A i)f r THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES v// *'^ Son. lOO M^3 f PREFACE. This series of lectures was delivered, by appointment, as the fifth course on the foundation established in the Union Theological Seminary by Mr. Zebulon Stiles Ely, in the followino; terms: — 'o "The undersigned gives the sum often thousand dollars to the Union Theological Seminary of the city of New York, to found a lectureship in the same, the title of which shall be ' The Elias P. Ely Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity.' "The course of lectures given on this foundation is to com- prise any topics that serve to establish the proposition that Christianity is a religion from God, or that it is the perfect and final form of religion for man. " Among the subjects discussed may be, — "The Nature and Need of a Revelation; "The Character and Influence of Christ and his Apostles; "The Authenticity and Credibility of the Scriptures, Mira- cles, and Prophecy; "The Diffusion and Benefits of Christianity; and " The Philosophy of Religion in its Relation to the Christian System. " Upon one or more of such subjects a course of ten public Lectures shall be given at least once in two or three years. The appointment of the Lecturer is to be by the concurrent 626804 vi ' PREFACE. action of the directors and faculty of said Seminary and the undersigned; and it shall ordinarily be made two years in advance. "The interest of the fund is to be devoted to the payment of the Lecturers, and the publication of the Lectures within a year after the delivery of the same. The copyright of the volumes thus published is to be vested in the Seminary. " In case it should seem more advisable, the directors have it at their discretion at times to use the proceeds of this fund in providing special courses of lectures or instruction, in place of the aforesaid public lectures, on the above-named subjects. "Should there at any time be a surplus of the fund, the directors are authorized to employ it in the way of prizes for dissertations by the students of the Seminary upon any of the above topics, or of prizes for essays thereon, open to public competition. "Zebulon Stiles Ely, "New York, May 8th, 1865." With the consent of Mr. Ely, and of the Faculty of the Union Theological Seminary, the following lectures were repeated, in the first month of the present year, at the Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore. The Table of Contents is a reproduction, almost without change, of a "Syllabus" of the course, which was distributed among the auditors. Figures, embodied in the text, refer to notes contained in the Appendix. Junk ii, 1883. TABLE OF CONTENTS. LECTURE I. RELIGION AND INTELLIGENCE. PAGE The main object of this course of lectures, to show that intelligence, as such, is the true bulwark, and not the enemy, of religion . . i Religion cannot — even if it would — withdraw itself from the liability of being made a subject of scientific or philosophic inquiry . . 2 First, the phenomena of religion, without any reference to their absolute significance, may be made the subject of a comparative, inductive study, and the result is the Science of Religions ... 3 Or, secondly, inquiry may be directed to the absolute significance and justification of the phenomena in question, and the result is the Philosophy of Religion 4 Importance of this latter inquiry for religion 6 Modern "Agnosticism," which results from a misapplication and misinterpretation of the method and conclusions of purely physical science, has' the form of knowledge, without its substance; from it religion has nothing to fear before the forum of absolute intelli- gence 7 The history of English Deism as partially illustrating the truth of the last statement 9 Against Agnosticism, philosophy and religion have a common cause. In this negative sense the two certainly agree II The more important question is, whether philosophy — which is, prop- erly, nothing but the unbiassed recognition and comprehension of experience on all its sides — confirms or invalidates the positive, theoretical presuppositions of religion 15 viii TABLE OF CONTENTS. FAGB For religion — and, above all, Christianity — is, in form and substance, of and for intelligence. It presupposes and requires knowledge of the Absolute. And philosophy aims to achieve the same knowl- edge by the way of experimental demonstration 17 Philosophy and Christianity alike imply (i) a process of intelligence (Theory of Knowledge), by which (2) the absolute object of in- telligence is reached (Theory or Science of Being) 19 Plan of the following lectures 19 LECTURE II. THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. The philosophic theory of knowledge is, in ideal, nothing but the science of intelligence as such, or of experience in the fullest sense of this term 20 This science not contained in Formal Logic. Nor is it contained in Empirical Psychology: — witness, the results of British psycho- logical speculation 23 The " science of intelligence as such " is the necessary correlate and condition of the science of being as such; in other words, it is an organic part of Philosophy, and is found, in more or less com- pletely developed form, wherever philosophy is found .... 29 Intelligence comparable to a light 32 Intelligence is an activity, versus the old sensational theory that the mind in knowledge is passive, and like a "piece of white paper." The relation of subject and object in knowledge is not purely mechanical, or sensible 34 The activity in question is synthetic. (Incidental discussion of space and time as forms of synthesis for intelligence). It is living and organic. It involves, in particular, the ideal continuity and unity of subject and object, within the sphere of knowledge, and not (as sensational agnosticism assumes) their mechanical separation and opposition outside the realm of all knowledge 39 Hence, (i) the forms of the "subject" are the forms of the "ob- ject," and vice versa 46 (2) Knowledge is a unifying process. It finds unity in the midst of apparent multiplicity. It sees the universal in the particular. Its object is thus the concrete universal, or the universal which TABLE OF CONTENTS. ix PAGE subsists through and by very means of the particular, and not the abstract universal, which excludes the particular and is never an object of real knowledge at all, but only of a supposititious im- agination 47 Intelligence is itself a concrete universal, for it is an organism. Every natural organism is a direct illustration of the one subsist- ing only in and through the many, the one life in and through the many members. The "members" of intelligence are the forms or fundamental categories of knowledge, the framework of all our conscious intelligence. The "one life" stands self- revealed in self-consciousness 48 Self-consciousness is the " light " of intelligence. It is a pure, ideal and spontaneous activity 49 Self-consciousness is the active and relatively independent condition of objective consciousness. But objective consciousness, on the other hand, is also the (relatively passive) condition of self-con- sciousness 5° Self-consciousness in man, while it is the organic head, or the "licrht," of all human consciousness whatsoever, turns out, upon examination, to be a borrowed light, and itself dependent on an Absolute Self-consciousness 52 The philosophic science of knowledge confirms St. Paul's denial "that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of our [purely individual] selves, ' ' and finds, in further agreement with the Apostle, that, in the absolute and final sense, " our sufficiency is of God." 55 LECTURE III. THE ABSOLUTE OBJECT OF INTELLIGENCE; OR, THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. The question as to "what being really is," not a " tyro's question." Its practical importance 59 The unity of Bemg is expressly or implicitly presupposed by all science "' Physical science seeks, not an absolute unity, but only a relative one "' The "universal," to which physical science leads us, is consequently X TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE abstract, not concrete. Its picture of the universe is monocnro- matic. And pantheism, in the odious sense of this term, consists, essentially, in adopting the highest generalizations of mathe- matico-physical inquiry as the final results of philosophic science, and interpreting the unity of being, accordingly, as abstract, dead and mechanical, rather than as concrete, living and organic . . 63 The terms being (or reality) and intelligence are correlative. The predicate being is applied to the object of intelligence. That most truly is, which is most truly knov/n or knowable. The real is the intelligible 69 The sensible, as such, (or as sensible) is not intelligible. It is "phenomenal." . 70 The science of knowledge demonstrates the organic unity of "sub- ject " and "object," or of intelligence and being. Hence (i) the distinction made between intelligence and being is a purely formal or "logical" one, not real. Being, in other words, in- cludes intelligence 71 (2) The nature of being, therefore, is not made known to intelli- gence by revelation from without, but from within, or from the inner depths of the nature of intelligence itself 72 (3) The revelation of being in intelligence necessarily takes the form of self-intelligence, self-knowledge, or self-consciousness. Being is thus primarily revealed as spiritual 72 (4) "Substance is Action" (Leibnitz). Or, Being is Activity, is Doing. It is activity of spirit. But the activity of spirit is Life (Aristotle). Absolute being, as such, is therefore absolutely living. No being whatsoever without " potency of life. " . . . 73 Space, time, and matter are dependent modes of absolute spiritual existence. Materialism, in holding the contrary, errs, among other things, against the first principles of thought and of being (Unity of Being and Unity of Knowledge). The proximate root of matter is found in force; and force is a purely spiritual cate- gory. The law of the motions of matter is identical in kind with the law of the activity of intelligence 74 Man, as man, is spirit 84 The philosophic doctrine that the unity of being is the unity of Ab- solute Spirit, is the doctrine of Theism 85 The unity of Absolute Spirit rests on a unity of self-consciousness, of personality 86 TABLE OF CONTENTS. xi LECTURE IV. THE BIBLICAL THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. PAGE Peculiar reasons why the theological student is obliged to inquire after the final results of philosophic science 89 He is entitled to have these results correctly reported to him ... 