other than the one 
 eternal reality of God. " ' Thou sayest,' " the author of the Theologia 
 Germanica imagines the objector to say, " ' beside the Perfect there 
 is no substance, yet sayest again, that somewhat floweth out from it : 
 now is not that which hath flowed out from it something beside it?' 
 Answer : This is why we say, beside it, or without it [outside of it] 
 there is no true Substance. That which hath flowed forth from it, is 
 no true Substance and hath no Substance except in the Perfect, but 
 is an accident, or a brightness or a visible appearance, which is no 
 Substance, and hath no Substance except in the fire whence the 
 brightness flowed forth, such as the sun or a candle.''^ 
 
 (4) Finally, all this is carried forward to its ethical and 
 religious application. These nothingnesses which separate us, as 
 creatures, from God — these qualities and determinations, this being 
 "here'' and "now," which make us to be creatures, and hide from 
 us our home in God — let us strip them away. " Thou shalt sink thy 
 thine-ness and thy thine shall become a mine in his mine," says 
 Eckhart to the souF in describing the process of its salvation; a 
 process summed up in that virtue of Ahgeschiedenlieit, in which by 
 heroic struggle the moveless inner divine man subdues to himself the 
 
 1 Miss Winkworth's translation, chap. I.— Note tlie Xeo-Platonic idea of emanation in 
 the last sentence, contained, characteristically, in a metaphor.— Note too that what to the 
 Vedantist was an express view of the self, is here only the implication regarding the self, 
 of the general doctrine as to the creature. (Cf. Erdmann, Hist. Philos. Eng. tr. vol. I., 
 pp. 549, 550.) 
 
 2 See Erdmann, Hist. Philos. Eng. tr. vol. I., p. 552. Cf. the reference (p. 219 infra) 
 to Professor Royce's paper on Eckhart. 
 
 149 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 outer man who is a creature of desire and change ; though the intense 
 and practical character of Eckhart's religious endeavours made it diffi- 
 cult enough for him to remain consistently at this point of view. The 
 same teaching, though again with the same qualification, is found in 
 the Theologia Germanica. " Now mark : when the creature claimeth 
 for its own anything good, such as Substance, Life, Knowledge, Power, 
 and in short whatever we should call good, as if it were that, or 
 possessed that, or that were itself, or that proceeded from it — as 
 often as this cometh to pass, the creature goeth astray. What did the 
 devil do else, or what was his going astray and his fall else, but that 
 he claimed for himself to be also somewhat, and would have it that 
 somewhat was his, and somewhat was due to him? This setting up 
 of a claim, and his I and Me and Mine, these were his going astray, 
 and his fall. And thus it is to this day."^ " Behold on this sort 
 must we cast all things from us, and strip ourselves of them ; we must 
 refrain from claiming anything for our own."^ " For if the left eye 
 be fulfilling its office toward outward things ; that is, holding converse 
 with time and the creatures; then must the right eye be hindered in 
 the working ^^ [i.e., "seeing into eternity "j.^ "Let no one suppose, 
 that we may attain to this true light and perfect knowledge, or life. 
 of Christ, by much questioning, or by hearsay, or by reading and 
 study, nor yet by high skill and great learning. Yea, so long as a 
 man taketh account of anything which is this or that, whether it be 
 himself, or any other creature; or doeth anything, or frameth a 
 purpose, for the sake of his own likings, or desires, or opinions, or 
 ends, he cometh not unto the life of Christ."* "Be assured, he who 
 helpeth a man to his own will, helpeth him to the worst that he can."^ 
 And with this may be compared the great lesson De contemptu 
 omnium vantitatum mundi which a Kempis is never weary of incul- 
 cating, and the lesson that we must withhold our riiinds from all the 
 creatures in order that we may find the Creator; for that which is 
 not God is nothing, and is to be accounted as nothing. 
 
 1 Miss Winkworth's translation, chap. II. 2 Jbid. chap. V. 
 
 3 Ibid. chap. VII. i Ibid. chap. XIX. 5 Ibid. chap. XXXIV. 
 
 150 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OP SPINOZA 
 V. 
 
 Such was the attempt, in the thought and in the life of the older 
 world, to rise by the negative way from appearances to reality. The 
 four cases which we have examined show the inner logic of that 
 endeavour; show the essential contradiction which vexes it; and show 
 something more — to what practical efficiency in evil days, and to 
 what clear shining of heavenly light in the soul, it was possible for 
 men to rise by that bleak and apparently hopeless road of denial. 
 
 When we leave those ages behind us and come to our own, it seems 
 as if the last possibility of mystic thought or life had departed. The 
 air is different. For good and for evil, the world has made us its 
 own. And yet Mysticism, alike in its logic and in its life, has had its 
 place among us ; and in both aspects has been surprisingly true to its 
 ancient type. As a practical spirit it has passed, as of old, "like 
 night from land to land," in unexpected places finding out its own, 
 leaving, to mark its course, here and there a starry name but usually 
 only the atmosphere of its peace. In the Church of England, in 
 Germany — though not now as once — and specially among the 
 Friends, it has laid its finger upon its chosen, and in them has given 
 to the modern world well-nigh its most admirable type of character. 
 And once at least it moved with terrific energies; many an English- 
 man, in the civil war, struck hard with the sword, and showed no 
 mercy in victory, nor lost hope in defeat, because he had in him as 
 an inner fire the same instinct that in earlier days led men to the 
 silent life — the instinct for the immediate ascent of the soul to God. 
 
 On the speculative side, the history is easier to trace; for there 
 the mystic conception of ultimate reality came forward in the place 
 determined by that secular logic which leads philosophy through its 
 epochs. Hence the mystic view of reality, as it appeared in modern 
 thought, was at once new and old: old, in that it unconsciously 
 repeated an ancient situation and an ancient movement of thought — 
 for Mysticism is really the one theology of which men ought to say 
 " semper eadem " ; new, in that it is original and independent, arising 
 from its own modern sources and moving by its own impulses. It 
 was a stage — a stage integral, essential, necessary — in the working 
 
 151 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 out of a scientific process which began with the beginning of the 
 modern world. In Greece the first men of science had, as we have 
 already seen, to begin at the very beginning. And in the long-drawn 
 carrying out of the attempt which they initiated, the thought of Par- 
 menides not merely occupies a place; it occupies a place logically 
 inevitable, performs a function logically necessary. In modern 
 thought there has been something very similar. Those who stood at 
 the beginning of the modern period held it necessary that science and 
 philosophy should do their work all over again ; should go back to the 
 very beginning and make their start once more from that point; 
 should, from the very bottom, build themselves up altogether anew. 
 And the long worldng out of the endeavour thus initiated proceeded, 
 as among ancient Greeks, so among modern Europeans, with strict 
 logical continuity. In the latter case, as in the former, there came a 
 point where the negative view showed itself as a necessary and 
 inevitable stage in the logical evolution. And at that point stood 
 Spinoza. 
 
 But the life of the first era of modern Europe was a much more 
 complex thing than that of the age in which Greek science began to 
 be. This is reflected in the way in which the negative metaphysic 
 takes its rise in Spinoza's thought; and is reflected in another 
 thing which we shall have to study a little later — the way, namely, 
 in which, in Spinoza's thinking, it has to share its throne with its 
 great opponents, as with Eleatics and Vedantists it had not to do. 
 
 For, as we study its genesis in Spinoza, the first factor that we 
 find is a moral and religious one. Experience, as he tells us in the 
 remarkable opening pages of his treatise on Method,^ had taught him 
 that " all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile." 
 Further reflection convinced him that if he "could really get to the 
 root of the matter " he " would be leaving certain evils for a certain 
 good." He " thus perceived that he was in a state of great peril " 
 and he " compelled himself to seek with all " his " strength for a 
 remedy however uncertain it might be ; as a sick man struggling with 
 
 1 Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione. I have followed Elwes' translation (2nd ed. 
 revised) of Spinoza's "Chief Works," save where references to some other edition or 
 translation are given. 
 
 152 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 a deadly disease, when he sees that death will surely be upon him 
 unless a remedy be found, is compelled to seek such a remedy with 
 all his strength, inasmuch as his whole hope lies therein." He was 
 able to see, however, what the source of all these evils is, and so in 
 what direction the way of escape from them must lie, if any such way 
 of escape there be. " All these evils," he says, " seem to have arisen 
 from the fact that happiness or unhappiness is made wholly to depend 
 on the quality of the object which we love. When a thing is not loved, 
 no quarrels will arise concerning it — no sadness will be felt if it perishes 
 — no envy if it is possessed by another — no fear, no hatred, no dis- 
 turbances of the mind. All these arise from the love of what is 
 perishable, such as the objects already mentioned [riches, fame, 
 pleasures of sense]. But love toward a thing eternal and infinite 
 feeds the mind wholly with joy, and is itself unmingled with any 
 sadness, wherefore it is greatly to be desired and sought for with all 
 our strength." 
 
 With Spinoza then, as with Yedantist and Neo-Platonist and 
 medieval Mystic, it is primarily a moral or religious passion which 
 sets him at work. It is a passion after that Eternal, by making our 
 home in which we shall be delivered from the vanities and the evils 
 of this life. But if we are to understand that fact aright, we must 
 give careful heed to three other facts. First, when a man undertakes 
 a scientific task, he has to work with scientific instruments no matter 
 whether the interest that set him at the work was primarily a moral 
 and religious, or primarily an intellectual, one; and therefore the 
 work itself must in the first instance be studied and be judged 05 
 science. Secondly, Spinoza's was a mind of such an order, that his 
 religious interest made him work all the more truly in the scientific 
 spirit. Just because the stake was so great, therefore the science 
 must be as accurate as possible. Just because it was a matter of life 
 and death in the deepest sense of those words, therefore logic must 
 have its uttermost right and do its uttermost work. But, thirdly, 
 even more than that is true. Spinoza's nature was as truly scientific 
 as it was truly religious. He was animated by the scientific passion 
 as truly as by the religious. He had the instinct for rationalising the 
 world, as truly as the longing after an eternal object for his love. 
 
 153 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 All these three counts require us to consider his system as a piece of 
 rational science — as a logical structure. And in doing that, our 
 first endeavour must be, with him as with Parmenides or Eckhart, to 
 understand the logical situation in which he found himself and which 
 gave him his point of departure. What that situation was we may 
 see by considering carefully just what Descartes had done in his 
 attempt to begin at the very beginning and to build up thence a 
 science which should be trustworthy because from beginning to end 
 no untested material had been admitted. 
 
 Descartes, then, after stripping away all traditions, all doctrines, 
 all principles, which lie in any way open to doubt, still finds one 
 thing which emphatically is. It so truly is, that even in attempting 
 to doubt its existence, one asserts its existence. Cogito, ergo sum. I, 
 the thinker, am. Or, as we should probably say nowadays : 
 " Thought is." 
 
 So far, good. But the really important question is : What did 
 Descartes do with the cogito when he had got it? This may best be 
 seen by comparing what Descartes did with what a later philosophy 
 did. This later philosophy perceived that in the cogito — in all 
 thought, though it be the kind of thought called doubt, or even 
 though it be the kind involved in sense-perception — there is involved, 
 on the one hand, a subjective consciousness, and on the other, an 
 objective consciousness in which certain principles are operative. 
 But this consciousness of objects and that consciousness of self are 
 seen to be correlative, neither being possible apart from the other; 
 so that they constitute together a consciousness which is truly one 
 and not two. This consciousness, then, this cogito, in which many 
 facts and operations are thus present in one self-conscious grasp, is 
 a true and veritable Many-in-One ; in it is found a genuine principle 
 of unity-in-diversity. And with this, the problem of the Many and 
 the One at which science and philosophy have been labouring from 
 the beginning, comes at last to its solution in the conception of a 
 supreme self-consciousness, or spirit, who is the subject of the world. 
 
 Now there is, it is true, something in Descartes' treatment of the 
 cogito which looks straight in this direction. And that something a 
 modern student, trained in the school of Platonic or Hegelian Ideal- 
 
 1.54 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 ism, would at once seize upon as the deepest and most valuable insight 
 of the Cartesian philosophy. It lies in the fact that to Descartes our 
 highest category is the conception of God. In all our judging— when 
 we doubt or criticise, when we find things to be imperfect or finite — 
 there is involved an explicit or implicit conception of a being perfect 
 and infinite ; only through the conception of the perfect and infinite 
 can we judge anything to be finite or imperfect. In other words, our 
 consciousness of God is the impelling element in all our knowledge. 
 It is, so to speak, the vital soul of the cogito. Without it there could 
 be no such thing as knowledge or thinking at all. 
 
 But to tliis insight that an explicit or implicit consciousness of 
 God constitutes the very essence of the cogito, and is the basis of all 
 knowledge, neither Descartes nor his age could do justice. Nor was 
 it to be expected that they should. There is no royal road to meta- 
 physic as reasoned science. If men are to use a higher category as 
 an assured instrument of orderly and abiding scientific insight, they 
 must first work their way through the stubborn dialectic of the lower 
 categories. So it was in Greek philosophy; and the case was not 
 otherwise with the philosophy of modern Europe. So that what we 
 must deal with here is not that idealistic Descartes whom a Platonist 
 or a Kantian may very rightly dig up out of the Meditations; it is 
 the Descartes whom that age received; and in particular it is the 
 Descartes who furnished to Spinoza his point of departure. We must 
 inquire very carefully what that Descartes did with the indubitable 
 reality which he had found even in the midst of doubt — with that 
 vital union of subject and object wMch he summed up in the word 
 cogito. 
 
 And first we must notice that in his attempt to found science and 
 philosophy anew, he began at the beginning in a far more rudi- 
 mentary sense than he himself imagined. In dealing with the 
 cogito, the Descartes that we are here concerned with drew his point 
 of view and his principles of explanation from the first and lowest 
 of the families of the categories. He went to the categories of Being 
 and employed in particular the category of Substance; adopted, that 
 is to say, the method of explanation in which the pure, eternal, 
 unchangeable, uncompounded Being is, in some way, put under or 
 
 1^5 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 behind the visible and changing qualities with which in our experi- 
 ence we have directly to deal, and is viewed as the substrate of those 
 qualities. The result of this was that he ended by splitting the 
 cogito into two. That is, he sharply sundered the subjective con- 
 sciousness and the consciousness of objects. Each he treated by 
 itself; but of course, since they were viewed as co-ordinate realities, 
 used the same category and followed the same schema in each case. 
 In dealing with the subjective consciousness, he conceived the ego, 
 which is the subject of the cogito, as a substance — a " thinking 
 thing " — and " thought " was its attribute. Of this attribute the 
 various states of mind (ideas, feelings, volitions, and so on) are 
 modifications. What leads him to this, is just the perception that 
 these latter, these " states of consciousness " which he comes in the 
 end to call modifications, cannot stand alone. They are not self- 
 intelligible. Per dliud, non per se, concipiuntur. And so we are 
 referred back, and back, and back, until we come to something which 
 fulfils the great requirement; something quod per se concipitur. 
 This is thought. But even yet Descartes is not quite satisfied. 
 Thought can be conceived through itself, it is true. But yet, there is 
 an ego which is the subject of the cogito; an ego whose essence and 
 nature it is to be a thinking thing. And so we get the complete 
 scheme: — the substance or thinking thing; its attribute, thought; 
 and the descending orders of the modifications of this attribute — 
 modes, and modes of modes, and modes of these again as far as you 
 choose to go. Thus, then, Descartes dealt with the subjective con- 
 sciousness. But, next, he finds a great order of facts or qualities 
 which he does not feel able to assign to the subjective consciousness, 
 and these he simply casts out of the cogito altogether.^ Here also 
 the same line of reflexion is followed out; the same search made 
 after something which can stand alone and be conceived through 
 itself. And this gives us the same general form on this side as on the 
 other: — a substance (body), its attribute (extension), and the 
 various modifications of this attribute. 
 
 Furthermore, these two spheres are quite independent of each 
 other. Each of these two substances can exist, and be conceived, 
 
 1 See especially Meditation VI. 
 156 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 without the help of the other. Indeed it is of the nature of sub- 
 stances to be mutually exclusive.^ And the attributes are as radically 
 opposed to each other, are as mutually exclusive, as the substances. 
 Extersion is not conscious; thought is not extended. In a word, 
 whatever thought is, that extension is not; and whatever extension is, 
 that thought is not. If anything falls within one, it falls without 
 the other. 
 
 But this absolute disjunction plunges us at once into difficulties. 
 For in our actual experience these two orders of being most certainly 
 come into connexion with each other. I, the thinking thing, have 
 an experience of extended things. We have, then, a double problem 
 on our hands. First, an empirical problem: By what expedient is 
 that connexion as a matter of fact brought about? And secondly, a 
 metaphysical problem: How, ultimately, is the possibility itself of 
 that connexion to be accounted for ? Descartes' answer to the former, 
 seen in his theory of the passions and in his view of the function 
 of the pineal gland, need not concern us here. But his answer to 
 the latter is of radical importance. 
 
 What he did not do, in this answer, was to remove the difficulty 
 itself by recognising the organic connexion of thought and the 
 extended world. Gassendi in his Objections forced Descartes to the 
 point where to a student of to-day this recognition seems unavoid- 
 able. But it was beyond the power of the philosophy of that age to 
 make the recognition in any vital way. A few sentences from the 
 argument between Gassendi and Descartes will show how the matter 
 stood. "... parceque d'un cote," Descartes had said in the 
 sixth Meditation,^ " j'ai une claire et distincte idee de moi-meme, en 
 tant que je suis seulement une chose qui pense, et non etendue, et 
 
 1 One finds such statements as, for instance, the following—" Sed jam dicendum est 
 quo pacto ex hoc solo quod unam siibstantiam absque altera clari &distincti intelligam, 
 certuft Sim unam ab alia exchidi. Nempe haec ipsa est notio svbstantiae, quod per se, hoc 
 est absque ope ullius alterius substantiae possit existere, nee ullus unqiiam qui duas 
 substantias per duos diversos conceptus percepit, non judicavit illas esse realiter dis- 
 tinctas." {Resjmnsiones quartae, p. 124— Second Elzevir edition.)— Indeed from the point 
 of view of " Being " substances 77iust be mutually exclusive. This Parmenides saw 
 clearly ; and then, with his principle that in the real there is no " is not," leapt at once to 
 the conclusion that the real is one indivisible substance. 
 
 2 Cousin's edition (Paris : Levrault, 1824-26), tome I., p. 332. In the Elzevir edition, the 
 fifth and seventh "Objections and Replies" (the fifth being the discussion with Gassendi) 
 are given as an Appendix. 
 
 157 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 que d'un autre j'ai une idee distincte du corps, en tant qu'il est 
 seulement une chose etendue et qui ue pense point, il est certain que 
 moi, c'est-a-dire mon ame par laquelle je suis ce que je suis, est entiere- 
 ment et veritablement distincte de mon corps, et qu'elle pent etre 
 ou exister sans lui." Gassendi, in the course of his argument, raises 
 this point.^ "... mais suppose, comme vous dites, que vous 
 soyez une chose qui n'est point etendue, je nie absolument que vous 
 en puissiez avoir Fidee. Car, je vous prie, dites-nous comment vous 
 .pensez que I'espece ou I'idee du corps qui est etendu puisse etre 
 regue en vous, c'est-a-dire en une substance qui n'est point etendue ?"^ 
 Descartes' answer is rather a clever parrying of the difficulty than a 
 solution of it. — " Je reponds a cela qu'aucune espece eorporelle n'est 
 regue dans I'esprit, mais que la conception ou I'intellection pure des 
 choses, soit corporelles, soit spirituelles, se fait sans aucune image 
 ou espece eorporelle."^ So that to the end Descartes held to the 
 mutual independence, the mutual exclusiveness, of thought and 
 extension. 
 
 And what he did do, in endeavouring to meet the diiSculty, was 
 this. He made the two substances, of which extension and thought 
 are the respective attributes, subordinate, and premised, to effect 
 their connexion with each other, a third substance which is God. 
 " By substance," he says, " we can conceive nothing else than a thing 
 which exists in such a way as to stand in need of nothing beyond 
 itself in order to its existence. And, in truth, there can be conceived 
 but one substance which is absolutely independent, and that is 
 God. . . . Created substances, however, whether corporeal or 
 thinking, may be conceived under this common concept [of sub- 
 stance] for these are things which in order to their existence, stand in 
 need of nothing but the concourse of God."^ Thinking substance and 
 extended substance, then, are not independent of God. But their 
 independence of each other Descartes maintains stoutly and to the end. 
 
 It was this thinking, then, and the logical situation which arose 
 
 1 With regard, as he points out, not to "corps en general," but to "corps massif et 
 grossier. 
 
 2 Ed. cited, tome II.. p. 224. 
 
 3 Ed. cited, tome II., p. 297. 
 
 i Principles, I. 51, 52, tr. Veitch (Blackwood). 
 
 158 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 out of this thinking, that furnished to Spinoza his scientific point of 
 departure. True, Spinoza brought with him elements which ortho- 
 dox Cartesians would have repudiated with becoming severity- 
 elements from ben ^ilaimon; from Chasdai Creskas; especially from 
 Ibn Ezra, and through him from that heretical Jew pantheist, 
 Avicebron; possibly even from Bruno. True also, he brought to the 
 Cartesian philosophy, deep spiritual passions of a kind to which it 
 was a stranger. And true, moreover, he often states in strangely 
 sharp and pointed language his opposition to this or that tenet of 
 Descartes.i g^t the fact remains that the logical situation created 
 by Cartesianism was Spinoza's scientific point of departure; and 
 that by Spinoza's work the fundamental lines in the movement of 
 Cartesian thought were carried forward to their logical conclusion. 
 That he himself had no special intention to do this ; that he did not 
 regard his own system as standing in any very intimate connexion 
 with the Cartesian system: — these things do not settle the question. 
 And to urge either his occasional sharp criticisms of Descartes, or the 
 bitter repudiation of him by the orthodox Cartesian schools, as a 
 reason for refusing to regard him as the man of thought who revealed 
 the ultimate meaning of the Cartesian categories and the Cartesian 
 method, is to miss the genuine core of the situation because of some 
 of its external incidents : — is to miss the main set of the tide because 
 of one or two of its prominent and rather noisy eddies. Spinoza 
 lived, whether he would or no, in the Cartesian current. In his long 
 and quiet meditations, the Cartesiaa thought ripened and worked 
 itself out. And the outcome was that he became to the first stage of 
 modern philosophy what Parmenides had been to the first stage of 
 Greek philosophy — the man who made clear the goal toward which 
 its method led, and the view of the world which lay implicit in its 
 working principle. 
 
 The position into which Spinoza was thus brought is what we 
 have now to consider. The advance which he made upon the Cartesian 
 position may be briefly outlined as follows : 
 
 In the first place he saw that there was really no need at all for 
 Descartes to set up his hopeless problem of the connexion of two 
 
 1 E.g., Eth. beginning of Pt. III. and especially beginning of Pt. V. 
 159 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 substances which are independent of each other. For what Descartes 
 had on the one side was really nothing more than an attribute and its 
 modifications. And what he had on the other side was likewise really 
 nothing more than an attribute and its modifications. There was no 
 need at all to put a distinct substance behind each of these attributes. 
 Indeed to do so was to misuse the category of substance itself. For a 
 substance is precisely that which is needed as the support or the 
 home of a variety of attributes; it is the single substrate required to 
 bring the many attributes back into unity of existence. What 
 Descartes should have said, then, was very simple: there is one sub- 
 stance, and in that one substance both these attributes inhere. 
 
 So that Spinoza's assertion that substance is One, simply com- 
 pletes the evolution of Descartes' thought. To Descartes substance is 
 that " which so exists as to stand in need of nothing beyond itself in 
 order to its existence." But upon that definition — unless we assert the 
 existence of a plurality of absolutely independent universes or monads 
 ■ — there can be but one substance. And this, as was noted above, 
 Descartes himself saw. There can be conceived, he admitted, but 
 one substance which is absolutely independent [i.e., which really does 
 fulfil the definition], and that is God. We perceive that all other 
 things can exist only through the concourse of God [i.e., according 
 to the definition are not substances at all] . But he avoided the force 
 of this, and avoided the transformation of his system which it 
 required, by adding that the term substance does not apply to God 
 and the creatures univoce; " that is, no signification of this word can 
 be distinctly understood which is common to God and them."^ 
 Descartes, that is to say, at once retains and does not retain the scheme 
 of the world which he had worked out by the use of the category of 
 substance. But the excommunicated Jew with his piercing intelli- 
 gence could not remain, as the loyal (and, let me insist, sincere) son 
 of the church remained, in such a position. That which Descartes 
 admitted, Spinoza insisted upon, and put in its proper place in the 
 system. For him, from the beginning, reality is One Substance. And 
 this is the first great step, the first main position, in Spinoza's meta- 
 physic. 
 
 1 See Principles, I. 51. 
 160 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 This first step consisted, it will be seen, in a stricter use of the 
 fundamental Cartesian category, not in an advance from it to a 
 higher category. In other words, Spinoza did not correct Descartes 
 by insisting upon a more accurate treatment of the cogito. He did 
 not point out that the objective consciousness — that of which the 
 consciousness of extended objects is one aspect — is correlative to the 
 subjective consciousness. He did not point out, to put the same 
 thing in another way, that extension is relative to thought, exists for 
 thought, and so comes within the sphere of thought. Such a correc- 
 tion as that, it was left for Kant to make. What Spinoza did was to 
 take his stand upon the Cartesian category and insist upon a more 
 thoroughgoing application of it. And this fact is of the very highest 
 importance for Spinoza's whole system. For it not only gave the 
 first step in it; but it also, as we have now to see, determined the 
 second step. And this second step was, if possible, more important 
 than the first; leads directly, indeed, to the negative conclusion; or 
 rather, is the negative conclusion. 
 
 "WTiat that second step was, an illustration will help to make plain. 
 I assert, let us say, that self-consciousness is the highest principle of 
 science — that reality consists in a single self-conscious and self- 
 determining spirit, and in its activities which are the world and the 
 history of the world. Thereupon an objector challenges me. " Self- 
 consciousness the highest principle of science ? But exactly what does 
 that tell me? "What do I know of the nature of self-consciousness?" 
 But to this I can at once make an answer: Tat tvam asi — thou art 
 it. ISTow it is just this question which Spinoza had to face as soon as 
 he had taken that first step which we have just seen. Eeality is One 
 Substance. Be it so ; but what does that tell us ? What can we know 
 about the nature of the One Substance? 
 
 And the key to this situation lay in the fact already indicated; 
 the fact, namely, that the category of substance itself, by which 
 Spinoza had shown himself so determined to abide, involves an answer 
 to this question. This Parmenides had seen, and had worked out 
 with clear and unflinching logic. This also Spinoza saw and worked 
 out; and, by doing so, gained the great regulative principle of his 
 philosophy. 
 
 12 161 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 This point we must consider very carefully. We shall best com- 
 prehend Spinoza's procedure here by comparing it with that of the 
 earlier historical instances which we have studied. We have seen 
 that the thinking which moves on the level of the categories of Being 
 has to make an absolute disjunction of " is " and " is not.'' The " is " 
 is a pure " is," and there is no place for any " is not " in it. But 
 from this two things at once follow. First, the true and veritable 
 Being is apart from all change ; for no " is not " can ever creep in to 
 bring about any alteration. Secondly, that true and veritable Being 
 must be apart from all limitations or determinations; for these also 
 involve an element of " is not." This Parmenides saw and his whole 
 system was simply the formulation of this single insight. This, too, 
 the mediaeval Mystics saw; as is specially evident in their doctrine of 
 the creature. That procession from God by which the creature comes 
 to be, is, they said, a procession of that which is not God, i.e., is a 
 procession of non-Being. Which is just to say that Being belongs to 
 God alone, and that the determinations which make the creature 
 seem to be an individual distinct from God, are really nothing at all.^ 
 
 It is this very same line of thought which Spinoza at this point 
 foUows out. First of all he sees that determination involves an ele- 
 ment of " is not." But this insight has at least two possible mean- 
 ings. To a man who stands at a certain logical level, it has one 
 significance. To a man who stands at a certain other logical level, it 
 has an altogether different significance. It will be advisable, in order 
 to understand exactly what it meant for Spinoza, to set these two 
 meanings side by side. 
 
 The first is expressed more exactly by saying that affirmation 
 involves negation. Affirmation and negation are correlative. Each, 
 for its own existence, requires the other. If you characterize any- 
 thing as " this " you distinguish it from " that." But — and this is 
 the key to the whole matter — it is just because a thing can be such 
 a " this " that it can have a place and a function in the system of the 
 universe at all. So that there is a sense in which determination is 
 negation. But this insight receives all its meaning from the still 
 
 1 A conclusion to which, as we have seen, the VedAnlists also come; and by an 
 argument that differs more in mode of expression than in logical content. 
 
 162 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 deeper insight which goes along with it. For the universe is seen to 
 be a determinate system— a system articulated in inner determina- 
 tions ; and the kind of negation involved in determination is seen to 
 be necessary to the existence of a universe at all. 
 
 But that is not what the principle meant to Spinoza. His 
 thought moves in the region of the Being-categories. And there the 
 " is not/' so far from being considered necessary to reality, has to be 
 cast out of reality altogether. A spatial illustration may make this 
 somewhat more clear. Imagine a cubic foot of space in some definite 
 position— say, at your right hand. Now, what is it that prevents 
 you, considered as the possessor of that defined portion of space, from 
 having the whole of space ? It is the determinations— the limitations 
 which give to that piece or fragment of space its size and shape. If 
 these particular limitations, and all limitations of this kind, were 
 annihilated, you would have the whole of space. If we carry through 
 an argument of this sort, not with regard to space merely, but with 
 regard to reality as a whole, we get Spinoza's own conception of the 
 meaning of his great principle. This or that particular thing— so he 
 felt — is a piece or fragment of reality. But if all the limitations, all 
 the determinations, which make it "this" or "that," were swept 
 away, then you would have not a piece or fragment of reality, but 
 reality itself. A particular thing is the One Substance with the 
 greater part — in most cases, indeed, with nearly all — of its reality 
 negated by determinations.^ Such, then, was to Spinoza the principle, 
 Omnis determinatio est negatio. And such a principle, so construed, 
 leads him at once to the principle that the One Substance is indeter- 
 miiiate.2 Every determination is viewed as a negation of reality. 
 Therefore the One Reality is beyond all determinations. 
 
 1 See, for instance, his explanation in a letter to Jarig Jellis (Ep.L.), of the doctrine that 
 figure is negation. "This determination [figure] therefore does not appertain to the 
 thing according to its being, but on the contrary is its non-being." (Elwes, vol. II., pp. 369, 
 370.) So that the application of the term modus to particular things is literally consistent. 
 A particular thing is a mode or manner in which the One Substance exists. And it is 
 precisely the determinations which bring it about that, in the particular thing, the One 
 Reality exists, not in its wholeness, but only in this very partial mode or manner. The 
 full carrying out of this would have given the Mystics' doctrine of the creature, or the 
 Vedantists' doctrine of the human self. 
 
 2 See, for example, the second letter to Huyghens (Ep. XXXVI.)— "Now since the 
 nature of God is not confined to a certain sphere of being, but exists in being, which is 
 absolutely indeterminate, so His nature also demands everything which perfectly ex- 
 presses being ; otherwise His nature would be determinate and deficient."— (Elwes, vol. 
 II., p. 337— italics mine.) 
 
 163 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 So far, then, Spinoza has done exactly what Vedantist and Eleatic 
 and Mystic did. He has worked, as they did, with a category which 
 belongs to the general family of the Being-Categories. He has taken, 
 as they did, three great steps which represent the strictest and most 
 faithful working out of the logic of that category. First, he has con- 
 ceived reality as a One — a One whose unity excludes all dividedness or 
 multiplicity. Secondly, he has affirmed that all determinations are 
 negations of reality. Thirdly, he has declared the One to be therefore 
 indeterminate. 
 
 These principles can serve, and, as we already know, several times 
 have served, as the ground-lines of a system of philosophy. They 
 are not merely consistent with one another, but are a rigidly consist- 
 ent development of the inner meaning of that category which fur- 
 nishes the original point of departure. They need only to be more 
 minutely explicated, and to be applied to the problems of practice, in 
 order to give such a full-orbed and thoroughgoing system as is found 
 in the Vedanta or in the school of Eckhart. In dealing with Spinoza, 
 then, let us set these three great positions together, as representing a 
 single factor or movement in his thought. And this movement in, or 
 aspect of, his thinking, let us call his "first metaphysic." 
 
 But now, will Spinoza give to these principles just that develop- 
 ment and application which would round them out into such a system 
 as we have seen in Vedantist and Mystic ? Our study of those earlier 
 systems has shown us what direction such development and applica- 
 tion would have to take. There remain yet a fourth and a fifth step. 
 The fourth step would proceed as follows. — All determinations are 
 negations of reality. Therefore the separateness from the One which 
 the particular things and beings of the world appear to have by 
 reason of their determinations, is, after all, an illusory separateness. 
 The One alone is, and what distinguishes us from it is really nothing 
 at all.^ This, when fully articulated, would give us a doctrine like 
 the Vedantist doctrine of the self, or the Mystic doctrine of the 
 creature. Then the fifth step would advance to the ethical and 
 religious application of all this — similar, for instance, to what we 
 
 1 Indeed, with regard to one order of determinations, Spinoza did virtually afflrm this. 
 In the letter to Jarig Jellis referred to above (p. 163, note) he called the determination of 
 figure " the non-being of the thing." 
 
 164 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 have already seen in the teaching of Eckhart or in the more con- 
 sistent teaching of the "Forest Schools." With this, the system as 
 a system would be fully rounded out. The only thing that would 
 still remain to be constructed would be its Apologetic — its defence of 
 itself against that great theoretical objection which, as we have seen, 
 always troubles systems of this kind. 
 
 YI. 
 
 "Will Spinoza round out those three principles into a com- 
 plete system of negative philosophy?" The answer is, that he did 
 not. And that sets us two problems. First, why did he not? 
 Secondly, what did he do instead? 
 
 Why he did not is easy to see. In the first place, as we have 
 already so fully seen, in a philosophical development of this kind, no 
 sooner do you reach an abstract Absolute, than you have a great 
 theoretical problem on your hands. The finite and manifold world 
 comes battering at your gate. And with this problem, in one form or 
 the other, you must deal. For if you say that the finitude and mani- 
 foldness which separate us from the One are really nothing at all, 
 and that therefore we really are not separated at all, are not really 
 finite, are not really manifold ; then the answer comes : " But we seem 
 to be finite; and our world seems to be manifold and subject to 
 change." And if you reply : " Yes, but that seeming is an illusion," 
 then you are still in difficulty. For at once the question arises : " In 
 a One which is absolutely without division, without change, without 
 negation, in a One which is eternal and perfect, how has such an 
 illusion come to be?" 
 
 Zeno, indeed, and even the Vedantists, could cut through this by 
 an easy method — by involving the objector himself in self-contradic- 
 tions. But such a way of escape was not in accordance with 
 Spinoza's temper. And moreover, in the Europe of his day, there 
 was an influence at work which gave to the problem now in question 
 an almost overpowering weight. Since the Eenaissance the manifold 
 world had been taking hold on men as never before. With regard 
 to a vast variety of interests, the soul of man had been kept " asleep " 
 
 165 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 for no small number of centuries, and now in its awakening was 
 intolerably " hungry." For one thing, men were turning with almost 
 passionate eagerness to the study of the physical order of nature. 
 And their devotion to such inquiries made the finite world seem to 
 them an ordered and veracious thing, whose reality was not lightly 
 to be disputed. It should be noted, too, that they were devoting 
 themselves particularly to those mathematical studies upon which 
 any scientific conquest of nature that is to be secure, must be based. 
 And in these mathematical and physical studies certain great ways 
 of viewing things were brought very decidedly forward. First, there 
 was the feeling that what explained the world was present in the 
 world. Its laws and causes were immanent laws and causes. In your 
 search for explanations you were not to go away from the world to 
 something outside of it or beyond it. Secondly, there was a growing 
 sense of the necessity of the laws operative in the world — a necessity 
 conceived at first mathematically rather than mechanically or physi- 
 cally, in so far as there is a distinction between these points of view.^ 
 It was not merely that Spinoza lived in an age which was resound- 
 ing with the work of such men. It was not merely that he numbered 
 such men among his friends and correspondents.^ It was not merely 
 that his mind was so large and open that it could not turn a dead 
 surface toward any great intellectual influence, and so sincere that 
 it could not lightly dismiss any great diflSculty. But it was that he 
 himself, in a very true sense, was one of these men. This scientific 
 tendency, with its devotion to the manifold world, with its view of 
 that world as genuinely real and the home of eternal laws and 
 inviolable necessities— this tendency possessed Spinoza's soul to its 
 very core. Not that it made him a physicist. But it exercised a great 
 influence on his metaphysical thinking. In a word, the tendency 
 which once had been great in the world, and the tendency which was 
 now coming to be great in the world— the tendency which moves away 
 from the manifold world to an abstract Absolute, and the tendency 
 which sees the manifold world actuated by an immanent and inviolable 
 
 1 Cf. Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion on the Basis of its History (Eng. tr. from 2nd 
 German ed.), pp. 40, 41. 
 
 2 E.g., Christian Huyghens— or even Oldenburg. 
 
 166 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 necessity — had come face to face ; and their battleground was the soul 
 of this Jew. But in that calm and self-disciplined mind there was 
 no outcry or tumult. The result simply was that by the side of that 
 "first metaphysic" which we have been studying, there arose 
 another. This we may call Spinoza's " second metaphysic." 
 
 The leading principles and the inner structure of this second 
 system, it must now be our task very briefly to study. This we can 
 most conveniently do by considering two chief topics: first, the 
 method upon which Spinoza, in this part of his thinking, worked; 
 secondly, the " world-scheme " built up by the use of that method. 
 And in dealing with the latter we shall have to discuss the relation of 
 this " second metaphysic " to the " first metaphysic " ; for Spinoza 
 himself regarded his thinking as a single system, and did not believe 
 that its leading factors and principles fall apart into two or three 
 distinct systems. 
 
 The significance of the method which Spinoza followed in this 
 second metaphysic of his may be brought to clearer light by a com- 
 parison. When men of science fling themselves upon the manifold 
 world of our experience, in the endeavour to make it intelligible as a 
 manifold, the process which they carry through is one of discovering 
 unity and eternity in that manifold. That the facts of the world 
 change on our hands, that they are one thing at one time and another 
 thing at another time, is precisely what makes men of science dissatis- 
 fied and sets them at work ; they cannot leave facts, and the successive 
 changes of facts, standing isolated. They link them together by 
 searching for — and actually discovering — those permanent and 
 unchanging relations, the formulations of which we call " laws of 
 nature." And in this labour there can never be rest, until the whole 
 manifold world is seen as a single system: — is seen as a unity which 
 is also an eternity; for the principles which mediate the unity, and 
 govern all the manifoldness and change, are eternal principles. 
 
 But to say this is to say that the method of scientific men is a 
 odoz avGo — a "way up." They begin with particulars, opaque, frag- 
 mentary, evanescent, altogether unsatisfactory to the intellect. But 
 from these they climb up to continually wider views of the laws which 
 are operating in them. And as they thus go up, they carry the 
 
 167 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 particulars along with them; and these become transformed — ^become, 
 at each upward step, more stable, more law-full, more satisfactory 
 in every way to the intellect. Then, if in this process we reach a 
 point where the whole system of existence is seen as transparently 
 intelligible — is seen as rational through and through — we can, if we 
 wish, turn and pursue a o&os uaToj ■ We can come down, bringing 
 our highest light with us, and illuminating particular spheres of 
 existence with it. But — a point particularly to be noted — we can 
 thus " come down," only because we had first laboured through the 
 " way up." For precisely the value of that " highest idea " to which 
 the upward way led us, precisely the feature of it which makes it 
 possible for us so to apply it as we "come down," lies in this, that 
 as we worked through the " way up " we found it in the particulars, 
 and gradually disentangled it, gradually brought it out into a light 
 that grew clearer as we went higher. Precisely the reason that we 
 can apply the highest idea as we " come down," is that it is not some 
 new thing, brought down from above and alien to the facts. On the 
 contrary, it was always in the facts. The only difference is that in 
 " coming down " one is applying with clear and easy intelligence 
 something which in " going up " one was gaining with pain and trouble. 
 The " way up " is what nowadays we usually call the " synthetic 
 method." Eeally it is a method of combined analysis and synthesis.^ 
 The "way down " on the other hand is a method of pure analysis, 
 made possible by preceding synthesis. Historically, however, the 
 analytic method has frequently attempted to stand alone, and in so 
 doing has played in human thought a great but not altogether a 
 happy part. Standing thus alone, it is cut off from its true source 
 and support ; its conjunction with the " way up " is broken ; and then 
 it becomes a method peculiarly dangerous — all the more dangerous, 
 that it is exceedingly attractive to just such minds as Spinoza's. In 
 this form, it starts with some idea as a premiss, and confines itself 
 strictly to the task of getting out of that premiss what is in it. All 
 matter not contained in that original premiss must with the utmost 
 severity be kept out of the conclusion. And if any such matter does 
 
 1 There are people who take a perverse pleasure in calling it " the inductive method." 
 But the historical English use of the term " induction " unfits it for such an application. 
 
 168 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 creep in, the method considers itself to that extent to have failed. 
 But of the " synthetic method " almost the opposite is true. It is 
 precisely the mark of this method to get more into the conclusion 
 than was apparent in the original point of departure. For it recog- 
 nises that its proper business is to get " ideas " (or categories) and 
 "facts" properly Joined together; and this process of bringing to 
 facts the ideas that illuminate them and that draw to light the reason 
 hidden in them, grows continually both in breadth and in depth as 
 it goes on. The material dealt with in any given investigation comes 
 to mean more and more as the investigation goes on. The original 
 premisses are being continually "reconstituted." The "ideas" get 
 both deeper and wider — increase both in connotation and in denota- 
 tion. And the "facts" continually take on wider relations and 
 greater significance. With the "analytic method" the object of 
 investigation remains fixed, fast, unchangeable from the beginning. 
 With the " synthetic method," the more you deal with the ol^Ject of 
 investigation the larger it becomes under your hands. 
 
 The analytic method in that strict form Spinoza deliberately 
 adopted. About the question of method he had thought seriously,^ 
 and in the treatise De Intellectus Emendatione gives us his conclu- 
 sion on the subject — his Organon. The treatise may be described as, 
 among other things, a plea for the use of the " way down " without 
 any "way up"; at least, without any "way up" in the sense 
 described above. There is an " origin and source of the whole of 
 nature," from which, as one may put it, the whole process of nature 
 flows down. And if we are to have a "faithful image of nature," 
 our mind must have a highest idea which represents that origin and 
 source, and then, from that highest idea, must deduce the whole 
 descending series of ideas which will accurately represent to us the 
 process of nature.^ Furthermore Spinoza thinks — or rather, he 
 seems to take for granted — that if we are to have a " faithful image 
 of nature," the logical movement of our ideas must proceed in tJie 
 
 1 See Martineau, Study of Spinoza (1882), p. 46 seq. The fact {ibid. pp. 48, 49) that the 
 De Intellectus Emendatione, which originally had taken the lead of the Ethics, was 
 gradually dropped, and at last left unfinished, is very significant. As it is, the treatise 
 ends with a problem which, upon the basis there laid down, is impossible of solution. 
 
 2 Elwes, vol. II., pp. 15, 16. 
 
 169 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 same direction as the logicaP movement of nature. Just as the whole 
 process of nature flows down from its " origin and source/' so must 
 our ideas flow down from the highest idea which represents that 
 " source." It does not seem to him permissible that our mind should 
 reverse the order ; should, in attempting to form a " faithful image 
 of nature," begin with the lowest particulars and run backward along 
 the course of their outward flow from their " origin," and so form at 
 last a " highest idea " corresponding to that " origin." 
 
 This, it is true, at once raises the question : " But how, without 
 such a 060^ avoo as has been described, are you to get that highest 
 idea at all?" And Spinoza actually does consider this difficulty 
 under one of its specific forms. He imagines an objector to say : " In 
 order to be certain that your highest idea is really a true idea, you 
 will need a proof. But that will call for a still higher idea ; in fact, 
 will lead to an infinite regress and so reduce the whole situation to 
 absurdity." Spinoza's answer to the mere demand for " proof " is 
 very admirable. But he does not see the deeper question which is 
 involved. His answer comes to this : " Supposing a man to have 
 gained that idea, and to be actually using it in the victorious ration- 
 alisation of nature — such a man would not be troubled at all about 
 your miserable question of proof." " Truth would make itself mani- 
 fest and all things would flow, as it were, spontaneously toward him."^ 
 But the very finality of his answer to the mere brute demand for 
 proof apparently blinds Spinoza to the fact that he has nowhere 
 clearly and consciously told us how we are to get that so indispensable 
 " highest idea." 
 
 But then, how, on his own method, is he to construct a world- 
 scheme? If he is to do so, a highest idea he must have. And since 
 he actually has done so, a highest idea presumably he did have. The 
 answer is that he did have a highest idea, and did proceed from it to 
 the elaboration of a world-scheme. But the way in which he got at 
 that highest idea was peculiar. In part it was the outcome of a long 
 course of reflection, the process of which had, so to speak, died away, 
 leaving the conclusion standing out like a self-evident and eternal 
 
 1 For with Spinoza the movement of nature is a logical movement. 
 2 Elwea. vol. II., p. 16. 
 170 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 truth. This conclusion he formulates into a certain number of 
 definitions— two or three of which contain the gist of the whole 
 luatter— and puts these at the head of his world-scheme just as 
 Euclid put his axioms at the beginning of his book on geometry. In 
 part, again, the highest idea was got by taking over a certain concep- 
 tion from that aspect of his thinking which we have called his " first 
 metaphysic." That first metaphysic had culminated in the view 
 that reality is One Substance. And with One Substance the " second 
 metaphysic " sets out. As we shall see more fully a little later, these 
 two substances appeared to Spinoza to be one and the same thmg, 
 and so he never doubts the genuine unity of his own thinking. But 
 really the two are radically different things. The transition from the 
 first to the second metaphysic is not the logically continuous transi- 
 tion from one part of a unitary system to the next. It is, on the 
 contrary, a transition in which the central conception undergoes a 
 most subtle, but also a thoroughly fundamental, change. The one 
 indeterminate substance becomes the One Substance with infinite 
 attributes. What blinded Spinoza to the greatness of this change 
 was probably the fact that he held in both cases to his great regulative 
 principle, Om7iis determinatio est negatio — every determination {i.e., 
 ascription of determinate limits, of definite characters and qualities) 
 is a negation of reality. He did not see that the use which he made 
 of this principle in the second case was really a denial of the principle 
 itself. 
 
 With this, then, we may proceed to consider the ground-lines of 
 the world-scheme itself, which in its elaboration constitutes the body 
 of his " second metaphysic." 
 
 The first point which we have to consider is how he expresses that 
 highest idea which, in the way already indicated, he puts at the head 
 of his philosophical scheme of the manifold world. First, under the 
 names causa sui and substantia, he brings forward the idea of a being, 
 unconditioned and self-existent — a being which contains within itself 
 the ground of its own existence and the ground of its own intelli- 
 gibility.^ Then, under the name God, he enriches this uncondi- 
 
 i Eth. Pt. I. defs. I. and III. Erdmann points out {Hist. Philos. Eng. tr. vol. II., p. 59) 
 that the expression causa sui has no reference to a process of self-creation, but means 
 " the unconditioned." 
 
 171 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 tioned and self-existent being with infinite attributes^ — an attribute 
 having been previously defined as that which the intellect perceives 
 as constituting the essence of substance.^ 
 
 Then from this starting-point, he goes on to the things which 
 are not self-referring but are other-referring. These — the various 
 individual {i.e., particular) things and beings of the world — are 
 viewed as modi; that is, as limited " manners of existence " of the 
 attributes of God.^ 
 
 Furthermore, the particular way in which God expresses himself 
 in modes depends absolutely on the necessity of the divine nature. 
 That is to say, the system of particular things, the order of the mani- 
 fold world, is an order of the strictest necessity and most inviolable 
 law. The manifold universe, so to speak, flows down from the one 
 source along channels absolutely determined by the nature of that 
 source.^ In a teleological system, it is true, there is also necessity; 
 for the end is the supreme law of that whole process in which it is 
 being realised. But in such a system as that now before us there is 
 absolutely no place for teleology or for the teleological kind of 
 necessity.^ The strict and inviolable necessity of this system is a 
 necessity altogether a tergo. 
 
 And so the great category of this metaphysic is the category of 
 cause. But we shall altogether fail to understand Spinoza if we take 
 his continually recurring term " cause " in the sense in which we 
 ordinarily use the term " efficient cause." As Erdmann points out,^ 
 Spinoza's term " cause " means mathematical or logical cause. His 
 relation of " cause and effect " is our relation of " ground and con- 
 sequent." In a word, the universe is to the Spinoza of the "second 
 metaphysic," a great process of analytic logic in which the nature 
 of God is the original premiss, from which processes of endless 
 " causation " flow forth. 
 
 1 Eth. Pt. I., def. VI. 
 
 2 Ibid. def. IV.— Mr. Hale White translates : " that which the intellect perceives of 
 substance, as if constituting its essence." 
 
 3 Eth. I. 25. Cor. with the reference to prop. 15 and def. V. 
 
 4 This is everywhere in Spinoza; but see especially his statement of the necessity of 
 the world's procession from God, in a letter to Hugo Boxel (Ep. LIV). 
 
 5 See the Appendix to Pt. I. of the Ethics. 
 Hist. Philos. Eng. tr. vol. II., p. 58. 
 
 172 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 Such is the skeleton of this part or aspect of the thought of 
 Spinoza. His amplification of it into a detailed system is exceed- 
 ingly elaborate ; and to one who simply takes his stand within it, and 
 judges it by its own standards, offers material for almost endless 
 question and criticism. To take a single instance : what is the rela- 
 tion of the One Substance to the Attributes? The definition of 
 " attribute/'i so far from giving us a clear view, may itself fairly be 
 called a nest of almost hopeless problems ; problems which centre in 
 the question of the place ascribed to the intellefct in Spinoza's scheme 
 of reality.2 But from all these questions of the internal criticism of 
 the " second metaphysic " we must here turn away. It is not merely 
 that the discussion of them would exceed, a score of times over, all 
 possible limits of space. But it would scarcely be in line with the 
 task here in hand— that, namely, of getting at the main lines, the 
 fundamental movements and tendencies, in Spinoza's thought, and 
 of viewing these in the light of the general history of philosophy. 
 
 Before passing on, however, one thing may be noted. Graphic 
 illustrations of rational doctrines are usually very treacherous helps. 
 But the attempt to envisage spatially this world-scheme of Spinoza's 
 second metaphysic is somewhat useful. Sir Frederick Pollock's 
 illustration,^ supplemented by that of Professor Erdmann,* may be 
 used. Let us imagine an infinite number of infinite plane surfaces 
 parallel to one another (the attributes). Each of these is ruled with 
 an intricate and continually varying pattern made up of geometrical 
 figures of definite shapes (the modes— particular things and individ- 
 uals) ; and the number of figures in the pattern is infinite (infinite 
 modes). The planes are different from one another — let us say, are 
 of different colours. But the pattern, and the changes that keep 
 taking place in it, are identically the same for every plane. Let it 
 be understood, too, that if you ask for the proximate " cause " of any 
 
 1 Eth. I. def. IV. 
 
 2 The two chief interpretations of the definition— which involve interpretations of 
 Spinoza's whole world -scheme— are Erdmann's and Kuno Fischer's. More, I think, can be 
 said for Erdmann's than is nowadays usually taken for granted. See, however, the 
 exposition of Spinoza's position in Joachim's excellent Study of the Ethics of Spinoza 
 (Clarendon Press, 1901), pp. 17-27. 
 