96 Specific difference of philosophy and religion 98 Christianity is a spiritual life, which the Scriptures represent as con- ditioned upon the knowledge of God 102 According to the Scriptures, (i) knowledge that, in form and sub- stance, is purely individual, is relatively empty and, when carried to its final issues, " cometh to nought." The scriptural estimate of sensible knowledge 105 (2) Knowledge proper is a spiritual process. This truth, which phil- osophic science expresses by saying that science is of and through the universal, is more concretely expressed — but without change of sense — by the Christian Scriptures in the declaration that our sufficiency to think is of God, or that true understanding is due to the inspiration of the Almighty I lO "Perfect freedom" the attribute only of that "thought" which is "begun, continued, and ended " in God. The Christian theory of knowledge implies a God "near at hand." 115 All knowledge is, in a sense, of the nature of "revelation." No merely mechanical revelation possible 118 Revelation, as a process of knowledge, is a spiritual process. Its essential form is that of self-revelation, or of the Spirit to the spirit, and it is rendered possible only through the organic one- ness of the recipient with the divine spirit 1 19 The content of revelation can not be out of essential relation to intelligence I20 LECTURE V. BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY: — THE ABSOLUTE. The Absolute omnipresent in the relative,- and yet distinct from the latter -122 The Absolute for religion, as for philosophy, is Spirit, and is God . 124 God as the creative condition of space and time, and of " force." . 125 Xii TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGB The Infinite as known, or knowable, in and by the finite . . . .129 The Scriptures find in the personality of a transcendent Man the true revelation and perfect exemplification of the nature of the absolute and everlasting God 132 The true understanding of Christ is a "spiritual understanding " .133 Absolute Being, or Spirit, exhibited in the Scriptures under the at- tributes of intelligence, life, and love 135 The triune God 138 '♦ Trinity " does not simply mean " threeness." The conception of trinity not a sensible, or phenomenal, but a spiritual conception. It is, accordingly, incapable of being sensibly illustrated . . . 141 Trinity is concrete unity 143 Intelligence, Life, and Love — each a triune process 145 This process, in finite beings, subject to temporal limitations, from which, in God, the Absolute, it is free 153 The Son and, through him, the world, as the object of the divine intelligence 157 The Holy Spirit, as at once name of the third person in the divine Trinity and also the concrete and perfect name of the Absolute, or of God 158 Brief defense of the expression, " Three /^rj^«j in one God." . .160 LECTURE VI. BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY: — THE WORLD. Philosophy of Nature and "Pure Physical Science" distinguished . 165 Philosophic Agnosticism and Mechanism as perversions of pure physical science 169 Religion presupposes, not a system of pure physical science, but a philosophy of nature 173 Brief r/jM/«(f' of the philosophy of nature 174 Biblical conceptions: — (a) The world dependent for its existence on divine power 178 (^) Creation not the result of a casual impulse or of an arbitrary determination on the part of the Creator 179 (c) God the everlasting worker. His relation to the world active and in- cessant 182 (d) The world full of divine riches 186 (e) Knowledge of the world to be "sought out." 187 (/) Vanity and corruptibility of the world apart from Cod 188 TABLE OF CONTENTS. xiii PAGE (^) Christ the Creator of the world, and 189 (A) Also its Redeemer. Redemption included in the definition Or conception of creation 102 (/) The rationale of creation founded in the doctrine of the Trinity. The Second person of the Trinity as the "first-born of every creature." . . . 195 (y) Christ the " image of the invisible God " only as he is Creator and Re- deemer of the world 197 (k) No limits of time placed on the divine v/ork 198 The foregoing conceptions opposed to pantheism 200 False antithesis of "nature " and "the supernatural." 202 LECTURE VII. BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY: — MAN. The Christian conception of man, on the two sides of his identity with nature, and of his distinction from and above nature . . . 204 Christian ethics is the theory of the "perfect man." 208 The experimental character of this theory; together with comments on a modern demand that "morals" should be "secularized" and "humanized." 212 Christian conceptions: — (a) The world and the natural man (or " the flesh ") regarded as, respectively, the place and the instrumental condition of the realization of the perfect man 2,^ (i) The birth of the spirit is the birth of the true man 227 (c) The actual realization of the true man depends on a spiritual activity, on the part of man 229 (rf) This activity is conditioned upon knowledge 231 (?) The object of this knowledge is " the will of God," which itself is nothing other than the law of absolute or perfected being, or, of the most perfect realization of the spiritual nature 233 (/) Man's activity supported by the activity of God himself; man, therefore, a colaborer with God 235 (^) Man finds the "dwelling-place" of his true self in God 240 (A) That will alone is free which wills the true self, or, which wills itself in God 243 (?) Man is "saved," or made "perfect man," "in Christ Jesus," and not merely by him. His redemption is a spiritual, and not a merely mechan- ical process 2^^ Christian ethics not quietistic 250 xiv TABLE OF CONTENTS. LECTURE VIII. COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRIS- TIANITY. Religion "of and for intelligence." '. . 252 In what sense the like is true in regard to the works of artistic and political genius 2^x Religion as the living apprehension of that which philosophy aims to comprehend 258 Faith as "abbreviated knowledge." 259 Indispensable value, for philosophy, of the data contained in the "Christian consciousness;" together with remarks on the ques- tion whether philosophy can exist without the data which religion furnishes 260 "Self-consciousness" as the principle or standard of measurement for the "philosophic content" of all "religions." 275 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIAMTY. LECTURE I. RELIGION AND INTELLIGENCE. T PRIZE highly the privilege of addressing you on -■- the theme chosen for the subject of this course of lectures. At the same time I appreciate rever- ently the responsibility resting upon one who under- takes to deal with such a theme. We are about to lay inquiring hands upon the foundations of the most sacred and the purest interests of humanity — the interests of religion and intelligence. Deeper and more impregnable foundations than these, we may be sure, there are none. Whatever we may do, we cannot shake them. They constitute the rock of ages, which can never be moved. May we only be permitted, in our way and measure, to demonstrate ■ — that means simply to point out, to show, to bring into clear and evident sight — anew what that rock is, and how religion and intelligence both rest upon it in harmonious union and to the complete satis- faction of man's highest, spiritual and intellectual needs. To-night we are, by way of introduction, to enter upon a more general, preliminary consideration of (1) 2 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. the relations which, from the nature of the case, may- or must exist between religion and intelligence. And first we note that religion, even if it should be held to involve, in itself, no function of intelli- gence — nay, even though it were regarded as in- volving the complete subjection or abrogation of intelligence in the religious subject — cannot with- draw itself from the liability of being made an ob- ject of intelligence, i.e., of what is called intelligent or scientific inquiry and examination. To this lia- bility it is subject in common with every other con- ceivable phase, phenomenon, or incident of the world of reality in which we are placed. Intelligence, thought, knowledge, consciousness, must have its object. This object may be intelligence itself, or anything whatever that enters within the realm of man's conscious knowledge or experience. Its re- lation to intelligence may be purely, or, at all events, predominantly mechanical, external, accidental. Ob- jects in such relation are, for example, stocks and stones, in which, as first perceived, intelligence does not, in any especial degree, find itself reflected, or through the mere taking cognizance of which it does not find itself specially strengthened or built up. They are therey the intelligent subject is here — me- chanically separate from and independent of them. They are viewed as casual, not necessary objects of his intelligence. He takes note of them and ob- serves that they "are there," that they exist; per- haps, if he belong to a learned society or, for any other reason, be disposed to cultivate the scientific RELIGION AND INTELLIGENCE. 3 habit of mind, he enters into a more minute exam- ination of them; he subjects them to the test of fire and of hammer, and, after taking copious notes of all that he observes, is ready to inform the world re- specting the phenomena of stocks and stones. He has met the first requirement of intelligence respect- ing stocks and stones. He has ascertained and knows the immediate, sensibly demonstrable facts about them. But, I repeat, his relation to them is, so far, relatively and characteristically mechanical and ac- cidental. Certain "objects," " facts," or " phenom- ena " are brought — it may be either wholly fortui- tously, or in consequence of a systematic intention on the part of the inquirer — within the range of his observation, and he simply observes and records the first and direct result of his observation. Now anything whatever that comes within the range of conscious intelligence may and in the first instance must be made an object of intelligence, in the foregoing sense. The first and lowest, but, also, indispensable condition of knowledge, is, to be aware of the objects of knowledge; to take note that they are there, " before the mind " — as men say — or within the range of conscious experience, and then to ob- serve how, or with what phenomena they exist, under what guise and in what relations they im- mediately appear. Now, religion "is there," ex- ists in history and among men, nations, and tribes at the present day Nay, what are called "religions" exist, with characteristic, visible marks of agreement or of disagreement among themselves. Upon them. 4 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. as objects in purely mechanical relation to intelli- gence, the latter may fix its attention. It may do this in the same unbiased way, or with the same absolute freedom from presuppositions, with which it addresses itself to the analytic observation and description of rocks and trees. Looking at religion in its manifestations as one among the many differ- ent objects presented to intelligence, its first work / will be to take accurate note of all these manifesta- tions, whatever they may be, whether existing in the form of myth or fable, of sacred legend or story, of dogma or of practice, of rites, ceremonies, etc. The result of all this praiseworthy and indispensa- ble industry will be what is called the " Science of Religions." From such mechanical relation to intel- ligence, religion — or, rather, religion viewed with reference to its visible or historic phenomena — can- not withdraw itself. But the forementioned industry — an industry like that of the ant, being devoted to the amassing and orderly arranging of multitudinous items of informa- tion respecting particular facts or classes of facts — is only the beginning of, or, better, the mere scaffold- ing for, the true and complete work of intelligence. It is the first step leading to complete or absolute intelligence, or comprehension; but it is only that. I may, for example, know the names of all the classes, orders, families, genera, species, or what not, of liv- ing existences; I may be familiar with their habitats, their modes of life, their peculiarities of form, color, etc., and yet I may not know what life is. What I RELIGION AND INTELLIGENCE. 5 know is precisely the special modes, the phenomena, of life, these alone — but not what it is to live. The essejice of life may still be to me a profound mystery. I may still be wholly unaware that, in Aristotle's just and pregnant phrase, " life is energy of mind." And so, too, with regard to stocks and stones, I am far from having absolute intelligence respecting them, when I am simply able to describe their immediate, phenomenal properties. In addition to their pos- session of these properties, these objects have this distinction, viz., that they exist, that they are, that they in some way possess being-. In what way or sense do they exist} Wherein does their being con- sist .'' They are, by common repute, material objects. But what is it to be material .'' Is material existence absolute and independent existence .'' Is there such a thing as absolute matter, wholly independent of and unrelated to spirit .-* Or is what we call material ex- istence only a dependent function of Absolute Mind — a part, for example, (speaking in Berkeleian fashion) of the Logos, the word or language, through which the Absolute Spirit, God, expresses himself to his finite children .? These are questions to which in- telligence must find an answer, before its work can be called ideally complete. They are questions which are imposed upon intelligence, by virtue of its own nature. And questions such as these, relating to absolute essence and cause, are precisely those which form the special subject-matter oi philosophy. Now just as little as religion can withdraw itself from the liability of being made the object of scien- 6 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. tific observation and thus of being brought into at least a mechanical relation to intelligence, just so little can it evade the liability, nay, the necessity, of being brought into that nearer relation to intel- ligence which philosophic inquiry involves. The science oi religions must be followed by the philoso- phy of religion. After learning what are the phe- nomena of religion, intelligent man must ask, What is religion? Is it an hallucination, or a well-founded reality ? Is it a mirage, or do those who breathe its atmosphere constitute the true city of God on earth ? The question must and will be asked. Nay, it is asked, and has again and again been asked. Religion has been and is sure, over and over again, to be placed in the crucible of philosophic intelli- gence, and its votaries cannot with indifference look upon the result of this test. Shall this result be, in the language of a recent foreign writer,^ that religion "is nothing more nor less than a belief in conflict with experience, and resting on the most ex- aggerated fancies," or that — in the words of him who may be regarded as the profoundest and most deeply experimental philosopher of modern times'* — religion, in the territory of human consciousness, is "that re- gion, in which all riddles of the world are solved, all the contradictions of speculative thought are recon- ciled, all agonies of the feeling heart are allayed, — the region of eternal truth, of eternal rest, of eternal peace.?" If any doubt exists as to the answer which real philosophy, real intelligence, real and complete experimental inquiry, gives and must give to this RELIGION AND INTELLIGENCE. 7 question, this state of things cannot but be looked upon by religion with the greatest concern. There is indeed a "knowledge that puffeth up," or, rather, that is itself puffed up, being Hke a bub- ble, without real or absolute content and substance, and from which religion has, in the long run, noth- ing to fear. It is a "wisdom of this world" and of " thei princes of this world, that come to nought." That is to say, it is a wisdom, a knowledge, all of whose categories or conceptions are derived purely from analytic observation of "this world" on the side of its absolute relativity, as sensibly presented in the conditioning forms of space and time; in short, as a world of relations which are purely and only finite. It boasts of being in the highest degree con- crete, while in reality it is in the highest degree ab- stract. For while it makes the foregoing boast, it declares with equal boastfulness — or else with mock- humility — that it considers only phenomena, and not absolute causes and essences. It abstracts — looks directly away from — the infinite and absolute, which the finite as well reveals as conceals, and by and through whose power and essence the finite is and has its nature. It abstracts, therefore, from the es- sential, from the absolute content and substance, in order to fix its attention exclusively upon the phenomenal sign or symbol. It reads the language of the absolute — for this is what we may call "this world" of sensibly finite relations — and ignores its meaning. And this is indeed nothing other than the legitimate work and method of pure mathemat- 8 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. ical and physical science, whose true and intelligent votaries, being aware of the special ontological limi- tations of their peculiar work and method, are also, and consequently, aware that these limitations prove nothing, pro or con, respecting the absolute limita- tions or range of intelligence. But there are those who seek — by usurpation, as it were — ta make them- selves "princes of this world"; /. e., who adopt this realm of knowledge as their kingdom of intelligence; nay, who proclaim this to be the only and absolute kingdom of intelligence for man; and who, conse- quently — and very naturally — in the matter of ab- solute and final knowledge respecting essential truth and reality, " come to nought." Their last word is not a proclamation and demonstrative exhibition of that truth of everlasting and essential reality and power and life — that truth of Eternal Mind and Love — the knowledge of which is, for religion, "eter- nal life," and for philosophy the consummation of all labor of intelligence. Not this is their last word, but — Agnosticism! Assuming to speak not simply for themselves, but for all mankind, in the past, the present, and the future, they pronounce the verdict, Ignoramus et ignorabimus. The absolute, they say, is the unknowable. Now this doctrine has surely nothing but the form of knowledge without its sub- stance; and this, I repeat, because in the very choice and adoption of its peculiar data, presuppositions, and method, it abstracts from the substance. It finds, naturally, in its conclusions no more than its premises contained. This formal knowledge. RELIGION AND INTELLIGENCE. 9 then, with reference to religion, finds its only posi- tive labor in collecting, classifying', and generaliz- ing the phenomena of religions. It thus attains, at most, only to a so-called science of religions, but not to science of j-eligion. It can exhibit great stores of information in discussing the former, but is dumb with reference to the latter; or, confessing that in " re- ligious ideas" there is a "vital element,"' finds this element in man's invincible and enslaving ignorance, rather than in his practical and theoretical posses- sion, through intelligence, of that truth, which, since it makes man spiritually free, can have no other truth superior to it, i. e., is absolute. From such abstract, negative wisdom, religion, if it be indeed a concrete reality, has nothing to fear. Agnosticism, as a cloud formed from the mists of dogmatic ignorance, may temporarily — and perhaps will always, in scattered, shifting places — cast a chilling and confusing shadow. But like all that is purely negative, it will be chased away by the sun- light of positive, experimental reality. The con- crete always thus triumphs over, persists in spite of, and refutes, the abstract. So it was, in the case of the issue between the Christian Church and English Deism. The implicit and in itself thoroughly justifi- able, though ill-defined, aim of the latter was to com- pass a philosophy of religion. But the theoretic or philosophic bases, on which it went to work, were ex- tremely abstract, dogmatic, narrow, being mainly de- rived from Locke, and being in kind the same on which, too, nowadays the substanceless, spectral 10 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. structure of Agnosticism is reared. It was no won- der, therefore, that Deism ended, not in real compre- hension of religion, but in conceptions, the adoption of which cuts the nerve of all religion, — the con- ceptions, namely, of God either as a purely tran- scendent and mechanical First Cause, or else (as in the case of Hume) of God as a being whose existence is wholly indemonstrable. Against such negative results as these the Church triumphed — not so much because the theoretic or quasi-philosophic principles which its defenders at that time nominally accepted as a basis of argument were superior to those of their adversaries; on the contrary, many of the leading Apologists swore by the same philosophic {i. e.y Lockeian) tenets as the Deists; — it triumphed be- cause there was in it something living and con- crete, an element of vital, self-evidencing and self- propagating reality. I may add that, even if religion were pure illusion, it would not necessarily have anything to fear from the philosophy of Agnosticism. An illusion has, at all events, this dignity, viz., that it is a phenomenon; and an illusion which, like religion, is as widespread as the human race, can scarcely dread detection from a philosophy which professes to know nothing but phenomena, and which, therefore, making this profession, has no right to single out a particular phenomenon and assert, or attempt to prove, that it is unfounded in — has no true correspondence with, or relation to — absolute reality.