 3 Spinoza, his Life and Philosophy, 2nd ed. (1899), pp. 156, 157. 
 i Hist. Philos. Eng. tr. vol. II., p. 62. 
 
 173 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 one of those geometrical figures, or of any change in it, the answer is 
 to be given by referring to the figures around it and to their changes. 
 That is to say, God is the source or " cause " of the whole system 
 of the manifold world — in other words, that whole system, viewed 
 in its unity, is God; but the proximate "cause" of any particular, 
 thing or event is to be looked for in the other particular things and 
 events. And both these orders of causation proceed with absolute , 
 necessity. 
 
 It remains to say a word about the relation to each other of these 
 two parts or aspects of Spinoza's thinking which have in the preced- 
 ing pages been so sharply distinguished. First, let it be distinctly 
 understood how the distinction is arrived at. As a critical reader 
 goes through Spinoza's writings, he becomes conscious that in them 
 there are distinct tendencies, distinct points of view. These are not 
 set apart from each other; nor does one appear later than another. 
 On the contrary, they are intertwined. On a single page, even in a 
 single paragraph or sentence, they appear together. Spinoza himself 
 does not even feel that there is such a distinction; he believes that 
 his system is one and continuous. Yet there is such a distinction. 
 Indeed it is more than distinction. It is contradiction. The appear- 
 ance together of the contradictory views and tendencies is really 
 only juxtaposition, only external union, never a genuine reconcilia- 
 tion. And what has here been attempted is to bring the distinction 
 and contradiction out into clear consciousness, by disentangling the 
 tendencies in question, formulating them, and thus setting them, in 
 their systematic forms, in sharp contrast with each other. 
 
 But an objector may urge: when all this is done, are the "first 
 metaphysic" and the "second metaphysic " really so different from 
 each other? Have you not in each the same starting-point — unica 
 substantia — and the same great regulative principle — Omnis deter- 
 minatio est negatio? So that Spinoza's thought is one continuous 
 system after all. The answer is, that the regulative principle is used 
 so differently as to become really a different principle. In the one 
 case it requires you to say that Substance has no attributes what- 
 ever. In the other it leads to the declaration that Substance cannot 
 
 174 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OP SPINOZA 
 
 have a limited number of attributes, nor attributes of a non-infinite 
 kind. And with this the Substance itself becomes difEerent. The 
 Substance with which the " second metaphysic " begins is not truly 
 the Substance with which the "first metaphysic" ends. 
 
 In connexion with this, however, there is a peculiar Spinozistic 
 doctrine which it is worth our while to notice. Plotinus had to face 
 much the same situation. He had an abstract One. And he also had 
 a rational cosmogony and cosmology. But, as we saw, he had a most 
 ingenious logical principle by which these two were enabled to live 
 together in peace. " It," he said of the One, " is by no means that 
 of which it is the principle." The powers and beings of the manifold 
 universe are altogether dependent upon it. But it goes its way in 
 the most absolute independence of them, and so retains all its 
 characters — its negative characters — as an abstract One.^ Now there 
 is something very much like this in Spinoza. " An effect," he says, 
 "differs from its cause precisely in that which it has from its 
 cause."2 And he uses this principle to show that intellect and will, 
 in any sense in which men use these attributes, cannot pertain to 
 God who is the sole cause of all things. That is to say, he uses it 
 for the very same purpose which Plotinus had served by the principle 
 noted above; he uses it to enable the abstract One to be the source 
 of a manifold order and yet remain an abstract One. It is an 
 expedient closely akin to that of Plotinus; so closely akin, indeed, 
 that it falls under the same condemnation. It is subtle ; it is ingeni- 
 ous; but it forgets the implications of the conception itself of 
 relation. You cannot have a relation which works only one way; 
 which binds B to A, but not A to B. 
 
 1 St. Thomas has the same problem, though a very different method of solving it. The 
 Divine nature is characterised by simplicitas. Yet in God is a multitudo intel- 
 lectorum. How can this be? St. Thomas answers by an elaborate doctrine based upon 
 the principle that the Divine nature itself is God's forma intelligibilisi ; the Divine intel- 
 ligence has but one intelligible form— its own nature (v. infra, pp. 344, 345). 
 
 2 Eth. I. 17. schol. 
 
 175 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 VII. 
 
 So far, then, for this aspect of Spinoza's philosophy. But no 
 sooner have we seen what it was, than we are once more face to face 
 with a difficulty. Just as in the metaphysical views expressed by 
 that Spinoza whose spiritual affinity is with Eleatic and Vedantist 
 and Mystic, there was a great theoretical crux, so here, in the meta- 
 physical views expressed by the Spinoza whose spiritual affinity is 
 with the Eenaissance and post-Eenaissance men of science, there is a 
 great theoretical difficulty. And just as in the first case that large 
 and open and sincere mind faces the difficulty and attempts to solve 
 it, so here does he face it and attempt to solve it. 
 
 First, let us see what the present difficulty is. It may be stated as 
 follows. — On the one hand, in that way of viewing the world with 
 which we have just been dealing, particular things and individual 
 beings all stand upon a level and all are actuated from behind. 
 Spiritual activities — the energies of thought and will — stand on pre- 
 cisely the same level as any natural activity. Spinoza, for instance, 
 expressly affirms that will does not appertain to the nature of God 
 more than any other natural thing does, but is related to it just as 
 motion and rest and all other things are related to it; all alike 
 follow from the necessity of the divine nature and are determined by 
 it to exist and to act as they actually do exist and act.^ And even if 
 Spinoza did not expressly declare this, it would still follow from the 
 general point of view which he here holds. From natura naturans — 
 i.e., from God, the substance whose essence the intellect perceives as 
 consisting in infinite attributes^ — follows necessarily natura naturata, 
 the system of modes.^ And iu natura naturata man stands on a level 
 with all other things, and man's actions on a level with all other 
 particular events. For thought is one attribute ; extension is another ; 
 and, to recur to the illustration mentioned on a previous page,* that 
 total pattern which appears on each of these planes, and on the 
 
 1 Eth. I. 32. Cor. 2. 2 Eth. I. defs. VI. and IV. 
 
 3 Eth. I. 29. schol. 4 p. 173, supra. 
 
 176 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 infinite number of other planes, flows from and is absolutely deter- 
 mined by the necessity of the divine nature. To give a precedence to 
 any one of the attributes, or to break down their absolute independ- 
 ence of one another, their absolute separateness, would be to forget 
 the essential principles of this " second metaphysic." 
 
 But on the other hand there is something which compels us to 
 do Just those things — to give a precedence to one of the " attributes," 
 and to break down their separation. Wliat this is, we must now con- 
 sider. 
 
 First, as we have already seen,i ^^ our experience subject and 
 object are correlative. The consciousness of objects and the con- 
 sciousness of self are necessary each to the other; if either be taken 
 away, the other vanishes; and the development of the one is the 
 development of the other. But such correlation and such organic 
 union imply community of nature; imply that a single principle is 
 manifesting itself in each of the members of the relation. There 
 is, that is to say, community of nature and of principle between the 
 world given to us in experience and the self that knows the world 
 and acts in it and upon it. But what is that common nature of the 
 self and of the world ? This question we could answer if we " knew 
 from within " either of the members of the relation. And one of 
 them we do know from within; as self-conscious, we know by inner 
 awareness the nature of the self. So that precisely in the self lies 
 the key to the nature of the world. That principle or energy of which 
 the human soul is an inchoate form — the principle frequently in 
 philosophy called "thought,"^ but for which "spirit" is an apter 
 name — is the principle of the whole objective order, including the 
 order of extended things and any other order of being with which 
 man's intelligence can enter into relation. In other words, the unity 
 of the world — the world in the greater sense of the term, as that 
 system of things in which the human soul is an element — is the unity 
 of a single self-conscious experience in which, through manifoldness 
 
 1 Sui)ra, pp. 2. 3 ; and 65. Cf. iitfra, pp. 208, 209. 
 
 2 In the sense of that total activity in which psycholoe;ists sometimes distinguish 
 " feeling," "intellect," and "will" :— a usage of the term "thought " which is convenient, 
 and dignified by long custom, but open to misunderstanding. 
 
 13 177 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 and diversity, through the shock of conflict and the discipline of 
 
 unfathomable sorrows, there is being realised an ideal end, a " far-off 
 
 divine event," 
 
 — the love^ 
 Toward which all being solemnly doth move.i 
 
 But from this certain consequences follow for the view of the 
 world expressed in Spinoza's " second metaphysic." First, the nature 
 of the manifold world is emphatically not the nature set forth by 
 Spinoza in this aspect of his thinking. The process which is the life 
 of spirit is not a process guided by a necessity that acts absolutely 
 a tergo. On the contrary, it leads itself on from before. It presents 
 ideal ends to itself, and to these it seeks to give being in the world of 
 achieved realities. True, the world, as a spiritual process, has neces- 
 sity in it. But it is the necessity which arises out of the fact that the 
 ideal end is itself the supreme law of that process of development of 
 which it is the culmination and fulness. And since the source alike of 
 that end and of that necessity communicates its own nature to men, 
 men are able to adopt that necessity as the law in which their own 
 being finds its fulfilment. So that, on the view ultimately given by 
 this tendency, necessity itself is enlisted as a good soldier " under the 
 banner of the free spirit."^ 
 
 But secondly, this same process — the life of spirit, or, as Spinoza 
 
 1 Arthur Henry Hallam, Sonnet On the Picture of the Three Fates in the Palazzo 
 Pitti at Florence. 
 
 2 Coleridge, in his marginal annotations in Crabb Robinson's copy of Spinoza, has an 
 interesting reference to Spinoza's doctrine of necessity, in which he does justice to 
 Spinoza's distinctions of immanent necessity from external compulsion. Commenting 
 upon /?f/(. I. 28. lie says: " . . . It is true he contends for Necessity ; but then he makes 
 two disparate classes of Necessity, the one identical with Liberty, . . . the other, 
 Compulsion = Slavery. If Necessity and Freedom are not different points of view of the 
 same thing ; the one the Form, the other the Substance, farewell to all Philosophy and to 
 all Ethics. It is easy to see that Freedom without Necessity would preclude all Science, 
 and as easy to see that Necessity without Freedom would subvert all morals ; but though 
 not so obvious it is yet equally true that the latter would deprive science of its main 
 Spring, its last ground and impulse ; and that the Former would bewilder and atheize all 
 morality. But never has a great man been so hardly and inequitably treated by Posterity 
 as Spinoza. ..." 
 
 My attention was called to Crabb Robinson's copy of Spinoza (and to Mr. Hale White's 
 publication of Coleridge's annotations, in the Athemetim, No. 3630, May 22, 1897) through 
 a charming act of kindness on the part of Miss Lucy Toulmin Smith to a stranger who 
 one day entered as a visitor the Library of Manchester College. 
 
 178 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 calls it, the " attribute " thought — cannot be placed as Spinoza places 
 it, simply on a level with the other aspects of reality like extension. 
 j\Ien cannot be viewed as standing on a level with " all other natural 
 things " — as having merely the same relation to the ultimate unity 
 that " motion and rest " have. On the contrary, the unity of exist- 
 ence lies in the fact that the world is constituted by an eternal spirit; 
 and we men have, as the essence of our being, a nature and an activity 
 which are our own and yet are His nature and activity communicated 
 to us. We are, so to speak, lesser centres in that system of which He 
 is the supreme centre. He is in us, and we live in His life. Through 
 us, or rather in us and our experience. He is realising an eternal 
 purpose; and we, in that loyalty to domestic and social and civic 
 duties which is the indispensable basis and content of all goodness, 
 but which has not become fully itself until it has risen to the form 
 of the conscious love of God, can adopt that purpose of His as our 
 purpose, and thus enter more and more upon the fulfilment of our 
 vocation as sharers in the divine nature and the divine life. 
 
 So that thought itself bears witness against the place which Spinoza 
 has assigned to it in the world-scheme of his " second metaphysic." 
 And this witness is borne by all the phases and aspects of that 
 thought which is our experience. It is involved in the possibility of 
 knowledge. It is involved in ordinary or " individual " morality. It 
 is involved in those great structures and far-reaching activities which 
 we denote by such terms as " the state " and " religion." 
 
 Such, then, is the situation which the Spinoza of the " second meta- 
 physic " has to face. What will he do ? One thing, it is evident, we 
 must not expect. We must not expect him to enter upon the reflective 
 mastery of the whole situation by grasping the insight just noted, and 
 explicating it into a system of metaphysic. That was left for the men 
 of a later day ; Spinoza must bring Cartesianism to its goal before the 
 new era could begin. Descartes had broken the cogito into two, and it 
 was but natural that Spinoza should harden the division.^ To see the 
 
 1 This is one of the chief points upon which Coleridge fastened, in the annotations 
 referred to above (p. 178, note). " Spinoza begins," says Coleridge, " with the Phantom of 
 a Thing in itself, i.e., an Object. But an Object implies a Subject as much as a S. an O. ; 
 therefore that only can have a chance of grounding knowledge, which assumes the actual 
 fact, namely X = Subject-Object = Object-Subject, Ideal-real, real-ideal! the Absolute 
 
 179 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA. 
 
 cogito restored fully to its rights and credited with the whole of its 
 own possessions, we must wait for Kant and Kant's successors. But 
 still a certain degree of advance in this direction was possible to 
 Spinoza. For in certain of the aspects or manifestations of thought, 
 the witness which it bears to itself is specially emphatic. Three such 
 aspects may be noted here ; in actual experience inseparably intercon- 
 nected, and distinguished here only for convenience of statement. 
 First, there is morality as in the individual man. Secondly, there is 
 the morality seen in the ideals and regulative principles that operate 
 in the life of the state. Thirdly, there is religion. These — all of 
 them works of thought,^ and all of them expressing the innermost 
 nature of thought — stand at the gate of any philosophical scheme of 
 reality, demanding admission and requiring that a place be made for 
 them which they can occupy without laying aside their essential 
 characters. This demand in its fulness Spinoza could not apprehend 
 or grant ; to do so would have been to effect that total transformation 
 of the philosophical scheme of things, which became possible only 
 after Kant and the Kantians had restored the cogito to its rights. 
 Something, however, Spinoza could do; and that he did. It was 
 never his habit to close his great intellect against any demand of 
 scientific sincerity. He listened to the demand now in question, and 
 did the best he could to meet it. The result was that he advanced to 
 flashes and glimpses of insight, and occasionally even to rather fully 
 articulated doctrines, which represent, or imply, a view of reality 
 different from either of the two which we have so far seen in him. 
 Keeping to the expression already employed, we may call this part or 
 aspect of his thinking his " third metaphysic." 
 
 The relation of this third metaphysic to the other two, it will be 
 understood, is much the same as that of those to each other. In 
 Spinoza's thinking they are intertwined. They appear together often 
 
 eternally foliating the Dual [so Coleridge goes on in his attempt at a speculative doctrine of 
 the Trinitj^l as this the Triad. Being + the Word = the Spirit, and then the mystery or 
 Love = God all in all when he hath finally submitted himself to whom all things had been 
 submitted" (from the annotation of Ep. II.— Spinoza to Oldenburg). Compare with this, 
 a sentence from the comment upon the reference to Nero's crime in Spinoza's third letter 
 to Biyenbergh : " The truth is, Spinoza, in common with all the metaphysicians before him 
 (Bdhmen perhaps excepted), began at the wrong end— commencing with God as an Object." 
 
 1 In that greater sense of the word already noted (= rational spirit). 
 
 180 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA - 
 
 on the same page, sometimes even in the same sentence; and are 
 never observed to speak hostile words to one another. Yet this appar- 
 ently so close union is only external. In reality they are citizens not 
 merely of different, but of deeply severed, kingdoms; to genuine 
 reconciliation and unity they never come. If it had been Spinoza's 
 fate to occupy a position similar to that of Socrates — to stand at the 
 head of a great philosophical succession which included in itself virtu- 
 ally all the serious and disinterested thinkers of the age — we should 
 probably have found in that succession three great schools, as distinct 
 from one another as were those which alike claimed Socrates as their 
 head. 
 
 Let us consider, then, the chief discussions and doctrines which 
 constitute this " third metaphysic." It would be very interesting to 
 study those occasional phrases scattered through his writings, 
 which have a bearing on this. For instance, in the very first sentence 
 of the De Intellectus Emendatione we find him resolving " to inquire 
 whether there might be some real good having power to communicate 
 itself." A few pages farther over we find him mentioning " the imion 
 existing between the mind and the whole of nature." In the mouth 
 of a Kantian — or of a Platonist — such conceptions would have an 
 immeasurable, a world-penetrating, significance. But we should go 
 astray if we supposed that they had so great a meaning for Spinoza. 
 We shall be on safer ground if we turn at once to his discussion of 
 those three great works or expressions of thought, in which the inner 
 nature of thought simply forces itself on the attention of the observer ; 
 to his discussion, namely, of indi%ddual morality, of the state, of 
 religion. 
 
 His elaborate discussion of the first of these c-annot be reproduced 
 within the limits of these pages. Xor is it necessary that it should. 
 For it is only with the ground-lines of the discussion, only with its 
 controlling conceptions, that we are specially concerned. 
 
 These amount to a virtual bringing back of that ideal point of 
 view, and of those teleological categories, which in the " second meta- 
 physic " had been driven into extremest exile. This we may see by 
 considering the three main topics of the discussion:^ first, the con- 
 
 1 Topics which are, of course, most closely interconnected. 
 181 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 ception of the moral good; secondly, the doctrine of man's freedom; 
 thirdly, the discussion of the way of attaining to that freedom and 
 that good. 
 
 Under the first of these three topics we have to consider in especial 
 two great conceptions : that of the " summum honum " ; and that of the 
 " conatus in suo esse perseverandi." You, as a man, have a given esse 
 or nature, and it is your summum honum to maintain — or rather, as 
 we shall see presently, to realise and fulfil — that esse. It is true that 
 the mere use of these two phrases does not necessarily introduce a new 
 point of view, Por the summum honum might be defined to consist 
 simply in your position as a necessitated mode of one of the attributes ; 
 and the esse, likewise, as consisting simply in the nature given you by 
 that position. But precisely the key to the situation is that that is 
 just how Spinoza does not conceive them. The esse is conceived, not 
 as the nature given you by your mere position as a necessitated mode 
 in the great " causal " series, but as something against which that 
 position wages war and which you have to maintain in the face of 
 that position. And that maintenance, that fulfilment of your nature 
 in the face of an implacably hostile situation, is your summum honum. 
 This, however, we must consider in slightly greater detail. First 
 of all, in man a great dualism of reason and passion is affirmed.^ But, 
 secondly, while the one side of this represents our position as necessi- 
 tated modes in the great causal nexus of modes, it is precisely in the 
 other side that our summum honum is to be sought. " Inasmuch as 
 the intellect is the best part of our being," says Spinoza in the remark- 
 able fourth chapter of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus , " it is 
 evident that we should make every effort to perfect it as far as possible 
 if we desire to search for what is really profitable to us. For in intel- 
 lectual perfection the highest good should consist." " Since," he 
 argues in the Ethics,^ "this effort of the mind wherewith the mind 
 endeavours, in so far as it reasons, to preserve its own being, is nothing 
 else but imdcrstanding ; this effort at understanding is the first and 
 single basis of virtue, nor should we endeavour to understand things 
 for the sake of any ulterior object . . ." "We know nothing," 
 
 1 Throughout Pts. IV. and V. of the Ethics. 
 2 IV. 26. dem. 
 
 182 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 runs the next proposition, " to be certainly good or evil, save such 
 things as really conduce to understanding or such as are able to hinder 
 us from understanding." Again, " In life it is before all things useful 
 to perfect the understanding, or reason, as far as we can, and in this 
 alone man's highest happiness or blessedness consists . . ."^ And 
 since the good lies in understanding, it follows that " the mind's 
 highest good is the knowledge of God, and the mind's highest virtue 
 is to know God."^ So, then, in this dualism of reason and passion, 
 the good lies altogether within one of the two sides. And the other 
 side — the side which wars against our attaining of this good, and, in 
 so far as it prevails, constitutes our '' bondage " — is, as was said a 
 moment ago, just what represents our place as modes in the great 
 nexus of modes. For the passions are the ways in which external 
 causes act upon us.^ That is to say, they represent man as the " second 
 metaphysic " must represent him altogether ; namely, as one mode 
 altogether determined by the " causal " activities of the other modes. 
 Spinoza states both sides of this dualism very strongly. The " bondage 
 of man " he states so strongly — i.e., in stating it he clings so closely 
 to the point of view of his " second metaphysic " — that he makes it 
 quite hopeless.* But he states the other side just as strongly. And 
 that he does not consider the bondage hopeless he still further shows 
 by describing the way in which man is to deliver himself from it, and 
 so to attain his good. 
 
 This brings us to the second of these topics, Spinoza's view of 
 freedom, which is really nothing other than his conception of the 
 Good stated from a special point of view. To study it for its own 
 sake would be to undertake one of the most interesting and most 
 instructive tasks in the history of philosophy. But here, once more, 
 for the purpose of our present discussion we may sum up the matter in 
 a sentence or two. Spinoza conceives the freedom of man to lie pre- 
 cisely in man's fulfilling the law of his own being and living out his 
 own true nature, unshackled and undisturbed by those "external 
 causes" to which reference was made above. But we have just seen how 
 
 1 Eth. IV. Appendix (IV.). 
 
 2 Eth. IV. 28. 
 
 3 See Eth. IV. 5. Cf. the Corollary of the preceding proposition. 
 
 * In Eth. IV., take the Axiom along with propositions 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. 
 
 183 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 Spinoza conceives that true nature of man and that true law of man's 
 being. He conceives them, namely, in a way which goes far beyond 
 the point of view of the " second metaphysic," and makes no slight 
 advance in the direction of restoring to the cogito its true meaning 
 and its true place and function in the universe.^ 
 
 And, as we might expect, we find the same tendency in Spinoza's 
 discussion of the third of these topics — the way of attaining to 
 freedom and the Good, We need not, however, dwell long upon it. 
 It is enough to say that Spinoza shows at length how the realm of the 
 understanding is to be extended over the realm of the passions ;2 in 
 other words, how we men are to break away from, and to rise above, 
 the position to which we would be absolutely confined if we were really 
 the " modes " which the " second metaphysic " holds us to be. Eeason, 
 when it has risen through the ascending stages of knowledge,^ comes 
 to that union with God — that union with '^' the whole of nature " — in 
 which it sees all things under the aspect of eternity and necessity ; and 
 learns to accept them, because when thus seen they are seen as parts of 
 perfection. But it accepts them, not as a mere mode accepts them — i.e., 
 as an external fate; in accepting them, it acts from within and of its 
 own accord ; for it has risen to the point of view of the eternal, and 
 so accepts them not only as good, but as being its Good — that in which 
 it fulfils its nature. And this state of the soul — in which it is no 
 longer swayed hither and thither by those forces from without which 
 act on us through the passions, but is guided solely by that highest 
 form of reason — is freedom. 
 
 So much, then, for the question how far Spinoza, in dealing with 
 individual morality, introduces a new and higher point of view into 
 his system. Next we have to consider the same question with regard 
 to his treatment of the state and of religion, 
 
 * Spinoza's conception of freedom, in its elaborate form, is of course to be looked for in 
 the latter part of Eth. IV. and in Eth. V. But it comes forward in many passages in his 
 writings— passages often remarkable [for a keenness and brilliancy that contrast strik- 
 ingly with the general calm of his pages. See, for instance. Tract. Theol.-Pol. cap. IV. 
 (Elwes, vol. I., pp. 58 and 66) ; letter to Isaac Orobio (Ep. XLIX.) with which cf, the keen 
 outburst in Eth. V. 41, schol. ; and especially' Troci. Pol., II. § 7, and the letter addressed to 
 Schaller dealing with Tschirnhausen's objections. (Ep. LVIII.) 
 
 2 See the earlier part of Eth. F.— specially the scholium to proposition 20. 
 
 3 See pp. 191, 192 infra. 
 
 184 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 In Spinoza's discussion of individual morality, we were specially 
 concerned to note how the view there taken by him lifted men above the 
 position of mere modes of one of the attributes. So far as this went, 
 it constituted a recognition alike of the true nature of the cogito and 
 of its true place and function in the system of reality. Now, if Spin- 
 oza holds to the new point of view, as he advances from the individ- 
 ual to the state, this recognition will be made both deeper and wider. 
 The whole insight, so to speak, will move in a wider field, and thus 
 the process of restoring the cogito to its rights will be carried onward 
 toward its conclusion. 
 
 For the state is one of the great works of the cogito; or, to employ 
 more modern language, it is a great structure of objective reason. 
 The long process of the formation of the state is one in which the 
 rational spirit has struggled and still is struggling, to work out a form 
 of organised society in the life of which that rational spirit will find 
 its own true home, will fulfil the law of its own being, will realise its 
 own essential and eternal nature. Hence, the state is not something 
 external to man. Nor do its laws ultimately represent a mere com- 
 pulsion from without. On the contrary, it is only by living the life 
 of a member of the state that man truly becomes man at all. And 
 his political freedom consists precisely in belonging to a state whose 
 laws are such that he can adopt them as his own laws and find in them 
 his guide toward the fulfilment of his own nature. 
 
 Under certain limitations this view of the state was taken for 
 granted by Greek citizens ; still more by Greek men of thought. Freed 
 from the Greek limitations, it received an elaborate and systematic 
 formulation from Hegel. And by at least one statesman of modem 
 daj's it was thrown into the language of practical politics — in Burke's 
 great saying that the state is not a contract limited to man's lower 
 interests, but on the contrary is " a partnership in all science, a part- 
 nership in all art, a partnership in every virtue, and in all 
 perfection." 
 
 But Spinoza, when he passes from the consideration of individual 
 morality to the consideration of the state, does not make this advance. 
 And the reason why is plain. In that very consideration of individual 
 morality, he conceives the good, as we have just seen, in a thoroughly 
 
 185 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPIXOZA 
 
 iutellectualistic way. Now, an intellectualistic good is not a selfish 
 good. Nor is it an individualistic good in the sense that the obtaining 
 of it by one man prevents the obtaining of it by others. But it is 
 individualistic in the sense that it can be realised by men who stand 
 almost alone; who live, as Spinoza himself did, in comparative 
 solitude. It is not necessarily a good the very striving after which 
 leads to, and is fulfilled in, the building up of great social structures 
 and the establishing of great social institutions. 
 
 Moreover, the view which Spinoza takes of the whole cogito is in 
 accordance with that intellectualistic view of the good. AVhen the will 
 is reduced to intellect ;i and when, in the peculiar way described by 
 him, the intellect extends its domain over the emotions and passions : — 
 then the cogito which is left is not one which is driven forth by its 
 own nature to social activities, nor one which can find its true home 
 only in the life of an organised society. 
 
 Hence in Spinoza's views concerning the state we must not look 
 for any great advance in the direction indicated above. First, indeed, 
 we shall see that certain of his political positions do look in that 
 direction. But we shall have also to notice that in his latest writing, 
 the Tractatus Politicus, a theory comes forward which almost super- 
 sedes those and swings far backward toward the point of view of the 
 " second metaphysic." 
 
 First, then, for the positions which imply the view that the state 
 stands in organic relation to the individual, and that therefore he who 
 would be truly a man and would truly realise man's nature, must live 
 in the state and perform the functions of a citizen. — These are found 
 particularly in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. For instance, in 
 the fourth chapter,^ he refuses to regard legislation as in its genuine 
 nature a force acting on the citizen from without. He rises to one of 
 his rare invectives when he speaks of those whose object in obeying 
 law is merely the avoidance of punishment. But the man who 
 follows the precept suum cuique, not because he fears the gallows, but 
 " from a knowledge of the true reason for laws and their necessity " — 
 
 1 See E^h. II. 49. Cor. Spinoza here says that the will and the intellect are one and the 
 same thing. But, with him, that virtually means the reduction of the will to intellect. 
 
 2 Elwes, vol. I., p. 58. 
 
 186 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 he it is who '^ acts from a firm purpose and of his own accord, and is 
 therefore properly called just." Again, in the sixteenth chapter, in 
 dealing with the duty of subjects to obey the commands of the 
 sovereign power, he remarks : " That state is the freest whose laws 
 are founded on sound reason, so that every member of it may, if he 
 will, be free ; that is, live with full consent under the entire guidance 
 of reason."^ 
 
 And the attitude revealed in such hints as those is carried still 
 farther in what we may call his theory of the relation of church and 
 state. " God," he says, " has no special kingdom among men, except 
 in so far as He reigns through temporal rulers."^ " It is only 
 through " those who possess the right of ruling and legislating " that 
 God rules among men, and directs human affairs with equity."^ Thus 
 " secular rulers are the proper interpreters of divine right."* But 
 from this it follows that the sovereign rulers " are the proper inter- 
 preters of religion and piety."^ " If we would obey God rightly," 
 " the outward observances of religion and all the external practices of 
 piety should be brought into accordance with the public peace and 
 well-being."^ "We cannot, therefore, doubt that the daily sacred 
 rites ... are under the sole control of the sovereign power ; no 
 one, save by the authority or concession of such sovereign, has the 
 right or power of administering them, of choosing others to adminis- 
 ter them, of defining or strengthening the foundations of the church 
 and her doctrines; of judging on questions of morality or acts of 
 piety ; of receiving any one into the church or excommunicating him 
 therefrom, or, lastly, of providing for the poor."'^ With these passages 
 may be taken one of wider scope from the last chapter of the treatise. — 
 " It follows plainly from the explanation given above of the founda- 
 tions of a state, that the ultimate aim of government is not to rule or 
 restrain by fear, nor to exact obedience, but contrariwise to free every 
 
 1 Elwes, vol. I., p. 206. 
 
 2 Tract. Theol.-Pol. cap. XIX. Elwes, vol. I., p. 245. 
 
 "■ hoc. cit. Elwes, vol. I., p. 248. 
 
 iLoc.cit. Elwes, vol. I., p. 249. 
 
 5 Loc. cit. Elwes, vol. I., p. 249. 
 
 6 Loc. cit. Elwes, vol. I., p. 249. 
 
 7 Loc. cit. Elwes, vol. I., p. 252. 
 
 187 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 man from fear, that he may live in all possible security; in other 
 words, to strengthen his natural right to exist and work without injury 
 to himself or others. No, the object of government is not to change 
 men from rational beings into beasts or puppets, but to enable them 
 to develop their minds and bodies in security and to employ their 
 reason unshackled; neither showing hatred, anger or deceit, nor 
 watched with the eyes of jealousy and injustice. In fact, the true aim 
 of government is liberty."^ 
 
 The view of the organic relation of the individual and the state 
 implies not only a doctrine as to what the function of the law is and 
 as to why we should obey the law. It implies also a doctrine concern- 
 ing the width of state action : whatever the state can do to enable its 
 individual members to live truly human lives and to fulfil the nature 
 of man, that the state ought to do. The Spinozistic views just noted 
 lean toward a. doctrine of this kind. But Spinoza never works his way 
 to a clear possession of it. Alongside such passages as those referred 
 to in the immediately preceding paragraphs, stand others wherein 
 Spinoza regards the function of the state as limited to the securing of 
 peace, and the guarding of the individual against the hindrances of 
 violence and disorder. " By human law," he says in the fourth chapter 
 of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus^^ " I mean a plan of living 
 which serves only to render life and the state secure." And in the 
 Tractatus Politicus he says : " The quality of the state of any 
 dominion is easily perceived from the end of the civil state, which end 
 is nothing else but peace and security of life. And therefore, that 
 dominion is the best where men pass their lives in unity and the laws 
 are kept unbroken."=^ Though even here it is fair to note the qualifica- 
 tion which he presently adds :* " When, then, we call that dominion 
 best, where men pass their lives in unity, I understand a human life, 
 defined not by mere circulation of the blood, and other qualities 
 common to all animals, but above all by reason, the true excellence and 
 life of the mind." 
 
 1 Tract. Theol.-Pol. cap. XX. Elwes, vol. I., pp. 258, 259. 
 
 2 Elwes, vol. I., p. 59. 
 
 3 Tract. Pol. V. § 2. Elwes, vol. I., p. 313. 
 
 * Ibid. cap. V. §5. Elwes. vol. I., p. 314. 
 
 188 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 But finally, as was said above, we come, at the opening of the 
 Tractatus Politic us, upon a doctrine which swings decidedly back 
 toward the point of view of the second metaphysic. This is the great 
 doctrine that natural right is " potentia" ; and this doctrine roots 
 itself directly in the view that man is "pars naturae," i.e., in the 
 language of the Ethics, a mode of one of the attributes. 
 "... Every natural thing has by nature as much right as it 
 has power to exist and to operate; since the natural power of every 
 natural thing whereby it exists and operates, is nothing else but the 
 power of God which is absolutely free. And so by natural right I 
 understand the very laws or rules of nature, in accordance with which 
 everything takes place; in other words, the power of nature itself. 
 And so the natural right of universal nature, and consequently of every 
 individual thing, extends as far as its power: and accordingly, what- 
 ever any man does after the laws of his nature, he does by the highest 
 natural right, and he has as much right over nature as he has power."^ 
 On this ground is rested man's right over nature. " If two come 
 together and unite their strength, they jointly have more power, and 
 consequently more right over nature, than both of them separately, and 
 the more there are that have so joined in alliance, the more right they 
 all collectively will possess."- And on no different ground is rested 
 the right of the state over its individual members. "... As 
 each individual in the state of nature, so the body and mind of a 
 dominion have as much right as they have power. And thus each 
 single citizen or subject has the less right, the more the common- 
 wealth exceeds him in power, and each citizen consequently does and 
 has nothing but what he may by the general decree of the common- 
 wealth defend."^ "... Whatever he [each individual] is 
 ordered by the general consent, he is l:)0und to execute, or may right- 
 fully be compelled thereto."* So that it is quite inconceivable that 
 "' every citizen should be allowed to interpret the commonwealth's 
 decrees or laws " and thus " be his own judge."^ — It will be noted 
 
 1 Tract. Pol. II. §§ 3 and L Elwes, vol. I., p. 292. 
 
 2 Ibid. II. § 13. Elwes, vol. I., p. 296. 
 
 3 Ihid. ni. § 2. Elwes, vol. I., p. 301. 
 i Ibid. II. ? 16. Elwes, vol. I., p. 297. 
 
 5 Ibid. III. (esp. § 4— Elwes, vol. I., p. 302). 
 
 189 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 exactly why this doctrine is referred to here. It is not for the purpose 
 of criticising Spinoza's strong assertion of the right of the state over 
 the individual. A sovereignty of the state over the individual there 
 must be, if civil society is to exist at all. But what we have to mark 
 is that the particular way in wliich Spinoza here gains a theory of 
 sovereignty, constitutes not an advance in the process of restoring the 
 cogito to its rights, but rather a relapse toward the point of view of 
 the " second metaphysic." 
 
 Let us pass, then, from Spinoza's political views to the last of the 
 three subjects upon which we have here to touch — namely, to his 
 conception of religion.^ If it was true that in the state we find the 
 cogito going forth from itself and building up a great objective 
 structure in whose life it realises its own being, even more is this same 
 thing true in religion. For in religion the rational spirit not only 
 builds up great objective structures. It not only organises men, and 
 establishes customs, and founds institutions. But it does all these 
 things, not from a point of view limited to this present life, but from the 
 point of view of that total or eternal life which is the real life of man. 
 That is, it tries to take the highest and ultimate point of view, and 
 from that point of view to organise man's life and to fashion man's 
 society. In doing this, it even seeks to make the state its minister, 
 and to make man's political life a phase or aspect of his total, or 
 religious, life. Nor, ultimately, can this be avoided. It is true, com- 
 promises, and divisions of the field between religion and politics, may 
 be useful or even necessary in this present life. But ultimately 
 religion cannot leave outside of itself anything whatsoever which is 
 human. It must either seek to shape the whole life of man ; or else 
 acknowledge that the point of view from which it is endeavouring to 
 organise man's life is not the highest and is not ultimate. 
 
 But it follows from this that an adequate theory of religion would 
 complete that process which an adequate theory of the state would 
 have carried part way: — the process of restoring the ror/ito to that 
 supreme place in philosophy, from which Descartes, with the best of 
 intentions toward it, had been the means of pulling it down. But 
 
 1 With this and the immediately following paragraphs, compare what is said on pp. 
 195-198 infra, concerning a contribution ultimately made to religion by the "second 
 metaphysic." 
 
 190 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 what we have already seen will guard us from expecting any such 
 adequate theory from Spinoza. He really has two views of the religious 
 life, as Pfieiderer points out.^ And these both lead us back to the 
 discussions just examined, rather than forward to a still fuller 
 possession of the new point of view. The one refers us to the theory 
 of the state. The other takes us back to the theory of the individual's 
 summum honum. 
 
 In the Tractatus Theologico-PoUticus Spinoza views religion as 
 obedience to the divine commands, as a life of practical piety. This 
 life of piety he sunders quite sharply, indeed sunders absolutely, from 
 philosophical insight. If it be guided by revelation, that revelation 
 itself is received under the form of imagination, not under that of 
 reason. And, as we have already seen, its rites and outward observ- 
 ances, are to be in accordance with the public peace and well-being, 
 and are therefore to be determined by the sovereign power alone; i.e., 
 as the rational organisation of man's life the state is both wider and 
 deeper than the church and includes the church. Indeed, religion in 
 this sense is doubly sundered from reason. Not only is it insisted 
 that philosophical insight is not its basis or source (so that Philosophy 
 and Theology stand altogether apart). But the separation is made so 
 absolute that reason is regarded as incapable of showing us this way 
 of salvation at all.^ So that, in what is the especial work of Spinoza's 
 " third metaphysic " — the work, namely, of putting thought in its true 
 place in the system of reality— this part of his theory of religion can 
 scarcely be said to take us any farther than did his theory of the state. 
 
 But, besides this, Spinoza has another view of religion. This is 
 brought forward in those closing pages of the Ethics where the theory 
 of the summum honum receives that final development which trans- 
 forms it into a theory of religion. In the third of those three kinds of 
 knowledge which he has distin.guished in the De Intelledus Emend(v- 
 tione,^ we know things under the form of eternity ; that is to say, we 
 
 1 Philof^ophy of Religion on the Basis of its History, (Eng. tr. from 2nd German ed., 
 vol. I., p. 62). 
 
 2 Tract. Theol.-Pol. cap. XV. (see especially Elwes. vol. I., p. 194 and p. 198, along with 
 Spinoza's annotation in Zoc. -Elwes, vol. I., p. 276 [25], Van Vloten et Land, vol. I., p. 
 625 [xxxi]). 
 
 3 See Elwes, vol. IT., p. 8 seg. Four kinds of "perception or knowledge ■' are men- 
 tioned in this passage ; but Spinoza usually groups these as three (see Eth. II. 40. schol. -' ; 
 V. 25-28, 31-33). 
 
 191 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 know them in God. But thus to know things is truly to know God. 
 This, furthermore, is our perfection, and we joy in it. This joy is 
 attended by the idea of God as its cause. And this, according to 
 Spinoza's definition,^ is love. Thus arises that unselfish and disinter- 
 ested intellectual love of God^ which does not expect or endeavour to 
 be loved by God in return.^ 
 
 In this intellectual love of God consists the essence of religion 
 according to Spinoza's second conception of it. How high and pure 
 and disinterested this conception is; how this lofty disinterestedness 
 is seen also in his theory of immortality ;* how in later days great poets 
 and teachers were touched by it : — these are topics upon which any lover 
 of Spinoza would gladly linger. To turn away from them to the work 
 of criticism seems almost like ingratitude. Yet if we are to learn 
 from Spinoza that which Spinoza has to teach, we must repeat 
 even here the question which especially concerns us as we discuss his 
 " third metaphysic." How far, then, does this conception take us in 
 restoring the cogiio to its place as a principle of philosophical explana- 
 tion, and thus in giving to reason its due place in the system of 
 reality ? 
 
 The answer is, that it really takes us no farther in this direction 
 than did the theory of individual morality. This intellectual istic 
 religion is the bloom upon that intellectualistic summum honum. No 
 more here than there can reason be pourtrayed going forth from itself 
 and building those great structures of church and state in which it 
 realises its nature and fulfils the law of its being. This, as Pfleiderer 
 points out,5 is the reason why Spinoza is never able to bring into 
 organic relation the two kinds of religion which he has described : this 
 intellectualistic religion to which men of disciplined mind may attain, 
 and which requires no institutions; and that religion of the many, 
 described in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, which has a revela- 
 tion, and institutions, and a social organisation.^ 
 
 1 The sixth of the definitions of the emotions appended to Eth. III. Cf. III. 13. achol. 
 
 2 Eth. V. 15. 
 
 3 Eth. V. 19. 
 
 * Eth. V. 21-23, 29-31, 3840. and specially 41. 
 
 5 Op. cit., (Eng. tr., vol. I., pp. 65, 66). 
 
 6 Now that the three tendencies in Spinoza's thinking are before us, the position of the 
 second relatively to the other two may be indicated in this way :— It stands midway 
 
 192 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Such, then, was the place occupied by Spinoza in that process of 
 development which is the history of philosophy. Descartes, standing 
 in the forefront of a new age and seized to his heart's core by its spirit, 
 had attempted to take his stand as if at the very beginnings of 
 science; had attempted to free himself from all assumptions, and to 
 show forth the bare fact as he found it. He could not, it is true, 
 annihilate the past. He could not put himself back where Vedic poet 
 or Ionic cpvaiokoyoz had stood. The cogiio became self-conscious in 
 him as it could not in them. But though his material was so different 
 from theirs, yet in dealing with it he put himself nearly upon the same 
 logical level as they; he used the same order of categories, and so 
 followed essentially the same method of conceiving reality. But while 
 it was thus given to him to initiate the first stage of modern philosophy, 
 it was not given to him to carry it through to its conclusion. To 
 develop the full significance of the categories which dominated it ; to 
 carry its method through to a final result; to formulate this result 
 fearlessly and uncompromisingly, turning aside for no influence either 
 of church or of state ; and thus, with, the emphasis of a final word, to 
 make clear what the ultimate outcome is of this way of attempting to 
 get at the truth of our experience: — this was reserved for Spinoza. 
 
 between the first and the third in the sense that, in working out its view of the world as 
 one, it keeps its hold upon certain parts and aspects of the manifold, but makes abstraction 
 of other parts and aspects. And those of which it makes abstraction are precisely those 
 which, as human development goes on, come more and more to be the supreme interests 
 of men. Yet even in this (so long as the scientific interest in the details of the world 
 remains dominant) its face must be regarded as turned toward the third rather than 
 toward the first. For though it abstracts from the aspects of reality just referred to, and 
 leaves no home for them in the One (and therefore cannot in their nature find a key 
 to the nature of the One), yet it does this, not in the sense of making a conscious 
 and intentional abstraction, such as he makes who believes abstraction to be 
 the sole way to truth ; but only in the sense that it has never seen them, has never 
 felt the pressure of the problem which they raise. And such abstraction is likely to be 
 overcome in the end. For if any aspect at all of the manifold be admitted into the 
 One, the other aspects, coming forward each in its own time, may be depended upon to 
 enforce their claims with an emphasis that increases with the deepening of human 
 experience, and at last becomes irresistible. But the conscious and thoroughgoing 
 abstraction which the first tendency makes is a diff'erent matter. By its very nature it 
 lies almost beyond correction through any art of persuasion. For of what avail is logical 
 refutation against a man who has found that human thought and speech cannot express 
 that which alone is real, and in union with which is the only true life of the soul ? 
 
 14 193 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 And this alone would make him, in the history of thought, one of 
 that small number of abiding figures with which it is the primary 
 task of the student of the history of philosophy to deal. But there is 
 more than that. In carrying the logic of Cartesianism forward to its 
 conclusion, he was no Wolff rounding out the teaching of a great 
 master and destroying its vitality in the process. On the contrary, his 
 was an original and searching intellect, having life in itself, and driven 
 by its own inner forces to penetrate to the elements of things. Hence 
 it was impossible for him to stop short with that acosmic or mystic 
 view which is the ultimate outcome of the Cartesian way of dealiag 
 with experience and the experienced world. Other types of thought 
 found a place in his mind and won from him an adherence which was 
 perfectly sincere: the naturalistic spirit of modern science made its 
 appeal to him, and, in defiance of the logic which required an abstract 
 Absolute, he made the One Substance the home of innumerable modes, 
 and gave to each mode its conatus in suo esse perseverandi; and he 
 even has glimpses of the Idealistic insight that spirit or reason is the 
 reality of all things, and the active agent in all cosmic processes. 
 
 Of such an historical position the result is that he who makes 
 Spinoza his companion makes the greatest things in philosophy his 
 companions. On one side, he finds himself brought into touch with 
 the austere and immemorial thought of Vedantist and Eleatic and 
 Mystic. On another, he is linked, by affinity rather than by similarity, 
 with that long succession of men of thought whose greatest name is 
 still that of Democritus — the men who seek to interpret the world, or 
 various aspects of it, by the conception of a natural necessity acting 
 a tergo} And on still another side — or rather in his final attitude 
 when he seeks to take into himself Spinoza's thought as a whole — he 
 finds himself with his face set toward Kant, and toward that still 
 greater man of thought who articulated Kant's deepest insight into a 
 systematic view of the world and of the world's history. 
 
 And the way in which Spinoza's system — indeed, the way in which 
 
 ^ Affinity hut not similarity.— The Spinoza of the "second metaphysic " agrees with 
 these men of science in attempting to explain the actual system of things by a necessity 
 which (1) is immanent. (2) acta a tergo. But he differs from them in that he takes the 
 divine nature itself as the home and seat of this necessity. He, if one may so speak, lifts 
 his Democriteanism into the very nature of God, and values it as the true interpretation 
 of that nature. 
 
 194 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 the whole movement from Descartes to Spinoza — thus cries out for 
 Kant, is in one sense the most important point of all for the student 
 of Spinoza. For if we would understand a system in which diverse 
 aspects stand unreconciled side by side, we must gain a point of view 
 above the diversities. We must gain a point of view from which we 
 can see how they came to be what they are ; and what the failure and 
 yet the relative justification of each is; and how they may all be 
 taken up into a greater and more comprehensive system which will 
 give to each its due without sanctioning the error which each has 
 when it attempts to stand alone and to make itself a finality. And 
 precisely the way to gain such a point of view for the study of Spinoza 
 is, first to make one's journey from him to Kant and Hegel ; and then 
 from these back again to Spinoza, in order to interpret him in the light 
 gained from those who finally satisfied the need which he intensified. 
 But that brings us to our last question. Let us suppose that the 
 journey just mentioned has been made. Let us suppose that Kant 
 and the Kantians have done their work, and that we are viewing things 
 from the new poiiit of view thus made possible to us. Is there not 
 still — so our question would run — a great lesson for us to learn from 
 Spinoza; a lesson which we can learn all the better now; which, 
 indeed, we could not have learned properly at all had not Kant come 
 to teach us ? Leaving the purely historical interest aside, and thinking 
 only of our own outlook upon our world, is there not still a great 
 reason why we should continue our pilgrimages to Spinoza? A brief 
 consideration of certain facts will show us that to this question we 
 must give an afiirmative answer. 
 
 First, since Kant and Hegel, we can no longer separate God and 
 the world in the way which was once thought agreeable to truth and 
 necessary to religion. We may say that God is the subject of the 
 world ; or that the world is God's thought, or God's activity, or God's 
 objective consciousness. Or we may prefer to retain a theological term 
 and say that the world is a continuous creation. But however we 
 phrase it, we cannot escape from the position that God and the world 
 stand in organic relation. 
 
 But, secondly, it follows from this that we can no longer think 
 highly of God by thinking meanly of the world. On the contrary, to 
 
 195 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 Lliiuk meanly of the world is to think meanly of God. If, then, we 
 would retain those high thoughts concerning God which the men of 
 the heroic ages of religion had, we must gain high thoughts of the 
 world such as those men had not. And there is one aspect of 
 Spinoza's thought which helps us to gain just such thoughts^ — the 
 aspect which comes especially forward in what we have been calling 
 his " second metaphysic." The way upward from the media;val view of 
 this present world and of nature, to juster views of these, was a long 
 and arduous way. It called for brave soldiers in the " war of the liber- 
 ation of humanity." Of these Spinoza was one ; and this seemingly so 
 anti-religious " second metaphysic " was precisely one of his instru- 
 ments in that war. The peculiar form of the category of cause 
 employed in this metaphysic is indeed inadequate to the matter to be 
 comprehended. But even with this inadequate category Spinoza makes 
 plain the greatness of the world, and the majesty of those laws which 
 are changeless and inviolable just because they are expressions of the 
 necessity of the Divine nature. 
 
 " But," it may be urged, " the metaphysic in question has been the 
 choice weapon, not of the merely irreligious, but of the positively and 
 avowedly anti-religious, in all the great ages of human culture. Is 
 there not something paradoxical in the statement that precisely by this 
 metaphysic Spinoza made a great and lasting contribution to the 
 deepest spiritual needs of man ? You say that in Spinoza we have, on 
 the one side, a man of religion— a man who expresses religion ' in its 
 most concentrated and exclusive form . . . that attitude of the 
 mind in which all other relations are swallowed up in the relation of 
 the soul to God ' f while, on the other side, we have a man of natural- 
 istic temper whose business it was to explain nature as a system of 
 necessitated modes. And then you say that it is the latter, rather than 
 the former, who has contributed to modern religion. Surely this is 
 paradox. Or is your meaning simply this : that modern man can gain 
 from a naturalistic metaphysic what Spinoza himself frequently seems 
 
 1 Cf. p. vii. of the Preface to the second edition (1894) of Mr. Hale White's transla- 
 tion of the Ethicfi. 
 
 •-' From the Master of BallioVs apt definition of Mysticism {Evolution of Theoloffy in 
 the Greek Philosophers, vol. II., p. 210). CA. the following reference to Spinoza's "Athe- 
 ism "— " In him the tendency to unity, to the infinite, to religion, overbalanced itself^ till, 
 by mere excess it seemed to be changed into its own opposite." (Philosophy of Kant, 
 Glasgow, 1877, p. 43.) 
 
 196 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OE SPINOZA 
 
 to gain from it — the Stoic peace which arises from tlie very thought of 
 the uecessity that is in tlie world, and from tiie insight that no freedom 
 is desirable except the freedom obtained by adopting this necessity as 
 one's own law ?" 
 
 No, the answer must run, that is not what is meant. The Stoic faith 
 that the necessity of nature is the wisest and kindliest and most reason- 
 able of all things ; and the resolute peace which such faith brings : — 
 these, it is true, one can learn from Spinoza. But what is here in view is 
 something different : this, namely, — present-day religion and theology 
 can learn, and have learned, a lesson from Spinoza, but the lesson itself 
 has been determined not so much by what Spinoza has to give as by 
 what the modern world is able to receive. For the characteristic 
 devotion of modern men is to their intellectual and practical citizen- 
 ship in this present world. They cannot neglect the creature in order 
 to find the Creator. They cannot turn away from the world; what 
 they seek, alike in thought, in labour, in religion, is the mastery of it. 
 It is true, indeed, as already we have had occasion to notice,^ that 
 Mysticism is not without its place among modern men. That ancient 
 spirit still passes to and fro, finding in solitary hearts and in quiet 
 societies its chosen, and bidding them, if they would truly live, to lose 
 themselves, not in the great energies of the world, but in God. And 
 if we had among us Mystics in the greatness of the ancient pattern — a 
 Bernard or an Eckhart— they might be powerful by the mere weight 
 of their practical example. Their devotion to ends intangible to us, 
 their absolute rejection of goods that we take for granted as the true 
 goods of life, might shock and surprise us into a re-examination of 
 our lives and into a questioning of our habitual " scale of values." 
 But the fact remains, that from Mysticism, in flie full and historical 
 sense of the name, the modern world is virtually incapable of learn- 
 ing. And from this it follows at once that when modern men make a 
 pilgrimage to Spinoza, it is not to the Spinoza of the " first meta- 
 
 physic." 
 