* With reference, then, to any attack upon religion RELIGION AND INTELLIGENCE. 11 which may come, or appear to come, from Agnostic quarters, religion may consider herself essentially safe. She may do this, because history has demon- strated that she is, with reference to such attack, invulnerable, and also because, in the matter of re- sistance to it, the cause of religion is, from the very nature of the case, identical with the cause of phi- losophy; and philosophy is, among other things, and first of all, the demonstrative, experimental refuta- tion of Agnosticism. For philosophy, let me remind you, has an historic and indeed, like religion, a perennial existence. It exists as demonstrative and in the highest and most pre-eminent degree experimental science. Indeed, philosophy may well be defined, in distinction from all other sciences, as the science of experience as such. It determines — finds out and declares — what is the absolute nature of experience, and what is that nature of being, of reality, which is given in and is organically one with experience. Twice, in the history of occidental thought, has philosophic science reached its flood-tide, first in the classic philosophy of Greece, with Plato and Aristotle, and again in the now classic philosophy of Germany. Results were reached in both cases — not disparate and opposed, but confirming and complementing each other. How should this be otherwise .'' — since the subject-matter of inquiry, viz., the world of man's conscious experience, or what we call the world of reality, and the agent of inquiry, viz., human intelligence, were in both cases the same. So 12 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. modern mathematics does not overturn, it only- supplements and extends, ancient mathematics. The results of philosophic inquiry exist, then, and are embodied in literary monuments accessible to the world. These results, too, have been wrought or assimilated into the intellectual life-blood of the western world to a remarkable degree and with most influential effect. The classic philosophy of Greece was the intellectual rudder of a score of centuries. With its aid Christianity itself, in the persons of its earliest apologists, first took its bear- ings in the world of intelligence, found and further made itself at home in this world, and so was the better able to commend itself successfully to a pa- gan world, waiting to receive its light. Nay, more than one Christian apostle found in the armory of Greek philosophy the words and conceptions best adapted to convey, in epistles now universally ac- cepted as canonical, " the truth as " — to their di- vinely illuminated minds — it was and everlastingly "is in Jesus." Nor has the positive substance of the classic philosophy of Greece, essentially, been displaced to-day — any more than Homer and So- phocles and Phidias have been displaced. Men no longer write Homeric epics, or Sophoclean dramas, nor do they longer seek to honor "the gods " through new statues, of Phidian conception and execution. Yet the truth of artistic conception, which is handed down to us in the immortal works of these artists, is a possession, a positive instruction, an inspiration for all time. Thp "relativity," if we may so term RELIGION AND INTELLIGENCE. 13 it, of ancient art is rather superficial and accidental, than essential. The like is true respecting the fun- damental philosophical conceptions of the Greek masters in philosophy, their conceptions respecting intelligence and respecting that nature of Being which alone intelligence can, must, and does recog- nize. The final result of that modern philosophic movement, beginning immediately with Kant, which has now become classic, was an essential reaffirma- tion of the best Greek conceptions respecting the universal, necessary, and eternal nature and content of human experience. But it was not mere reaf- firmation, not mere verbal repetition. It was a new demonstration, the outcome of the labor of the modern mind through centuries of struggle. It was therefore peculiarly relative to the needs, the diffi- culties, and the peculiar lights of the modern world. And we must say that it was, correspondingly, more complete than the ancient one; and it must further be added that the new light of experimental fact — and philosophy neither is, nor ever pretends to be, anything but the comprehension of such fact — the new light of experimental fact, I say, owing to its possession of which modern philosophy was able, on the one hand, to correct and, on the other, to render more complete the demonstration begun in Greek philosophy, was, notably and especially, the light shed by the fundamental facts of Christianity. The object of this parenthesis in my present ar- gument is to insist upon the fact that philosophy has an historic existence; that this existence is not 14 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. confined to the past, but continues through its results — often most powerful where least observed — in the present; and that philosophy has demon- strated many things. But I wish no less strenuously to insist that philosophy also exists in another fash- ion than this purely historic and general one. It exists universally — at least in an ideal way, as the object of the most deep-seated and radical impulse of human intelligence. It is still and always will be cultivated, with more or less of industry, ^energy, and success. And I say, as speaking for those who now seek intelligently to cultivate it, or may here- after do so, that they recognize, and must ever recognize — so far as they truly recognize anything whatsoever about the matter — that, while philo- sophic intelligence does not consist in repeating the words of others who have gone before, it is fatally and foolishly recreant to its own professed purpose, when it ignores the past. The past is not to be ignored, but to be known, comprehended, and valued at its precise worth. All worth is not in the past, but it is just as true that the past is not with- out worth. Some things have been demonstrated. This is to be recognized. Some things have been incorrectly, it may be altogether falsely, conceived and demonstrated; (in what science is the reverse true .'' yet the existence and worth of the science are not therefore denied;) and these are to be ex- amined anew. The work of philosophy is absolutely free, presuppositionless inquiry. But it is equally catholic and comprehensive. It is concerned only, RELIGION AND INTELLIGENCE. 15 like religion, to know the truth. "The love of the truth" is, in Platonic phrase, its only inspiration. And experimental fact, in the true and complete sense of this term, is, I repeat, philosophy's only guide.^ Returning now, to the point in our argument, from which the foregoing digression proceeded, I repeat that, as the first and, as it were, negative, part of her own peculiar task, philosophy herself has overthrown, and stands ever ready to over- throw, the slender ground of false theory on which Agnosticism rests, and this by the only means ap- propriate to such work, namely, the evidence of experimental fact. If, therefore, religion may seem to have anything to fear from Agnosticism, philoso- phy herself will, if need be, aid her in routing this enemy. But it is a question of far different concern for religion to ask. What then, is the verdict that phi- losophy pronounces upon religion, when, having accomplished the preliminary task of demolishing its natural adversary, sensational Agnosticism, it proceeds to its positive work of sounding to its lowest depths the sea of our conscious experience; or, what amounts to the same thing, examining the deepest foundations of the world of reality as it exists for man .'' Does it find there a secure and everlasting home for religion, or does the logic of fact compel it to pronounce religion a parasitic excres- cence upon human life, not to be carefully and ener- getically fostered, but to be cut off and consumed in 16 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. the flame of truth ? Is religion in its essence — not in its changing garb of story, image, rite, and prac- tice — true or false ? Has it an imperishable sub- stance of reality, or is its edifice only held up by sand-ropes of illusion, prejudice, and ignorance ? The essence of religion is contained, for intelligence, in certain presuppositions respecting the absolute nature and relations of things, with the truth or falsehood of which religion, as an object of intelli- gence, stands or falls. It presupposes that absolute being is Spiritual, and that Divine Spirit is the source and king and goal of all dependent being. It assumes that the world is not merely a vast, fate-directed mechanism, but that it is suffused, up- held, nay, everlastingly created by the power and wisdom of Divine Spirit. It implies that man is, in his true nature and intention, a spirit, and that he is able, required, and above all, privileged to enter into living relations to the Divine Spirit, — in which relations, more especially, religion directly consists or has its immediate life. Does philosophy confirm or overthrow these presuppositions and implica- tions } Religion shares with natural science the larger part of the honor of being the historic mother or matrix of philosophy. Is she devoured by her own offspring } And if not, what nature, what justification, what reality, does philosophy recog- nize in or for religion ? These questions, which indicate in broadest out- line the general scope of the discussions upon which we propose to enter, are not so novel and striking RELIGION AND INTELLIGENCE. 17 as they would be if there had never been such a thing- as religious philosophy cultivated among men. But they are fundamental, and each new generation must meet and answer them anew and indepen- dently, as a condition of the maintenance of a robust and self-sustaining — not to say self-propa- gating and world-saving — religious intelligence. No science is preserved and maintained by mere tradition. On the contrary each generation and each individual student, while accepting the old as a datum, must redemonstrate it in order really to have masterly possession of it. And most of all is this true concerning that science which religion presupposes, — the science of God in his relations to man and the world, and of man and the world in their relations to God. I have thus far spoken of the relation of religion to intelligence only as a relation into which relig- ion may and must perforce be brought, whether she will or not. But a higher and deeper truth is that religion — and, above all, Christianity — both presup- poses and invites the searching and illuminating light of true intelligence and finds in it the immediate sub- jective source of her best strength. Religion, ac- cording to the Christian ideal, is freedom — absolute freedom — not only for feeling and willing, but also for thinking, man, through the truth. "The truth shall make you," without any qualification added, i. e., absolutely and most truly, " free." Christian- ity's promise is "eternal life," through the knowl- edge of the Spiritual Father, who as such is declared 18 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. to be " the only true God," and of him whom God has sent and who expressly declared of himself that, in order to be rightly known, he must disap- pear from the physical presence of his disciples and reappear to their spiritual and only true sight, in his true and everlasting spiritual nature, by revela- tion in and through the eternal " Spirit of truth." Religion is thus, from the point of view of Christi- anity, a partaking of the Holy Ghost, which " guides into all truth." Its pastors, so far as they are " af- ter" Jehovah's own "heart," "feed his people with wisdom and understanding." Religion presupposes, and has, for one of its immediate aims, the promotion of absolute intelligence — intelligence, that is to say, respecting the nature of absolute being, or God, and respecting the absolute nature and relations of man, and of the finite universe which immediately sur- rounds man and first seems to claim him exclusively for its own. To its ministers, more than to any other class of men, is given the indirect protection, and, even, largely the direct promotion of the ab- solute or universal intelligence of communities and individuals. Hence, as I scarcely need to add, the obvious and universally recognized necessity that these ministers should be men of the most highly trained intelligence and of substantial knowledge. In view of this nature of religion it may even be said that in religious philosophy it is not so much intelligence, or philosophy, that judges religion, as religion that, through intelligence, takes cognizance of and judges its own self. RELIGION AND INTELLIGENCE. 19 Religion, as presupposing and requiring knowledge of the Absolute, and philosophy, as the pure, unbi- ased search for and demonstration of it, occupy like ground. Each implies (i) a process, way, or means of intelligence, by which (2) the Absolute Object of intelligence is reached. Our purpose and method will require us, accordingly, first succinctly to indicate the general nature and results of the philosophic theory of knowledge and of the abso- lute or final object of knowledge; and then to seek to state, in part with greater fulness, the concep- tions respecting the same topics, which are presup- posed or proclaimed by Christianity; with a view to showing that the Christian conceptions are not re- pugnant to the conceptions of philosophy, that the former are, rather, the fulfilment and enrichment of the latter, and, in general, that in positive, substan- tial, concrete and historic philosophy — in distinction from the negative, abstract, and substanceless em- piricism, which is often, though falsely, supposed to represent the last result of philosophic inquiry — "true religion" finds itself, not disgraced, but justi- fied, — and not eviscerated, or reduced, as regards its content for intelligence to a spectral caput mortimm, but left rich in positive, living, deeply experimental, and all-significant substance. LECTURE II. THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. ^Apxv Si 77 v6r)6ii. — Arist. Met. 12, 7, 4. *" I "'HE philosophic theory of knowledge, or the -*- theory of philosophic knowledge, is nothing but the completed science of knowledge, intel- ligence, or experience. Philosophic knowledge is nothing but intelligence completely fulfilling in kind, if not in degree, its own ideal, or realizing its full specific nature and function. In one respect such knowledge is something sui generis; in another it is not. Intelligence in its fundamental nature is an organic process. The complete nature of intel- ligence may in all strictness be likened to an organ- ism; nay, it is an organism. If a whole organism is, with reference to or in comparison with its separate members, something siii generis, then this descrip- tion applies to philosophic intelligence. And this is the case. A whole organism is something more than any of its particular members, or than the mere mechanical aggregate of all its members. It is, or represents, the common life or animating and unit- ing principle of all its parts. It is, I say, the co7n- mon life of all its parts, and is not the exclusive (20) PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 21 property of any one part, nor obtained by mere sum- mation of the peculiar properties of all the parts taken severally. And so it is siii generis. And yet, in its fulness and completeness, it is not without any of its parts. As it, the unifying and vivifying prin- ciple, permeates them all, so it presupposes them all, as the condition of its own xeality and perfection. The life and reality of the whole are in and through the life and reality of its parts or members. The whole has thus, in a sense, all its parts both ideally and really in common with itself; and, thus consid- ered, it is not sui generis. Least of all does the living whole contradict its members ! Complete, philosophic, or, as it is often equivocally called, ab- solute intelligence, does not contradict or overthrow, nor can it dispense with, the minor, particular func- tions of intelligence and their achievements. If historic information and mathematico-physical sci- ence, for example, represent the fruits of special functions or directions of intelligence, philosophy, as, in Platonic phrase, objectively the '- science of wholes," or subjectively the result of the functioning of complete or "absolute" intelligence, neither overturns, nor can afford to affect indifference to, the methods and results of such special sciences. To suppose the con- trary is simply absurd. Philosophic intelligence, or philosophy, is there- fore not separated from all other intelligence, or science, as the purely a priori from the purely a pos- teriori (as these term.s are often, and, indeed, too generally used). It does not differ from the latter 22 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. as the inexperimental, magical, miraculous, differs from the experimental, simple, and immediately ob- vious. No such chasm separates it from all other works of intelligence. If it were thus separated, it would contradict its own nature. The inexperimen- tal and inexplicable is no subject, object, or field of intelligence, but only, at most, of unintelligent superstition. Intelligence is nothing but the full, self-manifesting and self-recognizing light of expe- rience. In "absolute intelligence," or philosophy, experience simply takes, or seeks to take, complete account of herself — not to contradict or to look away from any part of herself To have experience, to know — not to have or do which were for man the same thing as not to be — wherein does this consist } It is obvious, to begin with, that intelligence, or knowledge, is, so to speak, bi-polar, or impliqs of necessity a double reference (i) to a subject or agent that knows, and (2) to an object, which is known. These two, subject and object, are so closely corre- lated, are bound to each other in such inseparable organic unity, that neither can be regarded exclu- sively by itself, except through a process of ab- straction, which like all abstraction, mutilates the living whole and changes the very nature of that which is abstracted. The question, which lies im- mediately before us, obviously requires us to consider the process or nature of intelligence more especially on its subjective side. What — we wish to know — is the true and complete description of intelligence PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 23 as a process whose seat is in a knowing agent? The form of the question makes apparent abstraction from the objective side of intelligence. We must there- fore see to it that our abstraction is only relative and is not carried so far as to pervert the essential nature of the subject of our inquiry. The more ex- press and explicit examination of intelligence on its objective side will follow in the next lecture. In answer, then, to our present inquiry, we remark, first, that that science of intelligence, that knowl- edge respecting the fundamental nature and process of knowledge itself, which we seek, is not contained or furnished in Formal Logic. Formal Logic only teaches us how to handle given data of intelligence or knowledge, so that, under manipulation, or em- ployed as terms in a process called reasoning, they may suffer no detriment, or may reappear in a so- called "conclusion" with nature and value un- changed. Or else, given a conclusion, formal logic teaches us the art of finding admitted data — "prem- ises" — that will, as it is said, substantiate or "prove" it, i. e., in reality, be identical with it, only in another and more familiar form. The fundamental principle of such logic is thus the so-called Principle of Iden- tity, whose formula is A = A; together with the obverse of this principle, the Principle of Contra- diction (A is not non-A), and the Principle of Excluded Middle (A must be either B or non-B; a third alternative is impossible). These principles logic presupposes as axiomatic, self-evident. It does not demonstrate or deduce them. It adopts 24 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. them as immediately or intuitively given, and sim- ply teaches how, in correct thinking, they are to be applied to data which, themselves also, are assumed as already supplied. Since formal logic does not inquire after the ultimate warrant of its principles, as contained in the nature and process of intelli- gence itself, and since it raises no question as to what it means for something to be a datum of intel- ligence, or as to what are the conditions, contained in the nature and process of intelligence, upon the fulfilment of which alone anything can become a datum for intelligence, this science can in no proper sense be styled the science of intelligence or of knowledge per se. It is only a partial, analytical science of the mode of intelligence, and not of its natia-e or essence. Still less, secondly, is the science, which we seek, to be looked for in what has been known as Empiri- cal Psychology. Here it is that a long and con- spicuous list of British inquirers, represented by such names as Locke, Hume, the two Mills, Spencer, and others have more or less blindly sought for it, but with final results, over which