 But the need of which the modern world is conscious, in the realm 
 where thought and religion meet, is this.— A^^iat is wrought into the 
 verv texture of the modern mind is the idea of natural law. Hence,, 
 
 1 Sujira, pp. 151, 152. 
 197 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
 
 if religion is to be, not a mere partisan fighting for its existence, but 
 the rightful and undoubted master of life, we must be enabled to see 
 natural law as a way of God, and the uniformity of natural law as an 
 appropriate expression of the rationality of God — an appropriate 
 expression of a divine reason which, being absolutely perfect, cannot 
 be capricious or arbitrary, and which is immanent in the whole of 
 nature. I do not mean to say that this is the precise point of view 
 taken by Spinoza in his " second metaphysic " ; at any rate, it is not 
 the form of expression there used. But it is the lesson which the 
 wisest and most sensitive of modern leaders of religious thought have 
 been able to learn from this aspect of Spinoza's teaching — leaders of 
 whom Herder, who was half theologian and half poet, and, therefore, 
 eminently fitted to learn valuable lessons in Spinoza's school, is a 
 representative.^ 
 
 Such, on this side of its history, has been the strange outcome of 
 the thought of Spinoza. It had in it a metaphysic which, to use 
 words already quoted, is the theoretical expression of religion " in its 
 most concentrated and exclusive form " ; and it had in it a metaphysic 
 which for centuries has been denounced as atheistic and anti-religious. 
 And of these two it was the latter, and not the former, which (through 
 men such as those just referred to — men of Herder's type) entered 
 beneficently into modern religious thinking, and helped in making 
 possible that insight which the world needed for composing the strife 
 between science and religion. For men who are in earnest about 
 religion — specially for men who are concerned with its intellectual 
 defense, or with interpreting it to new generations and changed minds 
 — few facts are more full of instruction and of warning than this. It 
 shows, for one thing, what mere sincerity in thinking can do. From 
 
 1 It is a lesson which can be learned also from Wordsworth ; in fact, in Wordsworth it 
 has its highest and soundest form. And it can be learned from Goethe; but those whose 
 good opinion is most worth having will not censure me if I prefer— though it would be a 
 happiness to be able to use gentler words in speaking of the great German to whom all 
 thoughtful modern men, whether they like it or no, are profoundly indebted— a single 
 touch of the pure heart and upright spirit of Wordsworth, to all that vast intelligence, 
 all that comprehension of the world from the point of view of art, for which the name 
 of Goethe stands. Wordsworth's spirit not only is morally higher, but it also brings a 
 sounder and truer understanding of the real nature of the world. For the real nature 
 of the world is, if I may be allowed such an expression, passionately moral. And this 
 Wordsworth knew ; and so did Plato ; but Goethe did not. 
 
 198 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPIXOZA 
 
 anything that seemed to be truth, or to be an aspect of truth, Spinoza 
 would not turn away. No matter how austere its countenance, he not 
 merely received it, but made it a welcome guest. And the result was 
 that, from a seemingly " anti-religious " view, later generations 
 learned a lesson which was in the most fundamental way serviceable 
 to religion. And it shows another thing : apologists who imagine 
 that religion can go forward only over the dead body of some scientific 
 truth have comprehended neither the depth nor the breadth of that 
 which they have taken it as their life-work to defend. Eeligion has 
 few more injurious friends than those who are strong in attacking 
 opponents, but weak in comprehending and interpreting their own 
 position. 
 
 199 
 
denus 
 
 PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM. ^ 
 
 In the pathetic and winning history of Mysticism one of the most 
 marked features is a certain impersonality. Not that Mysticism has 
 been without its special champions ; in its history there are outstand- 
 ing figures — the great and daring men of thought who clung to the 
 hope of union with reality, even while they were formulating the world- 
 shattering logic which puts reality beyond the reach of all the normal 
 forms and energies of our experience. But these are not so much 
 individual men of thought who by their own labour make their way 
 to a new insight, and win a generation to it, and so become the founders 
 of a school and a tradition. Eather they are voices for some- 
 thing wider than themselves ; something that works dimly in the mind 
 of an age, like a hidden ferment, and slowly gathers shape, and comes 
 at last to the spoken word. When some great race finds life an unsat- 
 isfied hunger or a burden of pain ; when some great civilisation, with 
 all its skill and wealth and luxury, weighs itself in the balances and 
 finds itself wanting; when some generation, possessed by the vision 
 and the passion of religion, finds its established religion a thing 
 external, ceremonial, priestly: — then, as by an original tendency of 
 human nature, and with no need of historical support or derivation, the 
 temper of Mysticism arises like a spirit moving upon the face of the 
 deep ; and, having arisen, finds its prophets. It is the business of the 
 Idealist to persuade and convince men, as best he can, under all cir- 
 cumstances and in every spiritual climate; but the Mystic speaks 
 usually to hearts made ready for his word ; and, to them, speaks with 
 overwhelming power. Indeed, the passage of mystic doctrine from 
 land to land and age to age has seldom been more aptly described 
 
 } I am indebted to the Delegates of the Clarendon Press for the generous permission 
 which has enabled me to quote from Jowett's translation, 
 
 203 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 than by Professor IJoyce/ when he calls to our minds the words of 
 Coleridge's Ancient Mariner: 
 
 I pass, like nigJit, from land to land ; 
 1 have strange power of speech ; 
 That moment that his face I see, 
 I know the man that must hear me : 
 To him my tale I teach. 
 
 The history of Idealism has been very different. He who first 
 formulated it, formulated it by the energies of the constructive 
 reason in him ; and formulated it well-nigh for ever. To its funda- 
 mental positions he worked his way slowly, sounding onward as 
 through an unknown sea ; availing himself of the diverse results of the 
 earlier science of his race, but going far beyond anything of which it 
 even had dreamed; and showing himself so pre-eminent in the power 
 and insight of the labouring reason that since his day Idealism has 
 never departed without profound loss from what is essential in his 
 method and teaching, nor returned without receiving the touch and 
 the inspiration of a new life. 
 
 In the first place, he fixed for ever the scientific point of departure 
 of Idealism^— the question how our knowledge is possible. Then, pro- 
 ceeding from that point of departure, he not only moved in the true 
 direction in his attempt to comprehend the nature of reality and the 
 meaning of our life, but moved so far in that true direction that the 
 way was made easy to all who in later days could enter into his teach- 
 ing as it really was. And another thing he did, in which his greatness 
 as the founder of Idealism culminates. He stated his view of the 
 world with a grace of temper, an elevation of soul, a prophetic and 
 compelling passion, such as gave to his truth a double power and made 
 it to the men of later ages an illumination and an austere allurement, 
 a persuasion and a rebuke. 
 
 This Plato did ; being one of those rare and most mighty spirits 
 in whom the gifts and the insights that are given singly to other men, 
 appear in combination, and in that combination take on a new and 
 greater power, each contributing to the other, each enlightening the 
 
 1 The World and the Individual, First Series, p. 85. 
 204 
 
PLATO AND TPIE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 other, each deepening the other. First, there came to union in him 
 the two great scientific currents in which the constructive thinking of 
 the Greeks had hitherto run : the older metaphysic, Ionian or Italian, 
 which sought to comprehend the universe as a universe ; and the newer 
 Socratic " way of ideas." In this combination each side found its true 
 fulfilment in the other, so that, in the place of two brilliant but limited 
 endeavours, there" arose a' single complete and solidly based and' 
 thoroughly luminous view of the world. Then, secondly, this synthesis 
 itself was part of a still wider synthesis. On the one side, as the 
 achievement just referred to indicates, he had in him the scientific 
 mind. He had its intellectual disinterestedness, its passion after 
 knowledge for its own sake, its instinct for looking straight upon facts 
 and seeing them with clear eyes just as they are; he inherited, in a 
 word, not simply the results of the previous scientific history of the 
 Greeks, but also their scientific temper in the very perfection of those 
 qualities which have made the Hellenic mind to all ages the pattern 
 of the scientific mind. But he was possessed also, and to the very 
 centre of his being, by the great practical passions : by the passion, 
 moral and political, which seeks to shape life and the social organisa- 
 tion of life according to the good ; and by the religious passion which 
 apprehends, as the good, the ultimate principle of the universe, and 
 thus sets the whole of man's life in the light of a heavenly vision, and 
 directs all his energies to the works whose significance is eternal. And 
 in him those things — that disinterested scientific temper, that passion- 
 ate devotion to the realisation of the good, and that profound religious- 
 ness — were not warring tendencies; they were co-operating powers, 
 each widening the scope and deepening the character of the others. 
 And even this is not the limit of the union and co-operation in him of 
 characters that ordinarily stand apart. Along with that scientific 
 intellect, that moral and political and religious temper, there went 
 the mind of the poet, and the capacities, both receptive and active, of 
 the artist. And this side of his nature, once more, — in spite of the 
 hostility that necessarily existed between him and those artists of his 
 race who either were artists and nothing more, or else represented a 
 reason earlier and unpurified l)y criticism — really worked together with 
 the others. He was half poet; but in him poetic intuition was a form 
 
 205 
 
PLATO AXD THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 of intelligence, rather than a rival of intelligence; and so the poet 
 in him made him a greater, not a less, philosopher. He had the Ionian 
 delight in beauty, and the Ionian command over the powers by which 
 beauty is expressed ; but he had also the earnestness of Lacedaemon — 
 no Dorian saw more clearly than he the need in human life of sim- 
 plicit}^ of austere discipline, of that gravity of mind which lifts a man 
 above luxury, above levity, above the habit of imitation. He had the 
 unashamed Greek joy in the whole of existence ; yet he was haunted by 
 a vision of eternity which condemned alike the world that now is, and 
 the mythology of his race, and the political order of his state. He had 
 the Greek delight in life, the Greek instinct for the exercise and 
 development of all the faculties of the soul, the catholic Greek sense 
 for completeness and integrity of life; yet he knew that life can 
 reach its true wholeness and integrity, not by leaving all its elements 
 and interests upon a level, but only by recognising the good, and 
 putting it in its place of supremacy, and arranging the whole of life 
 as the manifold system of its realisation. 
 
 Such was the many-sided reason that dwelt in Plato and helped to 
 make him the greatest figure in the long history of philosophy. But 
 there is still something else. A metaphysician is a man who seeks to 
 ascertain the true meaning of our experience. And the man who 
 would do that, must have more than scientific temper and scientific 
 ability, more than a wide mind and large capacities of reason; per- 
 sonally and vitally he must himself possess, on all its greater and 
 constitutive sides, the experience into whose meaning he would inquire. 
 For himself, and with directness and integrity of devotion, he must 
 have walked in the ways of life and have taken his part in the world's 
 work. And this requisite, too, was fulfilled in Plato. It was not only 
 that he was man of science, artist, poet; not only that he sustained 
 the part of friend and of teacher; but his heart was linked to the 
 greater causes in the life of his people ; he was a citizen drawn to the 
 welfare of the Greek states with an intensity of earnestness that had 
 in it the possibility, and at last the actualit}^ of tragic pain. He not 
 only had a vision of perfection, but felt the call to realise it ; to realise 
 it not abstractly nor in dream, but concretely in the life of his day — 
 in the education which lasts from birth till death, and in the order of 
 
 206 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 the state. He did not rest, as Windelband so finely points out/ in his 
 gaze upon the supersensuous world; he was not one of those saints 
 of contemplation who " receive into themselves the great picture of 
 existence and contemplate it in desireless peace." On the contrary, 
 having brought from the eternal realm ideals for this, he took up " with 
 passionate courage the struggle against the powers of the earth," and 
 strove " with all the energies of his soul ' to improve and to convert ' the 
 world " ; he was— and is — " the chief of all the spirits who exercise 
 the energies of will." Such he was; and being such, there was no 
 escape for him from the wrestle with the world, no standing apaCrt from 
 life, no remaining untouched by the storm of the times. 
 
 "Fhus, then, it was, that, while Spartan armies were going to and 
 fro upon the soil of Attica, there was given to the world in Plato its 
 most perfect example, not of philosophy only, but of the philosophic 
 mind. He was a great man of science; but he was more; he was a 
 mighty spirit, taking part in the struggle of man upon the earth, and 
 bringing to that struggle its illumination with eternal light. And so, 
 too, it was with his view of the world and of life ; it shows the intellect 
 working at its very highest power ; but it is more than a work of the 
 intellect. It is the passionate vision and creation of the entire human 
 soul; a vision and creation in which the working of the greater 
 passions — the passion for the state, the passion for righteousness, the 
 passion for eternity — goes hand in hand with the highest energy of 
 the disinterested intellect. 
 
 In attempting to understand this philosophy of Plato's as a body 
 of doctrine — which involves not merely apprehending Plato's conclu- 
 sions, but apprehending also the forces and tendencies that operated 
 in him to shape them — we have three things to remember at the outset. 
 First, Plato was an Idealist from the beginning ; from the beginning 
 the root of the matter was in him— there were no Kantian wanderings. 
 But secondly, his Idealism was not complete from the beginning. 
 The Idealism of his early and middle years had in it an incomplete- 
 ness which it was one of the great labours of his later years to remedy ; 
 
 1 At the close of his monograph on Plato (Frommanns Klassiker der Philosophic)— a. 
 brief but most admirable account, which ought to be translated into English. 
 
 207 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 and this later work gave to the whole structure of his philosophy at 
 once greater depth, greater concreteness, and greater power. While 
 thirdly, throughout Plato's whole life the forces that make, not for 
 Idealism at all, but for Mysticism, acted upon him and found in his 
 soul a great response. 
 
 These facts give us our plan of treatment. We are to consider an 
 •Mealist; but one whose -Idealism (1) stands face to face with the 
 great opponent of Idealism, (2) undergoes development from within. 
 It will be wise to take the discussion in three steps : ( 1 ) To put down 
 in summary form the conclusions which constitute the Idealism of his 
 early and central years; and in doing this, to note what the internal 
 incompleteness, just referred to, is. (2) Then to turn to the other 
 side, and consider the operation upon Plato, and in Plato, of the 
 influences that lead toward Mysticism. (3) Finally, to consider the 
 later stage of his philosophy, in order to see (a) how far he has made 
 good the incompleteness of his earlier Idealism, (/?) how far he has 
 overcome, and how far yielded to, the influences leading him toward 
 Mysticism. The two latter questions, it will be noted, do not stand 
 apart; they are so closely interconnected as really to form one ques- 
 tion ; for the more clearly and fully Plato works out his Idealism, the 
 more completely does he overcome the tendency toward Mysticism. 
 
 First, then, from the dialogues up to and including the Republic, 
 we have to gather the ground-lines of the earlier Platonic Idealism, 
 and to set these down in the form of a brief summary. 
 
 I. 
 
 What Plato saw to begin with was that our experience, our actual 
 present life, in order to be what it is, must be a part in a system of 
 reality greater than anything that now appears to us. He saw — saw 
 with a clearness which simply startles an English student turning 
 back to him from Locke or Bentham or the Mills — that there is in our 
 present experience something which this present world cannot give; 
 that there operates in our experience something which that experience 
 itself as it now stands cannot account for. For our experience involves 
 — one might almost say, is — the operation of conceptions which, both 
 
 208 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 in perfection and in universality, go beyond the particular things and 
 facts and events to which we apply them, and which we comprehend by 
 means of them. They, it must be repeated, are not merely present in 
 our experience; they are active and formative in it. They are in our 
 minds not merely as something possessed, but as something operative; 
 operative in the whole process of our thinking and knowing and doing. 
 The straight line, for instance, the perfect circle, the perfect square, 
 the perfectly equiangular triangle — these conceptions and the many 
 similar ones which might be named, are, in the first place, actual 
 possessions of our minds; but not that only; they are absolutely 
 essential to even the most elementary process of knowing the world, 
 and in that process are continuously operative and continuously regu- 
 lative. Yet this present world does not give them; there are no 
 straight lines or perfect circles in nature. And again, as we know 
 nature, so also we regulate our conduct, by conceptions which the 
 present world cannot give because it has them not to give. We seek 
 perfect truth, and justice absolute, and the courage that is complete in 
 wisdom ; but where are these to be found existing upon the earth ? 
 
 Here, then^ in the elementary facts and the elementary form of our 
 scientific and moral experience, is a great problem; and this problem 
 is the point of departure for that great voyage of the intellect, to which 
 Plato, by many interests, practical even more than speculative, was 
 driven. As he advances from it, he works his way to a view of what 
 a Greek would call the form — a modern, the constitution or eternal 
 order — of the world; and to a corresponding view of the place, the 
 development, the true function, of the soul as a part of that eternal 
 world. This view we have now to consider; though, as we go on to 
 set it down in orderly outline, we must remember that Plato himself 
 nowhere presents it in one systematically articulated account; for it 
 was his habit to develop now one, now another, of the many insights 
 which enter into it; and to develop these single insights, moreover, 
 by the method which best corresponds to the process and struggle and 
 gathering light of actual experience — the dialectic method. 
 
 (1) First, then, Plato finds the form or constitution of the world 
 to be essentially rational ; this is the keynote of his Idealism, and of 
 all Idealism. And unless Platonic Idealism, and all Idealism, is to be 
 15 209 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 radically misapprehended, it must be clearly understood what it means 
 to say that the world is rational in its constitution. It means some- 
 thing more than that each of the various things of the world has 
 independently in itself a rational nature. It means that all the things 
 of the world form one rational structure; form a system or process in 
 which reason is realised. A number of forms, each rational in the 
 sense of being apprehensible by reason, but simply existing side by 
 side, would not constitute a rational order. A rational order implies 
 some common purpose, some supreme principle, which is realised in 
 and through the total system or structure. That principle gives to 
 each part or element in the system its place and function, and by 
 giving to it its place and function gives it its meaning and reality. 
 So that the principle itself is at once the immanent law and con- 
 stitutive energy — is even, in a sense, the essential reality — of the whole 
 system. This is true of any system, of any whole made up of parts, 
 which is to be called rational. Most of all is it true of that greatest of all 
 " ordered and organised " wholes which is the real world. If the real 
 world is an " ordered and organised whole," it is the realisation of some 
 one supreme principle, which is at once the source and the immanent 
 law of the structure of the world, and as such gives to each of those 
 individual forms that make up the system of the world, its place, its 
 function, its character, its reality. This principle realised and fulfilled 
 in the structure of the world, Plato, in accordance with Greek usage, 
 calls the Good. To him, that is to say, the order or constitution of 
 the world consists in an hierarchy of rational forms — as he called 
 them. Ideas — with the Idea of Good at the head of the hierarchy. Or, 
 to put it in one word, the Good, as the source and law of all individual 
 determinations, of all individual capacities and functions, and thus of 
 all individual being, is the principle of reality.^ 
 
 The steps in Plato's dialectic advance to this insight were of course 
 many. One of them we shall have to deal with later, in considering 
 the forces that broke in upon Plato's Idealism, and made it all the 
 greater by making its battle harder. Here, however, a brief hint at 
 the general course of this part of the Platonic argument will be 
 
 1 See Philosophical Lectures and Remains of Bichard Lewis Nettleship, 1st ed., vol. 
 II., pp. 217-237. 
 
 210 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 sufficient. First, Plato saw that particular objects cannot stand alone. 
 Their lack of an abiding form, their incessant change, their arising 
 and their decay, show that they do not maintain their own being or 
 exist in their own right. How, then, are they to be accounted for ? At 
 the very lowest — making your first concession to reason as small as 
 you possibly can — you must go at least this far : that for each of the 
 kinds, for each group of similar things, there must be some one abid- 
 ing reality which fulfils itself through them and their changes. This 
 abiding reality — to which Plato gave the name Idea — he, at the 
 beginning of his work, tended to some extent to view as the common 
 element that remained when the differences of the particulars were 
 stripped away. But more and more he came to view it as an energetic 
 principle, a creative power, which manifests itself in and through the 
 things; so that instead of our being compelled to abstract from the 
 differences to get it, it itself explains those differences. An Idea 
 might perhaps be best defined for the modern mind by saying that 
 each Idea, together with the things of which it is the principle, would 
 form the object of a special science or special department of science.^ 
 But with this "lowest possible concession" we cannot stop. For 
 these constitutive principles of the various classes of existence cannot 
 themselves stand apart or maintain their own being. They are not 
 independent existences, standing side by side for ever; they must be 
 conceived as forming one order, one universe. And what that means 
 we have already seen ; they are the media or organs through which one 
 highest principle, one supreme creative energy, the Good, fulfils itself. 
 (2) The nature and operative principles of our minds correspond 
 to the nature and operative principles of the world ; 'thus it is that 
 knowledge and intelligent conduct are possible to us. The soul which 
 is man, is in organic union with those constitutive principles of the 
 world (the Ideas) — or, if you will, is in organic possession of them. 
 It brings them, or the potentiality of them, -with it as its equipment 
 for the business of life, as its principles of knowledge and its standards 
 of conduct. This insight Plato delighted to set forth in myths of 
 unexampled splendour. But the meaning of the myths is plain: the 
 
 1 E. Caird, Evolution of Theolof/y in the Greek Philosophers, vol. I., p. 119 seq. 
 
 211 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 real world is rational; the soul is reason; therefore, science and 
 intelligent conduct are alike possible. 
 
 (3) But that nature of the soul, and those its operative principles, 
 are developed only gradually, in and by that process in which we at 
 once apprehend reality and come to be ourselves. In knowing the 
 world, the reason which is man, recognising the presence and operation 
 of those eternal principles in the world, comes more and more into 
 possession of them, and so comes more and more truly to be itself. 
 This apprehension of the world, in its gradual development, passes 
 from stage to stage of clearness; passes, as Plato at one point says,^ 
 through three lower stages to find rest in a fourth. The first two of 
 these ("conjecture" and "belief"), which represent the working of 
 the intellect below the " scientific " level, we need not dwell upon here. 
 But we must notice carefully the third, and the transition from it to 
 the fourth. The third is what nowadays we should call the stage of 
 the special sciences. Its defect is that each of its special divisions has 
 its own point of view and its own point of departure ; so that instead 
 of seeing one universe in the light of one supreme principle, it almost 
 has several universes. Or, as one may put it, it begins too far down 
 the stream, and so, instead of seeing one stream, flowing from one 
 fountainhead, it sees only several different currents. At this 
 stage, then, knowledge is inaccurate in the sense of being abstract, 
 "unfinished," incomplete. But in the fourth stage, knowledge 
 becomes adequate in form to its object. For here knowledge 
 directs itself to that supreme principle, only in the light of 
 which can any particular thing whatever be truly understood; 
 namely, to the Good, which the whole system and structure of the 
 ■universe is intended to realise, and which, therefore, determines the 
 place and function — that is to say, determines the reality — of each 
 individual thing in the total system. So that the Good, just as it is 
 :the principle of being, is also the principle of knowledge. With 
 •regard both to the world and to our minds it is the principle of intel- 
 ligence; for it is its activity, las giving to the things of the world 
 definite determinations, definite places in the system, definite 
 iunctions, that makes the things of the world intelligible; and it is 
 
 1 Republic, 509 D seq. 
 212 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 only through an apprehension of it that our minds can enter fully and 
 finally into a true apprehension of things, and so become truly and 
 fully intelligent. Hence, too, knowledge of it (and conformity of 
 character to it) is the ultimate object of education; and it is in the 
 science which seeks to apprehend it, that education — for those who are 
 able to go so far — culminates. 
 
 (4) To live in accordance with that true nature of the world is 
 the true way of life for men. The world, as a system in which a 
 supreme principle, the Good, realises itself (in measure and beauty 
 and truth, as Plato said later), ^ furnishes the pattern according to 
 which man should organise his life. Indeed that statement is too 
 weak; for the world is the whole in which man lives; so that the 
 Good which is the organising principle of its structure and order, 
 should be the organising principle for Ms life. That is to say, the 
 Good (that which the world exists to realise) is more than a pattern 
 for man; it is that to which men should directly devote themselves 
 and seek to realise. So that the Good, as it is the principle of being, and 
 the principle of intelligence, is also the moral end for man. Moral- 
 ity means to know the Good which is the eternal law of the world, and 
 to make it the supreme principle of one's own life. But further : men 
 cannot realise the Good as solitary individuals. They must become 
 what the world is — a uocxjuoz, an " ordered and organised " society, 
 a state. The state, then, is a human institute for the realisation of 
 the Good. In accordance with that purpose and no other, the state 
 is to frame its constitution, to train its citizens, to educate its legisla- 
 tors and statesmen ; — is even to limit its own size, so that the individ- 
 ual citizen shall not be prevented from participating in the whole of its 
 life. And if a man is compelled to live in a state whose constitution 
 is evil or imperfect, let him organise his life so far as he can in 
 accordance with the order of the city whose "pattern is laid up in 
 heaven " ;2 it is the model for all cities, and the only model for the 
 man whose earthly city has an evil constitution ; and, after death, it 
 will receive those who have been faithful to its laws.^ 
 
 1 Philebus, especially 64-67. 
 
 2 Republic, 592. 
 
 3 It is interesting to note how men's thoxights answer one another across the ages. 
 Plato saw that our experience, in order to be what it now is, must be part of a reality 
 
 213 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 The foregoing statement is un-Platonic in form, but represents 
 fairly, in terms of modern thought, the essential principles that had 
 shaped themselves in Plato's -mind by the time he reached middle life. 
 If it were permissible to select any one Platonic statement as the most 
 pointed expression of those principl*is, and of the view of the world 
 which they constitute, it would be the comparison, in the Republic, of 
 the Idea of Good to the sun. The sun is to visible things the source 
 both of their being and of their visibility. Of their being, for he 
 makes them what they are ; he is " the author of generation and 
 nourishment and growth, though he himself is not generation." And 
 of their visibility, for he gives to them their capacity of being seen 
 and to the eye its capacity of seeing them. In the same way the 
 Idea of Good gives to all things their real and essential existence ; and, 
 by precisely the same creative or constitutive activity, it gives to them 
 that rational character — that place in a rational system fulfilling a 
 rational end — which is their knowableness.^ The Idea of Good, 
 in one word, is the principle of being, the principle of knowledge, and, 
 as is added a little later,^ the principle of conduct. 
 
 II. 
 
 Such a view concerning the form or constitution of the world, 
 and concerning the place and development and function of the soul in 
 the world, is Idealism. And yet, in anything that can be called a 
 study of Plato, this view must stand as the beginning rather than as 
 the end. In philosophy, battles easily won are usually either not 
 worth the winning, or are won so easily because of the hard labour of 
 earlier men. And Plato's battle was far from easil}^ won. He fought 
 over nearly the whole ground of philosophy ; that it is, in fact, which 
 makes him at once so deeply instructive and so infinitely suggestive. 
 
 greater than anything that now appears to us; and so he marked out a course of lifelong 
 education to lead us to the knowledge of that eternal reality, and called us to "philosophy," 
 i.e., to a life of political and speculative activities in which we more and more make our 
 society and ourselves at one with that reality. It is precisely the same insight— or one 
 aspect of it— that Professor Royce (27(C World and the Iiulividual, First Series, p. 56) puts 
 into the terse statement : " We live looking for the whole of our meaning. And this 
 looking constitutes the process called thinking." 
 
 1 507 iteq. 2 517C. 
 
 214 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 First, as was pointed out above, in the Idealism whose main 
 positions have just been set down, there is a certain incompleteness. 
 It is incomplete in the conception of its highest principle. For it 
 viewed the Idea of Good as a constitutive and organismg principle. 
 The Good exercises a creative energy ; it is the source and home, the 
 ordering power, the principle of unity, of the world. But that at once 
 raises the question : In order to be such a principle, must not the Good 
 be conceived as something more than simply the Good? If it is truly 
 to be regarded a? performing the supreme function of constituting 
 and ordering the world, must it not be taken up into some still higher 
 principle? Must it not, that is to say, be regarded as living and 
 active spirit ; so that the world would be viewed as constituted by an 
 eternal spirit who is the subject of the world, whose Ideas are the 
 regulative forms of the world, and the supreme law of whose activity 
 is the Good? 
 
 To this problem Plato came in his later work. In that work he 
 made, indeed, what looks like a fresh start ; for he came at the problem 
 from a somewhat different angle of approach, and used a different 
 terminology. But really it is the same problem ; and really, therefore, 
 the advance is continuous.^ But before we go on to consider that 
 advance, there is another matter to be dealt with. For, as also was 
 noted above, throughout the whole of Plato's life, the forces that lead 
 men, not to Idealism at all, but to Mysticism, worked upon him ; and 
 upon that many-sided mind, sensitive as it was to all spiritual influ- 
 ences, they could not be without effect. To these we must now turn ; 
 and in dealing with them we have to consider (A) in what form they 
 acted upon Plato; (B) what influence they had, whether in breaking 
 the unity and preventing the completeness of his Idealism, or in 
 setting another view alongside of it. Then, finally, we can come to 
 that thinking of his later years in which, so far as was possible to him, 
 he dealt with both the great problems that beset him; and, by a 
 certain development of his thought, at once put the keystone into the 
 arch of his Idealism, and overcame — though to the end only in part — 
 the mystic tendency. 
 
 1 One of the reasons for believing— what here is taken for granted -that the Pm-mcnidcs 
 (with the allied dialogues), is a genuine Platonic writing. 
 
 215 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 (A) First, then, the influences that make for Mysticism fall into 
 two great classes. For Mysticism has a twofold aspect. It is a type 
 of speculative thought; but it is also a movement of the practical 
 spirit. It is an intellectual conclusion; but usually it is also a con- 
 ception of religion and a way of life. 
 
 (1) So that we have to distinguish, first, the more purely intel- 
 lectual ways along which men are led to Mysticism. The general 
 tendency manifest in these may be seen by considering the situation 
 in which the philosophic intellect stands at the beginning of its work. 
 For what sets it upon its work is the insight that experience can be 
 what it now is only upon the supposition that reality goes far beyond 
 the appearances which from moment to moment make up the fleeting 
 content of experience. And the work to which this insight calls 
 philosophy is, of course, the attempt to reach a form of consciousness 
 more adequate than the everyday consciousness to the apprehension of 
 that reality. But precisely in this beginning and in this point of 
 departure there lies for the intellect a great danger. It should 
 remember that the reality to which it is- attempting to make its way, is 
 sought as the explanation and the illumination of the experience from 
 which it first set out. Or, in technical terms, it should remember that 
 the desired universal and the present particulars are in organic con- 
 nexion; that the noumenal order does not stand separate from time 
 and from phenomena, but rather is the phenomenal order truly imder- 
 stood ; else the one is no explanation of the other. But this very thing 
 the intellect is tempted, not to say driven, to forget ; and that by the 
 nature of the situation itself. For what the mind is seeking to do is 
 to pass from an experience of appearances to a consciousness of 
 reality ; and what stands out in the foreground, and is acutely felt, is, 
 of course, not the likeness of the two, but their difference. The 
 reality — in its character surely it is that which the appearances are 
 not. They come and go, arise and decay; it abides for ever, and is 
 always itself. They are chained to eye and ear; it, for its existence 
 and perfection, depends upon no perishing organs of flesh. Thus the 
 tendency arises to separate the two : what they are, it is not ; what it 
 is, they are not. And the two being separated, the way of the soul is 
 
 216 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 plain ; in the vision of the perfect and eternal reality, it must forget, 
 or resist, or despise, the present world. 
 
 This tendency takes many forms and operates in many degrees of 
 power. A number of the purer cases of it we. have already considered 
 in dealing with Spinoza.^ It did its work almost completely, for 
 instance, when, through generations of forgotten men, the Hindu 
 mind, moving under a burden of sad experience, sought to reach the 
 one fundamental reality by saying NHi, Neti — It is not so, it is not so 
 — to every particular form of god or goddess and to every particular 
 natural determination; and thus accomplished the* vast march of 
 thought from Veda to Vedanta. Or again, it swept in perfect intel- 
 lectual clearness, and with one arrow-like flight, to its goal, when Par- 
 menides sharply and abruptly set over against the world of the senses, 
 a reality which parely and absolutely is, and is not flawed or limited 
 or contaminated by any "is not." These thoroughgoing cases, as a 
 rule, occur either at the beginning of a great civilisation, or in its 
 decline: at the beginning, when the pioneers of thought, by sheer 
 force of speculative daring, carry one-sided methods through to their 
 conclusion ; in the decline, when men turn away from the evil world, 
 and the religious influences which we are to consider in a moment work 
 victoriously upon them. But the logic of Mysticism is also able to 
 secure a footing in the middle periods, when the great constructive 
 and comprehensive minds are at work. In a different way, however ; 
 usually as a tendency concealed in some method which is accepted 
 without question, but whose final significance is not perceived. In 
 such a method Mysticism often lies implicit, until at last some intellect, 
 fearless in its logic, but working in the service of the religious instinct, 
 carries the method relentlessly to its conclusion, and shows reality to 
 men as that with which they can enter into union only by renouncing 
 the world and all the normal forms of experience. 
 
 For our present purpose, one such method is specially important. 
 It is, indeed, simply a particular case of the general situation described 
 a moment ago. The facts and events of the world, as they are given 
 to us in our everyday consciousness, cannot stand alone. If we would 
 really understand them, we must go to something wider than them- 
 
 1 SvjJra, pp. 126-150. 
 217 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 selves ; to the laws or principles which govern them, which hold them 
 together and make them and their changes one connected and 
 systematic world. In the language of philosophy, we must go to their 
 universals. But how are we to conceive those universals? If we 
 remembered that we seek the universal as an explanation of the par- 
 ticular, we should see that the universals must be active principles of 
 synthesis — active and concrete principles which hold things together 
 into one world, and by giving to each particular its place in the world 
 give it its reality. The universals, that is to say, would be conceived 
 as at once explaining and containing both the particulars and their 
 differences and their relations; would be conceived as at once the 
 source and the home alike of the particulars, and of the relations 
 which link them together into one system, and of the differences which 
 mark their individuality. And the highest universal would be the 
 most concrete of all, being the source and home of the whole order of 
 the world, of all the individuals in it, and of all the relations and dif- 
 ferences which make them individuals and yet link them together by 
 eternal laws in the one system of the world. But at the very beginning 
 of the search for universals there is something which frequently leads 
 us to forget all this. For the universal is something which is common 
 to all the members of a class ; they all share in it, and their sharing in 
 it is the source of their reality. But how are we to get at something 
 which is common to all the diverse members of a class ? Surely nothing 
 can be easier — simply strip away the differences and retain what is 
 left. It is very natural thus to take for granted that since the universal 
 is a form common to all the members of a class, the way to reach it 
 must be by abstracting from the differences of those members. But 
 natural as it is to drift into such a method, it puts you, as soon as you 
 adopt it, into the grip of the logic of denial. For as you ascend from 
 stage to stage, stripping away the differences from particular things 
 and specific conceptions, your universals become more and more 
 abstract, until at last you reach the end with an ineffable One which is 
 beyond all natural determinations and all forms of reason ; and union 
 with which, whether speculative or practical,^ is therefore to be attained 
 
 1 Whether speculative or practical .-—To the thoroughgoing Mystic, it should be 
 remembered, these are really one. 
 
 218 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 only in some experience which transcends all forms of reason and all 
 ordinary activities of the rational spirit which is man. Thus it was, 
 for instance, that mediaeval Eealism with its strong tendency to ascend 
 to the universal by the method of abstraction, led the way to Mysti- 
 cism. "WTien its method was taken up by men of deep inward religion 
 and of an unflinching logic which not even canons and decretals could 
 bind, that which was left to them at the end, after they had abstracted 
 from the last diiierences — from the distinction between God the 
 omniscient knower, and the world, ideal or temporal, which He consti- 
 tutes and knows ; and from the distinction between the persons of the 
 Trinity — was that ultimate Godhead, that " still wilderness " which 
 " never did look upon deed " and " where never was seen difference, 
 neither Father, nor Son, nor Holy Ghost."^ The same tendency, again, 
 was manifest when Spinoza, on one side of his thinking, carried to 
 the last conclusion a method and a principle which, coming from 
 Descartes, seemed new, but in truth were as old as medieval Eealism, 
 and in the hands of a rigorous logician had in them the same 
 potentiality of Mysticism. Or, to take an instance which lies at our 
 very doors, the abstract tendency is present in the later thinking of 
 Kant, and is in constant strife with that concrete or S3^nthetic method 
 which is Kant's proper contribution to modern philosophy; a strife 
 so continuous that without reference to it, as the Master of Balliol in 
 almost every chapter of his great exposition has to remind us, scarcely 
 any leading point in Kant's critical philosophy can be understood.' 
 
 1 See the pai>er on Meister Eckhart in Professor Royce's Studies of Good and Evil ; 
 especially pp. 276-282, and the words of Schwester Katrei as given on p. 297. 
 
 2 Indeed, it might almost be said that in man's effort to come to reality. Mysticism 
 may arise from any important error, from any important misuse of categories, provided 
 (1) that the method employed be that of the purely analytic logic which carries a beginning 
 rigorously to the conclusion, allowing no opportunity for turning back upon it to criticise 
 or reconstitute it ; (2) that the men be too completely possessed by intellectual gravity or 
 by religious passion to rest in the philosophic scepticism which would be the outcome of 
 the mere logic of the situation. To take a most unpromising instance— a case where the 
 beginning augurs anything but a mystic close— if a man, deeply religious but at the same 
 time keenly logical, were with implicit confidence to accept as his point of departure 
 almost any book of the traditional English or Scottish school of philosophy, he would 
 almost certainly become a Mystic ; would almost certainly come to deny the world given 
 to his present intelligence in the name of a reality not apprehensible by intelligence, and 
 to seek desperately for some way of union with that reality. Indeed, if Mr. Herbert Spencer, 
 retaining his philosophy, had been predominantly a man of religion rather than predomin- 
 antly a man of science, he would have been a Mystic— But the most remarkable of recent 
 
 219 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 In Plato both that general and this special form of the intellectual 
 movement toward Mysticism are found. The explanation of our 
 present world and of our experience in it, lies for him in a world of 
 perfect and eternal realities, the Ideas, which are at once rational 
 forms and rational energies. And, of course, he knew that the explana- 
 tion and the thing explained must be in organic union: that world, 
 he knew, must be the truth of this world; this world, truly known, 
 must be a factor or element in the life of that, and a manifestation of 
 its nature. But, like all high and clear spirits who are acutely sensi- 
 tive to the evil and the imperfection of this world, Plato is tempted to 
 let his soul dwell in that world, forgetting this, or despising it, or 
 renouncing it, as a thing only of some secondary reality which in the 
 presence of true reality stands condemned for ever. And to this 
 temptation to set the two worlds apart, the one as shadow, the other 
 as reality, he continually yields. Perhaps his keenest feeling is the 
 feeling of the difference between the real world and this present world 
 of the senses — this, inconstant, fleeting, full of change and decay; 
 that, with its unchanging perfections of reason. And this feeling, as 
 we are to see in a moment, was intensified by the form which the 
 religious passion often took in him; and by the way in which he 
 suffered from the resistance of his Greek world to that ideal which 
 represents the demand of the real world upon present society. So that, 
 in his central period, Plato, like Erigena, like Aquinas, like Spinoza, 
 like Kant — like his own pupil, Aristotle — is torn between the synthetic 
 and the abstract movements of thought, between theologia affirmativa 
 and theologia negaiiva. It is true that the conflict of these tendencies 
 assumed a very different form in him from that which it assumed in 
 Erigena or Aquinas, in Spinoza or Kant. It is true also that the 
 yielding to the negative tendency is less in him than iu any of the 
 others just named ;i true that the promise and the power of that 
 thoroughgoing Idealism to which he was later to come is already in 
 
 intellectual approaches to Mysticism comes from a very different direction. It is (if I may 
 venture so daring a statement) tiiat found in the keenest of piodern English dialecticians, 
 a man of thought to whom we are all deeply indebted, Mr. F. H. Bradley. The cause of 
 it, which lies in his treatment of some of the higher categories, is most interesting but 
 cannot be discussed here. 
 
 1 Even than in Aristotle, See the discussion in Caird, Evolution of Theology in the 
 Greek Philosophers, vol. I., especially pp. 285, 286. 
 
 220 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 the dialogues of the central period. But none the less the strife is 
 there. And in the special form mentioned an instant ago — i.e., in 
 advancing from particulars to class-conceptions — the strife is also 
 there. In the earlier thinking of Plato there is a wavering between 
 two views of the relation of a universal to the particulars grouped 
 under it ; the two views, as one may say, are present in solution. The 
 one, regarding the universal as the common element in different 
 individuals, tends to seek it by abstraction, by leaving aside the differ- 
 ences of those individuals, and to give it an existence independent and 
 separate ; making it, to use an expression of the later Plato, like a sail 
 drawn over the individual members of the class. ^ The other regards it 
 as a synthetic principle, manifesting itself through differences, and 
 therefore both explaining and containing those differences. And as far 
 as the former prevails, it makes possible, in the way already indicated, 
 the logic of Mysticism. 
 
 (3) But, as we have seen, there is another order of influences 
 making for Mysticism — the practical or religious ; and it is only when 
 these co-operate with the first that Mysticism in the completeness of 
 its type arises. The nature of these may be indicated in this way. — To 
 the religious instinct and passion, in its higher development, two 
 directions of movement are possible; and thus in man's effort after 
 God two tendencies have arisen. These are seldom found in purity of 
 type, ordinary religious life usually containing both, though approx- 
 imating sometimes to the one, sometimes to the other. Of these 
 tendencies the one which commonly is the earlier to prevail, whether 
 in the individual or in any deeply religious age, is dominated by the 
 sense of the sharp contrast between the world and God; the world as 
 evil, God as altogether good; or the world as nothingness and vanity, 
 God as all in all. But the later and more thoughtful tendency sees 
 that Manichgeism in any form shatters religion itself; that the 
 religious life in its every step implies an organic connexion between 
 God and the world; God being led by the goodness of His nature to 
 impart Himself; the world being a process wherein, by that increas- 
 ing impartation of Himself, He realises an eternal purpose which 
 itself arises from His nature and is the expression of it. The religion 
 
 ' 1 Parmenides, 131 BC. 
 
 221 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 of this latter type is the wider and the profounder ; in a certain very 
 important sense, it is really the more religious. But the religion of the 
 former kind is usually the more intense and overmastering. It makes 
 ascetics and warriors; and it has in it at least the beginning of 
 Mysticism. For on the one hand it presupposes an eternal reality and 
 the possibility that man can become at one with it; and it makes the 
 quest after such union the supreme business of life. But on the other 
 hand it is convinced that upon no such ways as those of the present 
 world, through no such energies as those of man's natural soul, is that 
 union to be attained. 
 
 Now, Plato was a man profoundly religious. And both his native 
 character and the circumstances of his life made it inevitable that at 
 least occasionally, under special stress of the world's evil or the world's 
 tragedy, the religious temper in him should assume the first rather 
 than the second of the two forms just distinguished. For in him was 
 the grave Dorian austerity which can lift men with indignant scorn 
 above the allurements of the world; and the hunger after eternity 
 and after perfection, which in this world, or in any world made after 
 the fashion of this, can find no rest ; and that inborn purity of mind, 
 observable in fine and high spirits, which turns instinctively away 
 from evil and seeks its home with a reality in which evil and the 
 trouble of evil have no place. And his outer life was fitted to develop 
 the world-denying instincts within. Only too well he knew the sadden- 
 ing of the soul which comes to men who enter upon life with high 
 devotion to the welfare of their society and to the great causes in 
 which that welfare consists, and find the world to be a body of death, 
 immovable by that passion, unresponsive to those purposes. It was 
 not merely that the men of Athens, the best of them as well as the 
 worst, had slain his master. But in him a high ethical and political 
 passion, the passion of the reformer who has gazed upon heavenly 
 perfection and seeks to bring it to the ways of earthly society, broke 
 in vain against the life of his day; broke in vain against the pride of 
 the elder Dionysius; in vain against the life of Athens, where the 
 citizens were no longer men of Marathon, but loved comfort and 
 cleverness and unstable change more than righteousness; in vain 
 against the general political condition of the Greek world in the period 
 
 222 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 that runs from the day of the Thirty to the coming of the Macedonian. 
 And so it came to pass that through the whole course of Plato's life 
 there ran that same tragedy of passion and of hope which filled the 
 early years of Wordsworth. The passion of the prophet and of the 
 reformer shattered itself into despair against the circumstances of the 
 age, and against the brute power with which political inefficiency and 
 political corruption can maintain themselves against high ideals and 
 high character.^ 
 
 (B) Thus, then, the influences that lead toward the doctrine and 
 life of the Mystics, acted upon the founder himself of Idealism. What 
 response, we must next ask, did they call forth ? what result had they 
 in Plato's view of reality and of the way of life ? 
 
 One thing is clear to begin with. They have influenced very deeply 
 the tone and expression of the Platonic philosophy. It presents itself 
 to its students as a many-coloured web shot through and through with 
 mystic motives. Not only toward what we commonly call the things 
 of the world, but also toward many even of the virtues in their 
 ordinary exercise, and toward the opinion which is at least a poten- 
 tiality of knowledge, and toward many of the greater literary and 
 artistic forms, Plato takes up frequently the true Mystic's attitude of 
 pity and renunciation and rebuke. And he has the Mystic's strange 
 and compelling glory of speech, the power mingled of prophecy and 
 poetry, which, logically or illogically, has fallen so often to the lot of 
 those who use speech only for winning men to the silent life. In calling 
 men to the renunciation of the world, to the practice of death, his 
 words take on the tint of Mysticism, just as sometimes, on evenings 
 late in autumn, the sky that bent over the work of the day ceases to be 
 a thing of this world, and with stern magniflcence and yet with beauty 
 unutterable testifies against the weariness and the ambitions of the 
 earth, and against the men who in these things lose themselves. 
 
 Nevertheless, the outcome in Plato was not Mysticism. It was not 
 to be that among men of Greek speech the great argument which Par- 
 menides had left a thing purely intellectual should advance to " do the 
 full work of a philosophy" as an ethic and a religion. Though Plato 
 
 1 See the excellent statement in Wlndelband, Platon, especially in the first chapter 
 and in the concluding pages. 
 
 223 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 revered Parmenides, and though of all the Hellenes he was the most 
 fitted in character and experience to respond to the appeal of Mysti- 
 cism, yet the very fact that he was a Hellene made it impossible that 
 it should be his vocation to lift the Parmenidean view of reality into 
 a wisdom for the guidance of life, and to give to that wisdom its 
 language of irresistible persuasion. The Greek loyalty to reason and 
 the energies of reason; the Greek love of definite and specific form; 
 the Greek belief that such form is truly and essentially characteristic 
 of reality : — these held the field. He was not won away from his view 
 that the forms and energies which constitute reality are forms and 
 energies of reason ; and that this rationality of the real means that it 
 has one supreme and organising principle, the Good, without devotion 
 to which reason is not reason. . And holding to this, he is not a 
 Mystic. For though he may sometimes speak of the present world 
 with the voice of a Mystic, yet there remains a difference which is 
 essential. The relation between Plato when he goes farthest toward 
 Mysticism, and the thoroughgoing Mystic, might be stated in this 
 way. — Both believe that there is a reality untroubled by change or evil 
 or decay. Both believe that in union with that reality lies the welfare 
 and blessedness of the soul. Both believe that it is beyond all reach of 
 sense-perception. But the Mystic goes on to add that it lies just as 
 much beyond all forms of reason as it does beyond sense-perception, so 
 that if you would apprehend it, and make it your own, and become at 
 one with it, it must be in an immediacy of experience which transcends 
 reason, transcends all ordinary forms of cognitive and moral experi- 
 ence. While Plato urges, on the contrary, that the truly real is the 
 very perfection of reason, the very perfection of all rational form and 
 rational energy, and that it is by perfecting the reason within you — 
 reason in the greater sense of the word, not the mere logical intellect — 
 that you draw near to it. With the Mystic, to put it in a word, the 
 negatives directed against the present world, and against the life that 
 men live if they walk in its ways, are uttered in the name of a reality 
 above reason ; with Plato those same negatives are uttered in the name 
 of a reality which is the completeness of reason. 
 
 So that Plato, even though you can learn a great deal of practical 
 Mysticism from him if you have the right kind of soul, remains an 
 
 224 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 Idealist. Yet the influences which we have been considering were by 
 no means without their effect. They were not able to make the earlier 
 Plato a Mystic. But they were able to do something : they were able 
 to determine the type of his Idealism. They caused it to be of that 
 modified type which was sketched on an earlier page,i under the name 
 of Abstract Idealisr.i : that which regards the genuine reality and the 
 ■true home of the soul as a world of pure reason (in that larger sense of 
 the word already indicated), from which this present world of the 
 senses is separated as a realm of merely secondary reality; so that 
 the union of the soul with the genuine reality is to be won, its citizen- 
 ship in that world accomplished, only by a life in which sense-experi- 
 ence is not an integral element subserving the interests of the spirit, 
 but is regarded rather as an alien atmosphere to be escaped from. 
 
 In setting down the broad outlines of the earlier Platonic Idealism 
 we noted as a matter of fact, and without considering the explanation, 
 that there was an incompleteness in its conception of its highest prin- 
 ciple. What we have now seen might almost be put in this way : that 
 corresponding to that incompleteness at the top, there is an incom- 
 pleteness at the bottom ; the world given to the senses is not clearly 
 and unwaveringly viewed as a manifestation of the highest principle, 
 and as a factor in its realisation of its purpose. 
 
 This, however, we must understand somewhat more fully. And 
 that can best be done by returning to that summary outline, and con- 
 sidering in what way the negative tendency, when it comes to the front, 
 is able to modify each of the four positions there indicated. 
 
 (1) First, then, Plato often speaks as if the system of Ideas were 
 not so much the form, or order, or constitution, of the one universe 
 which we know and of which our present experience is an integral 
 part; but were rather a universe existing by itself and complete in 
 itself — the real universe; and this sensible and temporal process in 
 which we now live, a system having only a secondary reality. So that, 
 in this aspect of Plato's thought, we approach to a theory of two 
 worlds: one of absolutely pure reason and complete righteousness, 
 where without hindrance the Good perfectly realises itself ; the other 
 an imperfect realm of sense and time. And of this lower world Plato 
 
 1 Supra, p. 12. 
 16 225 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OP IDEALISM 
 
 speaks in varying tones. Sometimes he makes it a shadow, or a 
 hindrance, or a prison. From it the good man seeks to escape, 
 philosophy as a " practice of death "' being his way of deliverance. 
 At other times he views it as in some sense organically connected ■ 
 with the world of Ideas. The things of this world have some share, by 
 participation or imitation or however it be, in the nature of the Ideas ; 
 so that in this world, even in the forms and activities of the " unex- 
 amined life,"i some fulfilment is possible of that Idea which is the 
 life-giving sun of the real world — the Good. 
 
 (2) But when Plato has to deal explicitly with the question of the 
 possibility of knowledge, what will he do with his tendency toward a 
 two-world theory? For in knowledge the two worlds are together; 
 particidar and universal are in organic connexion. Knowledge is 
 really an interpreting of particulars in the light of their universals. 
 Or, if you have failed to see that, and regard knowledge as having to 
 do only with universals — so that the process of gaining knowledge is 
 a passing out of particulars to universals — still the very fact that you 
 can pass from the one to the other shows that the two are in connexion. 
 What Plato does is very remarkable. He maintains — to explain the 
 possibility of knowledge he must maintain — his belief in the corre- 
 spondence of the nature and principles of our minds to the nature and 
 principles of reality, and in the consequent capacity of our minds to 
 form class-conceptions which represent to us the Ideas. But when 
 his sense of the gulf between the two worlds is strong upon him, he 
 expresses that belief not scientifically, but prophetically, in myths and 
 parables that for blended charm and majesty stand unequalled in 
 literature. The souls of men — so in these he teaches — pre-existed, and 
 in their pre-existence gained some glimpse, fuller or narrower, of the 
 Ideas. That vision, when they fell to the earth, they retained in a 
 sort of latent memory; and so bring with them to their present life 
 the potentiality of true knowledge. Under the stimulus of the things 
 of this world, which imitate the Ideas or share somehow in their 
 nature, that potentiality is realised, or may be realised; the ancient 
 vision, called from its latency into clear consciousness, becomes what 
 we call knowledge or science, but what truly is Reminiscence. It will 
 
 1 ApoloQU. 38 A. 
 226 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 be observed what this really means. It means that, even when Plato 
 is using the speech of Abstract Idealism, the root of Concrete Idealism 
 is in him. For while the form of language used in such a myth as 
 that of the Phaedrus sets the two worlds apart, its essential meaning 
 joins them together. > 
 
 (3) Under the influence of the separation of universal and 
 particular, of Idea and phenomenon, the " stages of knowledge " 
 come to be represented, not so much as stages in a development 
 in which we pass from the vague and inadequate to the clearer 
 and more adequate, from the abstract to the concrete, in one word, 
 from the particulars in isolation to the particujars seen in the light 
 of the Idea of Good as elements or factors in its realisation; but 
 rather as different kinds of insight relating to different orders of 
 objects. Knowledge and opinion are different faculties and have to do 
 with different kinds of subject-matter. The sphere of knowledge is 
 being ; . but the sphere of opinion is that mixture of being with non- 
 being (i.e., of the Idea with empty space) which is the present world. C 
 The~one is absolute and infallible, as having grasped the supreme 
 principle of the real world and seeing everything in its light. But the 
 other is relative and erring, tossing about in a region which is half- 
 way between pure being and pure non-being.^ He who has failed to 
 grasp the Idea of Good which is the supreme principle of all reality 
 and therefore the master-light of all vision of reality — can we allow 
 his " opinion " to be a genuine stage on the way to knowledge ? Eather 
 we must say of him " that he knows neither the essence of good, nor 
 any other good thing; and that any phantom of it, which he may 
 chance to apprehend, is the fruit of opinion and not of science ; and 
 that he dreams and sleeps away his present life, and never wakes on 
 this side of that future world, in which he is doomed to sleep for 
 ever."^ 
 
 (4) So far as the two-world theory prevails, the rule of conduct, 
 
 1 Republic, 47G-480. Cf. Symposium, 202A, and even Timaen.t, 51D, 52. 
 
 2 Republic, 534C, tr. Davies and Vaughan. Compare the treatment of " right opinion " 
 in the Meno (97-100), where the tone is gentler (though possibly with a touch of irony— cgr., 
 in the reference to that right opinion of statesmen which is in politics what divination is 
 in religion— "for diviners and also prophets say many things truly, but they know not 
 what they say ") but the radical opposition itself is by no means obscured or given up. 
 
 227 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 " live in accordance with the true nature of the world," comes to 
 mean: Eise to citizenship in the real world, and in order to do so 
 separate yourself from the life and the ways of this present world. 
 Positively, that is to say, the good man is called to a life not of this 
 world. While, negatively, it is held that the Good cannot be realised 
 under the ordinary forms of our present experience, so far as that 
 experience is one of time and sense ; so that " demotic virtue," instead 
 of being viewed as a genuine though inadequate stage in the realisa- 
 tion of the Good, is regarded as a phantom of virtue calling for down- 
 right condemnation. Both these sides of the abstract tendency come 
 frequently to expression in Plato; but the place where they secure 
 their most continuous and impressive statement is — with singular 
 appropriateness — in the Phaedo. The man of philosophic mind " is 
 always pursuing death and dying," and " has had the desire of death 
 all his life long." But what is " the nature of that death " ? It is 
 that " release of the soul from the body " which enables the soul " to 
 exist in herself."^ For the body is a hinderer in the acquirement of 
 knowledge. The senses which it brings to the soul are " inaccurate 
 witnesses."^ So that the soul, if she attempt " to consider an^ihing 
 in company with the body" is "obviously deceived"; and if she is to 
 gain a revelation of true existence, must gain it in that thought in 
 which " the mind is gathered into herself, and none of these things 
 troul)le her, — neither sights nor sounds nor pain nor any pleasure," in 
 which " she takes leave of the body and has as little as possible to do 
 with it," in which " she has no bodily sense or desire, but is aspiring 
 after true being," in which she is free from all the troubles and evils of 
 the bodily life, hunger and disease, " loves, and lusts, and fears, and 
 fancies of all kinds, and endless foolery," "wars and fightings and 
 factions."-'' So long as the soul uses the body as an instrument of 
 perception (i.e., uses the senses), she is " dragged by the body into the 
 region of the changeable, and wanders and is confused; the world 
 spins round her, and she is like a drunkard, when she touches 
 change. . . . But when returning into herself she reflects, then 
 
 1 64 ABC. 2 65 A. s 65, 66. 
 
 22S 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 she passes into the other world, the region of purity, and eternity, and 
 immortality, and unchangeableness, which are her kindred, and with 
 them she ever lives, when she is by herself and is not let or hindered ; 
 then she ceases from her erring ways, and being in communion with 
 the unchanging, is unchanging."^ It is at this existence of the soul in 
 herself alone, in which " the soul in herself " beholds " the realities of 
 things," that philosophy (in Plato's sense of the word) aims while 
 the soul is still cumbered with the body. " The lovers of knowledge," 
 says Socrates, " are conscious that the soul was simply fastened and 
 glued to the body — until philosophy received her, she could only view 
 real existence through the bars of a prison, not in and through 
 herself ; she was wallowing in the mire of every sort of ignorance, and 
 by reason of lust had become the principal accomplice in her own 
 captivity. This was her original state ; and then, as I was saying, and 
 as the lovers of knowledge are well aware, philosophy, seeing how 
 terrible was her confinement, of which she was to herself the cause, 
 received and gently comforted her and sought to release her, pointing 
 out that the eye and the ear and the other senses are full of deception, 
 and persuading her to retire from them, and abstain from all but the 
 necessary use of them, and be gathered up and collected into herself, 
 bidding her trust in herself and her own pure apprehension of pure 
 existence, and to mistrust whatever comes to her through other 
 channels and is subject to variation; for such things are visible and 
 tangible, but what she sees in her own nature is intelligible and 
 invisible. And the soul of the true philosopher thinks that she ought 
 not to resist this deliverance, and therefore abstains from pleasures 
 and desires and pains and fears, as far as she is able;" — delivering 
 herself thus from the dominion of pleasure and pain, because " each 
 pleasure and pain is a sort of nail which nails and rivets the soul to 
 the body, until she becomes like the body, and believes that to be true 
 which the body affirms to be true; and from agreeing with the body 
 and having the same delights she is obliged to have the same habits- 
 and haunts, and is not likely ever to be pure at her departure to the 
 world below, but is always infected by the body ; and so she sinks into 
 another body, and there germinates and grows, and has, therefore, no 
 
 1 79 CD. 
 
 229 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 part in the communion of the divine and pure and simple/'^ So that 
 philosophy, while we remain upon the earth, is a study and practice of 
 death. But that the long purification and deliverance may be con- 
 summated, the body must be more than subdued ; it must die, so that 
 the soul may take up her dwelling altogether " in her own place alone." 
 And hence, when the day of death comes, the true lover of wisdom will 
 depart with joy, having " a firm conviction that there, and there only, 
 he can find wisdom in her purity."^ The soul " which is pure at 
 departing, and draws after her no bodily taint, having never volun- 
 tarily during life had connexion with the body, which she is ever 
 avoiding, herself gathered into herself ;" — such a soul cannot " at her 
 departure from the body be scattered and blown away by the winds 
 and be nowhere and nothing," but " herself invisible, departs to the 
 invisible world — to the divine and immortal and rational: thither 
 arriving, she is secure of bliss and is released from the error and folly 
 of men, their fears and wild passions and all other human ills, and 
 for ever dwells, as they say of the initiated, in company with the 
 gods."^ While, on the other hand, the virtues wliich do not measure 
 up to this level — the " demotic " virtues, the virtues of men who live 
 in the sphere of sense and time, and are busy with the matters of this 
 phantom world, and are unguided by the vision of that Good which is 
 the source and form of all virtue: — these cannot properly be called 
 virtues at all. The courage of such men is but another form of fear. 
 They face one evil because they fear a greater; they are courageous 
 because they are cowards. Similarly their utilitarian temperance is 
 intemperance; they abstain from one pleasure because they desire 
 another, overcoming pleasure in one form because they themselves are 
 overcome by it in some other form.* They do not know that " the 
 exchange of one fear or pleasure or pain for another fear or pleasure 
 or pain, and of the greater for the less, as if they were coins, is not 
 the exchange of virtue."^ Wisdom — i.e., the apprehension of the Idea 
 of Good and the viewing of things in its light — is the " one true coin 
 for which all things ought to be exchanged " ; and the virtue which is 
 
 1 82 E, 83. 2 68 B. 3 80 E, 84 B, 81A. 
 
 4 68 DE. 5 69 A. 
 
 230 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 made up of the goods of the earth, severed from wisdom and exchanged 
 with one another, "is a shadow of virtue only, nor is there any 
 freedom or health or truth in her."^ 
 
 To sum up, then, what we have so far seen, we must say that the 
 two tendencies which have been the main currents in the greater 
 history of philosophy and of religion, are both present in Plato : the 
 synthetic, which in philosophy gives rise to what we have called 
 Concrete Idealism; and the abstract or negative, whose partial 
 triumph gives rise to Abstract Idealism, but whose complete domina- 
 tion in a profoundly religious mind is the source of Mysticism. But 
 we must also note the relation in Plato of these two tendencies. The 
 tragedy of the world lay close at his heart; and the most impressive 
 thing in all his writing is his prophesying against the world. But in 
 spite of that, we must make no mistake about the fact that even in his 
 earlier and middle years his deepest loyalty is with the s}Tithetic 
 tendency. True, its victory is in this period never complete. Again 
 and again Plato draws the line sharp and hard between science and 
 opinion, between demotic morality and true virtue, between the soul 
 in the body and the soul freed from the body, between the real world 
 and the cavern of our sense-experience; again and again with sad 
 earnestness he exhorts men to practise death that they may truly live, 
 and to fly from the world to God. But with all this, the deepest 
 impulse of his philosophy is toward an organic connexion of our 
 present life, and of the system of things in which it is lived, with the 
 ultimate principle of reality. This, of course, is a question of the final 
 impression which the whole body of his writings in the periods in 
 question makes upon the reader. But special reference may be made 
 to two subjects which already have taken pre-eminent place in his 
 thought: the state as the greatest of human institutions for the 
 concrete realisation of the Good, by the bringing of men's lives out 
 of confusion, out of self-willed individualism, into an order which 
 reflects the order of eternal reality ; and still more.- education as that 
 
 1 69 B. 
 
 2 still viore .-—because with regard to the state, the facts of the world have driven him 
 partly to despair (Republic, 592) ; so that even in its culmination as a theory of the state, 
 his Idealism is touched by the breath of the theologia nefirafiro— touched by its breath, not 
 
 231 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 in which men, not by suppression of the normal energies and capacities 
 of their nature, but by the development and discipline of these, are 
 led throughout the whole of life in knowledge and in character toward 
 the Good. 
 
 But Plato, lover of truth for its own sake, and master of that 
 dialectic method which criticises its own conclusion, and brings to 
 light the further problems implicit in it, and corrects or enlarges it 
 until those problems are adequately solved, would have been some- 
 thing less than himself if he had left his philosophy in this strife of 
 tendencies. Plato was a man to look his own problems in the face ; and 
 therefore the passage of years brought to his Idealism a steady growth 
 in thoroughness, in self-consistency, in mastery of its materials. He 
 felt that in some genuine sense everything which you cannot decisively 
 reject as mere unreality, mere void nothingness, must be organically 
 connected with the supreme principle of reality; indeed, that is the 
 cardinal instinct of all philosophy, and its presence in Plato compelled 
 him to face the problems that arose from his tendency to separate the 
 world of pure reason and perfect goodness from the world of sensible 
 and temporal experience. With these problems he dealt in his later 
 period, which might almost be described by saying that in it the 
 conflict between the two types of Idealism comes explicitly forward, 
 and is settled, so far as was possible to him, in favour of the Concrete. 
 
 III. 
 
 But this brings us to the third step of our work. "We have to 
 consider that later thought of Plato in which he apparently makes a 
 new start, but really carries directly forward the development of his 
 Idealism. In approaching this it is necessary to have in mind the 
 exact situation in which at the beginning of that later thought he finds 
 himself. Hence it is advisable to note again, first, the problems which 
 remain for him from his earlier thinking; secondly, the positive 
 
 possessed by it, for the cause of his despair about the state lies in the folly of men, not in 
 any incommunicability of the Good. (Compare as a striking, though somewhat poetical, 
 instance of a feeling for the organic connexion of civil society with the " pattern laid up 
 in heaven," the assertion placed in the mouth of Socrates in the Crito of the kinship of the 
 Athenian laws with those of the world below.) 
 
 232 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 insight wliicli he carries forward with him and upon which any- 
 advance in solving those problems must be based. The problems, as 
 already we have seen, are two. (1) There is a problem connected with 
 the conception of the highest principle. If the Good is to be regarded 
 as the creative energy and organising principle of the universe, must 
 it not be conceived as something more than simply the Good ; namely, 
 as self-conscious and self-determining spirit, which constitutes the 
 world in view of an end — the Good — and shapes its structure and 
 process according to definite types and fixed laws — the Ideas? 
 (2) There is the problem raised for him by that negative aspect of his 
 system which we have just been considering — his tendency to exclude 
 from genuine reality the sense-world and the human experiences and 
 activities connected positively with it. Or, putting these two problems 
 together, we may say, as was noted above, that what Plato has to face 
 is a double incompleteness in his Idealism : an incompleteness at the 
 top — i.e., in its conception of the highest principle; and a correspond- 
 ing incompleteness at the bottom — the inability to comprehend the 
 sense-world as an organ and manifestation of the highest reality. 
 Secondly, with regard to the positive insight which Plato carries 
 forward from his earlier Idealism to his later, what we have to 
 remember is this. — If you have been led to draw a line through the 
 universe, and to say that what is above this line is truly real, while 
 what is below it is unreal, or only partly real, that mistake is not 
 necessarily a fatal one. For if, with regard to what you do consider as 
 real, your method is the true one, the synthetic one, it is likely sooner 
 or later to break the barrier which you have erected around the field of 
 its operation, and to go forth to reclaim the banished parts of the 
 universe.^ And this is very nearly Plato's case. For, however prone 
 he occasionally may be to look upon the things of the sense-world with 
 the eyes of a Mystic, yet, as we have already seen, when he comes to 
 describe what to him is the genuine, the undoubtedly real, world, his 
 method is the thoroughly synthetic method of Concrete Idealism. 
 
 1 In which case your original distinction into real and unreal, substance and shadow, 
 is almost certain to pass over into the perfectly sound and necessary distinction (insisted 
 upon in our own day by Mr. Bradley) between the degrees of reality which things hare 
 accordingly as they are lower or higher manifestations, less or more adequate media, of 
 the supreme principle. Cf. Caird, Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, vol. 
 I., pp. 193-197 and 221-259. 
 
 233 
 
PLATO AND THE POUNDING OP IDEALISM 
 
 The real world, precisely in the name of which he sometimes denies 
 and denounces this present world, is to him no ineffable One. It is a 
 world rational and rationally organised. Rational, for it is made up 
 of rational forms or energies (the Ideas) and rational distinctions are 
 of its very essence. And rationally organised ; for it has one supreme 
 principle, the Good, which is a true universal of universals — no mere 
 abstracted common element, but an eternally creative energy, a truly 
 active and organising principle, the source and home and explanation 
 of all the other Ideas, of all their differences, of all their determina- 
 tions, and therefore of their whole reality and their whole knowable- 
 ness. Thus we may say fairly that the central battle of Idealism is 
 already won in the thinking of Plato's middle period. In fact, we 
 have seen reason for saying more than that. As a special evidence of 
 how that central victory extends itself along the whole line, we have 
 had to mark the way in which Plato causes the interests of the ideal 
 world to come over and prevail concretely in this, in two great realms, 
 education and the state: education as advancing through orderly 
 stages toward the apprehension of the Idea of Good; the state as the 
 human institute for its concrete realisation. 
 
 We have to turn, then, to the last stage of Plato's thought. In it, 
 as was noted above, we seem to come upon something new. The Ideal 
 Theory seems to have fallen into the background, and a new inquiry to 
 have been made into the constitution of the world, which leads directly 
 to the conclusion that the world is a work of active intelligence. 
 Really, however, the advance is continuous, as we shall see if we follow 
 its own line of movement. Let us consider, then, somewhat more fully 
 just what the problem is, which arises for Plato out of the dualism, 
 the two-world theory, toward which the facts of life had in earlier 
 years driven him. The problem raised by the separation of the two 
 worlds — whether the antithesis be left sharp and hard, or modified 
 into something not far from organic connexion — is twofold.^ First, 
 how came this present world into existence at all ? Reality is with the 
 other world. Then this world, if it has any reality at all, must have 
 its source in that world. But why does that world, complete in its 
 
 1 A twofold problem which, it may be observed in passing, haa haunted theology even 
 more than philosophy. 
 
 234 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 eternal perfectiou, go beyond itself, to constitute another world, its 
 counterpart or its shadow ? What is there in its nature which impels 
 it thus beyond itself, and leads it to communicate itself, and drives it 
 to the energies of creation? Secondly, if that world is the source of 
 this, how is it that this world departs so far from the nature of that ? 
 how is it that that world has given rise to something so much unlike 
 itself — nay, so contradictory to itself? How from that world of 
 reason and purity, of blessedness and perfection, has this scene of 
 imperfection and pain, of sorrow and an imprisoning bod}^, of folly 
 and madness, arisen ? It is with problems of which the foregoing is a 
 statement in modern dress, that Plato deals in the great group of 
 dialogues — Parmenides, Sophist, Statesman, and especially Philehus 
 and Timaeus — in which his philosophy, laying aside at times its 
 charm of expression and showing itself grey with the labour of thought, 
 reaches its height of metaphysical comprehension. 
 
 First, then, how came this present world into being at all? How 
 came the world of Ideas to go outside of itself, to go beyond its own 
 completeness and perfection and become the source of another world? 
 Here it may be advisable to pass at once to Plato's final answer, then 
 to come back and follow the argument by which he leads up to it. 
 That final answer is given by an interpretation (seen in preparation in 
 earlier writings) of the character of that supreme principle of the real 
 world, which formerly Plato had called the Idea of Good. It — or 
 following Plato's example in the Timaeus let us say, he — " was good, 
 and the good can never have any jealousy of anything. And being free 
 from jealousy, he desired that all things should be as like himself as 
 they could be."^ That is to say, it is of the very nature of the supreme 
 principle to communicate itself, to impart to others its own being and 
 character and blessedness; so that the nature itself of the supreme 
 principle is the ground of the existence of beings, other than the 
 supreme principle, and yet sharing in its nature and, therefore, in its 
 reality. 
 
 So far as this conclusion prevails — we shall see presently that 
 Plato was not able to carry it out into all its consequences — it is 
 Concrete Idealism. The advance to it which we have now to consider, 
 
 1 Timaeua, 29 E. 
 235 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 was a long one. Its central conception, that the supreme reality does 
 not stand apart, but is the fundamental energy of the whole process 
 of the world, and that it is so because by its very nature as goodness 
 it is essentially self -communicative — a conception with which Plato, 
 myths or no myths, is thoroughly in earnest — is already present in the 
 comparison of the Idea of Good to the sun^ in the latest-written section 
 of the Republic; and also in the criticism of Anaxagoras in the 
 Phaedor- But the dialectical conquest of it was no quick or easy 
 process. It is worked out in that group of dialogues which, logically 
 and perhaps chronologically, opens with the Parmenides and closes 
 with the Philehus. This great piece of dialectic has two sides; a side 
 polemic, a side constructive. 
 
 The polemic side — with an occasional pause to crush the head of 
 materialism or sensationalism, when these happen to cross the path — 
 is directed in the main against that great argument of Parmenides 
 which shuts reality up into motionlessness for ever. The spirit of 
 Parmenides was very congenial to Plato, and wrote itself deeply upon 
 certain aspects of his earlier Idealism ; " my father Parmenides," 
 Plato might have said as appropriately as the Eleatic stranger of the 
 Sophist.^ Yet the two systems are at bottom completely irreconcilable. 
 If the argument of Parmenides could have secured full right of way 
 in Plato's mind^ it must have shattered any form whatever of Idealism ; 
 must (considering the religiousness of Plato) have led him at last to a 
 complete Mysticism. So that even the earlier form of Plato's Ideal- 
 ism was built up in the face of Parmenides. And if there was to be 
 any development of that earlier Idealism, it must make its way, so to 
 speak, over the dead body of the Parmenidean argument. The 
 argument of Parmenides, then, Plato shatters in the one way possible ; 
 namely, by attacking it at its source and taking away that radical 
 disjunction of being and non-being, of is and is not, upon which it is 
 based. This is done by showing that non-being exists and is a kind 
 of being; the meaning of which, in modern speech, is, that reality is 
 not an indivisible one, but that there are differences and distinctions 
 
 ^ Bepublic, 506 E-509. 2 97.99, especially 99. 3 241 E. 
 
 236 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 within it; that reality, so far from being an nndifferentiated and 
 ineffable unity, is a rational system.^ 
 
 This having been done, the way is open for the constructive 
 advance. By a very keen argument (which, it is worthy of note, 
 proceeds explicitly from the question of the possibility of knowledge) 
 it is shown that in true being there is motion — " motion and life and 
 soul and mind." True being is not " devoid of life and mind." It 
 does not " exist in awful meaninglessness, an everlasting fixture." And 
 having mind and life, it must " have a soul which contains them." 
 And, furthermore, having life and mind and soul, it cannot " remain 
 absolutely unmoved."^ In the Philehus, the view thus prepared for 
 comes to pointed expression. Mind is " king of heaven and earth." 
 It " orders all things " ; for " all this which they call the universe " is 
 not " left to the guidance of unreason and chance medley," but is " as 
 our fathers have declared, ordered and governed by a marvellous 
 intelligence and wisdom."^ 
 
 Thus, then, the real world comes explicitly to be conceived as a 
 world of rational activity, and its highest principle as at once the 
 supreme intelligence and supreme energy of the universe, acting in 
 " creation " and in " providence "* according to its nature as reason 
 and goodness. And with this the view of the Timaeus, stated above — 
 the view that the perfect God, being good, is led by His nature to 
 communicate Himself and so becomes the author and father of the 
 universe — is made possible, not merely as a prophetic insight, but as 
 the culmination of a reasoned Idealism. 
 
 So far, we have been following Plato's own line of advance. But 
 at this point let us stop to consider how far the problems left over 
 from the earlier Idealism have been met in the argument Just outlined. 
 Those problems, it will be remembered, were two : one, so to speak, at 
 the top, the other at the bottom, of the Platonic Idealism; one con- 
 nected with the conception of the highest principle, the other with the 
 interpretation of the sense-world. And the latter breaks again into 
 two : ( 1 ) Upon the two-world theory, how do you account for this 
 
 1 Sophist, 241 E— 260. It is interesting to compare Hegel's Logic. 
 2 Sophist, 246-249. 3 Philebus, 28. •» Timaevs, 30. 
 
 237 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 present world at all — why, when the real world is eternally perfect and 
 complete, did it go out of itself to give rise to another world? 
 (2) WTien the real world became the source of this, why did it appar- 
 ently contradict its own nature, giving rise to a world so different from 
 iself, so imperfect and so evil ? It will be seen that the argument which 
 we have just been following, brings forward — though it does not with 
 any fulness articulate — the conceptions necessary for solving the first of 
 these problems and the first part of the second. And it furnishes a 
 basis for dealing with the remaining part of the second. For such a 
 view makes it possible to regard this present world as in organic con- 
 nexion with the highest principle of reality. When that principle is 
 viewed as active and self-determining reason, and as a goodness which 
 cannot remain in itself, but is led by its very nature to go out of itself 
 and communicate itself, it is scarcely possible to regard this present 
 world, and all worlds, — " all time and all existence " — as anything 
 other than as the field of its activity, the process in which it fulfils its 
 own nature by communicating itself and so realising the Good. And 
 such a view, if he could clearly have entered into it, would have 
 enabled Plato to look with eyes of faith upon those aspects of the 
 present world which so grieved him. Its imperfection, its struggle 
 and unrest, its tragedies of unrewarded toil, of baffled devotion, of 
 defeated righteousness, would have been accepted by him as elements 
 in a process in which a wisdom, too vast for us to understand its 
 separate steps, is fulfilling itself. 
 
 Does Plato, then, take this last step, which would have made his 
 Idealism as thoroughly concrete as is possible to human insight ? The 
 anwer falls into two parts. 
 
 First, he took up positions which look toward it, which, one might 
 almost say, contain it implicitly. In the Philehus, for instance, he 
 puts the capstone upon the argument which was outlined a moment 
 ago by applying it directly to man's life. The characters of the 
 divinely organised universe — Beauty, Symmetry, TrutW — are to be 
 adopted by man as the characters to be realised in his own nature and 
 life. But the most striking instance of all is furnished by a work of 
 Plato's which is described sometimes as a falling from faith, as a 
 
 1 PhilebuN, 65 A. 
 
 238 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 forsaking of the height for the lowland, or even as an example of the 
 hollowness of philosophy which fails its disciples at the last; but 
 which in truth is one of the most nobly pathetic chapters in the 
 spiritual history of man. For that is what we must say of the Laws 
 when we consider the position it holds in Plato's life. Much earlier, 
 as was pointed out above, the essential concreteness in the temper of 
 his Idealism manifested itself in his devotion to the state. It had been 
 the greatest work of his middle life to set before his disciples a picture 
 of the state as it should be. Then, in later years, endeavouring to make 
 his presentation of the true polity more concrete, he entered upon that 
 magnificently conceived design which would have given an almost epic 
 completeness to the Republic, but of which the Timaeus is the only 
 finished part. The ideal state he had described. Now he would show 
 it taking its place and discharging its function in the world, holding 
 its own in struggle, and showing " by the greatness of its actions and 
 the magnanimity of its words in dealing with other cities a result 
 worthy of its training and education."^ To this end, Timaeus was to 
 begin with the generation of the world and carry its story down to the 
 creation of man ; and then Critias was to receive the men thus created, 
 and show the place and life and work of the ideal state by describing 
 how an Athens, which once was, maintained the freedom of the whole 
 of Europe and Asia, when a mighty power from the Atlantic made an 
 expedition against them.^ But even this was not enough. The desire 
 to bring the ideal into some more feasible connexion with the life and 
 ordinary nature of man, led to another step; and that step was the 
 Laws. At the end of his life, when we should have expected his con- 
 nexion with the world to be growing fainter, his aloofness from it to 
 be increasing — precisely then it was that Plato, seeking at least some 
 measure of the effective operation of the heavenly ideal in the affairs 
 of the earth, bent his sublime head, and turned to the daily life and 
 unaspiring minds of men, and outlined — in a collection of sketches 
 and fragments edited by some later hand — a " second-best " constitu- 
 tion, more applicable, as he thought, to the life of this present world 
 than that polity which in earlier days he had sketched in strict 
 
 1 Ti7naeus, 19 C. 2 Timaeus, 27A, 24 E. 
 
 239 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 following of the pattern laid up in heaven. The endeavour of the 
 Laws is no apostasy from Idealism; it represents no loss of belief in 
 the heavenly pattern. But it is a recognition that there is a difference 
 between heaven and earth, between the eternal ideal and the present 
 state of human affairs ; that, therefore, it is vain to expect in one step 
 and by one single stroke to realise the order of heaven in the life of the 
 earth; for the ideal realises itself through many intermediate stages, 
 and the only way to the heavenly glory is by making the best of this 
 present twilight. Indeed, Plato almost reverses what we commonly 
 take to be the normal relation of the abstract and the concrete theology 
 in a man's life. We usually expect that a man will begin life with 
 delight in this world, with thoughtless participation in its interests 
 and enjoyments; and then, when he grows old and the graver and 
 longer interests of the soul enforce their claim, that he will look away 
 from this world toward heaven. But Plato belongs to another order 
 of men. These, by native purity and loftiness of mind, aided, it may 
 be, by some hopeless sorrow, are brought early in life to feel that 
 "whatsoever is not God, is nothing, and ought to be accounted as 
 nothing."^ And from this they draw the great practical lessons, 
 de neglectu omnis creaturae, ut Creator possit inveniri, and de se 
 tenendo tamquam exule et peregrino super terram} But as life goes 
 on, and reflexion deepens, and religion joins hands with reason, and 
 the world's great need forces itself upon the mature soul, more and 
 more they turn, with a certain grave and wistful devotion, to take 
 their places in the world and to give their hearts to its labours, its 
 interests, its causes. And Plato, though there was no statesman's post 
 for him at Syracuse or Athens, found at last his place. It has already 
 been noted how his defeated passion for the state answers to the 
 defeated political hope of Wordsworth. The parallelism holds to the 
 end. Each found, for the problem of his practical life and personal 
 activity, the same solution ; of each, one can say in Windelband's fine 
 expression,^ seine That ist seine Lehre. For each, the defeated passion 
 in him, and the mighty thoughts that had grown in the soil of that 
 
 1 De Tmitatione Christi, III. 31. 2. 
 
 2 Ibid. III. 31, and I. 17. 1. 
 
 3 Platon, S. 29. 
 
 240 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 defeat, found expression by voice and pen; and, iinding expression, 
 entered upon a field of influence greater than ever was given to 
 statesman entrusted with the framing of constitutions, or the 
 administering of affairs, in Sicily or Athens or Paris ; going forth to 
 be a guide and an inspiration, while the world of men continues, to 
 the highest hearts in every land. 
 
 There are, then, in Plato's later thought— especially in his 
 practical interest, his interest in education and the state — positions 
 which imply the organic connexion of this present world, marred 
 though it is by evil and unrest, with the final principle of reality. 
 But, as was indicated above, this is only part of the answer to the 
 question now l^efore us. The other part is, that with regard to the 
 world of sensible experience, this implicit view is never brought to 
 clear articulation; on the contrary, in Plato's express doctrine the 
 opposite view prevails to the end. 
 
 In the last analysis, the cause of this failure clearly and unwaver- 
 ingly to view the world of sensible experience as a manifestation of the 
 supreme principle of reality lies in the fact that Plato's latest 
 conception of that supreme principle never quite comes to its 
 rights. If he had been able clearly to articulate his conception of 
 that principle as active intelligence and self-imparting goodness 
 — in one word, as self-determining and self-communicating spirit — he 
 would have been compelled to view the sense-world, and our experience 
 in it, as a stage of the process in which that principle is fulfilling its 
 nature and realising its purpose. But only in many ages, only in 
 many leaders of the thought of the ages, could so great a work be 
 done. To no one man was so great an intellectual achievement 
 possible. Plato, we may say, hit the core of the solution ; but it was 
 scarcely given to him to go back over all his system, and in the light 
 of that central truth to work it into a thoroughly articulated view of 
 the world. 
 
 For one thing, ancient thought had not clearly apprehended the 
 nature of self-consciousness or spirit as it is in man himself. When 
 you have seen that the self -consciousness, which is man, in a sense 
 constitutes its own objects and so " makes nature " ; and that in doing 
 this it exercises a synthetic power — is an active principle of unity in 
 
 17 241 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 diversity, linking many facts into one experience and thus constituting 
 both the facts which make up the experience and tlie experience which 
 is made up of the facts : — then you can advance with secure footing to 
 the view that the principle of union implied in the existence of the 
 universe is a self-conscious and self-determining spirit which consti- 
 tutes and links into one system the apparently conflicting facts of the 
 world, and through many stages wherein men suffer, and are blessed, 
 and at last become truly themselves, realises its purpose. But an 
 insight into the synthetic or creative energy of self-consciousness as 
 it is in man never became the explicit point of departure for Hellenic 
 thought.^ Hence, while it was possible for Plato to come to the belief 
 that mind is " king of heaven and earth " and " orders all things," it 
 was scarcely possible for him to articulate that belief into a thoroughly 
 organic view of the world. 
 
 We shall best see this, however, by turning to Plato's own treat- 
 ment of the problem now before us. Granted — so that problem stands 
 — that the supreme principle of the real world, being good, must go 
 beyond itself to communicate its nature and impart its blessedness, 
 why must the created world be one of imperfection? Why is it not 
 like its source in perfection and blessedness? Has not the supreme 
 principle, in going out into such a world, contradicted rather than 
 obeyed its own nature? 
 
 The part of Plato's theory which corresponds to this question may 
 be put in this way. — When the supreme principle goes out of itself 
 upon that creative activity, into what region does it go forth? Mani- 
 festly into the region of non-being. So that the created world is a 
 mixture of being and non-being. That is to say, it is a world of 
 becoming, and therefore of imperfection, and of all the evils of 
 imperfection. 
 
 But such an answer has two possible meanings. Upon the first 
 meaning, the total explanation of this going out into the region of 
 non-being and creating there a world which is a mixture of being and 
 non-being and is, therefore, subject to imperfection and evil, lies in 
 the divine nature itself which thus goes forth. In other words, it is 
 affirmed that the supreme principle must begin its creative work with 
 
 I Windelband, op. cit. S. 74. 
 
 242 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 something less than perfection — something less than completely 
 realised " Being '' — in order to achieve its purpose at all. If it is to 
 fulfil its purpose, that communication of itself to other beings to 
 which it is impelled by its nature, must not be a creation of perfection 
 by perfection. For in that case the perfection of the created beings 
 would be, after all, a sort of sham battle; would be a sort of gaining 
 the goal without running. To lay aside metaphor, it would be only an 
 apparent perfection, being radically flawed by the fact that those who 
 have it, were absolutely passive in the acquiring of it. If it is really 
 to be their perfection, and not just a divine perfection laid upon them 
 from the outside, they must themselves conquer it; they must them- 
 selves be active, must themselves labour and suffer, in the process of 
 its attainment. They must, therefore, begin not at the top of the 
 scale, but somewhere lower. In Plato's language they must begin out 
 in the region of non-being. Beginning there, they must work their 
 way toward true and pure being, by a process in which their own 
 labour and struggle is answered by ever increasing impartations to 
 them of the divine nature. 
 
 This, then, is one possible meaning of the view that creation is a 
 process in which being goes out into the region of non-being; and 
 that the world which arises is consequently a mixtiire of being and 
 non-being, an order, that is to say, of becoming and imperfection. 
 And such a view is Concrete Idealism. For it sees this world of time 
 in organic connexion with the realities of eternity. It sees this present 
 order of things, and our human struggle upward through its imper- 
 fection and evil, as a process in which, by no sham battle, but by most 
 real achievement, the divine nature fulfils itself by imparting itself to 
 other beings. 
 
 But upon the other meaning, the explanation of the fact that the 
 created world is blended of being and non-being is made. to lie, not in 
 the essential nature and conditions of the divine activity in creation, 
 but in the nature of the region of non-being into which that activity 
 goes forth. Non-being, that is to say, really is viewed as a second 
 eternal principle of things. It is regarded as having a nature of its 
 own, power of its own; as being able, by its stubbornness, its recalci- 
 trancy, its unsuitability to the divine forms which are to be impressed 
 
 243 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 upon it, to thwart or impede the creative energies of the divine nature, 
 and so to diminish the perfection of the created world. And upon the 
 whole it is to this view that Plato is driven. His general description 
 of non-being — that it is a mere potentiality of taking on form, an 
 incomprehensible something which receives all things ;i his particular 
 description of it is empty space'^ :— these pass over into statements 
 which imply that non-being is, somehow, more than a mere empty field 
 in which being can work, more, that is to say, than the mere possi- 
 bility of creation. It has a power of positive resistance in it; this is 
 explicitly called Necessity,^ and is viewed as a co-eternal principle able 
 to limit and hinder the purely rational creative energy, so that the 
 resultant world is not purely rational, but is a mixture of sense and 
 reason.* 
 
 So that to the end there is a measure of dualism in Plato. Indeed, 
 for him there is no escape from it. For, on the one hand, he was 
 acutely conscious of the imperfection of the world. And, on the other 
 hand, in his day it was not possible for human thought to conceive the 
 intelligent and self-communicating goodness, which is the supreme 
 principle of reality, as fulfilling its purpose of self-communication by a 
 process which begins with something lower than its own eternal 
 perfection; by a process, that is to say, which, to the created beings 
 standing in it, is one of evolution and of the struggle and suffering 
 that evolution involves. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Plato's philosophy, then, was one that laboured toward concrete- 
 ness; laboured toward a conception of the highest reality as a mind 
 perfect in reason and goodness, self-communicating, and therefore the 
 author and father of a universe. But to the end that effort is in part 
 defeated. Plato's acute sense of the evil in the present world makes 
 him feel that it is deeply sundered from genuine reality; while, on 
 the other hand, he has not entered sufficiently into possession of his 
 
 1 Timaeus, 51 A. '^ Timaetis, 52. 3 Timacus, 48 A, 56 C. 
 
 ■* Timaeus, 44 (cf. Phacdo, 6(J). 
 
 244 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 highest conception to be enabled — or rather, to be compelled — to view 
 the supreme mind as a synthetic principle realising itself through the 
 total process of the world. 
 
 So tliat a measure of the negative theology is in him to the end. 
 And it makes him grave and austere. We have already seen how in 
 the very years when his hold upon life and his delight in its greater 
 energies must have been at the height, a certain stern and sad and 
 uncompromising aloofness marked even his devotion to the state. 
 Scarcely can the true statesman bear rule in the city of his birth. The 
 " city which is his own " has its pattern laid up in heaven. It he will 
 seek to behold, and in accordance with it will organise his life. But 
 " with any other city he will have nothing to do.''^ And something of 
 this temper remained in him throughout life. Hardly can he reconcile 
 himself to the world. To the last it stands at the bar of his thought 
 as a product of perfect reason, but perfect reason working in an alien 
 realm and upon alien material and prevented thereby from fulfilling 
 itself; while the religious spirit in him feels instinctively that the 
 reality with which it longs to be at one is something far other than this 
 world, something far removed from the whole order of things, the 
 whole system of life, which has its being in space and time. And so 
 to the end he continues to speak in that characteristic note and tone 
 which in all ages has drawn to him high and pure hearts to whom the 
 penetrating insights of his science were a closed book — the note and 
 tone of the man who, having lifted up his mind to the things that are 
 eternal, prophesies against the world, and exhorts men to fly from the 
 world to God. 
 
 Thus the Greek spirit was transformed in Plato. Its mastery over 
 the resources of the present life, its habitual delight in the activities 
 of the day that now is, its quick susceptibility to every interesting 
 thing and every beautiful form that the world affords, its proneness 
 to lose itself in these and make the most of them before the evil days 
 come in which the pale shade has no more delight in life : — all this was 
 in Plato, but in him as something that stands rebuked. Always he 
 had disliked the volatility and fickleness of the Athenians of his day; 
 always his sympathy had been with the grave strength of the men of 
 
 1 Repnbtir, 592. 
 245 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 Marathon or the austere discipline of Sparta. And upon all this there 
 had supervened an infinitely prof ounder spiritual power, against which 
 his science made gradual headway, but which it could never whoUy 
 overcome — the tendency of a pure and high mind, and of a heart 
 religious with the religion of eternity, toward the absolute condemna- 
 tion of the things of the world in the light of a vision of the heavenly 
 perfection. 
 
 When the genius of Greece still was young, and interpreted the 
 life of nature in accordance with the life of its own soul, it shaped out 
 in legend an unintentional prophecy of this transformation which it 
 was itself to undergo when its doom was descending upon it, and in 
 the soul of its greatest son it turned itself toward the things of 
 eternity. The daughter of the earth-goddess led the life of a happy 
 child, playing among the flowers in the meadows of Enna, lost in 
 momentary pleasures, absorbed in momentary griefs. Very direct and 
 simple was the unity of her mind with the beauty that surrounded her, 
 and with her home the kindly earth ; and her heart was very close to 
 her mother's heart — for there was no barrier of knowledge or of vision 
 or of experience that could come between. But when Hades suddenly 
 had taken her to him, and set her at his side on the inexorable throne 
 from which the issues of all things mortal are seen; and when 
 Demeter, making desolate the earth, had compelled the restitution of 
 her child for the happier seasons of the year: — she who returned to 
 Demeter's arms was not she who had gone. Persephone it was; but 
 no longer the happy child of the Sicilian meadows. A stately queen 
 she came, in her eyes the unfathomable wisdom of the kingdom of the 
 dead, in her bearing the majesty of the dark king her mate, at her 
 heart a grave astonishment as she looked upon the hapless creatures, 
 her mother's friends, the men who till the earth, and struggle for 
 things that pass away, and mourn as the objects of their foolish quests 
 perish in their hands. Never while the system of the universe endured 
 could Demeter have her child again. Henceforward she must walk 
 through all her genial summers, companioning, not with a happy 
 child, but with the majestic woman whose eyes, " imperial, disimpas- 
 sioned," had gazed upon uttermost mysteries and ultimate doom. 
 And yei it may be that Demeter, having thus undergone her fate, came 
 
 246 
 
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 
 
 at last to find it good ; for it may be that the nature of the Immortal 
 Gods, unchangeable at her heart, caused her at last to rejoice with a 
 joy that had never been in her life before, when she found at her side 
 no longer the child that played in Enna and by night lay close to her 
 mother's heart, but a companion god, thmking godlike thoughts, 
 achieving godlike things, queen of the world of the dead. 
 
 The genius of Greece might in this almost have been speaking of 
 itself. The philosophy of Plato is the Persephone's journey of the 
 Greek spirit. In him it looked upon ultimate things, and so was led 
 to regard with other eyes the life of the earth. And undoubtedly the 
 " hidden wisdom of the world " was in this. For while it is true that 
 the beginnings of human life, and its divinely appointed end, are in 
 organic connexion, it is also true that the end is far from the begin- 
 ning; a great journey, a mighty discipline, lie between. Earth and 
 heaven are parts of one universe; but earth is very different from 
 heaven, and the ascent is steep and long. The nature of the world, and 
 the meaning of life, can be known only in the light of the divinely 
 intended synthesis toward which the whole creation moves; but the 
 very vision of that synthesis is false vision unless it makes clear how 
 far apart the antithetic members of the system now stand, and how 
 rast must be the process that reconciles them in the life of the iiltimate 
 city of God. Hence the men of the negative theology, though they 
 have overstated their truth and made the difference between eternal 
 reality and our present life absolute and hopeless, yet by their very 
 insistence upon the difference itself, have done profound service to 
 humanity. We all need their lesson ; and need it the more that our 
 age is altogether disinclined to learn it. A few can learn it in the 
 school of the Mystics. But most of us, touched, if not controlled, by 
 the scientific mind of our day, and devoted practically to mastering the 
 things of the world, can learn it only as it takes on humane forms and 
 goes hand in hand with the synthetic spirit of science. And precisely 
 thus it is that it appears in the urbane but solemn teaching of the 
 great son of Ariston. 
 
 247 
 
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM 
 
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM. 
 
 I. 
 
 In considering the Idealism of Plato, we found that the positive 
 tendency was not able in him fully to reach its goal. Something of 
 the negative view remains with him to the end. In the world, he 
 continues to the last to feel, there is a necessity which is no manifesta- 
 tion of the divine nature, no aspect of the divine activity, but an alien 
 force able to prevent the divine nature, in its creation, from mani- 
 festing and realising itself as it does when it works in its own realm 
 where time and space are not. So that even in his. latest and ripest 
 thought he still tends to condemn the present world, not only ethically, 
 as an order of imperfection, but metaphysically, as not being truly real. 
 
 The ultimate cause of this incompleteness of the Platonic Idealism 
 we must call again to mind. We saw^ that the highest conception of 
 Idealism is the conception of self-determining and self-communicating 
 spirit as the principle of union, the constitutive and governing power, 
 of the universe. It is only through this conception that human 
 thought can comprehend the possibility of the organic connexion and 
 unity of all existences under one supreme principle in one completely 
 rational world ; only through it, that is to say, that Idealism becomes 
 truly concrete. And we also saw that the place where man gains that 
 conception of spirit is his own soul. When you have apprehended the 
 self-consciousness which is man, as an active principle of synthesis; 
 and have advanced to the thought of a self-conscious spirit, not 
 discursive and defective as in man, but eternal and perfect, as the 
 universal principle of synthesis; and have come thus to regard the 
 order of the universe as an order constituted by that eternally active 
 spirit, and the process of the universe as a teleological process in which 
 that spirit fulfils its nature and realises its purpose by continually 
 
 1 Supra, pp. 64-79. 
 251 
 
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM 
 
 increasing impartatious of itself : — then at last your Idealism is in its 
 gronnd-lines self-consistent and concrete. For then, without contra- 
 dicting your own view of the nature of ultimate reality, you can regard 
 this world, and the conditions of our life in it, as in organic connexion 
 with that ultimate reality. That eternal spirit, in going forth into a 
 world of space and time, is not going out into an alien realm, nor 
 working upon alien material, but is fulfilling its own nature; is acting 
 altogether from itself, has the sources of its action altogether within 
 itself. While from our side, this imperfect knowledge of ours is a 
 stage on the way to perfect knowledge, this half-intelligent demotic 
 morality a stage on the way to a morality that clearly apprehends the 
 divine idea which it is fulfilling. The whole process of the world, in 
 one word — with that imperfect knowledge of ours, and that demotic 
 morality, as factors in it — is a process in which, stage after stage, 
 through the struggle necessary to genuine achievement, the divine 
 purpose is fulfilling itself, the Good being realised. 
 
 Plato's whole interpretation of the world as rational is a call for 
 such a conception. In his treatment of the Idea of Good as the 
 organising principle of reality, as the principle of knowledge, as the 
 true end for man's endeavour, he is really struggling toward it. And 
 at last, in the dialogues of the final period, he brings it to explicit 
 utterance. But yet he does not enter into full possession of it as the 
 instrument for the rational comprehension of the world; one great 
 province or aspect of the world he to the end leaves outside. He is 
 unable to come to a view of the whole process of the universe as an 
 evolution, in and through which the supreme reason, by communicating 
 itself, realises its purpose; rather, he tends to the end to break the 
 continuity between the real world, as a realm of fixed and complete 
 perfections, and this present world, where nothing is, but everything 
 with imperfection and sorrow is becoming. There must be, he knows, 
 some connexion between the two. But he feels that the connexion is 
 not continuous, not fully organic. Something which is a radical 
 opponent of reality has intervened to break the continuity; and how 
 that can be, he explains by the supposition that when the divine nature 
 went forth upon its creative activity it worked in a region or upon a 
 medium which was alien and intractable, so that the divine nature 
 
 252 
 
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM 
 
 could not do itself justice in its own creation; or rather its creation 
 is not altogether its own, Xecessity or non-being having also a part 
 in it. 
 
 In Plato, then, if one may so speak, Idealism reached its goal, but 
 did not quite enter into possession of it. In this sense, Plato's was a 
 philosophy that called upon the later world to complete it. And, 
 whether with or without conscious reference to Plato, the later world 
 took up the task. Indeed, one might almost say that the history of 
 Idealism falls into two great chapters : the first, the story of its founda- 
 tion by Plato ; the second, the longer and more perplexed story of how 
 the philosophy thus founded entered into clearer possession of its own 
 highest conception, and so became better able to do justice to its view 
 of the world as an order of reason and of righteousness. 
 
 As soon as we pass the limits of the purely Greek age, that 
 second chapter in the history of Idealism becomes infinitely com- 
 plicated. First, indeed, there comes a complete triumph of the 
 opposite tendency — in the mystic theology- and religion which had 
 their most congenial home in Alexandria. And from that time on, 
 the whole breadth and complexity of the history of the world enters 
 into the history of Idealism. The rest of this book is to be given to 
 a consideration of two single points in that history, which, however 
 small a part they form of the total history, are yet sufficient 
 to show the breadth, the depth, the vitality, the complexity, of the 
 forces that worked there. But before we go on to that, a moment 
 should be given to the question which meets us upon the threshold 
 of what has just been called the '•' second chapter '" in the history of 
 idealistic philosophy. What advance in the direction of makmg 
 Idealism more concrete by further articulating its liighest conception, 
 was made within the age of Hellenic thought ? Without considering 
 this question, on the one hand the attempt to understand Plato is left 
 half-finished, while, on the other hand, factors that worked in the later 
 history are neglected. So that at least a brief reference must be 
 made here, first to Aristotle, secondly to the Stoics. 
 
 Aristotle, after insisting — in fact, over-insisting — upon the dualism 
 in Plato, strikes directly into the pathway which leads toward the 
 overcoming of it : or rather, which excludes it from the beginning. 
 
 253 
 
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM 
 
 For he comes to his constructive work with the insight that the real 
 world consists of formed matter; that is to say, of concrete individ- 
 uals. And concerning the individual things and beings which thus 
 make up the world., two facts are clear. First, the universals which 
 realise themselves in these individuals, do so only gradually. Individ- 
 ual things are not eternally or changelessly themselves. They come 
 to be themselves ; they pass from potentiality to actuality. Secondly, 
 the individual things of the world do not stand upon a level. They 
 form a scale of being, which is the system of the universe; a scale in 
 which each individual is actuality to those below it, but matter or 
 potentiality to those above. So that the universe is one great life or 
 process, in the survey of which we are led upward from mere matter 
 or potentiality to the realisation of ever higher universals. But 
 secondly, in this movement from potentiality to actuality — whether 
 we think merely of the formation of some individual thing, or of the 
 total movement which is the process of the universe — there is always a 
 priority of the actual to the potential. And that in knowledge, in 
 time, and in substance. In knowledge; for it is only by seeing the 
 actuality which a given thing may become that I am in position to 
 view that given thing as potentiality at all. In time; just as the 
 finished house in the architect's thought must precede the shaping of 
 the separate timbers and stones, or as the fully completed growth of 
 corn must precede the corn which is used as seed. In substance; 
 because the end which a process is to realise is the true governing 
 principle of the process; because, in other words, the r/Ao> of a 
 process is its true apj?/, its final cause its true efficient cause. 
 
 So far, then, we have seen ( 1 ) that the process of the universe is a 
 process of movement upward from potentiality to actuality; (2) that 
 to the existence and continuance of such a process, there is necessary 
 a priority of the actual to the potential. But these two insights at once 
 set a further problem : What is that actuality which is the prius of 
 this whole system — this whole continuous and eternal world-process — 
 of potentialities and actualities ? That prius must be eternal ; must be 
 self-active energy; must be actuality fully-realised and perfect — 
 actuality without any mixture of unactualised potentiality; must, in 
 a word, be an eternal and self-dependent principle, which, by its very 
 
 254 
 
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM 
 
 nature, energises perfectly and to the full height of being. But how 
 is such an energy to be conceived ? This Aristotle answers by his great 
 conception of self-consciousness. That fully-realised actuality which 
 is implied in the process of the world, is an eternal and completely 
 actualised reason which has itself for its object. 
 