as an inscription the one word "Vanity" can alone be appropriately written. The true motive for the existence of the Scotch Common Sense, or Intuitional School, as represented by Reid and Hamilton, lay precisely in the sense, which these men and their supporters had, of the essential vanity, the pure negativism, of that sensational empiricism, which their rivals had ostensibly deduced from empirical psychology. The PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 25 result of all this alleged examination and explana- tion of intelligence, on the part of the empirical school, was not philosophic science^ but nescience, — not the illumination of intelligence, but only the en- veloping of it in new and thicker clouds of apparently baffling mystery. The conclusions reached were in flagrant contradiction of the universal practical post- ulates of intelligence, and the merit of the Scotch School consisted in the energy with which it reaf- firmed some of the more obvious of these postulates under the guise of " necessary beliefs," " native no- tions," or "intuitions." To comprehension of these postulates the leaders of the Scotch School them- selves did not indeed come. As to the origin or absolute justification of the "beliefs" in question, the How, the Whence, the Why of them, its mem- bers had scarcely one reasonable word to offer. Reid's "explanation" of them was the precise op- posite of explanation. It consisted in ascribing them to the ''magic'' of our "constitution." They were he said, "as it were, conjured up by nature;" how, or with what absolute sense or justification, one could not tell. And with Hamilton the case stands substantially not at all better. It is true that he, rather feebly echoing the phraseology of Kant, talks of "the spontaneity of reason," as ac- counting for primary beliefs. And in the same tone it happened to Reid to speak of the province of " common sense" — otherwise conceived as the fac- ulty of necessary beliefs — as identical with that of "reason," viz., "to judge of things self-evident." 26 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. But this only amounted, in Reid's case, to giving to beliefs that were confessedly unaccountable, though necessary, the euphemistic description of "things self-evident," and making "reason" identical with a faculty of " magic." Reason, the fundamental faculty and the very root of all intelligence and all experience, was in effect made to be a faculty of the unintelligible, inexplicable, and inexperi- mental ! And so with Hamilton. The fact is, that the method of the Scotch School was essentially identical with that of their ostensible adversaries. Their whole wisdom was, after all, in kind nothing but the wisdom of descriptive empirical psychology. It consisted in pointing out the ivnnediatc content of intelligence or experience, but not in demonstrat- ing the science of intelligence or experience as such or as a living process, and still less of the absolute object of intelligence. It may be added, for the sake of completeness, that the only work which, under the circumstances, the Scotch School could be expected by its polemics to accomplish, it seems effectually to have accomplished. The later sen- sational empiricists, e. g., J. S. Mill and H. Spencer, admit as necessary, though indeed quite inexplic- able and scientifically unjustifiable, certain of the beliefs, which it was the merit and the peculiarity of the Scotch School to insist upon, such, for exam- ple, as the belief in self.^ This marks a substantial advance upon the position of Hume, who represents in completest and most consistent form the purely negative results of epistemological inquiry pro- PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 27 ceeding from the postulates and by the method of a narrowly sensational psychology. Hume, too, rec- ognized the beliefs in question, but not as inherently necessary, nor as inexplicable. He found an osten- sible explanation for them, an explanation by which they were /;/ substance explained away. All belief, namely, was for Hume but a peculiar phenomenon of consciousness. It was a case of unusual strength and vividness in our ideas, due to customary, but inherently contingent, association ; and it was nothing else. It signified or proved nothing be- yond itself as a contingent mental phenomenon. - In brief, then, empirical psychology is incompetent to furnish us the science of which we are in quest, because its work is wholly restricted to the analytic recognition of conscious phenomena — of thoughts, feelings, ideas, fancies, wishes, and the like — which we are said involuntarily to " have" or which, in the peculiar language of psychology, are simply given for, or presented to, intelligence. Its work, I say, is wholly restricted to the recognition of these phe- nomena as they are given, or as they immediately appear, and of the rules of co-existence and se- quence which obtain among them. It has to do, then, with finished prodticts or furnished materials of intelligence, and not with that ox^z.x{\z process of intelligence or experience, without which the prod- ucts would never exist and the materials would be given in vain.^ It deals only with pure effects, and it is no wonder that it then sees in the effects at most only the evidence of some cause, or causal 28 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. process, but not what that cause or process is. The same is fully true even with reference to that latest form of empirical psychology called physio- logical psychology. Here, the steps of a mechan- ical process are traced, in the phenomena of the nervous system, which run parallel with and im- mediately condition certain other phenomena called states of consciousness, feelings, or sensations. But this process is not itself the process of intelligence. For intelligence it is only relatively a process; ab- solutely considered, it is for intelligence a product, an effect, a final result or object of intelligence. So true is this, that Mr. Spencer, as English spokes- man of those who seek in psychology the science of intelligence, says expressly that his belief that he possesses a nervous system, is inferential; it is a "conclusion" of intelligence. That is to say, in the language just above employed, it is a product of intelligence. How shall then the process, which is believed to be observed in the object of this in- ferential belief (the nervous system), be that process of intelligence whereby the belief itself is created .-' Mr. Spencer goes on further to assert that there is no "perceptible or conceivable community ot na- ture " between the facts of physiology and those of psychology. Self-evidently true as this assertion is, from Mr. Spencer's point of view, it is, if taken without any qualification whatsoever, thoroughly arbitrary and dogmatic. From the spiritualistic point of view of philosophy, the two classes of facts in question, in spite of their absolute specific differ- PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 29 ence, are demonstrably one through their inclusion in, or functional dependence on, a genus of reality that at once transcends and is immanent in them both.* Reserving, therefore, our right to protest against the unqualified form and tone of Mr. Spen- cer's assertion, it is enough for us now to note that so far as the denial of any community of nature between physical and psychical facts is justified in fact, just so far is the inference strengthened that the physical process is not identical with the process of intelligence. Analytico-descriptive, introspec- tive, empirical psychology is a science, and phys- iological psychology is a science — each of them devoted to the legitimate work of exploring a por- tion of the field of phenomena which are at once given for and also dependent for their existence on intelligence. But neither of them is the science of science or of intelligence. Neither of them can ask after that nature of intelligence, which is itself the condition of the existence and of the observa- bleness of the field of phenomena in the exploration of which each is engaged. Such are among the reasons why we cannot apply with hope of success to the formal logician or to the empirical psychologist for information respecting the science of intelligence, knowledge, or experience, as such. Where, then, does this science exist, if in- deed it have existence } It exists in pJiilosophy, which is quite another thing than either formal logic or psychology. It exists, historically, in phi- 30 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. losophy, so far as philosophy itself has a well- founded historic existence. For philosophy exists only by grace of and through the science of knowl- edge. Nay, no denial of the possibility of positive results for philosophy, no philosophical scepticism, and no materialistic and anti-philosophical dogma- tism, ever existed or can exist, except on the express or implied ground of results flowing from some al- leged science of knowledge. We are accustomed, correctly, to think and speak of philosophy as the science of being as such, the science of absolute reality, or of the absolute nature of things, etc. But what is reality or being but object or subject of knowledge? It belongs to "reality," in the defini- tion of philosophy, to be known, just as necessarily as it belongs to water (for example) to be wet. Just as there can be no science of any but wet water, so there can be no science of any but known or knowable reality. No greater absurdity or in- justice was ever committed than through the attri- bution to the great philosophers of a disposition, wish, tendency, or even, in any just sense, the attempt to demonstrate anything about a sphere of reality which transcends intelligence. This in- justice is nevertheless not uncommonly committed, and the view which leads to it has had its most influential modern supporter in Immanuel Kant, whose argument, nevertheless, rests only on the essentially dogmatic basis of an incomplete theory of knowledge, in which "sensible affection" is un- critically, and in the face of the tendency of Kant's PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 31 own discoveries and demonstrations, held to be the only touchstone of reality. Whenever, and so far as, intelligence absurdly identifies itself with its instrument, viz., sensation, its conception of reality is sensible, and only sensible; and then the lurking and indestructible feeling that the sensible is not the all of reality finds expression and seeks to justify itself in the doctrine of a realm which is held to transcend intelligence, because it transcends sense — a realm of unknowable " things-in-them- selves."' This sense-begotten and altogether dog- matic prejudice is the whole explanation of the charge, so current in modern times, that philosophy in its search for the absolute reality, seeks or pre- tends to go beyond and demonstrate something independent of experience. But whenever intelli- gence comes to know itself in its instrument (sen- sation), and hence also in its distinction from and superiority to the same, its conception of reality is corrected accordingly, and becomes that which is set forth in the great philosophies — the philosophies of Aristotle, Leibnitz, Hegel, etc., — and which, as we shall see, Christianity at once presupposes and pro- claims. I repeat then, that intelligence and reality, like father and son, or like subject and object in con- sciousness, are strict correlates. There is no science of the one, without science of the other. In this sense Parmenides spoke truly, " Thought and Being are one." The science of being per se is but the demonstrative interpretation of intelligence, or ex- perience, per se. Wherever, therefore, philosophy 32 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. has a positive existence, there you may look for more or less complete developments of the science of knowledge. I need scarcely add that in modern philosophy these are found in greater extent than in ancient philosophy. The difference, however, is only one of completeness and extent, but not of kind. What, then, has the philosophic science of knowl- edge to tell us.-* First, it is obvious that intelligence is comparable to a light. Such comparison is very commonly made. The expressions, " light of intelligence, of knowledge, of consciousness, of experience," have passed into common speech. The same metaphor, which they express, is implied in the employment, for the purpose of expressing purely intellectual functions, and relations, of such words as to see and perceive. For instance, one will or may say, on the ground of a purely rational persuasion, " I see that perfect virtue is perfect humanity." ''Was man zveiss sieht man erst" says Goethe, carrying the metaphor to the apparent verge of paradox, and yet remaining strictly within the realm of experimental truth. Physical light, we may say, is but a part of, and is conditioned by mental light. What, in the view of physics, exists "objectively" in the case of light is only molecular motions. These are not seen, nor do they of themselves constitute light: the latter in its pecul- iar nature exists for us only in and through our conscious sensations of sight. The light of intelli- PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 33 gence is the light of our own existence and, for us, of all other existence. But the notion of light is that of a purely simple quality — a somewhat that is diffusive and all-com- prehensive, but contains in itself no element of difference. Pure light, while it renders all objects visible, is, taken by itself alone, invisible. Light can- not be perceived without the presence of illuminated objects. So it is with the light of conscious intelli- gence, which is — or would be — a perfect blank, with- out objects of intelligence. Physical light must have, we may say, — repeating our previous statement in another form, — a content, in order to be known. The same is true of conscious intelligence. Suppose, now, one were to attempt to explain light by an analytical examination of that which I have termed the " content " of light (viz., the sum total, the uni- verse, of illuminated objects or of things visible), and were finally to declare that the universal laiv of this content — say, the physical law of gravitation or of evolution — was a law to explain the whole or specific nature of light. Should we not call this ar- rant nonsense.-* Yet such procedure would be quite of a piece with the method of the empirical psychol- ogist, so far as he supposes, that by analyzing the content of conscious intelligence, and ascertaining the laws of co-existence and sequence which obtain therein — laws of association, for example — he has found the key of explanation for the nature of intel- ligence itself. No. Just as physical light, as a thing sui generis, has an objective explanation that is pe- 34 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. culiar to itself, so is it with intelligence and its light. Physical light is objectively and physically explained as a peculiar mode of motion. Subjectively, or con- sciously, it is a mental phenomenon not to be con- founded with any other. Further, it is not known without visible objects, but is not to be identified with any or all of them. Analogously, the light of intelligence is objectively explained as a complex process, whose law and factors are subsequently to be named. Subjectively, it is a thing, which we must for the present, at least, term unique and inde- finable, and yet is immediately known as the life of all knowing. It is not known without intelligible or conscious objects, but is not to be identified with any or all of them. Intelligence, I said, is a process. As such, it is an activity^ and that, too, not a quasi-activity, or phenomenon of activity, such as is pure motion in time and space, but a genuine and substantial one, such as Aristotle terms an energy. In short, it is an organic and spontaneous, self-realizing and self-ful- filling activity. Of these, points, now, in their order. And first I mention that the facts which demon- strate that intelligence is such an activity as has been described, are overlooked by the empirical phi- losopher, who admits no results or methods but those of mechanico-physical science and empirical psychol- ogy. He, the rather, forsakes fact and betakes him- self to metaphor — to a metaphor, by which it is made the nature of intelligence, or " mind," to have no nature, but to be, in Locke's phrase, only " like a PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 35 piece of white paper, upon which nothing has ever been written." Objects, then, whose right and power to exist independently of all intelligence it never occurs to the empiricist to question, are supposed — still in the language of metaphor — to produce "im- pressions " or to imprint legible " characters " on the passive paper-like mind, and the result is — knowledge! Here knowledge is taken in the abstract or abbrevi- ated sense of mere information, a so-called intellect- ual possession, acquired, not by an active industry of intelligence, — for intelligence is regarded as orig- inally nothing positive, "having no nature," no real being, and consequently no power to do anything, — but by gift from a "world" of unintelligent and, strictly speaking, unintelligible objects, in which alone true reality, unqualified being, is held to reside, and which mechanically strike upon the mind anci so produce their "impressions." Knowledge, i;iteU ligence, mind, is thus nothing real per se; it does not by its intrinsic nature share in essential reality; it is only the simulacrum, the fancied transcript, or insubstantial image of reality, It is the manifei^tiir tion, the appearance, \.\\q phenomenon of reality. This is the traditional basis of the theory of knowl- edge which is styled " sensational," sir\ce it derives its whole strength from an analysis of one of the charac- teristic aspects of sensible knowledge. Thjs theory, which ends by essentially abolishing the distinction of subject and object in knowledge, {i. e., by render- ing subject and object unknowable and hence indis- tinguishable), begins by assuming the distinction in 36 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. name, but interpreting and applying it as purely- mechanical in fact. A mechanical relation is one that holds, and is possible; only within space and time. Objects in mechanical relation are separated in space or time, or both. They are wholly distinct from each other. They are inherently, or as to their natures, unrelated, or have nothing in common. At least, it is not essential to mechanical relation that such community of nature should exist. Such ob- jects merely co-exist or follow each other. They constitute only a loose aggregate, not an organic whole. If held together, this is by a power external and superior to themselves, that is to say, by a power whose relation to them is (again) conceived as only mechanical. Thus simply co-existing or following each other, the nearest relationship into which they can enter with reference to each other is that of ex- ternal contact, as the result of local motion So, in the sensational theory of knowledge, object is origi- nally conceived as moving up into contact with sub- ject and leaving its mark upon it, which mark then remains as the all of knowledge, taking the impos- sible place of subject and object at one and the same time.* In other words, the originally supposed sub- ject and object disappear in — or remain outside of — the final product, and as the analysis of this prod- uct is supposed to constitute or discover the whole of our actual knowledge, it remains impossible to furnish a rational explanation of the ground upon which the original supposition was made. The log- ical result is Hume's scepticism — or abstinence from PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 37 all opinion — respecting the real existence of object and subject ("external world" and "mind"). Less consistent is the modern doctrine of Agnosticism, which persistently holds to the reality of subject and object, though acknowledging and loudly proclaim- ing their complete ultimate unknowableness. There is indeed a mechanical aspect of knowledge — more especially of sensible knowledge — but this aspect is superficial or, at best, only conditional, not essen- tially constitutive. The best proof of this is found in the fact that the attempt to found a science of knowl- edge on the supposition that the fundamental and exclusive relation of subject and object is mechanical ends not in science of subject and object, but in nes- cience with regard to them; not in explaining intel- ligence to itself, but in rendering the very possibility of intelligence inexplicable. The deficiencies of the sensational theory of knowl- edge, and the true relation of mechanical sense to or- ganic intelligence, were well understood and power- fully set forth in ancient times by Plato and Aristotle and in modern times, before Kant, by Leibnitz — but in each case, from a peculiar point of view, or with reference to the peculiar form in which the problem of sensible knowledge was presented to the philoso- phers by the sensationalists among their contempo- raries. The views of Leibnitz, in particular, were developed' with special reference to the modifica- tion of sensational theory set forth in Locke's Essay. But after Locke came Hume, who reduced to final and most consistent expression, that which with 38 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. Locke existed rather in the form of germinant ideas or first rude beginnings. And