 Here we seem on the very verge of the completion of Idealism, 
 with regard at least to the system of its conceptions. But there is 
 still a question to ask. That eternal self-consciousness, completely 
 actualised and perfect, having in its own activity its adequate object : — 
 will Aristotle describe it as the creative and informing energy of the 
 whole process of the world, so that the world is its thought, its 
 activity, its objective consciousness, and it, as at once transcendent 
 and immanent, is the source and the explanation, the home and the 
 end, of the world? 
 
 If Aristotle could have done this, he would have brought his great 
 argument to its consistent conclusion; would have done justice at 
 once to his principle that imiversal and particular must not be 
 separated, and to the call which his criticism of Plato makes upon 
 himself ; would have brought Greek thinking to its culmination in an 
 Idealism of thoroughly concrete type. And at times — for instance, in 
 his comparison of the order of the universe to the order of an army — 
 ' he does seem to put into express words precisely such a conclusion. 
 But though his whole argument calls for such a conclusion and 
 prepares the way for it, yet he cannot be said clearly and unwaver- 
 ingly to hold it. For his own view of what reason is in its perfect 
 exercise, lies in the way. Eeason, he sees, to be perfect, must supply 
 to itself its own object. If it receives its object from without, the 
 result must be, in the case of the supreme reason of the universe, the 
 intrusion of something non-rational. Of that supreme reason wg must, 
 therefore, believe that it is absolutely self-contained, supplying its own 
 object, depending on nothing from without. While reason as it is in 
 man must be regarded as a sort of combination in which an active 
 element, corresponding to the divine reason, somehow goes along with 
 a passive element which is connected with the body and its avenues of 
 sense. 
 
 The view that the self-consciousness which is the supreme reason 
 
 255 
 
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM 
 
 of the universe, must be complete within itself, supplying its own 
 object, is perfectly sound; might, in fact, be called an axiom. But 
 it does not forbid the view of Concrete or Positive Idealism that the 
 universe is the objective consciousness of God. Aristotle, however, 
 takes it precisely so as to forbid that conclusion. Like Plato, he is 
 acutely conscious of the imperfection of the world of our sense- 
 experience. It certainly must be excluded, he feels, from that system 
 of absolutely perfect reason which alone can form the objective 
 consciousness of God. So that in his conception of God, and of the 
 relation of the sense-world to Him, Aristotle is really more Platonic 
 than that very side of Plato against which his severest criticisms had 
 been directed. God's existence is perfect peace, exalted above all 
 change and becoming. He is active intelligence, but His activity 
 cannot be viewed as the carrying on of any such process of develop- 
 ment as the world, nor can His intelligence have a world of change 
 as its object. Eatlier His activity is one absolutely free from 
 potentiality or becoming, and His knowledge one which can have no 
 other object than Himself as perfect being and absolute truth. He is 
 altogether self-contained; His blessedness consists precisely in that 
 knowledge in which, as absolute subject. He has Himself as His own 
 perfect and adequate object : — a blessedness which would lose its 
 perfection, its peace, its exaltation above all change, if the divine 
 activity went forth into any such world as that of our daily struggle, 
 or the divine nature manifested itself in any process of becoming. 
 God in His blessedness is a universe by Himself, complete, eternal, 
 perfect. But the world of our experience, which the whole inquiry 
 was undertaken to explain, and which up to this point it did explain, 
 is here at one stroke severed from its own ultimate principle. Steadily 
 the great argument had been carried forward. It had been shown 
 that the process of development from potentiality to actuality which 
 is the world, involves as its necessary prius an actuality, eternal, self- 
 active, having in it no unrealised potentiality; and that this can be 
 conceived only as self-consciousness, only as a completely actualiscd 
 reason. But when it remains only to put the capstone upon the whole 
 argument by saying that God is the creative and constitutive energy 
 of the world, and that it is through His communication of Himself 
 
 256 
 
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM 
 
 that individual things have natures and capacities of their own, and so 
 are able to exist and energise and fill their places in the system of the 
 world : — precisely then it is that Aristotle, in the way which we have 
 just seen, is led to turn round upon his own argument, and to give it 
 a conclusion opposite to that which its whole previous course had 
 called for. 
 
 Thus, then, the Aristotelian votjGi?, vo?}aeoj5 — the conception of 
 the supreme principle of reality as self-consciousness — does not lead to 
 a view of the organic connexion of God, as the concrete and all- 
 inclusive universal, with the world, and with that process of develop- 
 ment which is the history of the world. Not, indeed, that Aristotle 
 evades the problem of the relation between God and the world. But 
 he tends to make it a relation altogether from the world's side. As a 
 lover moves toward a beautiful and beloved object, and is governed by 
 the impulse to organise his life according to its form and nature, so 
 the world moves toward God. In this sense, indeed, God, as the end 
 toward which the world moves and which it seeks to realise, is the 
 governing principle of the whole process of the world. But not 
 through any activity on the part of God Himself. His activity can 
 be no other than that of absolutely pure thought; and the object of 
 such thought can be nothing other than the perfect reason which is 
 Himself. In that contemplation He remains, perfect and unchange- 
 able in blessedness for ever.^ 
 
 Aristotle's view of what constitutes reason in its perfect exercise, 
 coupled with his sense of the imperfection of the world of our sensible 
 experience, was decisive, then, of the character of his Idealism. In 
 fact, his conception of reason was determinative, as the Master of 
 Balliol reminds us,^ in all the great departments of his thought. In 
 
 1 See, however, Caird, The Evolution of Theoloc/y in the Greek Philosophers, vol. II., 
 pp. 11-30. Between the two interpretations, there is no difference with regard to the 
 broad fact that Aristotle makes a virtually complete disjunction between God and the 
 present world of change and contingency. The point in dispute is whether the line is 
 drawn above or below the universals which are seeking to realise themselves in the 
 things of the world— above or below what Plato would have called the Ideas. In other 
 words, is the object of the divine thought, the universals as a system of absolutely pure 
 reason, lifted above all change and contingency, or is it God Himself in a sense which 
 excludes these ? On the former view, the step to an organic theory would be much easier. 
 But, whether easy or hard, Aristotle does not take it. In the present world he continues to 
 recognise a contingency with which neither God nor pure reason can have any connexion. 
 
 2 The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, vol. I., p. 287 seq. 
 18 257 
 
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM 
 
 his ethic it leads him to rank the Intellectual Virtues in which reason 
 deals purely with itself, above the Practical Virtues in which reason 
 is in relation with a world of sense and change. In his psychology it 
 leads to a disjunction of the two aspects of man's intelligence. There 
 is a reason, eternal and existing separately, which mahes all things. 
 And there is a passive or receptive reason in man, which becomes all 
 things. This, indeed, might seem a convenient form for working out 
 an organic connexion between the universal principles of the world 
 and the particulars of our ordinary experience. But the connexion 
 of the two reasons in man seems after all to be only an external one; 
 at the death of the body it is dissolved, passive reason perishing with 
 the body in relation to which it existed, active reason continuing in 
 that independent and unmixed existence which either is, or is like, the 
 divine existence. And of the disjunction which thus runs through 
 every part of his system, the separation of God and the world which 
 we have just been considering is simply the highest and final instance. 
 It will be noticed that the logical motives of the dualism which 
 thus remains in Aristotle, are the same as those we saw operative in 
 Plato's thought; only Aristotle draws the lines more rigidly. Like 
 Plato, Aristotle was keenly alive to the imperfection of the world. In 
 it he found something essentially non-rational — an irreducible and 
 intractable contingency, corresponding to that necessity of which 
 Plato had spoken in the Timaeus. And in each case, this works in at 
 once with the very natural conception that since the highest principle 
 of reality is absolutely perfect, it cannot be conceived as working 
 through, or in, any media except those that have an absolute perfection 
 like its own; which means for Aristotle that in spite of his own 
 conception of evolution as a way of nature, he cannot conceive it as a 
 way of God. That for created beings the only genuine perfection is 
 one in whose achieving they themselves have co-operated, and that 
 therefore the divine creative activity must begin with something less 
 than perfection : — this is an argument which Aristotle cannot admit. 
 He sees the imperfection of the world; sees the imperfection of our 
 experience in it ; but cannot conceive of God as working through such 
 imperfection toward that true perfection which is wrought out only 
 in struggle. God as perfect must be self-contained in the sense of 
 
 258 
 
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM 
 
 excluding the world of change; as complete actuality, having in 
 Himself no unrealised potentiality at all, He cannot have an object 
 lower than Himself, nor any activity lower than the contemplation 
 of absolute perfection; the world of becoming, while it may be 
 impelled by the inner principle of its life to move for ever toward Him, 
 cannot be His workmanship nor the temple of His indwelling. 
 Indeed, in view of this similarity in the inner logic of their systems, 
 one may almost say that the difference between Plato and Aristotle is 
 one rather of temper and manner than of fundamental logical motives 
 or of ultimate conclusions. Aristotle works his way outward from his 
 Idealistic centre to a great cyclopaedia of natural and social science 
 illuminated by Idealistic conceptions. But while Aristotle thus 
 delights to work upon the circumference even at the expense of 
 occasionally forgetting the centre, Plato prefers to remain habitually 
 at the centre, and only from its lofty height to view the circumference. 
 Hence Plato frequently tends — under the influence of the Par- 
 menidean cast and tendency which remained in his many-sided 
 intellect even after he had overcome the specifically Parmenidean 
 argument, and under the influence still more of the lofty religious- 
 ness native to his character and deepened by grief and by high hope 
 disappointed — to put the whole of the emphasis upon the centre and 
 despise or even deny the circumference; thus really breaking the 
 unity of his system through the very intensity of his instinct for that 
 unity. While Aristotle, with his cooler scientific mind, gives attention 
 to both centre and circumference, and yet wrongs both by setting them 
 apart. 
 
 So far, then, for the first step in the history of Idealism after 
 Plato. Aristotle, seeing the defect in the Platonic Idealism, and 
 pointing out the way to overcome it, ends by retaining it ; ends with 
 the conception, not of a God who is the life of the world, and of a 
 world which is the activity and manifestation of God, but of a world 
 which has life in itself, and a God who dwells apart from it in the 
 solitude of absolute perfection, in the blessedness of a contemplation 
 in which a perfect subject gazes for ever upon a perfect object. 
 
 With Aristotle we are really at the end of strictly Hellenic 
 thought. Already the wide world was breaking in upon Greece and 
 
 259 
 
THE COMPLETIXG OF IDEALISM 
 
 another age was preparing. But before we pass on to it, we must give 
 a moment to the men who did so much in that preparation for it — the 
 Stoics. These, though their first interest was practical — the search 
 for a wise way of living — were genuinely great in metaphysie; 
 indeed, without being so, they could not have been great in ethics. In 
 metaphysie, however, the " root of the matter " is in a sense twofold. 
 There is first the instinct for the unity of all existence ; but, secondly, 
 the instinct for doing justice to the individual existences within that 
 unity and to the particular facts which make up the life of these. 
 Without the first there is nothing worthy of l)eing called philosophy ; 
 but the second must work with it to do justice to the wealth which 
 the unity really contains. Now, the Stoics were weak in the lesser 
 matters — and therefore in many of the greater matters — of the second. 
 But they were victoriously strong in the first. Platonic and Aristo- 
 telian dualism they sweep out at one stroke. They have no doubt at all 
 that reality is one — and that it is rational; no doubt at all that the 
 supreme principle of reality is immanent in the world, and that it is 
 kindred in nature to the reason which is in man ; no doubt at all that 
 man is capable of communion with it and of obedience to its ways, and 
 that in that communion and obedience lie his freedom and his true 
 way of life. 
 
 This seems a great advance. And in one sense it is a great 
 advance. Yet we must make clear to ourselves what it does, and what 
 it does not, contain. It is not enough to assert the true conclusion, 
 unless you make it intelligible; not enough to assert that reality is 
 one, unless you show how it is one. And this the Stoics were not in 
 position to do ; were far less in position to do than Plato or Aristotle. 
 Still less than Plato or Aristotle had they proceeded from an appre- 
 hension of the reason in man as a synthetic principle — from that 
 apprehension which led Kant to the emphatic statement about man's 
 understanding that it " makes nature." And without this they might 
 assert the rationality of the whole system and structure of the 
 universe; but they could not articulate that insight. And such 
 articulation is the business of systematic philosophy. 
 
 So that in the metaphysie of the Stoics we have to mark a double 
 defect, each side of which intensifies tlie other. They despised and 
 
 260 
 
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM 
 
 rejected certain aspects of experience, certain provinces of reality. 
 And, holding the view that the world is rational, they could not give 
 to that view its systematic articulation. But of course it is to be 
 remembered that the true Stoic was first of all a soldier of righteous- 
 ness, and only secondarily a philosopher of the school. He fought in 
 the most cruel of all moral conflicts— that which arises from the decay 
 of a great civilisation. Simplicity and uprightness seemed to be gone 
 from the earth, luxury and wickedness everywhere to prevail. By 
 nothing less than a general treason of society, the causes of right 
 reason stood defeated. Upon the field of that lost battle, the Stoic 
 lived his life; and as the shadows, of night grew deeper, and the 
 hideous forms that thrive in its darkness gathered more thickly 
 around, he recognised it as his vocation to form no other ties than 
 those of his soldier's duty, and to stand immovable at the post to which 
 the wisdom of the universe had assigned him. 
 
 Aristotle, then, holds that the highest reality is a self-conscious 
 and self-dependent spirit, existing separately from our world of 
 change ; while the Stoic holds precisely the complementary view, that 
 God is immanent in the world as its reason and its life. But Greek 
 thought was not able to work out, as a clearly articulated possession of 
 the scientific mind, the conception which, by taking up both those sides 
 into the unity of a more comprehensive view, would have enabled each 
 of them to enter into its own proper significance and to unite with the 
 other. That conception is not merely the conception of God as self- 
 conscious and self-dependent spirit, but the further conception of Him 
 as the self-conscious and self-determining spirit who is the subject of 
 the world ; so that the world is regarded as an activity or manifesta- 
 tion of God, the history of the world as a process in which a divine 
 purpose is being realised ; that purpose, again, not being arbitrarily or 
 externally chosen, but arising out of and expressing the divine nature 
 itself, and being capable of fulfilment, therefore, only by the gradual 
 impartation of the divine mind and nature to man. For such an 
 Idealism Greek thought assembled the materials; but scarcely was 
 able to bring them to the unity of an organic structure. This was to 
 some extent a matter simply of the order of time. In the history of 
 
 261 
 
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM 
 
 thought it is a conspicuous and much honoured part to set in place 
 the keystone which makes visible to all the world the unity of the 
 manifold building and of the varied labours that have entered into it. 
 But first must come the more heroic workmen who, with only the 
 prophetic instinct of science to guide them, lay deep foundations at 
 what seem hopeless distances apart. And then, too, a fully developed 
 Idealism requires an historical outlook such as was not possible to the 
 Greeks ; an outlook over successive ages and races, each doing its work 
 upon the earth and passing away, and thus setting the mind of the 
 spectator upon the search for some plan of the world or wisdom of 
 history. And there was still another reason; one connected, not 
 simply with the historical position of the Greeks, but with the intrinsic 
 quality of their mind. As we have seen, Idealism arises when, seeking 
 to know the world, you also know the soul and find in it a principle for 
 interpreting the world. For the place where we apprehend the char- 
 acter of spirit as an active principle of synthesis, is in ourselves. 
 Unless we have apprehended the nature and activity of spirit there, we 
 cannot be in position to articulate clearly and consistently the insight 
 that spirit is the principle of synthesis, the constitutive and organising 
 energy, implied in the existence of the universe. But the Hellenic 
 mind, while devoted to the objective interests of the spirit, was disin- 
 clined to set the individual soul before it in order to analyse its inner 
 processes for their own sake. The strength, the intellectual tact, the 
 unfailing clearness, of the Greek genius, were based in a certain large 
 and calm objectivity, a tendency to fix contemplation upon that 
 universal structure of things which was felt to be at once more real 
 and more worthy than the single soul in its individuality. And this 
 objective tendency of the Hellenic mind was the source at once of the 
 greatness and the incompleteness of Greek Idealism. 
 
 But this indicates to us in what direction we must look, if we 
 Avould see the Idealistic or spiritual view of the world completing itself 
 from within. We must look for an age, or a type of experience, in 
 which the individual soul becomes a thing of supreme value, and, in a 
 profound and worthy sense (i.e., without sinking into mere subjectiv- 
 ism, without losing objectivity of view and of interest) is turned in 
 upon itself. And precisely such a type of experience was now to 
 
 262 
 
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM 
 
 become the chief factor of human history, in a religion which, so far 
 as it could be faithful to the whole of itself, did not turn its eyes away 
 from the world, and yet was a religion of the inner spirit ; a religion 
 in which the struggles and attainments of the inner spirit are viewed 
 as the most real thing in life, and therefore as that in the world which 
 most truly expresses the nature and meaning of the world. 
 
 II. 
 
 Such a religion— a religion that from the inner spirit goes forth 
 to the world and to the whole breadth of the interests o-f the world- 
 was Christianity ; Christianity, at least, as it existed in the mind of 
 its Founder, or as it struggles in human society to be faithful to that 
 mind. Jesus, in His daily life and habitual consciousness, looked upon 
 those eternal relations of man's life which are the order and structure 
 of the universe, with an objectivitj^ as large, as calm, as unfailing, as 
 that of the Greek mind itself; and looking thus upon them, He 
 expressed them in terms of the spirit. He searched the inner spirit ; 
 but he did not shut men up to it. Freely He looked upon the world; 
 freely, turning His eyes away from nothing, He regarded the whole 
 order and structure of it, the whole constitution of things in which 
 man lives, the whole array of the conditions of our life.^ And as He 
 looked with this clear and open gaze upon the world, not all its imper- 
 fection, not all its evil, could make Him waver for a single instant in 
 His consciousness that the relations which constitute its order and the 
 order of man's life, are ultimately spiritual, ultimately moral — nay, 
 immediately spiritual, immediately moral. His consciousness of God 
 He habitually expressed in the words, My Father ; His consciousness 
 of the relation of God to the human world and of the human world to 
 God, in the words, Our Father. Man's life, that is to say, is a com- 
 munication of Himself on the part of God ; the universe, a society of 
 spirits which God constitutes and administers as His family. With 
 
 I Even with "nature" in the more restricted sense of the word— the external world, 
 the birds and fields and lilies— He lived as a man might live with the things of His home 
 (see Caird, The Evolution of Religion, vol. II., p. 122 seq.). It would indicate a truth, 
 were one to say that the view which Wordsworth took of nature poetically, Jesus took 
 religiously. 
 
 263 
 
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM 
 
 Him and with the ultimate realities of eternity we all stand in 
 intimate organic relationship : whatsoever we do to " the least of 
 these/' we do to Jesus and therefore to the Father; or again, to 
 choose an instance of a different character, Jesus habitually speaks of 
 eternal life as a present possession. 
 
 And of such a view of the world as a system over the whole of 
 which the love, the righteousness, the wisdom, of the Father extend, 
 " reaching from end to end, sweetly and strongly ordering all things,^' 
 — of such a view the practical attitude of Jesus was, if possible, even 
 more expressive than His words. He lived a life of absolute confidence 
 in the Father: absolute confidence ia the Father's administration of 
 the world ; absolute confidence in the reach of that administration over 
 every side of man's life, over every aspect of the world and of its 
 history; absolute confidence in the supremacy of the Father and in 
 the inability of any power to defeat His purpose ; absolute confidence, 
 therefore, in the good, and in the impossibility that any labour for 
 the good can ultimately be without its due effect. This confidence in 
 the Father who " sends us," and in the good which is His purpose, 
 was the habitual mind of Jesus. He saw human life as human life 
 actually is ; He faced all the sufferings of men, all the sins of men, all 
 the sinfulness of men, and never lost hope, or fell into bitterness, or 
 held back in misgiving ; but remained absolutely certain that through 
 all this stricken and troubled process of the world's history omnipotent 
 goodness is at work realising its purpose. Hence He taught that the 
 man who really saves his life is the man who loses it by devoting 
 himself to that divine purpose and making himself its organ ;i and He 
 gave to His belief in the organic relation of the human world to God 
 the most decisive of all possible expressions, by seeking to win men's 
 hearts and to lead them toward a consciousness of God similar to His 
 own and toward the way of life which arises from such a consciousness. 
 
 Such a confidence in God, such a belief in the possible unity of the 
 affairs of the world with the divine plan, it was that Christianity 
 carried with it, as it went out to be the religion of the world. 
 Implicitly — not as a possession of the intellect, but as an inner spirit 
 of faith and of life — it held the view that the world and the history of 
 
 1 See Caird, The Evolution of Religion, vol. II., pp. 88, 104-5, 137. 
 264 
 
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM 
 
 the world stand in organic connexion with the ultimate God. But 
 Cliristianity was certain to come more and more to intellectual 
 possession of its implicit faith. For the world out into which it went 
 was that Gentile world which had inherited the intellectual spirit of 
 the Greeks, and their impulse to bring implicit beliefs to the light of 
 day in the form of ordered science.^ 
 
 But the history of this entrance of Christendom upon the intel- 
 lectual possession of its own implicit view of God and the world, is 
 perhaps the most complicated of all human histories. In the first 
 place, there is a complexity from within. Christianity could scarcely 
 advance immediately to the apprehension of the organic connexion of 
 God and the world. It was inevitable that the advance should be, in a 
 sense, dialectic ; should be an advance through antithesis to synthesis. 
 For Christianity has in it the possibility of both the forms of the 
 religious temper distinguished on a previous page.- With the acute 
 sensitiveness to all evil, the imperious consciousness of sin, which it 
 introduces into life, it tends, both with individuals and the church, to 
 assume at the beginning the more negative of the two forms. Under 
 this form, it leads men to condemn not only their sins and their sinful 
 tendencies, but the whole of their nature and the whole of the world. 
 Thus it becomes a principle of separation from the world ; and to the 
 negative implied in its positive gives so great a place as to obscure or 
 even defeat that positive itself. Such religion, too, is commonly the 
 religion of intense natures. Hence, when it gains hold upon the 
 church, it is as a rule only slowly and with struggle that the advance 
 beyond it is made. Soon or late, however, the advance must come. 
 For, in that form, Christianity, though an intense and heroic religion, 
 is involved in a deep contradiction with itself, with the mind of its 
 founder, and with reason. It cannot see the world as a work of God ; 
 and instead of saving it, leaves it to those of its powers which are most 
 unlike God. Its inner principle, that is to say, is working under 
 
 1 Hence it is strikingly appropriate that the man who formally completed Idealism in 
 its Platonic type, was a Father of the church— Augustine, who on one of the many sides 
 of his intense and eager thought, made the Ideas (the norms upon which human thinking 
 proceeds, but which manifestly go beyond the individual mind, and have a universal 
 validity) to be forms or standards in the divine mind. 
 
 2 Supra, pp. 221, 222. 
 
 265 
 
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM 
 
 limitations which contradict that inner principle itself. Hence the 
 forces which make for human development, continually impel that 
 principle to fulfil itself by going beyond those limitations. Season, 
 which is irreconcilably an enemy to Manichaeism; experience, which 
 shows how genuinely great are the world and the natural mind of 
 man ; the love which carries the individual beyond himself and beyond 
 the limits of his church or order to the service of the imperfect world ; 
 the mind of the Founder, exerting itself in the church : — these produce 
 gradually their effect, and the mind of Christendom comes more and 
 more to apprehend that the world stands in organic connexion with 
 God, the things of time with those of eternity, the conditions of man's 
 present life with the divine plan. 
 
 But secondly, this internal complexity and struggle is deepened by 
 struggles and complexities from without. For Christianity became 
 the central stream of human liistory. To it, every current of 
 human thinking, of human passion, of human achievement, every 
 scientific tradition, every type of religion and of religious aspira- 
 tion, became tributary, bringing clear or troubled waters, which 
 partly were received and assimilated, partly were hurried forward 
 in rival and contending currents. Virtually all the types, and 
 all the divisions, of man's science, of his philosophy, of his greater 
 religion, entered and exerted their influence; so that he who would 
 trace the development within Christendom of the conception of God 
 and the conception of God's relation to nature and man, would have to 
 make himself acquainted in the end with nothing less than the whole 
 scientific and religious history of the human race. 
 
 In the pages that remain, not even a beginning can be made at the 
 telling of that great history.^ But the impression which it is the 
 business of this book to convey — an impression of the two funda- 
 mental tendencies in the endeavour of the soul to move intellectually 
 and practically toward reality — calls for at least some indication of the 
 complexity of the development now in question ; calls for at least some 
 glimpse of the variety of interests and insights operative in it, of the 
 crossing, the conflicting, the involution, of its intellectual and 
 emotional and moral factors. 
 
 1 A condensed outline, firmly and clearly drawn, of the more positive side of it, ia 
 given by Principal Fairbairn in Book I. of his Place of Chriat in Modern Theology. 
 
 266 
 
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM 
 
 In attempting to give such an indication, it is scarcely possible to 
 touch the modern world. " On the practical side, the story is too hope- 
 lessly vast ; and the issues are not yet clear. On the side of thought 
 the history is easier to follow; and there are two specially striking 
 examples of the direct entanglement and conflict of the two tendencies 
 — Spinoza and Kant. But with Spinoza we have already attempted to 
 deal. While that veiled conflict of the abstract and the concrete 
 movement of thought, which ran through the whole structure of 
 Kant's critical philosophy, has been laid bare for us by the Master of 
 Balliol in an exposition which is one of the masterworks of English 
 philosophical literature. But for the present purpose the mediaeval 
 world is almost more instructive than our own ; because in it life and 
 thought went more closely hand in hand. Turning to it, we are to 
 attempt to deal with two single points which illustrate the wealth and 
 complexity of the forces at work. The one is Erigena's view of the 
 Division of Nature; it goes beyond the story of the inner develop- 
 ment of Idealism, and takes us back to that ultimate antithesis with 
 which we were concerned on earlier pages; for it shows the Idealism 
 implicit in Christianity almost overborne by Neo-Platonic Mysticism. 
 The other is an aspect of Aquinas' conception of the relation of the 
 world to God. It shows us that implicit Idealism struggling toward 
 a thorough expression of itself, but crossed just at the culmination by 
 a dualism very similar in motive to that of Plato and Aristotle. 
 
 267 
 
ERIGENA : THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE. 
 
 Men more different than Erigena and Spinoza it would be hard 
 to imagine ; or philosophies more different in atmosphere and outward 
 appearance than Spinoza's with its severity of science, and Erigena's 
 with its radiance of mystic passion. Yet in the inner logic of the two 
 philosophies there is a similarity : each in its own way shows us the 
 affirmative method and the negative dwelling together in a single 
 mind. This was due in part to the very nature of their endeavour. 
 As men of philosophy and of religion, they strove to see the world 
 as One; strove to pass from present appearances to eternal reality. 
 But, as we so often have seen,^ there are in such a movement of thought 
 two possibilities. We may see that the present appearances must 
 somehow be in organic connexion with eternal reality; for else the 
 world is hopelessly rent in twain, and the very unity that we set out 
 to find is lost. But, on the other hand, we may be so overwhelmed by 
 the differences between reality in its oneness and perfection, and the 
 appearances in their dividedness and evil, that we refuse to regard 
 these appearances as real at all ; they are deceptions — shadows of the 
 cave — coloured veils breaking up the pure light of the One. And 
 between the two possibilities, thus inherent in the very nature of their 
 task, both Erigena and Spinoza divided their hearts. But the form 
 which this division of mind assumed was determined for each by his 
 own special circumstances ; in each case there was a preceding history 
 leading to the presence and combination of the two tendencies in one 
 outlook upon the world. For Spinoza there stood on the one side the 
 modern attempt to apprehend reality by the use of the category of 
 Substance — the Cartesian tradition, whose last prophet is shut up to 
 the belief that reality is One Substance, and all manifoldness an 
 illusion. On the other stood the newly-developed physical science, 
 whose temper and point of view formed part of Spinoza's very soul. 
 
 1 Cf. supra, pp. 7-11 : p. 83 note ; p. 117 set]. ; p. 216 seq. 
 271 
 
EKIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUEE 
 
 ^V'ith Erigena, the diverse traditions that made up his intellectual 
 inheritance lay closer to historical religion. First, there was the early 
 history of Christian theology : the Apologists had wrought out a large- 
 hearted theory of divine revelation, of God's manifestation of Himself 
 in general and special forms to all the world; and then Fathers and 
 Councils had formulated the doctrine of the Trinity. But along with 
 this Christian theology and strangely interwoven with it, there came 
 another type of thought : the philosophy which called itself by Plato's 
 name, but really was the summing up and the testament of the ancient 
 civilisation that had gone down to death, and in dying had turned its 
 eyes away from the world to an absolutely transcendent God. 
 
 Such a combination of Christianity and Neo-Platonism might have 
 seemed beyond possibility. For whether viewed as theologies, seeking 
 to pass from the manifoldness of the world to an apprehension of its 
 eternal unity, or as religions seeking the way of life by wkich man 
 becomes at one with that supreme principle, the two represent the 
 greatest possible opposition of method and tendency. Extreme 
 opposites they were, too, by historical position. Neo-Platonism was at 
 once the ultimate vision and the dying voice of the ancient world; 
 Christianity was the vital life of the new. And this opposition of 
 nature had manifested itself in open hostility of action. Neo-Platon- 
 ism, in the stress of its conflict, had made alliance with the cult of the 
 ancient gods. Nothing could better have marked the Neo-Platonist's 
 sense of the irreconcilableness of his theology with the Christian ; nor, 
 in the eyes of the Catholic theologian, could more thoroughly have 
 displayed Neo-Platonism as damned beyond all hope. 
 
 But though the old world was gone, and relapse into any of its 
 faiths or worships was regarded as the sin of sins, yet its mind could 
 not die. The Mysticism, with which in its old age it had sought to rise 
 above itself, neither did nor could pass out of the minds of men. In 
 part Christianity overcame it ; but in part it infused itself into Chris- 
 tianity. And so strong is the impulse of the human mind to bring to 
 unity all the insights and beliefs that have place in it, that the com- 
 bination even of these opposites was soon attempted. No sooner had 
 the great world-conflict been fought and settled, no sooner had history, 
 in a Justinian, given its decisive answer to the endeavour of Julian, 
 
 272 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUEE 
 
 than the Areopagite sought to give to a modified Neo-Platonism a 
 standing within the church. And the Areopagite did not stand alone ; 
 he had many teachers and compeers — Monophysite monks, for instance, 
 such as the real Stephen bar Sudaili and the phantom Heirotheus. 
 But the passion of the conflict was still deep enough to sharpen the 
 critical sense against books " unknown to Cyril and Athanasius." This 
 ghost of Neo-Platonism, in its Christian dress, could but wander 
 forward through the years, here and there (as in the case of Maximus 
 the Confessor) speaking home to an elect heart, but by the great body 
 of the orthodox misunderstood, suspected, or even condemned. 
 
 None the less, the combination was to take place. When Julian 
 and Justinian and the Areopagite all were gone, and the northern races 
 were seated beyond possibility of overthrow in the West — while Mercia 
 still was disputing with her rivals the supremacy of England, and 
 there were yet nearly forty years to the birth of Alfred the West-Saxon 
 — there was growing up, probably in some corner of Ireland with a 
 cloister school, the man who was to stand at the beginning of the 
 greater labours of mediaeval theology. But he was not to stand there 
 merely as a churchman systematising canonic doctrine. He received 
 into himself both the traditions now in question — the Christian 
 theology of the Trinity and the Incarnation, and the Neo-Platonism 
 contained in the mystical theology of Dionysius. These he welded into 
 a system which sounds the note and contains the motives of each of 
 the two great sides of medieeval thought — the mystic side and the 
 scholastic ; but which does much more. For Erigena was, in the strict 
 sense of the word, a secular figure, a man who belongs to the ages ; in 
 him the great histories that had gone before him found a voice again ; 
 while with his endeavour to see the whole process of the world as a 
 spiritual process, he from his ninth century may speak, as Noack 
 points out,^ to the men of the nineteenth with their Hegel. Nature 
 and history seem to have worked together in setting him in his fateful 
 place. He was a Christian ; by training, a theologian in the succession 
 of Christian theologians. But by special kinship of nature he was 
 fitted to receive, and, so far as was possible to a man who in his subtle 
 and unusual genius must have stood almost alone, to introduce as a 
 
 1 In the Voncort to his German translation of tiie De Divisione Naturae. 
 19 273 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 factor in the life of the West, that older theology to which God is all 
 in all and the world an emanation from M^hich the wise man will seek 
 to return into God Himself. 
 
 Eor the mind of Erigena was dominated by that which was central 
 to the logic of Neo-Platonism, and which in some form is central to 
 all philosophy — the instinct for unity. And by that instinct in both 
 its forms. As a philosophic or scientific instinct, it constrained him 
 to view the world, and all the history and process of the world, as 
 one — as one reality, issuing from one source, and in all its steps and 
 stages remaining one. Wliile as a religious passion, the passion for 
 unity with God, it joined itself with the philosophic instinct to 
 strengthen the demand that, as all things proceed from God, all things 
 must in the end return to God. 
 
 But the instinct for unity has two ways of fulfilling itself. First 
 it may conceive the unity of all existence as a unity which mediates 
 itself through diversity :— the unity which a system, for instance, has 
 by reason of its highest principle, or which a process has by reason of 
 the purpose that is realised in it. Or, secondly, it may conceive the 
 unity of the real as the solid, undifferentiated unity which rejects from 
 itself all manifoldness, all diversities, all distinctions. Of the two 
 conceptions, the latter is the easier to form; particularly in early 
 thought. Hence the man who is dominated by precisely the central 
 impulse of all science and of all philosophy, often conceives the unity 
 that he seeks as of the latter type. And from this, for the man of 
 intellectual clearness and speculative courage, the consequences follow 
 at once. The One is, and nothing else is. Then what is the manifold 
 world of our experience? It is illusion. And if the inquirer is a 
 religious man, he has to go a step farther. The welfare of the soul 
 lies with reality. The duty of a true man, therefore, is to lift himself 
 out of the illusion in which ordinary human life is spent. He must 
 seek a new type of experience, a new form of consciousness, in which 
 he enters into union with reality ; in which he lays aside the finitude 
 and manifoldness of human individuality, and without distinction or 
 division of essence becomes one with God. 
 
 The key to Erigena's position is that he cannot enter clearly into 
 the former of these two ways of philosophy, nor yet commit himself 
 
 274. 
 
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 unreservedly to the latter. Cannot enter clearly into the former : for 
 he does not possess, in clear mastery, those " categories of organic 
 unity " which enable human thought to retain all the manifoldness of 
 the given world, and yet view that world as having the genuine unity 
 of a system or process in which a single principle is manifesting itself, 
 a single purpose being realised. Nor can he commit himself 
 unreservedly to the latter. For his mind was not only subtle and acute. 
 It was comprehensive also, delighting to traverse all the ranges of 
 existence. And his spirit seems to have been affectionate; seems to 
 have cast out many tendrils that clung about the things and persons 
 of the manifold world; as frequently his paraholae with their keen eye 
 for the face of nature, show, or the tender dedication subinde dilectis- 
 simo tibij, frater in Christo Wulfade, et in studiis sapientiae coopera- 
 tori, at the close of the De Divisions Naturae. But behind all such 
 personal reasons stands the greater historical one — his inheritance of 
 Christianity and of Christian theology. His vision of the Lord Christ 
 taking upon Him the form of our mortal life, forbade him to dismiss 
 the world of our present struggle as unreality and illusion. 
 
 So that Erigena's work was done under almost -the greatest strain 
 that can come upon a man in the courts of philosophy. By imperious 
 necessities of thought within, by great histories without, he was com- 
 pelled to be faithful both to the Many and to the One; and at the 
 same time he was not clearly master of those categories which would 
 have enabled him not merely to keep both the Many and the One, but 
 to see each as necessary to the other. Hence he was in a continual 
 struggle to keep faithful to his belief in the unity of existence, and at 
 the same time to do justice to the diverse facts of that manifold world 
 which was given to his singularly open-eyed and sensitive spirit. And 
 what he built up under the pressure of that struggle was a system that 
 has virtually all the great conceptions and tendencies and traditions 
 of Alexandrian and medieval thought woven into it. But Erigena did 
 this as no mere eclectic, piecing together into an unstable structure 
 materials afforded by the histories that he inherited.' He was in 
 himself a great speculative genius. And his spirit is in the system 
 that he constructed. In all that age of great philosophies and 
 ■theologies which reaches from Augustine to Cusanus, it has no equal 
 
 275 
 
EKIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 for its swift and free ascent of the secular consciousness to its iiome in 
 God, or for the unfailing speculative passion with which it carries 
 through the idea of the whole world as a procession from 
 God. And it is the more remarkable as having taken form in the 
 ninth century — as if, through grey and cloudy twilight of earliest 
 morning there should break, for one fugitive moment and with the 
 many-coloured radiance that speaks of evening rather than of morning, 
 the flame of day. 
 
 The dialogue in which Erigena presents this system is long, com- 
 plicated, self -involved. Continually the argument returns upon itself ; 
 yet not with the mere vexatious iteration of some of the later School- 
 men, but with an emphasis that always is new and with a " subtle 
 flame " of speculation that maintains itself to the end. To this 
 dialogue — the five books De Divisione Naturae — we must now turn, 
 and attempt to follow in some systematic way the essential movement 
 of its thought.^ 
 
 First, in general terms, how did Erigena meet the situation just 
 described? He keeps both sides, we must answer; and does this by 
 means of an expedient that came to him from an earlier history. 
 
 First, he keeps the unity. To say this, indeed, is only to say that 
 he is Erigena and a philosopher. Always he is asserting it, or taking 
 it for granted, or labouring to reduce to it the stubborn opposites of 
 the world. The very title of his book, which seems to indicate multi- 
 plicity, really points toward unity. The object of his thinking, the 
 object of philosophy and theology, he calls Nature. But by Nature 
 lie means to nav, the totality of being viewed as one; and by the 
 Torms into which Nature is divided he means the aspects which that 
 one reality has somehow come to present. But secondly, as we shall 
 
 1 The references are to the edition of Floss (Misrne, vol. 122 of the Latin Patrology).— 
 It is a question whether Eriprena, with his passion for the point of view of eternity, did 
 not (in speaking of the Word) frequently write ingenitiis where Floss reads vnigenitus. 
 
 Except at one or two points (where Erigena, in his scorn for the human body as con- 
 •fcrasted with the anu;elic, is driven beyond his usual fine sensitiveness and allows the 
 language with which he condemns the brute in man, itself to take on a touch'of brutality), 
 I have made the translations very literal. This has been done in the hope of conveying a 
 more accurate impression of the man himself in his ninth century thought. But in one 
 way it is scarcely fair to him ; the depth and acuteness of his mind would be better shown 
 if his thoughts were turned into the present-day language of philosophy. 
 
 276 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUEE 
 
 see more fully in dealing with the second and third Forms of Nature, 
 he also keeps the manifold; though no man need imagine that the 
 manifold which a medieeval theologian, and a disciple of the Areopa- 
 gite at that, leaves standing, is quite the same as the manifold of 
 ordinary experience. 
 
 But, retaining thus a manifoldness within reality, has he not 
 shattered his own fundamental doctrine of the unity of Nature? The 
 answer is, as indicated a moment ago, that he escapes the difficulty 
 altogether, by bringing up a great distinction from that inheritance of 
 theological tradition which was his intellectual field and home. This 
 is the distinction between that ivhicJi is and that ivhich is not; and 
 the consequent distinction between the methods of apprehending these 
 two kinds of reality. The opening sentences of the De Divisione 
 Naturae, in which Erigena chooses for the totality of things the great 
 word Nature, show Nature as divided into the things that are and the 
 things that are not: 
 
 Master. — Often — as I ponder, witli such diligence of inquiry as my powers 
 admit, upon the fact that the first and highest division of all things which 
 can either be perceived by mind or transcend its reach, is into those that 
 are and tho.se that are not — there presents itself to me, as the general name 
 of all these, the term which in Greek is (pbatg-, but in Latin Natitra. Or do 
 you view the matter otherwise ? 
 
 Scholar. — Nay, I agree ; for I, too, find it thus, when I enter upon the path 
 of rational investigation. 
 
 Master. — Nature, then, as we have said, is the general name for all things 
 which are and which are not. 
 
 That which is is the reality able to present itself in ordinary human 
 experience ; the reality apprehensible by human reason, and declared, 
 therefore, by that reason to have existence. But there is a reality 
 which stands high above all the categories of reason, and of which, 
 therefore, reason can only say that it is not. This reality which is 
 beyond the grasp of mind and can, therefore, in all thinking and 
 speaking, be referred to only in negative terms of which the is not is 
 the summing up, is the true and genuine reality. x\nd with it, though 
 human thought and speech can find no name for it except Nothing 
 
 277 
 
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUEE 
 
 and no description of it except that it is not, yet a union of the soul 
 is possible; a union with which Erigena deals at length, but which we 
 cannot consider at this point. Corresponding to this distinction within 
 Nature is a distinction in theological method. There is, first, affirma- 
 tive theology, which of the divine essence predicates what is; not 
 meaning, indeed, that the divine essence is anything of that which 
 is, but that all qualities and existences which have their source in it 
 can be predicated of it. While negative theology denies that the divine 
 essence falls in the province of that which is ; i.e., of that which can 
 be thought or spoken.^ You can say, for instance, that God is truth, 
 inasmuch as He is the creator and original cause of that truth in 
 which all things that are true participate. But, on the negative 
 method, you deny that God is truth, because He is more than truth 
 and is exalted above everything that can be thought or said, above 
 everything of which it can at all be said that it is.^ And of these two 
 methods or procedures of theology, the preference must be given to 
 the negative. For what the affirmative procedure does, is, as a working 
 compromise, to effect a sort of transfer : it carries the methods of 
 human thinking into a realm where properly they have no place. 
 Categories like Essence, Wisdom, Truth, it applies where categories are 
 not applicable. In strict propriety, it is only the via negativa that can 
 be adopted in investigating the exalted and incomprehensible nature of 
 God. If men must have a name for that nature, let them use the word 
 that expresses the inability of thought to conceive it and of speech to 
 utter it — the word Nihil. For God, being exalted above all that can 
 be thought or uttered, can properly be affirmed only by the denial of 
 
 1 I. 13, 14. The argument, of chapter 14 is one that has taken a great place in the 
 history of thcologia ncpativa. God is viewed as coinHdcntia oj)X)ositorum. Hence you 
 must not attribute one side of an opposition or antithesis to God without the other. 
 But human thought— so Erigena takes for granted, whatever deeper view may be implicit 
 in him— has no conceptions which take up into unity both sides of these oppositions. 
 Hence human thought is precluded from attributing qualities to God at all, and has to 
 regard Him as altogether beyond the categories. It will be noted, that with these opposi- 
 tions, e.g.. Essence and Nothingness, Eternity and Time, Light and Darkness, Erigena 
 does not regard the latter as merely a denial of the former, but views both as positive. 
 Then since God is the source of both, affirmative theology must predicate both of Him ; 
 which can only mean that He is above both, and that therefore (as is noted in the text) the 
 true procedure for theology is the negative procedure. 
 
 2 IV. 5. 
 
 278 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUEE 
 
 all that is ; and is better known by non-knowledge.^ Thus, then, the 
 negative method avails us more than the affirmative, in our inevitable 
 attempt to characterise the ineffable essence of God. For affirmative 
 theology is a carrying over of qualities or predicates from the creatures 
 to the Creator ; but the denials of negative theology, moving far above 
 every creature, are valid of the Creator in and for Himself.^ Hence 
 it is that Erigena adopts the exhortation of the Areopagite to 
 Timotheus his friend : " If thou art strong for journeying in the 
 realm of mystic contemplation, forsake the senses and the operations 
 of the intellect, and both the things of sense and the things that are 
 invisible, and all that is and is not, and so far as in thee lieth be 
 restored in non-knowledge to the unity of that which is above all 
 essence and all science. For thus, in the immeasurable and uncondi- 
 tional passing of the soul beyond thyself and all things, forsaking all 
 things, and from all tilings being set free, shalt thou ascend to the 
 superessential ray of the divine darkness." 
 
 This division of Nature into that which is and that which is not, 
 with the corresponding distinction between the methods of theology, is 
 the expedient which sets Erigena free from his initial and funda- 
 mental difficulty. First, it leaves him free to assert the very highest 
 doctrine of unity; a doctrine of unity which sets him at the side of 
 Vedantist and Neo-Platonist. But secondly, it also leaves him free to 
 give a place within reality to the manifold — the manifold of our 
 experience, together with that higher system of forms and principles, 
 of persons and energies, requisite for the explanation of our experi- 
 ence. And this simultaneous honouring of the two great and appar- 
 ently antithetic necessities — the necessitv^ for unity, asserted imperi- 
 ously by the pliilosophic and theological intellect; and the necessity 
 of recognising the actual manifold of our experience — can take place 
 without fear of rational attack. For Nature as one (i.e., God as 
 original source) is above all grasp of reason. If it be objected : Does 
 
 1 III. 20 and 22. Erigena feels so keenly that knowledge conditions and limits its 
 object, that he is not content with denying that human reason can know God. He even 
 constructs, under certain modiflcatioiis, a doctrine that God cannot know Himself {II. 28), 
 But in estimating the real significance of such a view, we must remember that for 
 Erigena knowledge is defined by the ten Aristotelian categories. 
 
 2 IV. 5. 
 
 279 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUKE 
 
 not your retention of the manifold contradict your doctrine of unity? 
 the answer is : You cannot say that, for reason cannot enter here ; the 
 nature of the One is not to be limited by the application to it of the 
 categories.^ 
 
 Thus a " Division " — really not so much " of Nature," as of the 
 aspects which Nature presents to minds like ours^ — is effected. There 
 is, first, Nature as One. It is above the categories ; we cannot ration- 
 ally comprehend it, though we must affirm its unity. There is, 
 secondly, Nature as Manifold. This is the field wherein reason can 
 profitably employ itself ; and Erigena — as if rejoicing that his funda- 
 mental Mysticism is not after all to call him away from the courts of 
 science to mystic quietude — flings himself upon it with all the powers 
 of his subtle and eager mind and all the resources of his intellectual 
 inheritance. As he considers it, he finds within it a great distinction. 
 There are, first, the universals — eternal and energetic types; what 
 Plato called Ideas, but Erigena calls primordial causes. Secondly, 
 there are the effects of these causes, effects of which some at least are 
 temporal and visible. 
 
 But even this is not the end. The instinct for unity still has a 
 work to do, and here it is especially supported by the religious instinct. 
 If it is a demand of reason that there should be a unitary source of all 
 things, it is a demand both of reason and of religion that there should 
 be a unitary end of all things. So that the final Form of Nature is 
 that in which there is no more procession — no more forth-going — of 
 creatures in classes and kinds, but all things, in quiet, rest in God as 
 an undivided and unchangeable One.^ 
 
 Thus the "Division of Nature" comes at last to be fourfold. 
 First, there is Nature as One — Nature as creating, but not created, 
 
 1 It is interesting to compare the somewhat similar situation in Kant. Moral reason 
 asserts a catef,'orical imperative. And that assertion, so Kant thinks, the scientific reason 
 cannot challenge, because scientific reason cannot enter into the realm of noumena. 
 
 2 Cf. infra, pp. 304-307 and 314-31R (especially 315).— At the beginning of the third Book, 
 the second Form of Nature is referred to as " the second way of viewing universal Nature, 
 and, so to speak, its form or appearance."— In Spinoza, on the interpretation of those who 
 in dealing with the definition of "Attribute" (Eth. I. def. IV.) emphasise the tanquam, 
 there is a similar situation, arising out of similar logical motives. 
 
 3 II. 2. 
 
 280 
 
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 God as the original source of all things; secondly, the aboriginal 
 causes — Nature as created and creating ; thirdly, the effects of these — 
 Nature as created, but not creating; fourthly, Nature as One again, 
 when all process or emanation from the original One has returned to 
 its source, and God is all in all. 
 
 To the consideration of these four Forms of Nature, the De 
 Divisione Naturae is given. Of the first, as it is in itself, there is, of 
 course, nothing to be said, except in the way of amplifying the negative 
 position already indicated. This Erigena specially does in the first 
 Book, a great part of which is occupied by an extended proof of the 
 inapplicability of the ten Aristotelian categories to God. The Book 
 concludes by insisting once more upon the greater truth of the negative 
 theology. " And this is the Confession, prudent and catholic and for 
 our salvation, which we are to make concerning God: — that we may 
 first, in the affirmative way, using names or words, predicate all things 
 of Him, not properly, but by a certain transfer; but that all these 
 may again with full propriety be denied of Him according to the 
 negative way. For it is more correct to deny, than to affirm, that God 
 is anything of that which is predicated of Him."^ "... Of 
 God nothing can properly be predicated, because He is above every 
 thought, above every characterisation in form of sense or intelligence ; 
 better is He known through non-knowledge ; His absence of knowledge 
 is the true wisdom ; more truly and more credibly is He denied in aU 
 than affirmed. For whatsoever thou deniest of Him thou deniest 
 truly; but in no wise does that which our reason establishes about Him 
 stand fast in reality. If thou provest (approhaveris, imaginest thyself 
 to have proven) that He is this or that, thou shalt stand in the end 
 convicted of falsehood, because He is nothing of all those things which 
 are, or which can be said or thought. If, however, thou declarest that 
 He is neither this, nor that, nor any definite thing (nee hoc, nee ilhid, 
 nee ullum), then thy truthfulness shall be made manifest because He 
 is nothing of all those things which are and which are not. To him no 
 man can draw near, unless first, making strong the path of the soul, he 
 
 1 I. 76.— Erigena likes to call affirmative theology cataphatic, negative theology 
 apophatic. 
 
 281 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUEE 
 
 leaves behind him all the senses, and the activities of the understand- 
 ing, and all the things of sense, together with the whole of that which is 
 and which is not, and so far as in him lies is restored in non-knowledge 
 to unity with Ilim who is far above every essence and all thought; 
 for whom neither reason nor thinking is suitable, nor can He be 
 uttered or understood, nor is there for Him name or word/'^ 
 
 And yet something positive must be said about the first Form of 
 Nature. For Erigena is simply not capable of affirming a One above 
 the categories, and a Many subject to the categories, and then merely 
 leaving these side by side, with the statement that nothing can be said 
 affirmatively of the One, and that therefore the only thing for us to do 
 is to describe the Manifold as we find it. So that, although the first 
 Form of Nature is above the categories, yet Erigena does after all 
 make it an object of positive philosophical investigation ; he considers, 
 namely, its outgoing or procession into the lower Forms, and so gives 
 us a view of the universe of particular beings, as unfolded from an 
 original unity. 
 
 That is to say, Erigena turns to affirmative theology. The very 
 next sentence after the passage just quoted, goes on : " But, on the 
 other hand, as we have often said, without precisely contradicting 
 reason, all the things which are, from the highest to the lowest, can be 
 predicated of God, in the way of a certain similarity, or dissimilarity, 
 or contrariety, or opposition, since all the things which may be predi- 
 cated of Him have their source in Him." Then the second Book 
 makes a formal transition to the theology of affirmation, in which, in 
 our refiective consideration of the universe, we may by a sort of 
 transfer apply the terms and methods of our human science to God, 
 "since everything which bas its being in Him and from Him, may 
 with piety and reason be predicated of him."^ Later in the second 
 Book, the same transition is again indicated; for while in the De 
 Divisione Naturae there is an orderly plan and advance, yet the 
 book is like a gleaming web, in which all the strands are present at 
 the beginning and continually are reappearing. So that after dealing 
 in the earlier part of the second Book with the procession of the 
 primordial causes from God, and with the nature of man, — drawing 
 
 1 I. 00. 2 II. 1. 
 
 282 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUKE 
 
 his doctrines with inimitable exegesis from " divinissimus propheta, 
 Moisen"^ — he turns back to the inapplicability of the categories to 
 God; and to God's non-knowledge which is '" ineffable understanding," 
 the " true and highest wisdom " f then returns to the doctrine of the 
 Trinity thus : '' Let us now turn again to theology, which is the first 
 and chiefest part of wisdom. Rightly is it called so, because it is 
 concerned either solely or principally with the contemplation of the 
 divine nature. It falls into two parts, an affirmative and a negative, 
 which in Greek are called mxracpariHi) and a7io(parini'j. In the 
 first Book we dealt with negative theology, denying upon assured 
 grounds that the ten ' categories— together with all genera, forms, 
 numbers, and accidents — can properly be predicated of God. In this 
 present Book we have also proceeded according to the negative way, as 
 the order of our problem demanded ; and have taken up the position, 
 that God in His essence understands nothing of all that, which is and 
 is not, because He transcends every essence; that He absolutely does 
 not know wdiat He is (since He is in no wise determined or condi- 
 tioned), or of what quantity or quality He is (since no such deter- 
 mination attaches to Him and He is in nothing to be understood) ; 
 and that He in Hmiself absolutely cannot be comprehended in that 
 which is and that which is not : — a sort of non-knowledge which stands 
 high above all knowledge and understanding. But now let us attempt 
 to gain an insight into the other part, into affirmative theology, under 
 the leadership of Him, vrho is sought and seeks to be sought, who 
 comes to meet the souls that seek Him, and desires to be found. This 
 part of theology it is which, with regard to the divine nature, considers 
 what may with a certain propriety be brought forward, and be under- 
 stood by reason if it go prudently."^ 
 
 We have already noted the forms or stages under which Erigena 
 considers the procession by which the one eternal Nature gives rise to 
 a manifold reality. The first stage in the forth-going process— what 
 Erigena calls the second Form of Nature — contains a multitude of 
 existences, the causae primordiales. These are perfect; are purely 
 
 1 II. 15. 
 
 2 II. 2S.—Tp.'nus enim ignorantia ineffabilis est intelligentia. . ■ . Tpsa itaqtie 
 ignorantia summa ac vera est sapient ia. 
 
 3 II. 30. 
 
 283 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUEE 
 
 intelligible, unmixed with space or time; are at once creative 
 energies and the archetypes after which the things of this world are 
 found; — in a word; are Platonic Ideas. Yet Erigena is never weary 
 of insisting that this second Form of Nature is a unity. That is to 
 say, he really views it as a system — a system of intelligible forms, a 
 Hoff/^os vo7/t6s. Then the third Form, into which the second 
 proceeds, contains the actual things and beings of this present world. 
 We shall best understand Erigena's position in this — shall best 
 set before our minds both the difficulties that he faced, and the 
 solutions that he found for them — if we turn back for a moment to 
 Neo-Platonism, and alongside the solutions that Plotinus worked out 
 for the difficulties which beset him, place the solutions that Erigena 
 worked out for precisely the same difficulties. The One of Plotinus, 
 like Erigena's first Form of Nature, is absolutely a unity; it rejects 
 from itself all diversity and manifoldness. And it is absolutely 
 transcendent; so that reason can attain to no comprehension of it. 
 Yet the manifold world of our experience is left standing ; and, since 
 dualism is intolerable, that absolutely transcendent principle is 
 necessarily regarded as the source of it. But then arises at once the 
 problem : How can the One remain in its absolute transcendence and 
 absolute self-containedness, and yet give rise to this present world? 
 The steps in Plotinus' attempt to solve this problem we have already 
 had to consider.! First, he has two devices for enabling him to regard 
 the One as giving rise to something beyond itself, and yet as remaining 
 in its absolute unity. One of these devices consists in metaphor; the 
 procession of some further reality from the One is emanation, which 
 leaves the source precisely what it was before — as fragrance does the 
 flower from which it comes, or light the flame, or cold the snow. The 
 other is that most ingenious of logical devices, the conception of one- 
 ended relationship: "It (the One) is by no means that of which it 
 is the principle." Thus the passage is made from the One to that 
 which, in Plotinus' system, corresponds to the second Form of Nature 
 in Erigena's; to the rov?. ']''his is viewed as at once one and many. 
 It is a k6(7jw- vofjTo?, a place of intelligible forms, the home of the 
 Ideas or archetypes after which the things of the visible world are 
 
 1 Supra, pp. 142-144. 
 284 
 
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 made; i.e., at this point Plotinus weaves into his system the Platonic 
 theory of Ideas. And as the rovs is an emanation from the One, so 
 it is itself the source of a farther emanation, and thus we are led at 
 last to our present world. 
 
 But such a view involves difficulties, of which we must here notice 
 three. (1) There is the difficulty in deriving the vovs from the One 
 at all. (2) There is a difficulty in what may be called the internal 
 constitution of the vovs. As an emanation from the One it also is 
 One ; but toward the world — as containing the Ideas or archetypes of 
 the world — it is many. But the two sides of the conception are not 
 adequately held together. The vous is a one; and it is a many ; but 
 what the principle or energy of synthesis is, which thus enables a one 
 to be at the same time a many, Plotinus does not and cannot explain. 
 (3) The difficulty in the relation of the One to the rovs recurs in the 
 relation of the vovs to the world below it. How does the rovs go 
 beyond itself to give rise to the manifold world of our sense-experi- 
 ence? This difficulty is almost the same as that in Plato's earlier 
 Idealism with regard to the relation of the Ideas to the manifold 
 things of sense. 
 
 These difficulties are all in a sense contained in the first. Any 
 adequate solution of it would almost certainly involve the solution of 
 the others. But precisely that first difficulty it is which is absolutely 
 hopeless. WTien God or reality is defined in the Neo-Platonic way as 
 absolutely one, absolutely self-contained, absolutely transcendent, 
 there is no possibility whatever of advancing to a manifold world. 
 You are shut up to the position of the Vedantist and of Parmenides. 
 There simply is no such thing as a manifold world. Belief in it is an 
 illusion ; and a wise man's business is to free himself from the illusion. 
 
 But, as we have seen,i plotinus could not take up that position. He 
 cannot deny the existence of the manifold world, and therefore is 
 compelled to attempt in the way just noticed a derivation of it from 
 the One. But the derivation is altogether unsatisfactory. The meta- 
 phors do not help us; metaphors may illustrate arguments, but are 
 not themselves arguments. And the conception of a one-ended 
 relationship must be rejected as contradicting the very idea of 
 
 1 Supra, p.U2. 
 285 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUEE 
 
 relationship. What really lies behind these devices is the fact that in 
 Plotinus there are two types of thinking: the mystic thinking to 
 which reality is an absolutely self-contained One admitting no multi- 
 plicity; and the thinking which views the One as the source of the 
 manifold world. The same two types of thinking are in Spinoza ; we 
 have already had to study the way in whicli he makes the transition 
 from the one to the other — the way in which Spinoza the Mystic, with, 
 his One Substance that can have no determinations, passes over into 
 Spinoza the Pantheist to whom that indeterminate One has become the 
 self-determining energy of an orderly and systematic world.^ One 
 might almost say that the chief difference between the two is that in 
 Plotinus the Mystic predominates, in Spinoza the Pantheist. And 
 the same two types of thinking are in Erigena; only with him it is 
 hard to say which predominates. In fact, he is completely in earnest 
 with both. On almost every page can be found the ideas which 
 represent the two sides : the idea of God — the first Form of Nature — 
 as absolutely transcending our knowledge, and as that absolute unity 
 which repels all diversity ; and the idea of God " pouring Himself 
 forth," and so giving rise to the various orders of existence which 
 make up the universe. And he does not seem to have seen how incom- 
 patible these types of thinking are. There are, indeed, indications of 
 the gulf and attempts to bridge it.^ But upon the whole the battle 
 never is fought out. On the contrary, Erigena may be said to give 
 himself completely to each of the two sides. And for this he ought 
 not to be condemned as a m.an involved in mere self-contradiction. 
 For, in doing it, what he really does is to prophesy the Idealism which 
 
 1 Supra, pp. 165-175. 
 
 2 Here and there are statements, for instance, which remind one of the device of 
 Plotinus: It is by no means tfmt of which it is the principle. The divine wisdom, says 
 Erigena, " without measure is the measure of all, without number is the number of all, 
 without weight is the weight or order of all " (III. 16). To the "grounds " of things— the 
 primordial causes— he applies the distinction of Diony.sius: " first they are, and then they 
 are grounds" (TI. 36). Again he frequently avails himself of a distinction that reminds 
 one of Mr. Spencer— the possibility of knowing that something is, while it remains quite 
 impossible to know tnhat it is {e.g., III. 28). Sometimes, again, he declares that it is a 
 " mystery " ; or appeals to the darkeninfr of our minds since the fall. But upon the whole, 
 as is said in the text, he simply leaves the two types of thinking side by side. Indeed, he 
 does this in set phrase: "the ineffable manifoldness of the divine unity— for God is in 
 Himself manifold \mity.'" (. . . de ineffabili divinae unitatis rmiltiplicitate—Deus est 
 enim unum multiplex in seipso—lll. 17). 
 
 286 
 
ERIGEXA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 stands above both Mysticism and Pantheism, being able by its organic 
 categories, to do justice alike to the unity of the divine nature and the 
 nianifoldness of the world, alike to the transcendence and the imman- 
 ence of God. In accepting each side as true he really recognised that 
 truth was greater than either.^ 
 
 The conception of the procession or forthpouring of God, as the 
 source of the universe of creatures, is everywhere in Erigeua. We 
 must be content, however, with two passages; two great passages one 
 would call them, were it not that the De Divisione 2\aturae is crowded 
 from beginning to end with such passages. One occurs about midway in 
 the third Book. God, he says (following Dionysius), cannot be called 
 this or that, because He is all and in all. Then he goes on to trace 
 the process in which God goes beyond Himself and yet remains Him- 
 self. " Descending first from the superessentiality of His nature, in 
 which He can but be called Non-Being, He is created of Himself 
 [undergoes a creation at His own hands] in the primordial causes, 
 and becomes the beginning of every essence and of all life, of every 
 understanding, and of all things that enlightened contemplation 
 perceives {gnostica considerat theoria) in the primordial causes. 
 Then, descending out of the primordial causes, which occupy, as it 
 were, a middle station between God and the creature, that is, between 
 that ineffable superessentiality which stands high above every thought, 
 and the revealed Nature which is essentially cognisable for pure spirits, 
 
 1 It may be advisable — especially in view of the loose and irresponsible ^vay in which 
 the term "Pantheism" is frequently used— to point out once more the exact relation of 
 the three types of thought referred i o in the above paragraph. Pantheism i- the extreme 
 opposite of Mysticism ; while Idealism, when it is really dominant and not simply a 
 servant of some other view, docs justice to the truth of both. Mysticism sees reality as 
 an incommunicable One before which all the apparent things of our experience fade into 
 nothingness. Pantheism (of which Spinoza's "second metaphysic " is a type), on the 
 contrary, views God as unfolding Himself into a world of particular things and facts, all 
 of which therefore are real with the reality of God, but none of which can be called 
 " individuals," since each is simply a mode of the one divine Substance. Mysticism, in a 
 word, is the theology of absolute transcendence, Pantheimi the theology of absolute 
 immanence. While Idealism doe^; justice to both the two sides by viewing God as a self- 
 determining and self-communicating spirit— Himself a perfect individual, imparting 
 Him-elf and so giving rise to imperfect or "created" indi\ iduals. Again, Jlysticism is 
 negative theo'ogy ; while Pantheism and Ideal sm, though in very different ways, are 
 affirmative theologies. In dealing with the first Form of Nature, Erigena is a Mystic ; in 
 dealing wiih the second and third Forms, he might almost be called a combination of 
 Idealist and Pantheist ; and we shall have later to ask whether in dealing with the fourth 
 Form, he returns to the Mysticism of the flr-t. 
 
 287 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUEE 
 
 he ' becomes ' in the effects of those causes, and is made manifest in 
 His theophanies. Thence, through the manifold forms of those effects, 
 He proceeds, even to that last order of collective nature, in which 
 bodies are contained. And as in this order he goes forth into all 
 things, He makes all and becomes all in all, and returns into Himself 
 by calling all things back into Himself, and while He comes to be 
 [^enters upon conditioned existence, as one might say in the termin- 
 ology of a modern school] in all things, He does not cease to be above 
 all. All things He makes out of nothing,^ inasmuch as out of His 
 superessentiality He brings forth essences; living beings out of His 
 exaltation above life; intellects out of His transcendence of the 
 intellect; out of the negation of everything which is and is not, the 
 affirmation of all that is and is not. By this also we are most clearly 
 taught the return of all things into the cause, out of which they 
 proceeded, when all things turn back again into God, as air into light, 
 when God will be all in all ; not, indeed, as if God were not even now 
 all in all, but because, since the transgression of human nature and its 
 banishment from its seat in Eden — that is to say, from the height of 
 the spiritual life, and from, the apprehension of clearest wisdom — into 
 the profoundest deep of ignorance, no one save by divine grace is 
 enlightened, or is able — rapt with Paul to the height of the hidden 
 things of God — to discern with the intent gaze of true understanding 
 how God is all in all ; for the cloud of fleshly thoughts and the gloomy 
 twilight of vain imaginations lie between, and the penetrating genius 
 of the soul, weakened by unreasoning passions and baffled by the 
 splendours of transparent truth, expends itself upon the accustomed 
 shadows of the corporeal world. For it is not open to us to believe 
 that the heavenly essences, who never have left their state of eternal 
 blessedness, can recognise in the whole of creation anything else but 
 only God Himself, since they, lifted high above all sense and thought, 
 see all things in God and in the primordial causes, without needing any 
 
 1 For this "nothing," it will of course be understood, Erigena has a tueaninfj. The 
 "nothing" out of which the world is made, he proves (III. 20-23) to be the superessential 
 God Himself. For "all things have their becoming from God and through God and in 
 God " ; and if God is to be viewed as cause and the world as effect, then " there does not 
 pass over from the cause into its efTects anything which is alien to the true and proper 
 natnre of the cause." 
 
 28S 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 work of nature for the knowledge of truth,— for they alone enjoy the 
 inelfable grace of the eternal light."^ 
 
 The other, and more extended, of the two passages occurs earlier 
 in the third Book. Erigena is dealing with the " participation " which 
 exists among the orders of natural being. But before taking this 
 passage we should note the express definition of " participation " given 
 in another chapter. All things that are, says Erigena— following 
 "that supreme theologian, Dionysius the Areopagite, illustrious 
 bishop of Athens"— all things that are and all things that are 
 not, arc to be understood as nothing other than participation in 
 the divine essence. This participation is itself nothing other than 
 the reception or assumption of the essence which is participated 
 in; and such reception implies, or rather is, the "pouring out 
 of the divine wisdom which is to all things their substance and 
 their essence and whatever imder the form of nature is to be 
 perceived in them."^ But in the passage which we are now to 
 consider Erigena is thinking of that participation as the principle of 
 the ordering of the whole universe. Each order of natural being 
 participates in that which is above it and is participated in by that 
 below it ; except that God, who is highest, is participated in, but does 
 not participate; while "bodies," which are lowest, participate, but 
 are not participated in. From their original ground in the divine 
 Wisdom, the orders of being descend in a series of natural gradations ; 
 among their "participations" the all-creative wisdom "has estab- 
 lished wonderful and ineffable harmonies by which all things are 
 brought to the accord and friendship, or to the peace and love, or to 
 whatever else be the true name for this unifying of all things." But 
 what can this " participation " be ? It is nothing other, is the answer, 
 than the derivation of a next-following essence from that which 
 precedes it, and the bestowal of being from a first to that which stands 
 next to it. And then Erigena goes on to show how, through such 
 bestowal, the orders of the universe have their being. As a river 
 
 1 III. 20. 
 
 2 III. 9.— The Master goes on to call the Scholar's attention to the opinion of Dionysius 
 de processione. Dei per omnia, et mansione in seipso. in a letter to Titus the priest who 
 had asked what the house of Wisdom is, and what its mixing-bowl and its meat and 
 drink. 
 
 20 289 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUKE 
 
 streams from its source, and its waters for ever and without loss of 
 continuity make their way downward through the longest channel, so 
 " the divine goodness, and essence, and life, and wisdom, and all that 
 in the source of all exists, pour forth, first in the primordial causes, 
 and make these to be; and then hasten "down, in some ineffable way, 
 through the primordial causes into the effects of these, through tlie 
 self-harmonious orders of the universe, always flowing down through 
 the higher to the lower ; and return by the most secret pores of nature, 
 and by the most hidden path, to their source again. From that source 
 is every good thing, every essence, all life, all sense, all reason, all 
 wisdom, every genus, every species, all beauty, all order, all unity, all 
 equality, all difference, all place, all time, both everything which is 
 and everything which is not, both everything which is thought and 
 everything which is perceived by sense and everything which is above 
 sense and thought. The immutable motion in itself of the highest 
 and triune and sole true goodness, and its simple multiplicity, and its 
 inexhaustible pouring forth from itself, in itself, to itself, are the 
 cause of all things, nay rather, are all things. For if the being thought 
 of all things (intellectus omnium) is all things, and if the divine 
 goodness alone thinks all things, then that divine goodness itself is 
 alone all things, because it is the sole gnostic power which knew 
 all things before they were all things, and knew all things not 
 outside of itself — for outside of itself there is nothing — but has 
 all things within itself. For it encompasses all things, and nothing 
 is within it, in so far as it is true, but itself, because it alone is 
 true. The other things which are said to be, are its theophanies, 
 which truly subsist in it. And so God is everything which truly 
 is, because He Himself makes all things and becomes in all things, 
 as saith St. Dionysius the Areopagite. For everything" — here 
 Erigena exhausts the power of metaphor in insisting that the world 
 which is known is the manifestation of the God who cannot be 
 known — " everything which is thought or perceived by sense is 
 nothing other than the appearance of Him who does not appear, the 
 manifestation of the hidden, the affirmation of the denied, the compre- 
 hension of the incomprehensible, the utterance of the ineffable, the 
 approach of the inaccessible, the apprehension of the unintelligible, 
 
 290 
 
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 the body of the incorporeal, the essence of that which is above essence, 
 the form of that which has no form, the measure of the immeasurable, 
 the number of the innumerable, the weight of that which is devoid of 
 weight, the coming into gross matter of the spiritual, the visibility of 
 the invisible, the possession of place by that which is beyond place, tlie 
 taking on of time-form by that which is above time, the defining of 
 the infinite, the circumscribing of that which cannot be compassed, 
 and whatever else is thought or comprehended by pure intellect, or 
 cannot be held within the bounds of memory, or escapes the pene- 
 trating insight of the soul."^ Then Erigena go?s on to show, in the 
 most interesting way, that we men have in our own nature as intelli- 
 gences, an example of precisely such an activity of self -manifestation. 
 Alone, invisible, absolute in itself, our thought is yet able to go forth 
 from itself, and to incorporate itself in sounds and signs, and to enter 
 into the depth of others' hearts, and mingle itself with other minds, 
 and become one with that to which it is joined — and yet it remains 
 always itself, and in uniting itself with others does not relinquish its 
 own simplicity. But this brings us to an aspect of Erigena's thought 
 (his Idealism) which we are not yet in position to discuss. What we 
 have at this point to consider is something very difl'erent : namely, that 
 when Erigena proceeds to work out his view of the universe in its 
 descending scale of existences as arising from an outflowing, a pouring 
 forth, of itself on the part of the divina donitas, he is in much better 
 position than Plotinus. His view of the absolute unity and transcend- 
 ence of God places him, at the beginning, in the same logical situation 
 as Plotinus, and with the same difficulties to face. But he inherited 
 that which Plotinus did not ; the tradition of Christian theology. And 
 this in a form peculiarly favourable to his endeavour ; for the theology 
 to which he turned by affinity of soul, was that last great world-labour 
 of the Greek spirit, the theology of the East. True, he quotes contin- 
 ually from the Areopagite and from Maximus the Confessor; but he 
 constructs no fantastic hierarchy; a singularly clear and piercing 
 reason guides him, even when he is denying that reason can know 
 ultimate reality. True, again, he could not live in the West and escape 
 Augustine's influence; yet he is able to deal critically even with 
 
 1 HI. 4. 
 291 
 
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF XATURE 
 
 Augustine. But the man to whom really he reaches his hands across 
 the ages is Origen. And the theology which really had power over his 
 mind was that theology whose central and determinative conception is 
 the idea of the divine nature manifesting itself in the AVord. This 
 theology of the Logos and the Trinity it is that guides Erigena in this 
 greater half of his thought wdiich sees the incommunicable One as the 
 God who goes forth from Himself, communicates Himself, and gives 
 rise to a universe which in the ordered scale of its existences is full of 
 harmony and beauty, and in its natural arrangements testifies of 
 spiritual truths. So that Erigena is able to bring to the difficulties 
 that beset him and Plotinus alike, a solution which tends as truly to 
 be concrete as that of Plotinus to be abstract. Where Plotinus is 
 compelled to deal in abstract Ideas, Erigena deals in living energies, 
 living powers, living affections. The system of Erigena comes, in 
 fact, to be a Neo-Platonic framework filled with Idealistic content. 
 
 The second Book is formally given to the consideration of " the 
 procession of the creatures from the first and unitary cause of all 
 things through the primordial essences (which, before all things, are 
 established by it and in it and through it) into the diverse classes, and 
 fornis, and numbers, of things, to infinity.^'^ At the same time — so 
 the j\Iaster warns the Disciple — we shall find in the course of that 
 discussion many a thing introduced about the return of the creatures 
 to their beginning and goal ; for the procession and the return of the 
 creatures are so intimately connected as to appear inseparable ; about 
 the procession nothing worthy or reliable can be advanced without at 
 the same time considering the return of the creatures and the final 
 unifying of all things. Then the INIaster begins the discussion of the 
 first stage of the outgoing of the divine nature in this way : " As the 
 second Form of universal Nature, there appears (enitet, shines forth), 
 as was said above, that which is created and creates, and which accord- 
 ing to my belief is to be understood as consisting only in the 
 primordial causes of things. These primordial causes of things are 
 called by the Greeks TrpwroTDTra, that is, primordial patterns, or 
 TTftoopiffjuaT a, that is, predestinations or determinings (definitiones) ; 
 or again, deia OsXyjjara', that is, divine volitions ; and also iStai, 
 
 1 IT. 2. 
 
 292 
 
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 that is, kinds or forms in which the unchangeable grounds of ail 
 things to be created, were already present. Concerning these we shall 
 speak more in detail in the course of our work, and bring forwaid 
 testimonies from the holy Fathers. Not wrongly, however, are they 
 called by those names ; for the Father, that is, the beginning and origin 
 of all things, constituted already in His Word (namely, in the only- 
 begotten Son) the grounds of all things which were to be created, 
 before he constituted them into genera, and species, and numbers, and 
 differences, and all those other things which in created Nature either 
 can be seen and are seen, or on account of their loftiness cannot be 
 seen, and are not seen,, but none the less are."^ 
 
 The original forms, then — the beginnings, the causes, the Ideas — 
 of all things, the Father constituted in the Son. And constituted them 
 eternally. " What is to be gathered/' Erigena asks, " from that word 
 of the theologian: In the heginning God created? Art thou to under- 
 stand from these words, that the Father first begot His Word, and 
 then made the heavens and the earth in Him? Or has He begotten 
 His Word eternally, and in Him eternally made all things, so that the 
 procession of the Word from the Father, through begetting, in no wise 
 goes before that procession of all tilings out of nothing which is 
 accomplished in the Word through creation? Or, to put it more 
 plainly: have the primordial causes not always been in the Word of 
 God in which they have been made ? and ivas the Word when as yet the 
 causes were not ? Or are they co-eternal with Him, so that the Word 
 never existed without the causes which have their ground in Him ? and 
 is then that which is said of a precedence of the Word to the causes 
 grounded in Him, spoken altogether in the sense, that the Word 
 creates the causes, and they by the Word and in the Word are created ?"' 
 The decision is in favour of the latter view; "for," as the Disciple 
 says, " I do not see how a begetting of the Word from the Father can 
 precede in time the creation of all things from the Father in the Word 
 and through the Word. Rather I must believe that the begetting of 
 the Word and the creation of all things in the Word, are co-eternal, 
 since no one can be right in believing that in God there is anything 
 accidental or any temporal motions or processions. . , . Since to 
 
 III. 2 
 293 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUEE 
 
 God it is not accidental to be the Beginning, therefore He was never 
 without that of which He is the beginning.''^ And the primordial 
 causes which are thus eternal in the Word are likewise, in that Word, 
 both one and many, both a unity and a manifold. A passage in the 
 third Book in which this unity-in-diversity of the primordial causes 
 is set forth, is specially interesting both for itself and for the argu- 
 ment which it concludes.2 The Disciple is in a perplexity: in the 
 unbegotten Word, or Wisdom, of the Father the primordial causes are 
 eternal; in that Word or Wisdom, too, all things that proceed are 
 eternal; then how can the world have been created, as the church 
 teaches us, out of nothing? For how can anything be eternal, which 
 was not before it originated ? And how can that be in eternity which 
 begins to be in and with time? The Disciple, following a line of 
 thought which is present in Plato and Aristotle, is inclined to take 
 refuge in a theory of " formless matter." The primordial causes are 
 eternal in the Wisdom of the Father ; but the formless matter in and 
 through which those causes pass over into their effects — i.e., into the 
 genera and species of which the world is made up — is not thus eternal 
 in God, and is not to be numbered among the active " causes." But 
 Erigena sees clearly that if such formless matter plays a part in the 
 constituting of the world, it must also be numbered among the causes 
 which are eternal in God; and points out the contradiction in the 
 position of the " secular philosophers " who make formless matter a 
 principle outside of God and co-eternal with Him. He gives them 
 credit for taking up such a position out of their high conception of 
 •God, as a being who can have no connexion with formless matter. But 
 his own vision is more comprehensive and more daring: both the 
 formlessness of things, and their forms, with everything, whether 
 essential or accidental, which those forms contain, are created of the 
 ■one All-cause. From the one universal ground or source everything 
 which is, and which is not, flows forth: whether in the primordial 
 causes which, at once and all together {semel et simul), eternally are 
 made in the only-begotten Word of God; or in the formless matter 
 from which the primordial causes have taken occasion to appear in 
 visible creation; or in the effects of those primordial causes — effects 
 
 1 IT. 20. 2 III. ii.f). 
 
 294 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 in which this world from its beginning to its end runs its course in 
 natural order under the guidance of divine providence. But this only 
 shifts the Disciple's perplexity into another quarter. How can the 
 world be eternal in God when Eternity and Becoming stand opposed? 
 That which becomes stands in antithesis to that which is eternal: 
 how, then, can the world be at once eternal and yet in process of 
 becoming? In reply it is pointed out that in God there is nothing 
 accidental. Therefore, if He is Creator, He is not so accidentally; 
 it must be of the essence of His nature to be Creator ; and, therefore, 
 He is Creator eternally. That which is eternal, therefore, and that 
 which has come to be, are not diverse, but are one and the same ; in 
 the Word of God, the universe is eternal, and yet it is at the same 
 time a process of becoming.^ Then Erigena sums up the argument 
 with a statement to this effect.— The grounds of all tilings, so far as 
 they are understood in the superessential nature of the Word, are 
 eternal. For whatever exists substantially in the divine Word, just 
 because it is nothing other than the Word itself, must necessarily be 
 eternal. So, then, the Word itself and the unitary and yet manifold 
 hio-hest ground of the whole created universe are one and the same. 
 The only-begotten Son of God is, as the term Xoyoz indicates, at once 
 Word and ground and cause : the Word, for through Him the Father 
 spoke the becoming of all things; the ground, for He Himself is the 
 first exemplar [the Idea] of the whole visible and invisible universe — 
 in Him the Father saw all that He willed to come to be, before it had 
 
 1 Cf. III. 16. "... all thin^a visible and invisible, eternal and timeless, and eternity 
 itself, and time, and places, and distances, and all that is named under the categories of sub- 
 stance or of accident, and in general terms what things soever the whole created universe 
 contains, are at once, in the only-begotten Word of God, both eternal and made. In them 
 neither does the eternity precede the becoming, nor the becoming the eternity; the 
 eternity is created and the being created is eternal in the dispensation of the Word. For 
 all things which in the order of the ages v^eem to come temporally or spatially into being 
 through generation have eternally been made, all together and at once, in the Word of the 
 Lord. It is not to be believed that they first begin to be when their arising in this world 
 is perceived. " Substantially they were always in the Word of the Lord ; and their arising 
 and perishing in the order of space and time th-ough generation, that i^, through the 
 reception of the accidental, was always in the Word of God, in which that which is to 
 become already has become. The divine Wisdom includes all times, so that everything 
 which in the nature of things has a temporal origin, in it precedes and eternally subsists. 
 For it without measure is the measure of all, without number is the number of all, with- 
 out weight is the weight or order of all; nay, is time and age, is past and present and 
 future." 
 
 295 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 yet become ; the cause, for the occasions to all things subsist eternally 
 and unchangeably in Him. And since the Son of God is thus Word 
 and ground and cause, it is not inappropriate to say: the unitary and 
 yet in itself infinitely manifold creative ground and cause of the whole 
 created universe, is the Word of God; or conversely, the Word of God 
 is the unitary and yet in itself infinitely manifold creative ground and 
 cause of the created universe. Unitary (simplex), because the totality 
 of all things in Him is indivisible and inseparable; assuredly the 
 Word of God is the indivisible and inseparable unity of all things, 
 because He Himself is all things. Manifold, however, it may also 
 without incorrectness be called, because it pours itself out to infinity 
 through all things ; and this outpouring is itself the subsistence of all 
 things, for " it reaches from end to end sweetly and strongly ordering 
 all things" (as is declared in the Psalm: vclociter currit sermo ejus). 
 The Word remains comprehended in itself and unitary, because in it 
 all things are one. AVhile it remains in itself as something compk te, 
 and more than complete, and separate from all things, yet it extends 
 itself into all things, and that extension of itself is all things. The 
 outpouring, or extension, or " running " of the Word goes [logically] 
 before all things, and is the cause of the existence of all things, and is 
 all things. For, as Erigena emphaticall}^ says, there could be no more 
 despicable and pitiable death of the rational soul than even to think, 
 concerning the All-creator, such an abominable monstrosity as that 
 there is a space or time (or, he might have added, matter) already 
 prepared out into which the Word of God in its creative activity 
 proceeds. 
 
 This belief that God eternally constituted the primordial causes in 
 the Word, and that in the Word they are one, stands central to 
 Erigena's theory of the world and its derivation from God. He does 
 not deal explicitly with the relation of the Word to the original and 
 ultimate God, nor with the question whether that ultimate God has 
 manifested or communicated Himself in the Word. Such a question 
 could but be ruled out of court by a theologian who with regard to the 
 first and ultimate God follows the via negativa} So that with regard 
 
 1 After the formal transition from ncKative to affirmative theology in the passage 
 quoted above (11.30; so p. 283 supra), Erigena turns directly to the doctrine of the 
 Trinity and goes on to say that the F'alher may not inappropriately be identified w^ith the 
 
 296 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUIiE 
 
 to the three difiiculties of I'lotinus mentioned above, we must say that 
 the first stands also for Erigena; stands, in fact, for all negative 
 theology whatsoever. At the same time it should be pointed out that 
 Erigena, inheriting and employing in the way Just noted the Logos- 
 doctrine of Greek theology, needed but to go one step farther than he 
 actually did — needed but to view the Logos as not only the principle 
 of unity of the second Form, but as also its principle of relation with 
 the first — in order to overcome the negative theology altogether. But 
 that was not to be expected. With Erigena — as with many of the 
 greatest mediaeval theologians — to give up the negative theology would 
 have been to give np half of his soul. But when once he has passed 
 from the first Form of Nature to the second, it illuminates the whole 
 way for him. It enables him to solve at once what we have called the 
 second difficulty of Plotinus ; for he can view the causae primordiales , 
 the Ideas, as one in Christ; in Him the ideal world, the second Form 
 of Nature, consists ; He is the living principle of synthesis in which 
 the primordial causes are at once many and one.^ 
 
 "cause of causes." There are other passages which seem to touch upon this; but they 
 really deal with the inner relationships of the Trinity. Eckhart's problem of the relation 
 of God (tlie Trinity) to the Godhead— which is precisely the problem at issue here— Erigena 
 does not face. Indeed, as already has been pointed out, his treatment of the first Form of 
 Nature, if it be allowed to stand, absolves him from the obligation to deal with it. 
 
 1 How this can be, Erigena bluntly confesses that he does not know. "How all things 
 have their ground in the Word of God, let him explain who can. I confess thiit I do not 
 know. And I am not ashamed not to know, when I hear the Apostle say Qui solus habes 
 immortalitatent. ct lucem habitas inaccessibileni,— just as if he were aiming from far at 
 our present investigation." (III. 16.) 
 
 What is really behind such a statement is the fact that Erigena is not able to use the 
 organic categories to show how a spiritual system is both a many and a one. And a still 
 graver evidence of the same fact is the way in which Erigena at times almost loses the 
 manifoldness of the Ideas or primordial causes in their unity. "The grounds of the 
 things which God has created in Himself {i.e., which the Father has created in the Son) 
 are"- so Erigena takes for granted in the course of one of his arguments— "one in Him 
 without division ; they admit no defining of the proper substance through proper differ- 
 entiae or through accidental determinations, for it is only in their etfccts, not in themselves, 
 that they suffer these." (II. 28.) " In themselves the first causes are one, and simple, and 
 through no known order determined or separated from one another ; such determination 
 or separation they undergo in their efi'ects. Even as in the unit, while in it all the 
 particular numbers by one principle subsist, yet no single number is distinguished from 
 another, since in it they are a unity, and a simple unity, and not a unity compounded of 
 many members (for while out of the unit all the multiplication of the numbers proceeds 
 to infinity, yet the unit is by no means composed of the manifold numbers which proceed 
 from it, as if by a sort of counting these together into one) :— even so the primordial 
 causes, while they are understood as contained in the principle of all things, that is to say, 
 in the only-begotten (al. unbegotten) Word of God, are a simple and undivided unity ; as 
 
 297 
 
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 And it likewise places within his reach a solution of what was 
 noted as the third difficulty of Plotinus. The existence of the 
 primordial causes in the Word makes it easy to view them as having 
 a living and a creative energy, such as enables them to proceed beyond 
 themselves and give rise to the particular things and beings of our 
 present world. Or, rather, it is the Word itself that in them proceeds 
 to another stage in its outpouring of itself,^ and gives rise to another 
 order of natural existences— to what Erigena calls the third Form of 
 Nature. 
 
 At the close of the second Book there is a passage which sums up 
 Erigena's view of the second Form of Nature as a world of ideal 
 energies lying between the ultimate reality and our present order of 
 things, and also indicates the transition between those Ideas and the 
 present world; a passage which is interesting, also, as showing with 
 special distinctness the blending in Erigena of the two great labours 
 which the Greek spirit performed after it had been driven from its 
 home and was losing itself among the Gentiles — the theology of 
 Plotinus, the theology of Nicaea. "The primordial causes, then, as I 
 said before, are what the Greeks call Ideas ; that is, the eternal species 
 or forms and the unchangeable principles after which and in which 
 the world visible and invisible is formed and governed. Hence by 
 the Greek sages they came rightly to be called npcoTorvTta, that is, 
 original types or pattern-forms, which the Father made in the Son, 
 and wJiicli hy the Holy Ghost are distributed into their effects and 
 made manifold. They are called, too, Trpoopiff/.iara, that is, predeter- 
 minations (or foreordinations) ; for in them whatever things by divine 
 
 soon, however, as they proceed into their infinitely manifold effects, they take on their 
 vast and orderly plurality; not as if the cause of all things were not also order and 
 arrangement, or as if arrangement in itself were not to be counted among the principles 
 of things, when it is by participation in it that all orderly things receive their order; but 
 because every order appe ^rs as one and simple, and is distinguished by no differences, in 
 the hi'^hest All-cause and in the first participation in it, where all orders are unvarying 
 from themselves, forming an indissoluble unity whence the manifold order of all things 
 flows down." (III. 1.) 
 
 1 Not only, Erigena urges (e.g. in III. 16), are all things at once eternal and " become " 
 {facta)in the divine Word, but the divine Word itself makes everything and in everything 
 becomes. It alone is the essence of the existent, the movement and separation of things 
 that are distinct, the indissoluble connexion of the mingled and compounded, the 
 foundation of the established ; in a word, in all things it becomes all. 
 
 298 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 providence are coming to be or have come to be or shall come to be 
 are all together and at once and unchangeably predestined. For 
 nothing in the visible and invisible creature arises in natural wise 
 except what in them before all times and places is predetermined and 
 foreordained. In like manner, they are wont to be called by philoso- 
 phers deia 6 eXij^iar a, ih.a.i is, divine volitions; for all things that 
 God willed to make, He made in them primordially and causally ; and 
 all things that are to come into being, came into being in them before 
 the ages. And, therefore, they are said to be the principles of all 
 things, because all things that in the creature, whether visible or 
 invisible, are perceived by sense or thought, subsist by participation in 
 them. They themselves, however, are participations in the one All- 
 cause, the highest and holy Trinity, and hence are said to exist in 
 themselves, because between them and the one cause of all things no 
 creature intervenes. And while they subsist unchangeably in it, they 
 are the primordial causes of other causes which follow upon them to 
 the uttermost limits of the whole created and infinitely manifolded 
 Nature ; " infinitely," I say, not in respect of the Creator, but of the 
 creature — for the end of the multiplication of the creatures is known 
 to the Creator alone, because He Himself and no other is that end. 
 These primordial causes, then, which divine sages call the principles 
 of all things, are Goodness in itself, Essence in itself. Life in itself, 
 Wisdom in itself. Truth in itself, Thought in itself, and so with Reason, 
 Power, Righteousness, Welfare, Magnitude, Omnipotence, Eternity, 
 Peace, and all the powers and principles, which all together and at once 
 the Father made in the Son, and according to which the order of all 
 things from the highest to the lowest is framed (texitur), — that is, 
 from the intellectual creature which, after God, is nearest to God, 
 down to that last order of all things in which bodies are contained. 
 For that which is good is so through participation in the Good in 
 itself ; that which subsists essentially and substantially subsists through 
 participation in Essence in itself; that which lives possesses life 
 through participation in Life in itself. So, too, that which is wise and 
 intelligent and reasonable, is so only through participation in Wisdom 
 in itself, Intelligence in itself. Reason in itself. And the same of the 
 others. For there is in Nature no power, whether universal or 
 
 299 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OP NATURE 
 
 particular, which does not proceed, by an ineffable participation, from 
 the primordial causes."^ 
 
 The position indicated in the italicised words of the foregoing 
 passage, Erigena makes more explicit elsewhere. Father, Son, and 
 Holy Ghost, he says, are three causes in one cause. The Father is 
 the begetting cause of the only-begotten Son, who on His side '" is 
 the cause of all the primordial causes, which in Him are created by 
 the Father. The same Father is the cause of the Holy Ghost, who 
 proceeds from Him through the Son, and the Holy Ghost in turn is 
 the cause of the dividing, manifolding, and distributing, of all the 
 causes created by the Father in the Son, into their universal, special, 
 and proper effects, according to Nature and according to Grace."^ Or 
 again, in another connexion, " If, then, there is nothing to be perceived 
 in the nature of created things except what is given them by the 
 Creator, it follows that the creature, with regard alike to its essence 
 and its accidents, is nothing other than a gift of the Creator ; and the 
 dispensation of the gifts theology ascribes to the Holy Ghost as His 
 peculiar function. All, therefore, that the Father does in the Son, the 
 Holy Ghost dispenses, and, as He will, divides to each thing its own. 
 Seest thou not, then, how theology is able to attribute severally to the 
 substances or persons of the divine Goodness, as it were, their special 
 properties? The Father (so it affirms) does all; in the Word, 
 universally, essentially, and simply, all the primordial causes of things 
 have eternally their origin; the primordial causes originating in the 
 Word, the Spirit distributes, like seeds with power of growth, into 
 their effects — i.e., into the genera and species, the numbers and distinc- 
 tions, wliether of celestial and spiritual essences altogether without 
 bodies, or of essences clad with purest spiritual bodies constituted of 
 the simplicity of the universal elements, or of the sensible existences of 
 this visible world — existences universal or particular, separate in 
 space, movable in time, differing in quality and quantity ."^ And this 
 view of the function of the Holy Ghost as one of the persons of the 
 Trinity, can be proven, as Erigena remarks (a few sentences before 
 the passage just quoted), from the testimony of the Apostle (Alii per 
 Spiritum datur sermo sapientiae, alii ... 1 Cor. xii. 8-11), or 
 
 1 II. 36 (italic* mine). 2 n. 32. 3 II. 22. 
 
 300 
 
ERICtENA: the DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 from the Book of Genesis, where it says: Et Spiritus Dei fovebat 
 aquas. For to what other purpose could the Spirit of God have 
 cherished and made fruitful and nourished the waters (which upon 
 Erigena's allegorical interpretation are the causae primordiales) , than 
 to distribute and arrange, according to the distinctions of classes and 
 forms, of wholes and parts, and of all numbers, that reality (the 
 causae primordiales) which in the "Word was created in uniformity, 
 unity, and simplicit}^? 
 
 The causae primordiales which are one, as created by the Father 
 in the AVord, are, then, made manifold and distributed into their 
 effects by the Holy Ghost. For Erigena, a living and continuous divine 
 energy is thus both the principle of unity of the Ideas, and the source 
 of that expansive jiower and creative energy by which they proceed 
 from themselves and give rise to the orders of particular being which 
 make up the third Form of Nature. This transition from the Ideas 
 to the things of the present world had been a difficulty both for Plato 
 and for Plotinus. Plato, as we have seen, worked his way steadily 
 toward a solution of it. He came more and more to regard the 
 hierarchy of the Ideas not so much as a universe complete in itself, 
 abiding for ever in static perfection, and by that perfection rebuking 
 this second universe in which we live; but rather as the order ^ the 
 rational constitution, of the one universe to which all reality belongs. 
 And this he could do, because he more and more came to regard the 
 Ideas, not as mere forms of static perfection, but as creative energies 
 sharing in the nature of that supreme principle which is at once the 
 source of their reality and the principle of their organisation. While 
 Plotinus, in tracing the descent from the vov> through the world-soul 
 to the world of particulars, can but bring up the same logical devices 
 that he had already iised in attempting to bridge a similar, but 
 profounder, gulf — that between the One and the vrji?:. But for 
 Erigena, the Christian theology of the Greeks makes possible that 
 which to the pagan theology of the Greeks was not possible. The self- 
 manifesting and self-communicating Father pours Himself forth 
 through all the descending stages of existence, constituting the Ideas 
 in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost distributing them into their effects. 
 
 It is not an easy task to reduce any aspect of Erigena's thought to 
 
 301 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUEE 
 
 cold and systematic statement. And within the limits of the present 
 discussion it is simply not possible to consider the details of the 
 gigantic cosmogony which he works out in dealing with the third 
 Form of Nature. From the causae primordiales — not out of nothing 
 — proceed the four universal elements.^ These mediate between the 
 purely spiritual primordial causes and particular bodies.- So that 
 matter is viewed as arising from the combination of incorporeal exis- 
 tences. For qualities and quantities which in themselves are incorpor- 
 eal, by coming together bring into being formless matter, which by 
 the addition of incorporeal forms and colours takes shape in diverse 
 bodies (literally, "is moved into diverse bodies'' — compare Aris- 
 totle's Jiiv7]0i5).^ Then by distinguishing in compounded bodies, 
 (1) the matter, (2) the immanent or individual form, (3) the 
 essential or general (and therefore separable) form, he brings forward 
 what is really Plato's and Aristotle's problem of the relation of form 
 and matter, with the connected problem of the relation of essential and 
 contingent.* Man, again, he views as created in the image of God, and 
 therefore as containing within himself all created existences from the 
 heavenly to the animal — so that " in man God has created the whole 
 visible and invisible creature." " Although it remains to this day 
 hidden, how far the first estate of man reaches, since his transgression 
 by revolt from the heavenly light, still there is nothing naturally 
 present in the celestial essences which does not subsist essentially in 
 man." " The whole sensible world is created in him ; no part of it c;;n 
 be found, whether corporeal or incorporeal, which in created man does 
 not subsist, feel, live, and become incarnate."^ 
 
 With the details of this part of Erigena's system, however, — and 
 with the great allegorical exposition by which he brings both this and 
 other parts of his system out of the opening chapters of Genesis — it is 
 impossible here to deal. But although we cannot go into the details, 
 yet if we are to understand Erigena at all, we must consider the 
 broad movement of thought, and the chief logical motives, in this part 
 
 1 III. 14. 
 
 2III. 26. Compare the phrase in III. 27. "... the threefold creation of the world, 
 namely, in its grounds (rationibus), itsvniversal elements, its particular and compounded 
 bodies. " 
 
 3 III. 14. 4 III. 27. ^' IV. 7 seq. 
 
 302 
 
EKIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUKE 
 
 of his account of the world. For what it contains is precisely that 
 dualism which we have already seen in Plato and Aristotle, and which 
 haunts theology to this day; the dualism that arises from the sense, 
 on the one side, of the perfection of God as the source of the world; 
 on the other side, of the imperfection of the world which has come 
 from that God. 
 
 That dualism may be said to be absolutely inevitable for aU 
 affirmative theology which is not able to view the process of the world 
 and of man's spiritual history, from the point of view of development 
 or evolution. And this conception and point of view, it should be 
 understood, is not forced upon theology from the outside. It is called 
 for from within. For anything that can be called affirmative theology 
 at all, must view God as a self-communicating being; as a being 
 whose nature it is to impart his nature. And that means that God 
 must give rise to spiritual beings of a nature kindred to His own, and 
 must impart Himself to them. But such impartation on God's part 
 means struggle on their part. For unless in some very real sense 
 they earn their own life and achieve their own perfection — unless, in 
 one word, they " have life in themselves " — they cannot be regarded 
 as beings to whom God imparts Himself. They would have simply 
 a life and a perfection laid upon them from the outside; would have 
 no life or perfection of their own. They would, in fact, in their 
 unsuffering and untormented innocence, be (morally, if not meta- 
 physically) modes of the divine substance, rather than spirits made in 
 the likeness of God — spirits in whom God reproduces Himself, and to 
 whom, therefore, and only therefore, He can impart Himself. So 
 that, as we have already seen,^ affirmative theology must view God in 
 creation as making the actual, empirical beginning with something 
 less than His own eternal perfection, and from that beginning leading 
 created, beings onward through a process of development, which 
 from God's side may be described as an ever-increasing impartation 
 of Himself, but from man's side as a desperate struggle upward 
 through evil. But Plato and Aristotle — all the more remarkably in 
 Aristotle's case because he does see evolution in nature — cannot admit 
 such a View. Any result of the divine activity, any creation of God, 
 
 1 Supra, p. 82 wij. Cf. p. '212 ncq. and p. 258. 
 303 
 
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUEE 
 
 they instinctively feel, must have eternally in it the absolute and final 
 perfection of God; if a creation-theory can be admitted at all, it 
 must view the perfect and timeless maker as making a timelessly per- 
 fect work. But the world actually present to us is an order of becom- 
 ing, and is full of imperfection. Hence Plato is forced to a dualism 
 (the admission of a co-eternal impeding principle in creation), which 
 Aristotle hardens and makes more decisive. And for Erigena in his 
 affirmative theology, this situation is intensified and made most acule. 
 For he sees this present world as intimately in connexion with God; 
 in fact, as he emphatically puts it, what God creates in the second 
 and third Form of Nature is Himself; in those Forms, God 
 " becomes," God " is created." Hence, for Erigena, if one may so 
 express it, God in the world and the evil in the world stand directly 
 face to face, and the problem that troubled Plato and Aristotle is 
 intensified to the utmost. 
 
 We must briefly consider the presence in Erigena of each of the 
 two insights whose opposition thus constitutes the ultimate — and des- 
 perate — problem of theology and philosophy. It is understood, of 
 course, that in doing so we are confining ourselves to Erigena's 
 affirmative theology; for the negative theologian, when he has 
 reached his goal, has delivered himself even from this problem; he 
 has but to be still, having come to his rest in God. 
 
 First, Erigena never wavers from the height of his assertion of 
 the unity, and eternity, and divinity, of Nature through all its Forms. 
 This does not mean that he deifies the rocks and trees. It means that 
 for him God is all in all; it means that he has penetrated beyond the 
 appearance of the things of the earth to their reality, and has found 
 that reality to be God. In all creation God creates Himself; in all 
 becoming it is God that becomes. All the four Forms of Nature are 
 the procession of God, from Himself, through Himself, to Himself. 
 "... To God there is nothing future, for He includes (con- 
 cludat) within Himself all times together with their content, and is 
 the beginning, the middle, and the end, the extent and course and 
 return of all things." " Thou compellest us now to confess," the 
 Scholar presently replies, " that God is all — all that is said to be 
 eternal, all that is said to have become. For if the divine will and 
 
 304 
 
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OE NATURE 
 
 the divine vision are essential and eternal, and, i'or God, being, 
 willing, and seeing, are not different things, but one thing, and that 
 superessential ; if, furthermore, all that makes up the object of his 
 willing and seeing can reasonably be understood as nothing other 
 than Himself, since a simple nature can admit in itself nothing 
 which it itself is not: then beyond all dispute no other conclusion 
 remains than to confess that the one God is all in all. ... If the 
 nature of the divine Goodness," the Scholar farther admits, "is 
 distinct from that which God saw as something destined to become, 
 and made,— saw thus, and made, in Himself— then the simplicity of 
 the divine nature is rent apart, if an Other is understood in it which 
 is not itself. But this is absolutely impossible. And if the divine 
 nature is not distinct from that which it saw in itself as something 
 to be made; if it is, rather, one and the same divine nature, whose 
 simplicity is inviolable, and whose unity is indivisible; then with 
 certainty it follows that God is everywhere all, and wholly in every- 
 thing, at once the maker and that which ^s made, the seer and that 
 which is seen, at once the time and place and essence and substance 
 and accidents of all things ; in short, is everything which truly is or 
 is not; superessential in the essences, supersubstantial in the substances, 
 high above every creature as Creator, and within every creature as 
 created [in the creature God creates Himself], and underneath every 
 creature as subsistent [or, as substratum] , beginning to be from Him- 
 self, moving Himself through Himself, and moved to Himself, and 
 resting in Himself, made infinitely manifold in Himself through 
 genera and species, without any loss of the simplicity of His nature, 
 and calling back into Himself the infinity of His manifoldness. For 
 in Him all things are one." " Now I see," is the Master's answer, 
 " that in place of thy doubts clear insight has come, and that thou 
 wilt no longer hesitate to confess that all things are at once ' become ' 
 and eternal (et facta et etrrna), and that everything which is seen 
 truly to subsist in them is nothing other than the ineffable nature 
 of the divine Goodness." . . . "The conclusion is, that in all 
 things, it [the divine nature] alone truly and properly is; and 
 nothing which is not that nature truly properly is. . . . So that 
 we ought not to regard God and the creature as two existences distinct 
 
 21 305 
 
ERIGEXA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 from each other ; rather they are one and the same. For the creature 
 subsists in God, and God in wonderful and ineffable wise is created 
 in the creature; revealing Himself; the invisible making Himself 
 visible, the incomprehensible making Himself comprehensible, the 
 hidden, open, the unknown, known; the God above form and appear- 
 ance making Himself beautiful in form, gracious in appearance ; the 
 superessential making Himself essential, the supernatural, natural, 
 the simple, complex; the God exalted above accidental qualities mak- 
 ing Himself subject to such qualities, and becoming such a quality; 
 the infinite making Himself finite, the uncircumscribed, circum- 
 scribed, the supertemporal, temporal, the superlocal, local ; the Creator 
 of all being created in all, and the Maker of all made in all ; so that 
 the eternal begins to be, and the immutable is changed into all 
 {immolilis movetur in omnia) and in all things becomes all. And 
 this I say, not with reference to the incarnation of the Word, and His 
 becoming man, but with reference to the inefilable condescension of 
 the Supreme Goodness, which is Unity and Trinity, into the things 
 which are, in order that they may be, nay, in order that it may be 
 itself in all things from the highest to the lowest, always eternal, 
 always ' become,' eternal of itself, ' become ' in itself ; while eternal, 
 not ceasing to be become ; while become, not ceasing to be eternal ; and 
 making itself of itself. For it needs not some other matter, which 
 is not itself, in order therein to make itself; else would it seem pow- 
 erless, and imperfect in itself, if from some other where it received 
 aid for its appearance and perfection. From Himself, then, God 
 received the occasions to His theophanies — which is to say, divine 
 appearances — for ' of Him, and through Him, in Him, and to Him, 
 are all things.' And therefore the matter itself, of which the world 
 is said to have been made, is from Him and in Him; and He is in 
 it so far as it is regarded as having existence."^ 
 
 So that all things are divine and are a totum simul in God. That 
 of which God made the world He took no other where than from Him- 
 self, and " neither sought spaces outside of Himself, in which to create, 
 nor paid regard to times, in order in their intervals to complete His 
 work, but made all things in Himself; since He is the space of all 
 
 1 in. 17. 
 306 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUEE 
 
 things, and the time of times, and the age of ages, accomplishing 
 all things together and making all things in the twinkling of an eye. 
 For both those things which in the course of the ages have come to 
 birth, and those that even now are coming to birth, and those whose 
 birth is still to come, are all together and at once made in Him, in 
 whom past and present and future are all together, and all at once, 
 and all one."^ " God saw, then, that it ivas good, that is to sa}^ God 
 saw Himself in all things as the good. For God saw nothing but 
 Himself, because outside of Him there is nothing, and all that is in 
 Him is Himself, and his vision of Himself is simple and has its form 
 from none other than Himself."^ 
 
 But over against this vision of the theologian to whom God is all 
 and in all, and all cognisable things theophanies, stands the life of 
 the present world. And as Erigena looks upon it, the problem is 
 forced upon him which has been forced upon all the greater theo- 
 logians from Plato downward : How — and why — has evil come to have 
 a place in a world whose source is altogether good? Erigena sees — 
 what any one who deserves the name of theologian must see — that the 
 world is one as coming from one source; and that, therefore, in ulti- 
 mate analysis, all the elements or factors of the world have their 
 ground in one character and subserve one purpose. But, then, what 
 account can one give of the place of evil in such a world? And if 
 you can give no account — if you cannot see even the beginning or 
 promise of an explanation — what right have you to retain your funda- 
 mental conception of the unity of all existence? — if you thus are 
 really a Manicha?an, what right, for instance, have you to call your- 
 self a Theist ? 
 
 We must distinguish, of course, between an empirical account 
 of the origin of evil and a metaphysical account. The empirical 
 account simply describes as a matter of fact how evil comes to be; 
 the metaphysical seeks for the ground of evil, where all things must 
 somehow have their ground — in ultimate eternity. An empirical 
 account Erigena easily gives: evil arises from "perverse motions of 
 the free wlII."^ In modern language, evil is the correlate of man's 
 freedom. And when it is recognised that freedom on the part of man 
 
 1 III. 27. 2 III. 28. 3 See, e.g., IV. 5. 
 
 307 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 is necessary to any genuine self -communication on the part of God, 
 the way is prepared for tlie metaphysical accouiit which has already 
 been referred to/ and which, grave as are its difficulties, is at least 
 free from self-contradiction — one part of it does not deny the other 
 part. 
 
 But Erigena does not advance to this point of view ; though there 
 are hints of it in him- — as, indeed, there are in him hints of nearly 
 everything in philosophy. On the contrary, he breaks at last that to 
 which he so passionately held, the belief in the inviolable unity of all 
 existence. He falls into a dualism resembling, not in expression, 
 indeed, but in logical motive, that of Plato and Aristotle. Evil 
 becomes to him what the " Necessity " of the Timacus is to Plato, or 
 contingency to Aristotle — virtually a co-eternal principle which inter- 
 feres with the perfection of the created world. The very intensity of 
 his idea of unity coupled with his lack of clearly-possessed organic 
 categories, drives him into the following position. — (1) Evil, alike 
 in its origin and in its being, lies outside of " Nature." " God, then, 
 does not know evil. For if He knew evil, evil would necessarily be in 
 the nature of things. For the divine knowledge is the cause of all 
 things which are. . . . The cause of the essence of these things is 
 the divine knowledge, and, therefore, if God knew evil, then evil would 
 be perceived substantially in something; evil would participate in the 
 good, and thus from strength and goodness defect and evil would 
 proceed. But that this is impossible, true wisdom teaches."^ (2) How 
 anything which thus has no place in Nature, which, indeed, contradicts 
 
 1 Supra, p. 242 seq.\ p. 258 ; p. 303. Cf. p. 82 seg. 
 
 ■-' One of the-e— which may be said to present the theory in question in its static form 
 (the form. Stoio and Leibnizian, which views evil as contributing to goori, not as the 
 negative factor involved in 'levelopment, but rather as the imperfection which presents 
 itself when you 'ook at the single finite individual instead of at the whole)— is specially 
 striking: "How," an objector is imagined to say, "can God, exalted high over a'l, invis- 
 ible, incorporeal, incorruptible, descend from Himself ; and create Himself in all things, 
 in order to be all in all ; and, in His forthgoing, advance to the last visible hatefulnesses 
 and corruptions, to the meanest forms and species, of this world, in order to be in these, 
 if He is all in all?" " He," ru'S the answer, " who so speaks, knows not that in the total 
 universe of the creature there can be nothing hateful, that it no evil can mar, that it by 
 no error can be deceived or led astray. For what concerns only a part, God does not 
 permit to become in the whole, since, upon a view of the whole, neither is [what had 
 seemed] hatefulness hateful, nor does any evil injure, nor any error mislead." (III. 20.) 
 
 3 1.28. 
 
 308 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 and opposes Nature, could conic into existence at all — for, of course, 
 there are no sources outside of Nature — is a " mystery." Yet even 
 here Erigena has a glimpse of a solution; a glimpse to which only a 
 doctrine of development as a divine method could do justice. " Every- 
 thing which in 'natural' wise is created in num, remains of necessity 
 eternally inviolate and uncorrupted. . . . The rational and intel- 
 lectual nature, although it was not willingly deceived, yet could be 
 l)eguiled, especially since it had not yet received the perfection of the 
 form which — destined as that nature was to a course of transformation 
 ending in theosis, that is to say, deification — it was to have received 
 through the merit of obedience (perfectionem . . . quam merito 
 obedientiae esset acccptura in ikcosin, deificationem- dico, transfor- 
 manda) ."^ (3) Evil, once it had thus by perverse motions of the will 
 arisen, explains the dividedness and imperfection of the third Form of 
 Nature. A single passage of many will make Erigena's view clear. 
 " For, as reason teaches, this would not have fallen apart into its 
 manifold sensible species, and into the motley diversity of its parts, if 
 God had not foreseen the fall and ruin of the first man, who forsook 
 the unity of his nature; to the end that man — at least after his fall 
 from the spiritual realm to the corporeal, from the eternal to the 
 temporal, from the incorruptible to the perishable, from the highest 
 to the lowest, from the spiritual man to an animal, from a simple 
 nature to the distinction of the sexes, from angelic dignity and multi- 
 plication to the shame of the birth of our corruptible bodies — being 
 admonished by a penalty so dire, might come to recognise his pitiable 
 ruin, and seek to return to the condition of his pristine dignity by 
 repentance and the putting off of his pride and by the fulfilment of 
 the divine laws which he had transgressed. For it cannot be believed 
 that the most divine charity of the Creator has thrust sinful man down 
 into this world as if through some movement of wrath or desire of 
 vengeance ; since true reason shows us that the divine Goodness is 
 free from these non-essential qualities {his accideniihus) . Eather it 
 can have happened only in consequence of an ineffable principle and 
 of mercy incomprehensible; to the end that man — though by the 
 choice of his free will he had refused to maintain himself in the 
 
 1 IV. 5. 
 
 309 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 dignity of his nature — taught by punishment, should seek the grace 
 of his Creator; and, obeying by the help of that grace the divine 
 commands which earlier he had neglected out of pride, careful and 
 cautious and mindful of his earlier negligence and of his proud 
 humiliating fall, should turn back toward his ancient state, from 
 which — preserved by grace and by the free choice of his own will — he 
 should not fall again, nor wish to fall, nor be able to fall."^ 
 
 Such, then, is Erigeua's account of the forthgoing of the divina 
 honitas, and of the Forms of Nature which thus arise: the second 
 Form, the world of Ideas, a system of perfect types and perfect 
 energies ; the third Form, our present world, the result partly of the 
 farther procession of the divine goodness, partly of man's sin. With 
 this, we have to turn to the last of the Forms of Nature, that in which 
 all things return to their source in God. In the light of what we have 
 just seen, this will be not only the natural return of all things to their 
 source, but also their redemption from evil. And if Erigena is to be 
 understood, special attention must be given to this part of his thought. 
 Just as we do not understand Dante at all if we read only the 
 Inferno — because " it is interesting, while no person can live in the 
 white light of the Paradiso " — so we shall not understand Erigena at 
 all, nor indeed any mediaeval theologian, unless we walk with him whUe 
 he unfolds his highest hope and ultimate vision. 
 
 But before turning to this we must stop for a moment upon an 
 aspect of Erigena's thought, which is very important, but which the 
 course of the discussion so far has given us no opportunity to bring 
 forward. This is what we may call his Idealism. The whole of that 
 reality about which it is possible for science or philosophy to make 
 affirmations is, he sees, of the nature of thought. And to this Idealism 
 he comes from both sides : from the side of the material order ; from 
 the side of God. In the first Book, in dealing with the inapplicability 
 of the ten categories to God, he works out a sort of " immaterialism " ; 
 he reduces the corporeal to the incorporeal. Matter is a combination 
 of incorporeal qualities and quantities. And the form which holds it 
 together is incorporeal. And this immaterialism passes over into 
 
 1 II. 1-2. 
 
 310 
 
EKIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 express Idealism when it is said that space is arrangement or order, 
 and therefore subsists only in the mind; space is a definition, and its 
 determinations must be the activity of a rational and thinking nature ; 
 space is something thought in the soul, and is therefore incorporeal. 
 Hence, indeed, it is, as Gregory of Nyssa says, that from a God whose 
 nature is that of thought or spirit, a " material " world can come.^ 
 While from the side of God, he equally maintains that all created 
 existence is of the nature of thought. " God," he says, in dealing with 
 the problem of evil, " does not know that which is, because it subsists ; 
 but it subsists because God knows it. The cause of the essence of that 
 which is, is the divine knowledge.'"- " The knowledge of the saints in 
 the Wisdom of the Father," he says again, " is the creation of them. 
 For the perception in God of all things is the essence of all things."^ 
 In a word, God's knowledge of an existence is that existence. Or, to 
 put the same conception into more modern terms, the objective reality 
 of anything means its presence in the divine mind. It will, of course, 
 be understood that this does not necessarily deny selfhood — real 
 individuality or the germ of it — to created beings; and, therefore, is 
 not necessarily Pantheism. 
 
 Furthermore, Erigena in his affirmative theology is not only an 
 Idealist in the sense of asserting that all reality which science or 
 philosophy can investigate is of the nature of thought or spirit. He 
 really possesses also the true point of departure of Idealism : he sees 
 that spirit as it is in man is an active principle of synthesis. He 
 delights to pourtray the human soul as not imprisoned in space, nor 
 compelled to " reach out into space," but as having — to use modern 
 language — a s}Tithetic activity which is above the dividedness of space 
 and time, receiving at one and the same time, and into one and the 
 same experience, the most manifold kinds of sensation, retaining these 
 in memory, arranging and judging them.* Hence, when he goes on 
 with equal intensity to describe the soul as simplex, free from all union 
 or composition of distinct parts, he can only be understood as having 
 a conception of the soul which he is not able clearly to express — the 
 conception of it as a diversity-in-unity, a principle and activity of 
 sjmthesis. The very reason which he gives in insisting upon its 
 
 1 I. 27-61. ■-' II. 28. 3 II. 20. 4 III. 36. 
 
 311 
 
EKIGEXA: THE DIVISION OF NATUEE 
 
 simplicity shows this. It is a simplex, free from all composition of 
 distinct parts, he says, because " in itself it is in its wholeness every- 
 where throughout the whole. It is the whole life, the whole under- 
 standing, the whole reason, the whole of sense, the whole memory, 
 and, as this whole, it animates, nourishes, maintains and increases the 
 body. As the whole soul, it, in all the senses, perceives the forms of 
 sensible things. As the whole soul, it deals with, distinguishes, com- 
 bines, separates — going far beyond every bodily sense — the nature and 
 reason of the sensible things themselves. As the whole soul — beyond 
 and above every creature, and above itself as a being included in the 
 world of creatures — it circles in intelligible and eternal motion about 
 its Creator, becoming purified of all vices and imaginations." And, as 
 Erigena goes om in this very simplicity, it receives distinctions and 
 distinct names according to its activities. In its motion about the 
 divine essence it is Mind and Soul and Understanding. In dealing 
 with the natures and causes of created things it is Eeason. In 
 receiving sensuous images, it is Sense. As animating the body, it is 
 the Vital Principle. But in all these activities it is everywhere the 
 whole soul.i The same insight appears in Erigena's view of the soul 
 as a microcosm, which we shall have to consider in another connexion. 
 Thus, then. Idealism is present in the De Divisione Naturae; 
 Erigena has both its true point of departure and its specific insights. 
 But neither the age that he lived in, nor the history that lay behind 
 him, nor his equipment of categories, permitted the Idealism in him 
 to come fully to its right. With his inheritance of the Christian 
 theology of the Greeks, he stood between two worlds, the one of which 
 had spoken in Plotinus and Proelus, the other of which was to speak 
 in Hegel. To both of those worlds his heart was given; and the 
 result was that Idealism was present in him not as expressing his 
 highest insight and last conviction, but simply as one stage in that 
 desperate journey of the intellect which is set for any man who is a 
 Mystic, and yet cannot plainly and flatly deny the reality of the 
 present world. 
 
 We have to return, then, to the subject already before us — the 
 
 > IV. 5. Cf. 11. 
 
 312 
 
EIUGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 fourth Form of Nature. It would seciu at first sight as if Erigena's 
 work of explaining the world were already done, when he had given 
 his account of original reality and of the derivation of our present 
 world from it. But we have already seen that his instinct for unity 
 drives him farther. The world has come from one source, but it is 
 nevertheless not one. It is beset by dividedness ; and by dividedness of 
 a particularly unforgivable kind — sensuous manifoldness, diversity in 
 space and time. And worse still, it is torn apart by the dualism of 
 good and evil. Futhermore, to the discontent of the philosophic and 
 moral mind there is added the discontent of the specifically religious 
 mind : God must be all in all, and all things that have proceeded from 
 Him must return to Him. 
 
 So, then, we come to a fourth Form of Nature, which neither is 
 created nor creates, but in which all things rest eternally in their home 
 and unity in God. In attempting to deal with this, we must first 
 notice the general principle which guides Erigena in this part of his 
 work, and must then indicate very briefly the main steps in the return 
 of all things from their multiplicity and dividedness in the third Form 
 to their rest in the fourth. 
 
 To Erigena it is a general principle of Nature that things return 
 to their beginnings. The source from which they proceed is also their 
 goal. This is seen even in corporeal things; and as so seen, it 
 mystically intimates to us (for "there is, in my opinion, nothing 
 among visible and corporeal things which is not a sign of something 
 incorporeal and intelligible ") " the return of our nature to the source 
 whence it originated, and in which and through which it moves, and 
 to which it always strives to return. Universally in all men, whether 
 they be perfect or imperfect, pure or defiled, made new by knowledge 
 of the truth in Christ or cleaving to the old man in the darkness of 
 ignorance, lives one and the same natural desire for being, and well- 
 being, and abiding being, or, as St. Augustine briefly expresses it, the 
 desire to live happily and avoid misery .^ But this impulse after living 
 happily and having substantial existence is from Him who is eternal 
 and is good and is immanent in all things. And if every natural 
 motion, of necessity does not cease nor rest, until it has reached the 
 
 1 Compare the conatns in xho esse pcrscrernvdi of Spinoza. 
 313 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUEE 
 
 goal toward which it struggles, what can avail to hinder or restrain 
 or bring to a stand the necessary movement of human nature, so that it 
 shall not be able to reach that for which it naturally strives?" And 
 even, " if godlike Nature has somehow through unlikeness become 
 remote from its source, it strives always to return thither, in order to 
 attain again to the likeness which it had marred."^ 
 
 This principle itself is made possible for Erigena by the fact that 
 it is really one and the same nature which is present in the first, 
 second, and third Forms. In the first Form, that one Nature is viewed 
 as the beginning and cause of all; since it has nothing preceding it 
 which could stand to it as cause or beginning, it is called " Nature 
 creating and not created." Then, in the second Form, where it is 
 " both created and creating/' it is the same Nature. For the 
 primordial causes are that Nature " creating itself " and so going 
 forth in theophanies. And then in those theophanies it still farther 
 proceeds from, or unfolds, itself, coming forth from the most concealed 
 limits of its nature, in which it is unknown even to itself, that is to 
 say, recognises itself in no being because it is unconditioned and super- 
 natural and superessential and above everything that can be thought 
 or not thought. When it thus descends into the principles or original 
 grounds of things — into the causae primordiales — and, as it were, 
 creates itself, it begins to be in particular and definite forms. Then, 
 further, it has to be considered in the last effects of the primordial 
 causes, wherein it is rightly viewed simply as a nature which " is 
 created, but does not create." In these effects it comes to the end of 
 its forthgoing and manifestation — its self-externalisation, as a modern 
 terminology would have it. Just on this account, every corporeal and 
 visible creature given to our senses " is wont in the Scriptures not 
 unjustly to be called the last trace of the divine nature (extremum. 
 divinae naturae vestigium)." This trace "it is vouchsafed to every 
 contemplative mind to gain sight of, when, like another Moses, it 
 ascends the height of the mount of vision; although, indeed, it can 
 scarcely be distinguished clearly (ad purum) even by the spirits of 
 the wise; for the smoke of earthly imaginations, and the tumult of 
 changeable things, and the gleaming illusion of the things that 
 
 1 V. -A. 
 
 314 
 
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 suddenly are born and pass suddenly from us, stand as hindrances 
 in the way. Only very few — those that from earthly thoughts 
 wholly have set themselves free, and by virtue and knowledge are 
 purified — attaia unto it, to know God in these visible creatures:"^ 
 as, for instance, the patriarch Abraham did, when, guided by 
 the law of nature, he recognised the Creator from the revolution 
 of the stars; and other holy Fathers before the written law, 
 and in the law — as Moses in the bush and upon the mountain- 
 peak. But, in addition to these three Forms, there is still another 
 way in which the one Nature must be viewed : " When we recognise 
 this same divine nature as the goal of all, beyond which there is 
 nothing, and in which all things eternally subsist and in their 
 universality are God, then we rightly call it neither created nor 
 creating. Not created, because it is created of no one; not creative, 
 because it ceases to create when all things are transformed back into 
 their original grounds (wherein they will remain eternally and do 
 remain) and cease to be known by the name creature. For God will 
 be all in all, and every creature, transformed into God, wUl enter into 
 shadow, as the stars at the rising of the sun. Seest thou not, then, 
 upon what ground one and the same nature, namely, the divijie, can 
 be called from the point of view of the beginning not created, hut 
 creating, but from the point of view of the end or goal neither created 
 nor creating?"'^ In fact, it might almost be said that Erigena's 
 distinction of the four Forms of Nature is a device of exposition, a 
 device for the convenient setting forth of his view of the one system 
 of the one universe. The first and fourth Forms express the unity, the 
 
 1 Compare the following; from II. 18: "The first causes, then, both make their way 
 (proveniunt) into the things of which they are the causes, and do not forsake their source 
 or beginning {principium), i.e., the Wisdom of the Father, in which they have come to be, 
 and— remaining, so to speak, in themselves invisible, hidden for ever in the darkness of 
 their splendour, but in their effects brought forward as it were to the light of knowledge 
 — appear without ceasing." Or the following from the Scholar in V. 24 : " Far be it from 
 the hearts of the faithful to think that everything which has come to be in the Word of 
 God, is not life— life wise and eternal, without temporal beginning, without temporal end. 
 For both the realm of bodies, and the whole sensible creation, are, in the Word of God, life 
 wise and eternal, so that, in a way inefTable and incomprehensible but yet credible, every 
 creature lives in the Word of God, and in that Word is life ; and the divine Word— since 
 outside of it is nothing— moving as it were toward externality, has brought forth out of 
 itself all created creatures." 
 
 2 III. 23. 
 
 315 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUKE 
 
 second and third the diversity or manifold of types and of particulars. 
 And all four are alike God or in God ; for " God is the beginning, the 
 middle, and the end [i.e., source, process, and goal] of the whole 
 created universe ; not as if it were for Him three distinct things to be 
 beginning, middle, and goal, since these three are in Him one; but 
 because the movement of theological contemplation is threefold."^ 
 And what drives Erigena to adopt so vast and complex a scheme of 
 exposition is the fact that he has to work into one system both the 
 negative and the affirmative theology. 
 
 As Erigena passes on to consider the regressus which leads to the 
 fourth Form of ISTature, one expects him — in the light of what he had 
 said about the first Form of Nature — to return finally and completely 
 to his negative theology, to his Mysticism. And that not only as 
 moralist or preacher, advising men to lay aside all entanglement with 
 the particular and the individual, and to find their true being by 
 losing themselves in God; but as a metaphysician, declaring that, as 
 matter of fact, the final outcome of the whole process of the created 
 universe will be its passage to its rest in the " still abysm " of the 
 ineffable God, in which all things will become God, and so become 
 truly themselves, by ceasing to be themselves as particular distinct 
 existences. In that way the Erigena of the fourth Form of Nature 
 would decisively complete what the Erigena of the first Form of 
 Nature began. But as we go on to consider the details of Erigena's 
 last and highest view of Nature, his view of the ultimate outcome of 
 the world's process, what we find is that the Idealist has gained upon 
 the Mystic. In the ultimate outcome of things, individuality, instead 
 of being negated, is made complete. Or rather individuality is in part 
 negated, in part affirmed. But the negation is insisted upon in the 
 interest of the affirmation ; it is involved, Erigena thinks, in the true 
 advance of human individuals to their perfection ; is involved in their 
 rise to their Idea, in their return to their true home in the Word. 
 
 The regressus is described as having two forms or stages. There 
 is, first, a universal regressus which is the work both of nature and of 
 grace, and, secondly, a special regressus which is granted only to pure 
 hearts and is the work of grace alone.^ The former is the return of 
 
 ' III. 23. 2 V. 23. 3fi. 38, 39. 
 
 316 
 
EKIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 all things to their " beginnings in Nature " ; i.e., it is the exaltation of 
 all things to their Ideas, their primordial causes, and is thus a general 
 return of the third Form of Nature to the second. This, as we have 
 already seen in dealing with the general principle which here guides 
 Erigena's thinking, he regards as the regular course of Nature. But, 
 in addition to that, there is a special pressure upon him to assert such 
 a universal return. The third Form of Nature cannot quite vindicate 
 itself. It must be condemned metaphysically, as a realm of sense, 
 subject to dividedness in time and place ; and morally, because of the 
 presence of evil. It is as if Nature has in the third Form sunk below 
 itself, so that without possibility of exception the particular beings 
 into which the inviolable divine Nature has created itself, strive by 
 their own natural motion back to their Ideas. There are even 
 expressions in Erigena which seem to show him as holding this 
 opinion from the point of view of the particular existences themselves. 
 He seems to feel that the elementary Justice of the universe — that 
 "'ultimate decency of things" in which Robert Louis Stevenson 
 declared he would still believe though he woke up in hell— requires 
 that the return to the primordial causes should be shared in by all 
 existences whatever. It rescues, so to speak, the individual existences 
 from the evils which their particular and divided life had forced upon 
 them, and restores them to their own true and normal— in the 
 Platonic sense, ideal— being. They had been something less than 
 themselves ; this return simply makes them themselves ; and therefore 
 it both is, and ought to be, imdergone by all existences. 
 
 This universal return, then, means that each particular existence 
 is purified of the dividedness and imperfection of the third Form, and 
 returns to the perfection and completeness of its eternal type, and thus 
 rises to the second Form of Nature, all whose perfect existences — the 
 primordial causes— are one in the Word and therefore one in God. 
 Each human being, for instance, will return to the Idea of man ; that 
 is, he will rise above the division of sex, and above the limitations of 
 space and time, and enter into the normal or intended completeness of 
 human nature. This, of course, involves a great abstraction; the 
 abstraction involved (on the common interpretation of Plato) in 
 
 317 
 
EKIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 passing from an individual being of this present world to its Idea.^ 
 But this — even upon the severest interpretation — is not yet the com- 
 plete abstraction of Mysticism. There may be a loss (Erigena would 
 not call it loss) of individual peculiarities in rising to the form of the 
 eternal type. But there is no such complete sinking of individuality 
 as in that mystical outcome in which all things lose themselves in the 
 " still wilderness where never was seen difference^ neither Father, nor 
 Son, nor Holy Ghost," where " there are neither angels nor saints 
 nor choirs nor heavens," where " there is naught but God," so that 
 " no soul can come to God unless he becomes God as God was before 
 the soul's creation." 
 
 The universal return involves, in Erigena's view, two stages. 
 First, there is in general the transformation of the whole world of 
 sense; i.e., " the transmutation of all bodies, whether those subject to 
 the bodily senses, or those that by reason of their exceeding subtlety 
 escape the senses ;" for " in all that, which is substantially instituted 
 by the cause of all things, nothing will be brought to nothingness." 
 Secondly, there is the general return of the whole of human nature, 
 saved in Christ, to the pristine state of its creation, a return, as it 
 were, to Paradise, to the dignity of the divine image, through the 
 merit of Him whose blood was poured out for the common salvation 
 of the whole of humanity. This holds impartially of all men ; so that 
 no man will be robbed of those natural goods, which make up human 
 nature according to its Idea — which make up what was wont to be 
 called " Adamic perfection. "^ 
 
 But in dealing with such a universal return of the world and of 
 man, there at once arises a great difficulty. We have already seen 
 how the fact of evil drove Erigena into a sort of dualism in describing 
 the passage downward from the second Form to the Third. And now 
 that he is tracing the reverse movement, the movement of all things 
 upward from the third to the second Form, a kindred difficulty stands 
 in the way: there is the fact of evil; and there is the church's 
 doctrine of endless punishment in hell. 
 
 1 Thoro are, however, passages in Erig:ena which, if carried to their loKical conclusion, 
 would mak<^ the abstraction greater evan than this. See the two passages quoted in the 
 note to p. 297 supra. 
 
 2 See the corTludinp; summary at the end of V. 39, where the first two forms belong to 
 the universal return ; while the third is that special return which is deificatio. 
 
 318 
 
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 Erigena's discussion here is really a farther application of prin- 
 ciples which we have already had to notice. As we have seen, he 
 regards Nature as one and divine through all its Forms: the first 
 Form is God as source; the second, God creating Himself as the 
 eternal types or Ideas ; the third, God creating Himself as particular 
 existences. Hence, all that he could say of evil was, that it arises from 
 "perverse motions of the free will," but has no essential place in 
 " Nature." What he now does is to apply this principle in a form 
 which gives us the central principle of the theologian whom he 
 admired so much ; Origen's great principle of the permanence of all 
 spiritual substance ; though Erigena's use of it is subtle and brilliant 
 where Origen's was solid and profound. What God creates, urges 
 Erigena, cannot be anything else than the divine nature itself. And 
 that nature can neither perish, nor be subject to punishment. 
 
 As we go on to notice at slightly greater length the details of the 
 discussion, it is due to Erigena to set special emphasis upon one thing : 
 this man of the ninth century, writing in an age when torture and 
 pain, when the temper and the habit of vengeance, were familiar 
 parts of life, shows in his discussion a touch of the charity of Christ, 
 and a vision of God as exalted above mere vengeance, which in similar 
 discussions in more enlightened ages have frequently been wanting. 
 Erigena may have fallen into grave intellectual errors; with his 
 intellectual inheritance it was inevitable that he should. But into two 
 things, which may be dead in the twentieth century, but were not dead 
 in the nineteenth, he did not fall : into that darkening of the divine 
 righteousness, which transforms it from a righteousness of God into 
 a " radical wrong of man " ; and into that Manichaeism which, in its 
 very zeal to free God from all connexion with evil, really removes Him 
 from His place as God, by viewing a power hostile to Him as a 
 co-eternal principle of the universe, and as at last partly victorious 
 over Him and over His purpose. 
 
 Beginning with the prophetic word, lest lie put forth his hand, 
 and talce also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever, — in which 
 word " the return of human nature to the blessedness lost through sin 
 is most clearly promised" — Erigena goes on to remind his disciple 
 of the conclusion previously reached, " that the Paradise from which 
 
 319 
 
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 man was banished is nothing other than human nature itself as created 
 in the image of God; and tliat it fell from this its height because it 
 disdained the command of God/' From this it follows that " the 
 banishment of man from Paradise is nothing other than the loss of 
 the natural blessedness for whose possession he was created. For man 
 has not lost his nature, which, being created in the image and likeness 
 of God, is necessarily incorruptible ; he lost only the blessedness which 
 he would have attained, if he had not scorned to be obedient to God.'*'^ 
 As the outward form of man may be disfigured by leprosy and yet 
 remain the form of man, so human nature by its high-minded 
 disobedience is hatefully disfigured, but does not cease to be human 
 nature. And " when it is freed from this leprosy through the healing 
 grace of God, it will be called again to its pristine beauty. Nay, one 
 may even say, that the nature created in the image of God never has 
 lost, never can lose, the living strength (vigor em) of its beauty, and 
 the integrity of its essence. For the divine form remains unalterable 
 for ever; and yet, as a punishment for sin, it has become capable of 
 things corruptible "-^capable of the change and particularity of the 
 present world.^ Hence, as Avas indicated in a passage already quoted,^ 
 we must believe that in the banishment of man from Eden, it was 
 God's mercy, rather than His punitive righteousness, that was active. 
 For it was God's purpose to regenerate and illumine man, and make 
 him worthy to come to the tree of life, from which he had been driven, 
 and to eat of it so that he might not perish, but might live eternally. 
 Therefore it was that the cherubim were set in their station at the 
 east of Eden; for the cherubim signify the Word of God, in which 
 the treasures of knowledge and of wisdom are hidden, and which 
 without interruption stands ready for man's gaze, so that human 
 nature may be warned and illuminated and purified and led back at 
 last to unflawed completeness. And likewise the flaming sword 
 signifies the Word of God, which consumes our sins, and purifies our 
 natures, and at the same time distinguishes between our nature and 
 that which cleaves to it through the guilt of sin, and hatefully 
 disfigures it, and makes it unlike the Creator. So that the flaming 
 sword applies itself ineffahiU sua dementia et misericordia to the 
 
 1 V. 1, 2. •-' V. 0. 3 Supra, pp. ^09. 310. 
 
 320 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION^ OF NATURE 
 
 healing of human nature. Always before the eyes of our soul stand 
 the cherubim with the flaming sword to keep the way of the tree of 
 life— to keep the way of the tree of life, not in the sense of forbidding 
 our access, but in the sense of preventing us from ever forgetting that 
 tree, so that continually we may have before the eyes of our spirit 
 both the tree itself and the way of approach to it.^ 
 
 So Erigena agrees with the opinion of "the great theologian 
 Gregory," that " evil is not so strong that it can overcome the power 
 of good." It cannot, like good, proceed to infinity; it is sternly 
 restricted within necessary limits. It " cannot be perpetual, but by 
 the necessity of things is to reach an appointed bound, and is some- 
 time to cease." Just because the divine goodness is eternal and 
 infinite, its opposite cannot be eternal or infinite.- 
 
 But does not this bring us, asks the Scholar, into contradiction with 
 the accepted teaching that human nature is partly (in the elect) to 
 be redeemed, partly (in the godless) to be damned to eternal fire?^ 
 Erigena replies by asserting in accordance with the principle already 
 noted, that God punishes no nature which He has created, whether in 
 human or devilish substance ; in all creatures, God punishes only that 
 which He has not made, namely, the irrational motions of the perverse 
 will. Of the evil spirits, that alone which was created in them by God 
 Most High can remain, and is in no wise subject to punishment ; but 
 that which is not from God, namely, their evil, will perish, in order 
 that an evil permanent and co-eternal with the good, may not have 
 place in any creature whether human or angelic. The same is true of 
 death and misery, lest something hostile to life and blessedness, and 
 co-eternal with these, should arise.* And when it is said that the last 
 enemy will be destroyed — the last enemy with whose destruction all 
 sorrow and death, all enmities and separations, will cease — this does 
 not mean that his substance, created of God, is to perish, but that his 
 hostile purpose and will, which proceed not from God, but from 
 himself, are to perish. He is to be destroyed, not in the sense that he 
 will no longer exist, but, as "the great Origen" perceived, in the 
 sense that he will no longer be the Enemy and Death.^ 
 
 It is putting the same general position into another, and a very 
 
 1 V. 2. - V. 26. 3 V. 27. * V. 28. 5 V. 27. 
 
 22 321 
 
EINGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 telling, form, when Erigena urges that God is the only principle of 
 eternal existence, so that anything which is eternal can have its being 
 only in God and through God ; and, therefore, evil cannot be eternal 
 — cannot be an absolute and final principle of the universe.^ 
 
 His discussion of "that eternal fire, the torture, the burning 
 sulphurous pool," is what might be expected from the principles just 
 noted. In gentleness and spirituality, in freedom from heathen 
 imaginations and from the spirit of savagery, this theologian of the 
 ninth century stands far above many teachers of a later day. The 
 fire is that of undying memory, of late repentance, of earthly 
 imaginations and a love for earthly things which can no longer find 
 any corresponding object.^ But if it be asked how such memories and 
 imaginations can retain a place in " Nature "—so that that which lies 
 outside of Nature and is contrary to it, is endured by the power of 
 Nature, and within Nature is punished. Nature itself remaining 
 always and altogether inviolate in itself— Erigena can only answer 
 by the theologian's recourse to mystery; we must give place to the 
 incomprehensible power of God, and honour it with silence, for at its 
 entrance reason and insight are rebuked.^ 
 
 When this sad problem has been discussed, Erigena is able to 
 return to the real object and delight of his thought — to tracing the 
 course of " Nature," the course of the normal and inviolate order of 
 the world. The way in which he works out the universal regressus 
 vsdth which we are now concerned, may be briefly indicated as follows : 
 
 The process itself is one of synthesis or unifying. The nature 
 of this unifying Erigena indicates thus : "... with regard to 
 the unifying, this must of necessity always be heeded, that what is 
 seen to be lower is taken up (moveatur) into that which is higher, 
 that is to say, better; but a better never passes over into a meaner, 
 
 1 V. 30. 
 
 2 Of the Last Judgment, too, Erigena forbids sensuous images. The book, for 
 instance, is that power of memory of which Augustine speaks in the words : " There is a 
 divine power of the understanding, through which it comes to pass that for every man 
 his works, whether they are good or evil, are in their totality called back into his memory, 
 and with marvellous quickness are looked upon by the eyes of his soul, so that the knowl- 
 edge accuses or excuses the conscience, and thus each soul of man is judged." (Quoted 
 in Ve IHv. Nat. F. 38.) 
 
 3 V. 32, 33. 
 
 322 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 i.e., turns back in the renewal of the natures ; else what would come 
 to pass would be not unification, but division."^ In the universal 
 regressus this unification takes place in the two stages already referred 
 to: the unification of all natures in man; and the return of 
 man to his natural place in the divine Word. 
 
 First, all the things of this world are created in man ; so that in 
 man's return to the second Form of Nature, they return also; or, as 
 Erigena sometimes puts it, the sensible things of the present world, 
 being included in human nature, participate in the resurrection.^ This 
 view of man's position in the universe is found in many forms in 
 Erigena. At times, following Maximus the Confessor, he regards man 
 as a harmony of opposites, as the mediation and synthesis of aU 
 creatures, in whom the extremest antitheses of Nature are brought to 
 unity, and through whom therefore they can advance to their final 
 unity in God.-^ Again, man is to Erigena the microcosm that corre- 
 sponds to the macrocosm. This insight which is essential to any 
 adequate theory of knowledge and usually enters philosophy in that 
 connexion, is to Erigena the basis of man's return to God, and of 
 the return of the world to God in and through man. He in one place 
 makes a fourfold division of all created life — angelic intellect, reason 
 as in, man, sensible life as in animals, vitality without thought or sense 
 as in plants — and shows how all these, not in mere external combina- 
 tion, but in true synthesis, are in man; so that, in the homely 
 expression which Erigena loves to use, man is creaturarum omnium 
 officina — the workshop of all the creatures — and in him the whole of 
 Nature is contained.* And, Erigena thinks, this must be so ; unless 
 it were, unless God " created every creature in man," man would not 
 be truly " created in the image and likeness of God.'"^ 
 
 Then, secondly, human nature, which thus gathers up into itself all 
 the world, is itself taken up into the Word. " He came forth from the 
 Father, and came into the world, taking upon Himself the nature of 
 man in which the whole world consists (in qua totus mundus sub- 
 sistit) ; for there is nothing in the world which is not included in 
 
 1 II. 8. 2 V. 23. 3 II. 3-9. 4 III. 37 ; IV. 5. 
 
 5 IV. 7.— Erigena goes on to say, with a naivete very unusual to him, that he absolutely 
 does not know why, in preference to all the other visible and invisible creatures, God 
 should choose precisely man, as the creature to be made in His own image. 
 
 323 
 
EKKIEXA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 human nature. And again He left the world and went to the Father ; 
 that is, by union with His Deity, which is equal to the Father, He 
 exalted the human nature, which He had received, high above all 
 things visible and invisible, above all heavenly powers, above every- 
 thing that can be said and comprehended. For, while He saved, wholly 
 in Himself and wholly in the whole race of men, the whole human 
 nature which wholly he had taken upon Himself, establishing some 
 again in the previous condition of Nature [the universal regressus], 
 but exalting others by pre-eminence above Nature and deifying them 
 [the special return of pure hearts] ; yet in no other but Himself is 
 humanity made one with Deity in unity of substance, so as, trans- 
 formed into Deity itself, to transcend all things."^ In another place, 
 after dealing with an apparent deviation in Augustine, both from his 
 own opinion as expressed in other writings, and from the teachings 
 of his predecessors among the Fathers, " Ambrosius and the theologian 
 Gregory," he goes on : " I, however, who detract from no one and 
 strive with no one, unhesitatingly understand our Lord's own words : 
 / and the Father are one, as spoken not of His divinity alone, but of 
 His whole substance, of God and man together. "^ 
 
 Through Christ, furthermore, it is that man is still able to perform 
 this great function, even though he is fallen. For when fallen human 
 nature, in the darkness of its perverted will, forgot both its Creator 
 and its own original being; when it lay in wretched death, in the 
 abysmal dark of ignorance, in farthest alienation from its own true 
 nature and from its Creator, in shameful likeness to irrational and 
 mortal creatures; then "no one was able to redeem human nature 
 from this condition, to call it back, to renew it, and to establish it 
 again in that earlier state from which it had fallen; but the divine 
 Wisdom, which created it, and received it into unity with its own 
 substance in order to maintain it in that state, has freed it from all 
 misery. Let it not disturb thee, therefore, when it is said that human 
 nature is everywhere whole in itself, both the [divine] image whole in 
 the animal, and the animal whole in the [divine] image. Everything 
 which its Creator created primordially in it remains whole and 
 inviolate, but lies as yet concealed, awaiting the manifestation of the 
 
 1 V. 25. V. 37. 
 
 324 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUEE 
 
 sons of God."i The same view of Christ's general redemptive work as 
 the restoration of universal human nature to its beginning — i.e., to its 
 Idea, its primordial form as manifest in Eden — is seen when Erigena 
 points out that the Kedeemer of the world was free from that 
 ignorance in which we are sunken at our birth, " not only because he 
 was the Wisdom of the Father, for which there is no hidden thing, 
 but because He took upon Him unstained humanity, in order to purify 
 the stained; not as if He took upon Himself some other humanity 
 than that which He restored, but because he alone remained without 
 stain in it, and was preserved for the healing of the wound of 
 corrupted nature in its most secret grounds. For the whole [of 
 Nature] came to ruin in all, — save in the case of Him in whom alone 
 it remained incorruptible. Therefore, He Himself is become the 
 greatest example of grace, not because some indulgence was made to 
 human nature on His account, but because He alone among all, 
 without previous merit, was bound in unity of substance with the 
 Word of God, so that in Him all the elect, drawing from the fulness 
 of His grace, become Sons of God and partakers of the divine 
 substance."^ 
 
 Such, then, is the universal regressus, in which all existences are 
 taken up into man and man into the Word. The following passage — 
 one from among many — indicates the transition from the general to 
 the special return. "... By the ten virgins who went to meet the 
 bridegroom, is represented the universal return of the whole human 
 race (toiiits humanae numerositatis generalis . . . reversio) 
 to the pristine condition of Nature; but by the five wise ones, the 
 special return of all the saints. For the number of the elect is a 
 species of the human race. So that what is indicated is not merely 
 the return to the ancient beginning of Nature in generalitatem 
 Tiumanitaiis, but also the ineffable ascent beyond Nature into God 
 Himself in specialitate deificationis. All, as was said, are to return 
 to Paradise, but not all are to eat of the tree of life [i.e., the Word] ; 
 or at least, all are to receive of the tree of life, but not equally. For 
 only a fool is ignorant of the fact, that natural goods, of which all 
 will be equally partakers [in the universal return], are the fruit of 
 
 1 IV. 5, 6. 2 IV. 9. 
 
 325 
 
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 the tree of life. Eor Christ, as was discussed earlier, is called 
 Ttav ^vXov, id est omne lignum, because He omnium honorum 
 lignum est fructiferum, being Himself every good thing and the 
 bestower of all good. All men will enjoy his fruit through the 
 universal participation in the goods of Nature; but his elect, lifted 
 high above all Nature, will enjoy the special height of deification."^ 
 
 The special return, then, takes place only for purified souls and 
 only through the operation of divine grace as distinct from Nature. 
 It consists in the return of the soul not only to its Idea — its " begin- 
 ning in Nature " — but also its elevation, far above every natural 
 dignity, to its goal with God, as the cause of all things.^ This is 
 realised only in the men who " not merely are to ascend to the height 
 of the Nature present in them, but also, through the riches of the 
 divine grace which through Christ and in Christ is given to His 
 chosen, are to pass beyond all laws and limits of Nature superessen- 
 tially into God Himself, and become one in Him and with Him."' 
 The universal return brings all men to those natural goods of human 
 nature which, like all the Ideas, have their being in Christ; but this 
 special return brings those who participate in it to " the supernatural 
 grace and joy of deificatio " wherein the souls that are made perfect 
 are glorified by the supernatural grace of the contemplation of God." 
 One part of men — represented by the five foolish virgins in the 
 parable — will return only to Adamic perfection; to the condition of 
 man before he sinned, when the goods which he possessed were purely 
 natural and could not yet be called virtues. But the other part of 
 mankind will rise to that height to which man, if he had continued 
 free from sin, would have been lifted by grace. To this height, which 
 is the " spiritual marriage of the bridegroom," no one is admitted 
 save those whose souls are " bright with the light of wisdom and 
 glowing with the flames of divine love." It is above Nature, and 
 therefore unattainable to merely natural beauty or good. To it the 
 human spirit is uplifted only by " grace, and the merit of obedience 
 toward the divine commands, and the merit of the purest knowledge 
 of God which in this life it is possible to gain from Scripture and the 
 created world."* 
 
 1 V. 38. '- V. 38. 3 V. 39. * V. 38. 
 
 326 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUEE 
 
 The special regressus, which thus takes up into itself the whole 
 returning movement of Nature and at the same time goes beyond 
 Nature, Erigena is careful to trace through its stages. First, within 
 the limits of Nature, earthly body is transformed into vital move- 
 ment, vital movement into sense, sense into reason, reason into spirit 
 " in which consists the end of the whole rational creature " ; so that 
 the five natural constituents of man's being, by the taking up of the 
 lower into the higher, become one — inferioribus semper a superiorihus 
 consummatis, non ut non sint, sed ut unum sint. Then three " super- 
 natural and superessential " stages of ascent, which are in God, com- 
 plete this return of the soul. Of these " the first is the passing of 
 spirit into the knowledge of all the things that are next below God; 
 the second is the transition from this science into wisdom, that is, 
 into the innermost vision of truth so far as it is granted to the 
 creature; the third and highest is the supernatural sinking {occasus — 
 the going down, as of the sun) of the completely purified souls into 
 God Himself, and, as it were, the darkness of the incomprehensible 
 and unapproachable light, wherein are hidden the causes of all 
 things. And then will the night be bright like the day; that is, the 
 most hidden divine mysteries will in inefi'able wise be made open to 
 the blessed and illuminated intelligences."^ 
 
 We have already seen that the first or universal stage of the 
 regressus cannot be called mystical. And upon the whole the same 
 must be said of this. True, the purified soul is described as " sinking 
 into God." But the statement which immediately follows, that to 
 these blessed souls the most hidden mysteries will be made open, seems 
 to imply the retention of individual selfhood. And this reading of 
 the passage is distinctly confirmed by other passages. Early in the 
 fifth Book, Erigena, in dealing with the return of human nature, 
 distinguishes five stages (the number difi'ers at different places). 
 The fourth is when the spirit, and the whole human nature, return to 
 the primordial causes ; this is, of course, the sharing of human nature 
 in the universal regressus, which has already been dealt with. The 
 fifth is when Nature itself with its causes moves itself to God, " as air 
 to light." Then Erigena goes on : '' God will be all in all, when 
 
 I V. .39. 
 
 327 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 nothing will be except God alone. By this I do not attempt to assert 
 that the substance of things is to perish, but that rather it is to return 
 by the steps which have been mentioned to a better condition. For 
 how can that perish which is destined to return to a better state? 
 The transformation of human nature into God is, then, not to 1)6 
 regarded as a perishing of its substance, but as a wonderful and 
 ineffable return into that pristine condition, which it had lost through 
 transgression."^ A little later in the same chapter he points out that 
 the bodily substance will pass over into soul, " not in order that what 
 is may be lost, but that it may be saved in a better essence. The same 
 is true of the soul itself, that it so raises itself to intelligence as in it 
 to be preserved fairer and more like God. Not otherwise is it with 
 the transition, I will not say of all, but only of rational essences, into 
 God, in whom all things will find their goal and be one. But what 
 has been said about the unifying of human nature without the 
 destruction of the proper nature (proprietatis) of the individual 
 substances, we may confirm by the view of the sainted Maximus." 
 Then he quotes from Maximus a passage, in which it is pointed out 
 that when men are " deified " through the grace of the incarnate God, 
 " the whole man remains in soul and body through Nature, while 
 through grace he has become in soul and body altogether God." 
 "Thus," Erigena urges, "the peculiarity (proprietas) of the natures 
 will remain intact without prejudice to their unity, and neither will 
 the unity of the natures be removed by the peculiarity, nor the 
 peculiarity by the unity." Still later he argues that " a unifying of 
 human nature, with the preservation of the proprietates of the indi- 
 vidual substances, is possible."^ 
 
 IV. 8. 
 
 2 V. 13.— Such passages show Erigena reaching out after the organic categories which 
 neither he nor his age could possess, and for w int of which his thinking was compelled to 
 fall apart, on the one side toward the negative theology, on the other toward the affirma- 
 tive- And neither side could decisivoly prevail. For on the one hand, without the organic 
 and evolutionary categories the true scientific feeling for the unity of existence must lead 
 toward Mysticism. And on the other hand, the manifold world, with its divine presences, 
 absolutely refuses to be d smissed. So that Erigena- is really in the grasp of logical neces- 
 sity. He must deal with the pioblem of the Many and the One ; and the only possible 
 course was, with regard to the Many to be either a Pantheist like the Spinoza of the 
 " second metaphysic," or an Idealist (Erigena was both); and with regard to the One, to 
 be a Mystic, so far as a Christian i heologian of the ninth century, unable to call for the 
 ultimate extinction of individuality, could be. 
 
 328 
 
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE 
 
 In another way, also — a very diit'erent way — Erigena's conclusion 
 varies from that which the beginning would have led one to expect. 
 He began with, and throughout the whole discussion he continually 
 insists upon, the great and necessary thought of Nature as one ; which 
 implies that Nature and Grace are one, the ways of Nature being 
 manifestations of Grace, and Grace achieving its purposes through 
 the eternal orderliness of Nature. But, as we so often have had to 
 notice, he had not made his way, except in flashes of sudden and 
 brilliant insight, to the organic point of view. Hence in passing 
 down from the second Form to the third, he was obliged to admit a 
 rift in the unity of Nature — the coming into the world of something 
 which is absolutely unnatural, namely, evil. Then, m tracing the 
 reverse movement this separation necessarily reappears, and, in the 
 way which we have just seen, Grace is set apart from Nature as 
 superior to it. Erigena's thinking, in short, when its last word is 
 compared with its first, is at once a call for, and a prophecy of, the 
 day when the human mind, having entered into possession of more 
 adequate categories, should be able to repeat the assertion which he 
 made, but could not maintain: the assertion of the unity of Nature 
 and Grace, Law being a work of Grace, Grace being the principle of 
 Nature. 
 
 In the fourth Form of Nature, then, which is the outcome of the 
 process of the world, there is a universal return of the human race, 
 and of that whole creation which was made in it and for it, to the 
 primordial causes, and then, beyond this, there is the special return 
 to God Himself of those who are worthy to enjoy that pure partici- 
 pation. In this double Sabbath — the universal Sabbath in all the 
 works of God, the special Sabbath of Sabbaths in holy angels and holy 
 men — the house of God will be filled, and in it each will find his own 
 place, " some below, some above, some in the heights of Nature, others 
 exalted above all power of Nature with God Himself. And thus that 
 great feast will be set in order and celebrated, from which the 
 substance of nothing that is (for substances draw their being from 
 God) will be shut out, and to which the defect (vitium) of nothing 
 that is (because defects have not their origin from God) will be 
 
 329 
 
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUEE 
 
 introduced. For Nature will be purified, defect winnowed away, the 
 substantial germs of being preserved; by the flame of the divine 
 judgment the chaff of transgressions will be burnt away, the concealed 
 things of darkness illumined, and God will be seen as all in all."^ 
 
 Such was the view of the world and of our life taken by John 
 Scotus Erigena, a man of the ninth century. His intellect, as revealed 
 in the De Divisione Naturae, is an intellect subtle and powerful and 
 daring; one that can hold its steady way through a great argument 
 and yet flash into keen and original suggestions at every step. And 
 with all that originality went the greater qualities without which 
 originality is the passing novelty of a day. Habitually, Erigena's 
 mind sought the eternal; so much so, that one of the deepest 
 impressions left upon the reader's mind by the De Divisione Naturae, 
 in spite of all its delight in argument, is that of a strange peace which 
 knows nothing of contention, nothing of reviling, nothing of the 
 furious spirit of the theologians, nothing even of the contemporary 
 world — as if the book had been written in a solitude which left no 
 object for a man's thoughts but God and the eternal things of God. 
 And then, too, (probably by reason as much of instinct and native 
 sympathy as of knowledge), Erigena's was a comprehensive mind, in 
 the sense that the three great theologies which have swayed human 
 life, but for which in his day no clear distinction and reconciliation 
 had been worked out, lived in it side by side. With full earnestness, 
 Erigena gave himself to the mystical theology, which puts God 
 altogether beyond the apprehension of reason, and union with God 
 altogether beyond the normal forms and energies of our experience. 
 But with equal earnestness he gave himself to the affirmative theology, 
 upon whose positive view of the relation of the world to God the 
 ordered universe appears as a self-unfolding or self-communication of 
 God. And this latter theology was present in him in l)oth the forms 
 which historically it has assumed, the Pantheistic and the Idealistic; 
 forms represented in modern philosophy, the one by the Spinoza of 
 the "second metaphysic," the other by Hegel. For want of a clear 
 possession of the higher categories he is often driven, not, indeed, to 
 
 1 V. 38. 
 330 
 
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OP NATURE 
 
 Spinoza's formula of substance, attribute, and mode, but yet, none the 
 less really, toward the essential movement of thought of Pantheism; 
 is often driven to view the process of the universe as an unfolding 
 from above, of such a kind that the presence in it of anything not 
 directly and plainly of divine nature constitutes a problem of hopeless 
 difficulty. But he continually has glimpses of Hegel's greater way; 
 continually rises to the view of the history of the universe as a process 
 in which Absolute Reason realises its purpose of righteousness and of 
 good, by " externalising and diversifying itself " ; by giving rise, that 
 is to say, to individual existences, to whom life and the struggle of 
 life are real, and through whose labours and struggles there is slowly 
 built up that City of God in which, just because men have come to the 
 fulness of their individuality, God is truly all in all. 
 
 Par apart as these three theologies lie from one another, Erigena 
 found in himself a kinship of soul for each of them ; to each of them 
 he gave himself ; and so became one of those men whose vocation it is 
 to attempt the impossible, and by that attempt to serve the world and 
 carry forward its history to new stages. But as one takes leave of 
 him, it is not of the subtlety and brilliance of his mind, nor even of 
 his remarkable historical position, that one cares last to speak. The 
 best final word to say of him is, that he had high thoughts concerning 
 Ood; and therefore he had high thoughts concerning man and the 
 destiny of man ; concerning the destiny even of the men whose souls 
 are most shrouded in darkness. 
 
 331 
 
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS 
 
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS. 
 
 The " Theism " of a great master of systematic theology ought in 
 propriety to mean the whole body of his thought. It ought to signify 
 his whole view of the world and of man. For the world, and its citizen 
 man, have their being from God and in God; the very individuality 
 and freedom of man are themselves a communication of His nature 
 on the part of God. And from this it follows that the view of God, 
 the view of the nature of the world, the view of the meaning of man's 
 life, are correlative views. The form which any one of them has come 
 to assume in one's mind determines, if one's thinking really is 
 systematic, the form which the others must assume. Furthermore, 
 that which in the order of reality is primary and determinative, is 
 God; and that order of reality the order of our conception ought so 
 far as possible to reproduce. It is true that in the way of natural 
 reason we rise to the apprehension of God through the world and 
 through our own souls. But once a conception of God is reached by 
 us, either it becomes the organising and determinative principle of 
 all our thinking about the world and man, or else our thought (for 
 honourable reasons, it may indeed be — when the terrible mysteries of 
 life have put us to silence, and we have but faith where we " cannot 
 know") is fragmentary and not systematic. 
 
 So that a study of the Theism of St. Thomas ought to be a study 
 of the whole body of his theology, down to its last discussion of nature 
 or the state. But that is not possible here ; it is necessary in the few 
 pages that remain to fall below that justice, and to confine the 
 discussion to St. Thomas' " conception of God " in the usual limited 
 meaning of that expression. In dealing with it what we shall find is, 
 first a doctrine concerning God which logically implies, though it 
 does not expressly formulate, a view akin to Concrete or Objective 
 Idealism; but secondly, this view crossed by a dualism similar in 
 motive to that which already we have seen in Plato and Aristotle — 
 
 335 
 
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS 
 
 the dualism between the perfect and eternal God, and this imperfect 
 and temporal world. 
 
 The references are to the smaller, or philosophical, Summa which 
 St. Thomas wrote " contra gentiles." Any references to the larger — 
 the theological — Summa are indicated by the necessary abbreviation. 
 
 In the book Contra Gentiles we find, at the point to which our 
 task specially leads us, the following reasoning developed. St. 
 Thomas has by the preceding argument been led to declare that all 
 things movable, all tilings subject to Hivt^ffi?, i.e., the whole process 
 of the phenomenal world, must be referred back to unum primum 
 movens seipsum. But can we form any conception of a self-mover? 
 Yes, we can; and in the forty-fourth chapter of the first Book St. 
 Thomas proceeds to do so. That which moves itself, that in which 
 est movcre et nan moveri, does so per appetitum et apprehensionem. 
 But with regard to the omnium primum movens (quod Deum 
 dicimus), the desire cannot be for any particular or sensuous good, 
 for anything honum et appetihile ut hie et nunc. On the contrary, 
 the desire must be that of the First Mover for Himself. In all His 
 activities, He is Himself both the end and the source. But if God 
 thus desires Himself, He must be viewed as esse intelligens; in fact, 
 the title of the chapter now before us is Quod Deus est intelligens. 
 To put this into modern language God is, upon St. Thomas' view, 
 self-conscious and self-objecti tying Eeason — Eeason which desires 
 and wills itself ; and this desiring and willing of itself is the bringing 
 into "being of the world. 
 
 Then, in further developing his doctrine, St. Thomas goes on to 
 deal more at length with the self-knowledge of God. God, he says, 
 seipsum perfecte intelligit;^ furthermore since the intelligible form, 
 quo Deus intelligit, is nothing other than the divine essence itself, 
 therefore God, primo et per se solum seipsum cognoscit.^ And in 
 the theological Summa, to these verbs intelligo and cognosce he adds 
 comprehendo: — Deus perfecte comprehendit seipsum.^ 
 
 Still further, the knowledge of God is His very nature. 
 Intelligere Dei est sua essentia;'^ or as the theological Summa puts it,^ 
 
 1 I. 47. 2 I. 48. 3 /S. T. I. 14. 3. * I. 45. 5 I. 14. 4. 
 
 336 
 
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS 
 
 [Ipsuin] intdUgerc Dei est ejus subslantia. This, urges St. Thomas, 
 follows from, the preceding. God is esse intelligens. . But intelligere 
 est perfectio et actus intelligcntis. 
 
 Thus, then, God is conceived as an intelligence that knows, that 
 perfectly comprehends, itself. And this character as intelligence is 
 the essential nature of God; it is the divine substance itself. The 
 view of Aquinas, so far, might be summed up 1)y saying that to him 
 God is self-conscious, self-determining, self-objectifying Reason : self- 
 conscious, for He knows Himself; self-determining and self- 
 objectifying, for He determines Himself through Himself, is to 
 Himself the end of His own activities. 
 
 This brings us to the question which, for the purpose of our 
 present inquiry, we have to ask concerning the Thomistic Theism. 
 It has been our task to trace certain elemental oppositions in the 
 field of philosophy and theology. The first and deepest of these is 
 that between the negative view — which, in religious men, becomes 
 Mysticism — and the positive view, which, when it enters into clear 
 possession of its highest categories, is Idealism. Those highest 
 categories are the categories involved in the idea of spirit. But as 
 we have seen, even when these have been gained, there is still possible 
 a more abstract and a more concrete use of them. The self-conscious 
 and self-determining subject of the world may be viewed as in 
 organic connexion with the whole process of the world; not merely 
 of certain aspects of the world is God the source, but of the whole 
 order of the world; not merely through some fragment of it is He 
 realising His purpose, but through its whole process and history. 
 Or, again, the emphasis may be put so entirely upon pure reason that 
 the sense- world which has its being in space and time becomes meta- 
 physically a hopeless problem, and ethically a realm to be withdrawn 
 from. Or the abstraction may be carried still farther. The fact 
 that self-consciousness and the objective consciousness are correlative, 
 that consciousness of self implies consciousness of objects, and that 
 without such consciousness of objects there is no such thing as self- 
 consciousness : — this may be forgotten, and the emphasis laid alto- 
 gether upon the mere fact of self-consciousness, upon the mere 
 abstract fact that " I am I," upon the bare " I think " that attends 
 23 o37 
 
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS 
 
 each fact indifferently without reference to the object that is thought. 
 Then God can but be viewed as existing in the blessedness of such a 
 self-contemplation as leaves the world, in some inexplicable way, 
 apart from Him and alien to Him; one step farther in the way of 
 abstraction would, in fact, give us Mysticism. These are the three 
 typical possibilities in the use of the category of self-consciousness as 
 the final principle of explanation of the world. The strife between 
 these — a strife often implicit and unconscious — and the advance from 
 the less to the more concrete, make up the inner history of Idealism. 
 And the failure to distinguish them clearly is the source of some of 
 the most troublesome difficulties that have beset Idealism in philosophy 
 and Theism in theology. 
 
 In what position, then, does St. Thomas, with his definite enuncia- 
 tion of the category of self-conscious spirit, stand with reference to 
 these possible types ? The answer to this we have now to trace. 
 
 The conclusion of St. Thomas Just noted was that God is essen- 
 tially intelligence; intelUgere Dei est sua essentia. But alongside 
 this we have at once to set two other conclusions. The first is a con- 
 clusion with regard to the nature of intelligence which involves a 
 view of the relation between intelligence and its objects. "Intel- 
 Ugere/' he says, "is the activity or energising {actus) of an intel- 
 ligence — an activity which exists in itself, and does not pass over 
 into anything extrinsic to it, as, for instance, heating passes over into 
 that which is heated."^ This definition of intelUgere at once raises 
 the vital question between the abstract and the organic view. For 
 the definition implies that whatsoever God knows is in some true 
 sense in God. ^\aiich, then, of the two alternatives will St. Thomas 
 take? If he wishes to separate God and the world in the sense of 
 denying that the relation of the world to God is organic, he must 
 deny knowledge of the world to God. While if he insists that God 
 knows the world, he at once makes the world intrinsic to God ; makes 
 the world the objective consciousness of God. 
 
 What he does is to assert explicitly and strongly that God knows 
 the world; but, as we shall find, he does not see — or at any rate does 
 
 1 I. 45. 
 
 r>38 
 
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS 
 
 not draw — the logical consequence which this assertion carries as 
 soon as it is taken together with his own conception of knowledge. 
 God, he sa5-s, cognoscit alia a se.^ For, he argues, the cognition of 
 an effect is adequately possessed {sufjicienter hahctur) through the 
 cognition of its cause. Therefore, since God is through His own 
 essence the causa essendi of other things, and since He most full}' 
 knows His own essence, it must he aflBrmed that He ctiam alia 
 cognoscat. And this position is made still stronger hy the next 
 chapter which declares that God has propriam cognitionem de rebus 
 omnibus." And with this propriam cognitionem de rebus omnibus 
 Thomas is thoroughly in earnest. In several chapters both in the 
 Contra Gentiles and in the theological Summa he expressly affirms 
 that God knows the things which are not f He knows the particular 
 and the contingent;-* He knows the infinite ;5 He knows the base and 
 the evil.^ And this knowledge of God which includes all things, and 
 is the cause of things, is not discursive;'' does not proceed by com- 
 poimding and dividing.^ On the contrary, Deus omnia simul intel- 
 ligitp and this because He knows all things una specie intelligibili. 
 
 If we put these two views together we at once have the positive 
 tendency. For with reference to all things that are, even the con- 
 tingent and the evil, w^ith reference even to the things that are not, 
 it is declared that God omnia simitl intelligit. But it is also declared 
 that this very intelligere is "the activity or energising of an intel- 
 ligence — an activity which exists in itself and does not pass over into 
 anything extrinsic to it." The world then cannot be external to 
 God; the disjunction between the world and God which is the essence 
 of the negative tendency, is put decisively out of court; the world 
 becomes nothing other than the objective consciousness of God. 
 
 But did St. Thomas either fully accept, or consistently keep 
 himself up to, this point of view? The answer is that in part he 
 did, in part did not. The tendency toward the more concrete view 
 
 1 I. 49 : cf . Summa Theol. 1. 14. 5, 6. 
 
 2 Another side of this linking together of the divine knowledge and the things of the 
 world is seen in the principle (argued, e.g., in Snmma Theol. 1. 14. 8) that scientia (strictly 
 speaking, scientia approhationis) Dei c.s< can.^a rerum. 
 
 3 T. 66; S. T. I. 14. 9. < I. 67 ; S. T. I. 14. 11 and 13. s I. 69; S. T. I. 14. 12. 
 « I. 70, 71 ; S. T. 1. 14. 10. ^ i. 57 ; s. T. T. 14. 7. 8 I. 58. 9 I. 55. 
 
 339 
 
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS 
 
 is ioiind, for instance^ in tlie statenieut that God is iu all things, not 
 as though each thing were a part of His essence (so that any par- 
 ticular thing would be a " piece " or " mode " of the Divine Being) ; 
 nor as an accident; but as the mover (agens) is present in that which 
 is moved. It is present, again, in the discussion (found in each 
 ' Sununa) in which it is pointed out that the videntes Deum per 
 essentiam would see all things in God, and would see them not suc- 
 cessively but omnia simul:^ — a view which is put in another way 
 when it is said^ that with God vivere is one and the same thing with 
 intelligere. In God the percept and the thing perceived and the per- 
 ceiving itself are the same. But whatever is in God as perceived is 
 his life. Wherefore, since all things which are made by God are in 
 him as perceived (inteUecta) , it follows that all things in Him are 
 the divine life itself. Or if we turn to the later Books of the Contra 
 Gentiles — references to the Contra Gentiles have so far been to the 
 first Book, which sets forth what would usually be called St. Thomas' 
 " conception of God " — we find here and there hints which look in 
 the same direction. In the second Book, for instance, which contains 
 the doctrine of creation, he insists, in dealing with the diversities 
 of the world, that the distinction of things from one another is not 
 due to accident; nor is matter the first cause of it;^ nor yet con- 
 trariety in the first agents; but on the contrary, multiplicity and 
 variety, diversity and inequality in created things, are necessary, that 
 by this manifoldness a perfect copy of the divine perfection might 
 be found.* In the third Book, whose topic is in part Ethics and in 
 part the questions of Providence — of the divine government and 
 administration of the world — it is asserted^ that God is omnium 
 finis, that to know God {intelligere Deum) is the end for all intel- 
 ligent creatures^ (whence it follows quod ultima liominis felicitas 
 non sit in hac vita) f that to all operating agents God is the cause 
 of their operation (so that every operation ought to be ascribed to 
 God as to the first and principal agent ),^ and yet that this does not 
 exclude free will in the part of the creature f that there is a certain 
 coincidence of natural law and divine law.^" In the fourth Book, 
 
 1 III. 59, 60; S. T. I. 12. 8 ttcq. 2 fi-. T. I. 18. 4. s II. 40. 
 
 4 IT. 45. 5 III. 18. III. 2,5. 7 III. 48. 
 
 8 ni. 67. 9 III. 73. w III. 128 seq. 
 
 340 
 
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS 
 
 which is given to the consideration of revealed truths, we come to 
 the doctrine of the Trinity. But to that reference must be made at 
 a later jjoint. 
 
 Such teachings show how St. Thomas can maintain the more 
 concrete point of view. But upon the whole an abstract view prevails ; 
 or rather the rational foundations are laid for the concrete view, but 
 hopeless dithculties intervene, and the conclusion which is finally 
 drawn is to a very considerable extent abstract.^ 
 
 The difficulties arise both from the side of the world and from 
 the side of God. From the side of the world, its imperfection stands 
 over against the eternal and changeless perfection of God. Metaphysi- 
 cally the world is imperfect, as a divided order in time and space. 
 Ethically it is imperfect, as the seat of evil. Hence it has to be viewed 
 as in some sense disjoined from God. Yet, as the doctrines just 
 referred to show, St. Thomas sees that the world tnust be viewed as 
 intimately in connexion with God. And as between these two 
 necessities what he does is to adopt something like a Platonic theory 
 of Ideas. " The forms which exist in particular things," he says, in 
 that very chapter of the Contra Gentiles whose thesis is Quod Deus 
 est intelUgens, " are imperfect." But everything imperfect is 
 derived from something perfect, for the perfect is prior in nature to 
 the imperfect, just as actus is prior to potcntia. Hence the 
 imperfect forms which exist in the particular things of the 
 world, must be derived from actually subsisting perfect forms. 
 And these can subsist only in an intelligence. To St. Thomas 
 this is just another proof that God is esse intelUgens. But what 
 concerns us here is that it really shows the negative tendency at 
 work. Instead of the order of this world, even in its imperfections, 
 
 1 One result of this contrasts curiously with the position which St. Thomas has held, 
 and still hold*, as the guide of innumerable churchmen : in following the standard and 
 master of orthodoxy, we must, if we wish to keep orthodox ourselves, be careful how we 
 go beyond what stands written ; if we take a principle from one place, and another from 
 another, and put them together, and adopt the conclusion which logically follows, we are 
 as like as not to be heretics. As an exceedingly keen-minded teacher of philosophy, to 
 whom T am greatly indebted, once pointed out, when St. Thomas (bv reason of the very 
 clearness and sincerity of his own mind) cannot escape doctrines which have heretical 
 implications, he gives them their place in God, but forbids them to us men. He makes 
 God pantheistic, but he will not let us be pantheistic; he makes God heretical to save our 
 orthodoxy. 
 
 341 
 
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS 
 
 being regarded as wholly organic to a divine purpose, — though we 
 men cannot clearly see how, because " we see not to the close " — what 
 is really asserted is that there are two worlds: the perfect world of 
 ideal forms, which exists in God, or, as St. Thomas would say, in the 
 Word; and this present world of imperfection. The doctrine of 
 Ideas, as worked out in the greater Summa} carries the same impli- 
 cation; though it is limited by the statement that evil has no Idea 
 in God, because it is known by God non per propriam rationem sed 
 per rationem honi. 
 
 That which intervenes between the ideal world in God, and this 
 imperfect world, is of course creation. But the Thomistic doctrine of 
 creation^ is rather a repetition of the doctrine of Ideas than an 
 explanation of how a perfect God could make an imperfect world, or 
 how the imperfection of the world can be organic to the accomplish- 
 ment of a divine purpose. After pointing out that every being which 
 in any way whatsoever exists, is of God, and that the materia prima 
 is created by God, he goes on to discuss the question whether the 
 formal cause (causa exemplaris) is anything beyond God. In the 
 opening list of the arguments pro and contra he quotes the Augustin- 
 ian doctrine, ideae sunt formae principales, quae divina intelligentia 
 continentur, to prove that exemplaria rerum non sunt extra Deum and 
 then goes on : "I give the obvious answer : God is the prima causa 
 exemplaris of all things. And as evidence of this, let it be considered 
 that for the production of anything, a pattern {exemplar) is 
 necessary, that the effect may follow a determinate form. For the 
 artificer produces a determinate form in the material by reason of a 
 pattern upon which he looks, whether it be a pattern upon which 
 he gazes outwardly, or one which he conceives inwardly in his 
 mind. Moreover, it is manifest that the things which come to be 
 in the course of nature follow determinate forms. This determina- 
 tion of forms, furthermore, must be brought back to the divine 
 wisdom as to a first principle — to the divine wisdom which has 
 conceived (excogitavit) the order of the universe which consists in the 
 distinction of things. And therefore it is necessary to say that in the 
 divine wisdom are the rationes omnium rerum which we have above 
 
 1 ,S. T. I. 15. - S. T. I. 44. scq. 
 
 342 
 
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS 
 
 called (qu. 15. art. 1) Ideas, that is, pattern forms {formas exem- 
 plares) existing in the divine mind." Then St. Thomas goes on to 
 reconcile this with the doctrine we shall have presently to consider, 
 that of the simplicity of the divine nature; and comes to the conclu- 
 sion that God Himself is the first exemplar of all things. But this, it 
 will be noticed, still leaves the disjunction. The ideal world exists in 
 God; and then this present world exists somehow, apart from that 
 ideal world, as an imperfect copy of it. 
 
 But, secondly, there were difficulties from the side of God. St. 
 Thomas, with the mediaeval theologians generally, is committed to the 
 doctrine of the simplicity of the divine nature; the divine nature is 
 such a unity as excludes diversity.^ The divine nature, St. Thomas 
 thinks, must be such a unity, because else it would be a compositum; 
 and that for many reasons is impossible; it would involve, for 
 instance, the possibility of dissolution, and then, too, omne composi- 
 tum posterius est suis componentibus?- 
 
 What such a view indicates is that St. Thomas, even in formally 
 declaring that God is self-conscious and self-determining spirit, has 
 not entered into the real significance of the category which he is using. 
 He has failed to apprehend spirit as a principle of synthesis, of unity 
 in diversity ; as a principle whose essential nature it is to hold many 
 elements together in the unity of one experience, at once distinguish- 
 ing itself from each of those elements and each of them from one 
 another. But so to conceive spirit is the key to the whole theistic 
 view of the world. Continually St. Thomas comes near to such a 
 conception; but to enter clearly upon it, and to lift it to its "full 
 working prerogative " as a principle for the explanation of the world, 
 was reserved for the men who carried forward the work begun by 
 Immanuel Kant. So that St. Thomas is exposed to a great danger. 
 For the view of the divine nature as omnino simplex, if carried rigor- 
 ously to its conclusion, would put God beyond the apprehension of our 
 reason, and union with God beyond the normal capacities of our 
 
 II. 18; cf. the discussion De Unitate Dei in the greater Summa where the first con- 
 clusion is : unum non addit supra ens rem aliquam, sed tantxim negationem divisionis 
 (S. r. I.U. 1). 
 
 2 Et dependens ex eis adds the theological Summa in its statement of these reasons 
 
 a. 3. 7). 
 
 343 
 
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS 
 
 nature. That is to say, it would lead, according to the temper of the 
 man who held the view, either to Agnosticism or to Mysticism. 
 Either outcome was, of course, impossible for Aquinas ; not merely on 
 account of his position in the church, but by reason also of his genuine 
 insight into the positive character of the relation of God to the world.^ 
 Yet when the doctrine of the simplicity of the divine nature is in the 
 foreground of his thought, he can save himself from such an outcome 
 only by ingenious expedients. Intellectus noster, he resolutely affirms, 
 de Deo simplici non in vanum enunciationes format componendo et 
 dividendo, quamvis Deus omnino sit simplex. It is true, he admits, 
 that we come to knowledge of God by manifold conceptions, honitas, 
 sapientia, and the like. But then, he urges, we do not attribute the 
 method of the knowing intellect to the things which are known — just 
 as, for instance, we do not attribute immateriality to a stone, although 
 we know it in an immaterial fashion. So, then, in our knowledge of 
 God, the manifoldness of conception is to be referred to ourselves, as 
 knowing intellects, but unity is to be referred to the God who is 
 known. — Later, when St. Thomas has affirmed that God has propriam 
 cognitionem de rehus omnibus, the same difficulty recurs. If the 
 divine intelligence is omnino simplex, how can there be in it multitude 
 intellectorumf But here once more, instead of rising to the view 
 of spirit as a synthetic principle, and therefore a principle at once of 
 unity and of diversity, St. Thomas saves himself by an ingenious 
 device. He falls back upon the theory of intelligible forms. An 
 intelligible form is a principiuni formaJe inteUcctualis operationis; by 
 means of it the knowing intelligence knows the thing ; not in such a 
 way that the knowing itself {intelUgere ipsum) is an action passing 
 over into the thing known (as heating "passes over into the thing 
 heated"); but in such a way that the knowing remains in the 
 intelligence, and yet has relation to the thing which is known. But 
 the divine intelligence has no other intelligible form than its own 
 essence, which is simple, but nevertheless is the likeness of all things. 
 And so, by one intelligible form which is the divine nature, and by 
 
 1 The Mystic oiitcomo. however, was possible for St. Thomas' fellow-Dominican and, 
 in a sense, disciple, Master Eckhart. 
 
 344 
 
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS 
 
 one general concept {intentio inteUecta) , which is the divine Word, 
 many things can be kno\\Ti by God.^ 
 
 We have already seen what is implied in St. Thomas' view of the 
 activity of the divine intelligence as one which exists in itself and 
 does not pass over into anything extrinsic to itself. Taken in con- 
 nexion with the statement that God has propriam cognitionem de 
 rebus omnibus, it implies that the world is in God, so that in knowing 
 the world God is not going beyond Himself, is not passing over into 
 something extrinsic to Himself. But what we have just seen is that 
 from both sides — that of God, that of the world — Aquinas is led to 
 hold the two apart. And this is rendered easier for a theologian by 
 another fact. In the genuine order of science, we start with the world 
 of our experience, and seek to understand it; and the explanation of 
 it we find at last in God. And then, of course, the principle of 
 explanation and the thing explained must be viewed as standing in 
 organic connexion — unless, as sometimes happens, the scientific 
 inquiry forgets its own beginning. But if you start with ready-made 
 conceptions — God, the soul, the world — you feel at liberty to link 
 these together or hold them apart as the exigencies of your thought 
 may require. And thus to start with separate ready-made conceptions 
 is one of the specific dangers of the professional theologian ; it is, in 
 fact, the essence of that theological procedure laiown as the dogmatic. 
 
 But, in attempting to consider how far the Theism of Aquinas is pos- 
 itive and concrete, how far abstract and negative, we have still another 
 question to raise; and that the central one. The difficulties which we 
 have been considering, the opposition of what seem to be necessities 
 of thought: — will St. Thomas find any solution for these when he 
 comes to deal with the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation? 
 In his discussion of these, if anywhere, we may expect the concrete 
 view to come fully to its rights. For the central conception of the 
 Christian view of the world is that God became man, and that thus 
 there was lived, under the actual conditions of human history, a life 
 which is the true and normal — in the strict Platonic sense, the ideal — 
 human life. But this involves a thoroughly concrete view. For it 
 
 1 I.e. St. Thomas really puts the two sides together in God ; the diversities are put into 
 the divine nature, -which is nevertheless declared from the outset to be a unitj" (see Contra 
 Gentile.1, 1. 36, 46, and 53). 
 
 345 
 
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS 
 
 implies/ on the one side, that God fulfils Himself in human nature ; 
 and on the other side, that the human nature, which in the Son of 
 Man rose to the true form of its own Idea, is potentially the divine 
 nature. Taking the discussion in the Contra Gentiles with that in 
 the theological Summa, one must say, however, that while St. Thomas 
 advances toward such a view, he does not enter fully into it. Is there 
 a procession in God ? he asks.^ First, he notes some very interesting 
 counter-arguments. For instance, (1) procession signifies movement 
 toward the outside, but in God there is nothing movable nor extrane- 
 ous, therefore no procession ; ( 2 ) everything which proceeds is diverse 
 from that from which it proceeded. But in God there is no diversity, 
 but the completest simplicity. Therefore in God there is no proces- 
 sion. But, in spite of these, he holds that there is a procession in God. 
 Not as a cause proceeding into its effect; that would give us the 
 heresy of Arius. Nor as a cause carrying itself into its effect and 
 impressing its own likeness thereupon; that would be the opposite 
 heresy, the error of Sabellius. As against these Thomas holds to a 
 procession in God; such as appears in intelligence whose activity 
 remains in itself and there forms a concept — a verhum cordis, of 
 which the verhum vocis is a sign. Such a procession, urges Thomas, 
 there is in God. And it is twofold — the processio Verhi, which can be 
 called generaiio (generatio Fili) and the processio amoris. Then he 
 goes on to distinguish these, the one (the generation of the Son) 
 taking place secundum actionem intelligihilem, the other (the proces- 
 sion of the Spirit) secundum operationem voluntatis. But when it 
 comes to bring the Son, and the Father through the Son, into organic 
 connexion with human nature and with all the breadth of the human 
 world, the great monastic Doctor slackens his pace. In the fourth 
 Book of the Contra Gentiles^ he does, indeed, bring the doctrine of the 
 first Book, that God thinks Himself, into relation with the revealed 
 doctrine of the "Word. That which was made in Him ivas life; i.e., 
 as St. Thomas takes it, all things pre-existed in Him, so that He is 
 both the Likeness of God (hahet Deitatem, et est verus Deus, imago 
 invisihilis Dei), and the original type of all created things. But this 
 still leaves the great disjunction possible ; the Word is the Idea of all 
 
 1 ,S. T. I. 27. 2 11. scq. 
 
 346 
 
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS 
 
 things — but yet He may not be regarded as fulfilling Himself through 
 all things and realising His purpose in all history. In fact, one is 
 tempted to say that with St. Thomas, as with so many later 
 theologians, the other elements of his thought govern his doctrine of 
 the Trinity and the Incarnation, rather than the doctrine of the 
 Trinity and the Incarnation the other elements of his thought. 
 
 Such, in the outline of its logical motives, is St. Thomas' concep- 
 tion of God. So limited a statement, it is true, does not do justice 
 to the Thomistic Theism. As was pointed out above, if justice is to 
 be done to any man's Theism — to his real Theism, which may, or may 
 not, be identical with his professed — the whole body of his thought 
 must be taken into account.^ In the case of St. Thomas one would 
 have to consider, in particular, how genuinely the concrete tendency 
 comes to its right in his teleology : in his view, namely, of history as 
 the process of the realisation of a divine purpose; and of the state 
 and its laws as factors in that realisation. 
 
 But the bare logical outline now before us is enough to show that 
 within the system, apparently so complete and full-rounded, of the 
 great Dominican theologian, there is a deep division of mind. The 
 dualism can, indeed, almost be put down in the set terms of an 
 antimony. The thesis is: The world, as a single system, must have 
 come from God — the Manichgean view simply cannot be admitted. 
 Therefore, the world must, in the last analysis, be of the nature of 
 God; i.e., must be essentially, and upon the whole, good. And there- 
 fore again, in some way which is difficult or impossible for the human 
 mind in its present state to comprehend, the imperfections of the world 
 must be organic to the purposes and activity of the divine perfection ; 
 and, therefore, still farther, the world is a true home and field of 
 labour for the sons of God, and the normal activities that make up 
 man's life in this world are man's true way home to the heavenly 
 glory. But over against this thesis rises the antithesis: The world, 
 as it stands, is manifestly imperfect, manifestly evil. Therefore, it 
 cannot be of God; and consequently cannot be a true home or arena 
 
 1 It is no rare thing for a church teacher, who in his " Theology " has yielded to dualism 
 —even to the extent of Manichseism— to show himself in his Ethics and Politics a sound 
 and hearty Theist. 
 
 347 
 
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS 
 
 for the chiidreu of God; so that man, if he is to come to his home in 
 God, must renounce and forsake the world. 
 
 And this division of mind is, in St. Thomas, no mere matter of 
 individual thinking. He, under the form of a theological system, as 
 genuinely as Dante under the form of poetry, was the expression of 
 tlie mind of the Middle Ages. \Miat that mind was — its strength 
 through devotion to God, its weakness through injustice to nature and 
 through the consequent sundering of nature and grace— I have already 
 attempted to indicate.^ Its vision of the glory of God was so intense 
 and overmastering, its sense of the evils in the world so keen, that it 
 was driven to a separation of the divine and the natural; and so the 
 very man who in modern times stood for its spirit of systematic com- 
 prehension, could rebuke it for not being comprehensive enough, and 
 could say of it, that with all its zeal for the divine it made the divine 
 kingdom the dwelling-place of the dead, attainable only through the 
 gate of death; and the natural world just as much a realm of death, 
 for there is no divinity in it — God being outside of nature, and there- 
 fore, nature the grave of God." The charge has its truth. Yet 
 gentler words would be still closer to truth. It would be at once more 
 kindly and more wise to say that, as a matter of historical fact, when 
 men of searching intellect and pure heart have dealt with the actual 
 life of the world, their conclusions have fallen in two directions and 
 approximated to two types : the one apprehends God as the eternal 
 truth and life of the world ; the other apprehends Him as that reality 
 in the presence of which the world fades into nothingness. The 
 spiritual struggle of mediaeval men made them so acutely sensitive to 
 both demands that in their thought the opposed tendencies lose the 
 sense of their opposition, and are interwoven. In Erigena both views 
 are present, each in its extremest possible form ; but with the positive 
 taking upon the whole the greater place, especially at the close. In 
 St. Thomas, also, both views are present ; but they stand in a different 
 •relation, which reminds one a little of the ground-lines of Plato's 
 earlier Idealism. AVith regard to the " real " world — the world which 
 
 1 Supra, pp. 29-33. 
 
 2 Hefcel, HiMory of Philoftophy Kng. tr., vol. III., p. 94 seq. It is the .scholastic mind 
 that Hegel has specially in view. 
 
 348 
 
COXCLUSIOX 
 
 is known to angelic intelligences, but for us men is very largely a 
 •• world to come " — the positive or Idealistic view prevails completely ; 
 while, with regard to the world "that now is," that Idealism is 
 crossed by a certain measure of the negative or abstract view. But in 
 spite of this deep division of the mediaeval mind, in spite of this 
 distance to which mediaeval men went in excluding many aspects of 
 the world and of our life from genuine reality, we must in fairness 
 keep open eyes for the fact that the essential spirit of mediaeval 
 thought was the spirit of unity and comprehension. The purpose of 
 the mediffival mind was to bring all human knowledge to unity in a 
 knowledge of God ; and if this attempt was partly a success, partly a 
 failure, alike in the ninth century when it was made by the daring 
 and brilliant mind of Erigena, and in the thirteenth when it was 
 undertaken by the sober and massive intelligence of St. Thomas, the 
 reason lies, upon a last view, simply in this, that earth is not heaven 
 and human science not the iotum simiil of heavenlv vision. 
 
 With this we must end our study of the two great ways in which 
 the apprehension of God has shaped men's attitude toward the world 
 and toward their ow^n life in the affairs of the world. ]\Iediseval men 
 stood — w^here all men stand — between time and eternity; and it was 
 their labour, both in practice and in speculation, to bring their life 
 in time under the form of eternity. They felt the unity — the unity in 
 God — of all existence. Hence the inner impulse of their science was 
 to see the world as one ; and to see it as one by knowing God. In the 
 light of the knowledge of God all the contending elements and 
 currents of the world were to take on the form of unity and eternity. 
 But the material of which their life was made defeated that 
 
 349 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 endeavour ; the struggle of life made them feel precisely the hopeless 
 dividedness of existence, the hopeless irreconcilability of its elements. 
 They had fought their way, with infinite toil and pain, up from chaos ; 
 with infinite toil and pain were subduing the flesh to the spirit, and 
 the passions of the earth to heavenly light. God and the world stood 
 for them far asunder; between the two they must choose; and they 
 chose rather to lose themselves with God than to be masters of the 
 world. As a man sitting in the midst of music and of dreams hears 
 far out in the night the call of the trumpet, and recognises his greater 
 vocation, and turns to the long march through the darkness, and to 
 the battle that with its chances of life and death waits the break of 
 day ; so the leaders of mediseval religion turned from the allurements 
 of the beautiful and terrible world, and allowed to their hearts no 
 love save the heavenly love,^ and gave themselves to the one task of 
 so organising society that it should be, in labour, in discipline, in 
 vision, a training-school for the life to come. So that the final insight 
 to which both their life and their science led them, defeated in part 
 the impulse with which their science began. All things of the world are 
 one in God ; and therefore to know the world as it truly is we must 
 know God. But so soon as we come to a knowledge of God, we come 
 to that which condemns the world. Through all things there runs 
 the absolute and final distinction between God and that which is not 
 God, between heaven and the awful eternity of hell. And man, as he 
 looks upon God and upon that twofold issue of his own life, stands in 
 ^ a strait with regard to all the things of this world and all the appeal 
 which they make to his heart. We must love God ; but whether we 
 can love Him in loving the things which He has made is a problem 
 of hopeless difficulty; for the things which He has made have some- 
 how come to be full of evil. On the one hand, there is no source of 
 real existence but God; and, therefore, throughout the whole of 
 existence, with all its trouble and toil and darkness — its " desperate 
 and hideous years," its " wrong too bitter for atoning " — God must 
 be achieving a vast design. But on the other hand, the world is evil 
 
 1 If we turn from Aquinas to Dante, the fact remains that, while Dante's love never 
 losea its humanity, it maintains itself only hy lifting itself from earth to heaven. The 
 Beatrice whom Dante loved through all his greater years was the Beatrice who, among 
 the blessed, looked upon the face of God. 
 
 350 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 while God is good; therefore, the world is alien to God, and the sons 
 of God must renounce it. Such was the problem laid upon mediaeval 
 men by that wisdom which is the inner soul of the ages, the wisdom 
 which allots to each mortal generation its toil, and leads each by the 
 burden of hopeless difficulties into a citizenship of eternity. With 
 that problem medieval men did the best that they could do: they 
 admitted both solutions to a place in their thought, and became at 
 once Idealists, serving God by mastering the world, and Mystics, 
 finding God by renouncing both the world and their own individuality. 
 For modern men the problem of life, however different in appear- 
 ance, is not different in essence. On the one side, for us as for them, 
 stands the evil of the world. And its distinctively modern form — the 
 industrial and social selfishness which allows whole classes of human 
 beings to live here upon the earth in hell — is, with all its refinement, 
 a profounder form of evil than that savage power of the flesh which 
 medieval men had to overcome, as, in obedience to a light from 
 heaven, they lifted themselves out of their northern barbarism, liut 
 if that which shows the world as divided and broken has taken on an 
 intenser form, so also has the demand for unity; the demand, namely, 
 that the world shall be seen as one order of existence framed through- 
 out for the realisation of one supreme purpose; and that, therefore, 
 all the interpretations of the world, scientific, moral, religious, shall 
 lead to a common centre. This demand arises from all sides of the 
 modern situation; alike from the scientific side, and from the 
 religious and moral. For science can admit no dualism; at every 
 point in its work it presupposes and implies the unity of all existence, 
 and the continuity of the whole cosmic process, including man and 
 all that makes up man's life. While theology (and still more the 
 religion of which theology is the intellectual expression or shadow) 
 with its central presupposition of the supremacy of God, just as truly 
 demands the unity of all existence and the continuity of the whole 
 process of the universe ; and that whether we interpret the supremacy 
 of God in Christian and paternal terms, or in Eoman and forensic. 
 And the moral consciousness, which seems most of all to force a 
 dualistic belief upon the pure heart and the upright spirit, really 
 calls for an ultimate unity. As Plato saw, the Chief Good must be 
 
 351 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 one, and it must be the supreme principle of Being. It must be the 
 highest principle of the whole system of existence as well as of man's 
 moral endeavour. For in the last analysis the Good for man must be 
 the divine nature; and for the attainment of it — the genuine and 
 difficult, not the easy and fictitious, attainment of it — the whole order 
 of the world must be framed. 
 
 In some respects, modern thought, with all its dividedness, is in a 
 better position than mediseval to meet that demand. For one thing, 
 we have a keener sense of the difficulty of the task. Medieval men 
 boldly attempted to unify reason and faith, science and revelation. 
 But if we moderns are acutely conscious of any one thing more than 
 of any other, it is that such unification must be achieved, if at all, in 
 some greater experience to come ubi ipsa Veritas vita animae nostrae 
 erit. We are content to speak, not of unifying, but of reconciling. 
 Anything that could fairly be called the unification of science and 
 revelation would reqiiire completed {i.e., eternal) science, completed 
 revelation, and complete intellectual vision ; whereas we ourselves, and 
 our science, and our revelation (so far as revelation means something 
 apprehensible by the human spirit), are all alike incomplete in the 
 sense of existing under the form of time. But we can seek to recon- 
 cile with each other the two great powers which make up our spiritual 
 life — the scientific reason which sees the world as an order of 
 continuity and changeless law, and the religious spirit which 
 organises life in accordance with a faith in God: — to reconcile these 
 in a reasoned belief that the world is a divinely-ordered system and 
 its history a divinely-guided process.^ Then, too, for men who see 
 things as they are, the steady advance of science and its strengthen- 
 . ing of its own position bring hope rather than fear. The man who 
 sees nature as an order of unchanging law, is better qualified to 
 advance to the view that the cosmic process is, in constitution and 
 purpose, divine and divinely rational, than is the man who sees that 
 
 1 It should be understood that, if men of science have a difficulty in admittin?? this 
 belief, theologians have a still greater difficulty in holding it consistently. The intel- 
 lectual pressure upon a theologian is a terrible one ; and the clearer his mind the more 
 terrible the pressure. Faith in God, and the fact of evil, constitute when taken together 
 thp last and most awful of all the problems bv which the human mind is tried. The 
 theologian is always exposed to the temptation to be a Theist toward his opponents, but a 
 Manicheean within his own system. 
 
 352 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 process as subject to arbitrary divine fiats (a view which implies that 
 the ordinary process of the world goes its own way upon some non- 
 divine level, but subject to interference from above). ^ Science and 
 religion, in fact, by doing justice to themselves, enter into deeper 
 kinship with each other. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to 
 say that religion, since it includes the whole of life, can never do 
 justice to itself without taking up into itself the spirit of science. 
 And, to some extent, that is being done to-day. Theology, for 
 example, is being transformed by a genuinely scientific study of the 
 religious experiences and types of mind recorded in the Bible, and 
 specially of that mind of Jesus which is at once the fulfilment and the 
 illumination of those experiences; and, as so transformed, is becom- 
 ing less and less a declaration made on the authority of the church, 
 and more and more an expression of the facts of actual life, and of 
 the faiths involved in those facts. 
 
 So that on the intellectual side the situation certainly grows more 
 hopeful age by age. But in the world of to-day that which stands 
 darkly in the way is a fact of another order. It is not a fact arising 
 from the essential relations between the scientific and the religious 
 mind. It has really little to do with any conflict between the 
 scientific spirit and the spirit of the organised church, or between the 
 scientific principle of continuity and all that love, all those hopes and 
 visions, which have in the heart of man a natural temple. The seat 
 of it is in the temper with which we live the practical life. Medieval 
 men were so intent upon God that they saw Him in and for Himself, 
 but did not with sufficient clearness see Him in the ordinary and the 
 everyday, in the phenomena of nature, in the layman's life. But we, 
 throughout our whole organisation of commerce and society, have so 
 given ourselves to ourselves that we do not like to keep God in our 
 thoughts at all. In a social and industrial order where the weak serve 
 the successful we labour proudly and masterfully, each man seeking 
 by " length of watching, strength of mind " to build a city for him- 
 self. It is hard for us to give ourselves to God, and to citizenship in 
 the city where there is no selfishness, no impoverishing or crippling 
 of one life to maintain the splendour of another, but the good that 
 
 1 Cf. fiiipra, pp. 195-198 ; cf. p. o.'5, note. 
 24 353 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 ail men serve is a common good. And this habit of living each for 
 himself is not only the source of innumerable and cruel evils ; it even 
 infuses a soul of evil into the very activities which, if performed as 
 unto God, would be a fulfilment of His purpose. 
 
 By this it is not meant that we modern men can save ourselves 
 from ourselves only by returning to the mediieval position. Still less 
 is it meant that we can save ourselves from the lower world which 
 is too much with us, only by turning back to that ancient theology 
 before whose overmastering vision of God the world faded into 
 nothingness as dreams fade at break of day. On the contrary, we can 
 save ourselves only by being true to that greater world which we 
 have discovered and made our own. But what such fidelity to the 
 world really involves depends upon what the world is. And the truth 
 of the world, the truth both of ourselves and of the world, is God ; 
 God, and that " f ar-ofS divine event " which is the purpose of God, 
 are the meaning of the world. And this means that the citizenship 
 to which we are called is a heavenly citizenship; but it also means 
 that that heavenly citizenship must first he fulfilled upon the earth, in 
 the life in which our duties are those of the good neighbour, the 
 honest citizen, the devoted churchman. The perfection of human life 
 lies in being at one with God ; but to that oneness with God men can 
 come, not by departure from the world into eternal quietude, but 
 only by flinging themselves into the labours and causes of the history 
 in which God is realising His eternal purpose. The true inspiration 
 of a man's life is the love of God, its true object the glory of God ; 
 but that glory is one of work and of struggle rather than of silent 
 peace. We have much to learn from the mystic saint in the loneliness 
 of his rest in God. But his securely-guarded peace is not for us. 
 Even while we honour him, we must turn our faces toward a life at 
 once more commonplace and more divine. The man to whom the love 
 of God is the central impulse of life must take his place in the world, 
 must share in its labours and duties and affections and losses, must 
 undergo the fate which it has for all its citizens. And that fate is 
 seldom a light one. They who in the manifold relationships of life 
 and in the affairs of the world seek to be faithful to God and man, are 
 likely to come at last before God bearing deep marks of toil and 
 
 354 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 storm; like ships that withiu them carry high and gentle hearts, but 
 can look for no escape from the dangers that are native to the sea, 
 and come at last to harbour weather-beaten, scarred by lightning and 
 tempest and hidden rock. To many — and they are not the forgotten 
 of God — is not given the life of those who dwell here upon the earth 
 in great peace, looking upon God, and in all the fierce storm of the 
 world seeing nothing but God. Most of us labour with a more 
 troubled blending of anguish and calm, of remorse and hope, toward 
 our west. But when the light of day is passing from the sky, and 
 through the shadow there begins to break that other light of the stars 
 from their infinite spaces, and the worn hands that have laboured 
 hard in the world's affairs begin to stretch themselves out " for love of 
 the farther shore," then, the man as he turns to the untravelled world 
 which awaits him across the darkness may know at least this : already 
 in this world he has had his part in the realisation of a purpose of 
 God; and in the world to come that which waits for him, and for his 
 fellows, and for all the human struggle, is not less of God, but more. 
 
 355 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Agnosticism, 4, 344. 
 
 Apologists, the, 272. 
 
 Aquinas, see St. Thomas. 
 
 Areopagite, the, see Dionysius. 
 
 Aristotle, 7, 58, 59, 60, 90, 220, 253-259, 260, 261, 267, 294, 302, 303, .304, 308, 3.35. 
 
 bar Sudaili, Stephen, 273. 
 
 Boethius, 97n. 
 
 Bradley, F. H., 2l97i2, 233»i. 
 
 Calvinism and Arminianism, 79n. 
 
 Cause, the conception of, as used by Spinoza, 172. 
 
 Creation, must begin with something less than perfection, 242, 258, 303, 308. 
 
 Cf. 82 seq. 
 Cudworth, 88ra. 
 
 Dante, 310, 350/1. 
 
 Descartes, 59, 114, 154-158, 159, 160, 161, 193, 219, 271. 
 
 Dionysius the Areopagite, 273, 277, 279, 287, 289, 290, 291. 
 
 Eckhart, Master, 147, 164, 165, 219, 344)i. 
 Erigena, 14, 220, 267, 271-331, 348. 
 
 Freedom and Necessity, 78, 79 (with note 2), 102-105, 178 (with note 2), 179. 
 —in Spinoza, 183, 184. 
 
 Goethe, 198n. 
 
 Green, T. H., 8, 26», 63, 64. 
 
 Hegel, 52, 60-63, 90, 114, 194, 195, 301, 312, 330, 331, 348. 
 Herder, 198. 
 Hierotheus, 273. 
 Hume, 59«, 113, 114. 
 
 Idealism 
 
 —compared with Mj'sticism, 7-12, 83?t, 115-122, 287w. 
 
 —the types of. Abstract and Concrete, 12, 225, 227, 231, 232, 233, 235, 238-247, 
 
 251-263, 265, 266, 335, 337, 338-349, 350, 351. 
 —of Aristotle, 253-259. 
 —of Christianity, 262-266. 
 
 —of Erigena, see 271-331, but specially 310-312, 316 seq., 327 331. 
 —of Phito, 203-247. 
 — in Spinoza, see 176-195. 
 — the Idealistic position outlineil, 17-110. 
 
 357 
 
INDEX 
 
 Kaut, 2, 4G, 59, 93, 114, 125, 126, 180, 194, 195, 219, 220, 267, 342. 
 
 Manichajism, 70«, 99, 221, 266, 307, 319, 347/f, 352«. 
 
 Materialism, 4, 38, 39, 47, 53h. 
 
 Maximu8 the Confessor, 273, 291, 323, 328. 
 
 Mediaeval view of the world, 29-34; see also Erigena, Mysticism, St. Thomas. 
 
 Mysticism 
 
 —compared with Idealism, 7-12, 83?i, 115-122, 287m. 
 
 —in Parmenides, 126, 127-132, 217. 
 
 —Hindu, 126, 132-141, 217. 
 
 — Neo-Platonic, 126, 141-144, 272-274; and see Plotinus. > 
 
 — MedifEval, 126, 145-150, 162, 217-219; and see Erigena. 
 
 —Modern, 151, 152. 
 
 —in Spinoza, 115, 116, 152-165. 
 
 —in Plato, 58, 124, 125, 214-232, 236. 
 
 — in Erigena, see 271-331. 
 
 Necessity, see Freedom. 
 
 Neo-Platonism, see Mysticism and Plotinus. 
 
 Newman, J. H., 17-23, 27, 28, 32, 50, 53, 73, 75. 
 
 Origen, SOn, SSn, 292, 319, 321. 
 
 Pantheism, 287n, 311; a?ic? see Spinoza a7ic? Erigena. 
 
 Parmenides, 59?i, 126, 128 131, 135, 136, 152, 157«, 159, 161, 162, 217, 230, 285. 
 
 Cf. 140, 147. 
 Plato, 2, 7, 11, 13, 25, 46, 57, 58, 59, 93, 947i, 96 (with note), 108, 109, 124, 125; 203- 
 
 247, 251-253, 255, 256, 251n, 258, 259, 260, 267, 272, 285, 294, 301, 302, 303, 
 
 304, 307, 308, 317, 335, 348, 351. 
 Plotinus, 142-144, 175, 284-286, 291, 292,297, 298, 301, 312. 
 
 Renaissance, the, 35, 59. 
 Royce, 204, 213?i5. 
 
 St. Thomas, 14, 40, 90, 145, 175/i, 220, 267, 335-349. 
 Spinoza, 59, 113-199, 219, 220, 267, 271, 286, 330, 331. 
 Stevenson, R. L., 317. 
 Stoics, 2.53, 260, 261. 
 
 Wordsworth, 23-29, 32, 50, 53, 74, 75, lOOvi, 198«. 
 
 358 
 
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