the deficiency of the sensational theory, as deHvered to the world by Hume, was first clearly perceived and declared by Kant. It was this that awoke Kant from his " dogmatic slum- bers," and led him to begin — only to begin, not to complete — a new demonstration of the true whole science of knowledge, which is of peculiar interest and importance for us, not only because we live in an intellectual age that still rings with the echo of Kant's achievement, but also, in particular, because Kant pointed out in the sensational theory its fatal failure to recognize the element of mental or intelli- gent activity, and showed how, and in what sense, this element, in order to the erection of a truly ex- perimental science of knowledge, (and more imme- diately of sensible knowledge itself,) is to be, and must be, restored. The state of the case, as presented (in part, ex- plicitly, and in part, as will be noted, only impli- citly) by Hume, is briefly this. All knowledge is held to be either immediately or derivatively sensa- tional. Sensation is mechanical impression. Im- pressions have no breadth — they are not complex. They are atomically simple. These statements do not correspond to the first appearances. "Impres- sions" seem to be complex, to have definite extent and character. But analysis, the only instrument of method which pure sensationalism admits, must resolve all complexity into mere insubstantial ap- pearance—just as, in the hands of the physical phi- PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 39 losopher, it resolves all appearance of complex mate- rial existence into the (supposed) essential simplicity of independent atoms, standing in purely mechanical relations to each other. So, for Hume, the real truth about our sensible consciousness is, that it is made up of a series of independent and (in the last resort) atomically simple sensations, impressions, or " perceptions," which follow each other with an in- conceivable rapidity, but between which no real or necessary connection — /. e., no other relation, es- sentially, than the purely superficial and accidental mechanical relation of matter-of-fact contiguity or remoteness in time and space — is perceivable. In truth, the premises of the theory do not even admit the admission that even such mechanical relation is perceivable. Strictly interpreted, they would re- strict consciousness, and by consequence knowledge and intelligence, to the immediate instantaneous present, to the entire exclusion of the past and the fu- ture, and a man's "knowledge" at any instant would consist only in the simple impression which hap- pened to constitute his "mind" at any instant; — i. e., his knowledge, for well-known psychological reasons, would be no knowledge. Hume's theory, as Kant perceives, ends logically in this way, and Kant's way of expressing its deficiency consists in saying that it excludes the idea, the possibility, and, above all, con- tradicts the fact, of combination or synthesis among the elements of our (sensible) knowledge. For, as matter of fact, such combination or synthesis exists, and that not in purely casual, accidental forms, but 40 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. in forms of rule or law, which are necessary and universal/ The casual, or "habitual," synthesis Hume ad- mitted, positing, to account for it, the faculty of memory and certain principles of association. The necessary and universal he denied. Kant takes issue with Hume on this point, declaring that the neces- sary and universal — necessary and universal truths — having the form of necessary and universal synthe- ses of elements of knowledge, are, as matter of fact contained in those sciences (pure mathematics and pure physical science,) which have to do, the one with the formal, the other with the material, side of sensible knowledge. The fact is established. The only question is. What nature of intelligence, or of the process of knowledge, does the fact at once im- ply and reveal .■' The fact, I said, of the existence of the necessary and universal syntheses in knowledge is established. But even if it were not, yet Hume himself admits the existence of fortuitous and even habitual syntheses and this in opposition to the strict requirements of the purely analytic method of the theory of knowledge founded on the presupposi- tions of sensational psychology.^ That which needs to be explained, but for which the purely mechanico- sensible theory of knowledge has no sufficient ex- planation, is the existence of any synthesis what- soever, whether fortuitous or necessary, and hence of any actual sensible knowledge whatsoever; for there is no such knowledge, whether in the form of perception or of conception, which does not involve PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 41 and exist in the form of a synthesis or combination of those elementary materials of knowledge, for which alone analytic sensationalism has an eye. And so Kant's answer to the above-mentioned question consists in showing that, and how, all syn- thesis in sensible knowledge involves the immediate, characteristic and exclusive work — the active tvork — of organic and organizing mind. All synthesis is the immediate and continued work of a synthetic, i. e., combining, activity, which, if the materials of knowledge, that it unites or combines, are conceived as provided by the mechanical operation of foreign objects upon the subject," must, on its own part, be recognized as having its seat exclusively in the subject. But, now, it is synthesis alone which makes knowl- edge to be knowledge; or, at all events, without synthesis knowledge is not. And as synthesis is primarily an activity — the synthesizing or combin- ing act of intelligence conditions the resulting, ob- servable fact or state of synthesis in the finished product or content of intelligence — so is it with knowledge. Knowledge, intelligence, consciousness, these words are primarily to be considered as active, transitive substantives. They denote something which does not consist in the Taer^ passive "receiving" or "having" of informing "impressions" or of "con- tents." In this purely mechanical way the white paper "has" the characters imprinted upon it, and the tea-kettle "has" its liquid "contents"; but neither paper nor kettle is any wiser or more intel- 42 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. Hgent on this account. No, knowledge is strictly in the first instance, or fundamentally considered, an ideal or mental activity, the most characteristic and universal form of which, as far as we now see, is synthesis, — combining, unifying, joining the manifold in one. But in what way is this synthesis effected, or what is its relation to the elements combined .-* Is this re- lation wholly mechanical, and hence indifferent ? For instance, a bushel basket may be termed a form of synthesis with reference to the potatoes which fill the basket. It combines or holds them together, but only mechanically. It belongs in no sense necessarily to the nature of potatoes, that they be put into a basket, nor to the nature of the basket that it should contain, or be a means of mechanical synthesis for, potatoes. The relation of basket and potatoes is fortuitous and mechanical. The most universal forms of synthesis in sensible knowledge are — to follow, a little longer, in the track of Kant — space and time, and the categories of quantity, quality, relation (notably, the relation of substance and accident, and of cause and effect, or law of order), and modality. Are space and time, now, ideal baskets, as it were, into which, for lack of any other receptacle prepared to receive them, intelligence arbitrarily puts foreign " ob- jects," which are in themselves indifferent to space and time } Are the objects of sensible conscious- ness as indifferent to space and time, as the potatoes to the basket } And in employing the categories, PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 43 those master-forms of intellectual conception (an- other name for synthesis), under which alone — to speak with Kant — the material of knowledge fur- nished through sensible impressions can acquire for us objective form and character, — in employing, I say, these categories for the purpose of effectuating more definite synthetic union among the percep- tional elements of knowledge, are we forcing the latter, as it were, into a strait-jacket, to which, they, through their very nature, stand, if not in an attitude of positive rebellion, yet of complete indifference ? To these questions, the science of knowledge, considered as the simple, honest, and complete demonstration of that which lies within the range of and constitutes experience, and prosecuted with- out regard to gratuitously imagined and absolutely supposititious conditions of knowledge and of exist- ence which are alleged to transcend experience," gives and can give but one answer. The relation of so-called subjective, mind-generated, synthetic form, to so-called objective, sense-generated, dis- crete matter of sensible consciousness, is not merely mechanical. Only in a superficial sense can it be thus styled. In essence it is organic. It is, in kind, not a dead, but a living relation.^^ Space and time are not merely receivers or containers of physical objects, such that the former and the latter might and would still remain all the same — and wholly unchanged, even though separated from each other. Nor are the categories merely a dress, which, sensi- 44 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. ble objects may — but need not necessarily — put on, and which serves, like all dress, rather to conceal than to reveal the immediate, true, and character- istic nature of its wearers. Time and space without sensible objects, and sensible objects without time and space, are purely mechanical, forced, and unreal abstractions. The like must be said respecting the categories, as forms, when considered apart from their content, and of their content — the so-called " raw material " supplied in sensuous consciousness — when viewed in separation from the categories. If the object were in purely mechanical relation to the subject and hence to be conceived as essentially separate or absolutely and only different from, and opposed to the latter, then the reverse of what has just been said would be true. But then, too, it would also be true that the " subject form " or container would never attain to, be placed upon, or receive the "object matter" or content of knowl- edge. Thus it is that, maintaining the foregoing supposition, the theoretical sensationalist (as Locke, Hume, et al.,) and the critical idealist (Kant), who start with the express or implicit assumption of the mechanical relation as the fundamental one between subject and object, come quickly to the conclusion that the true object is an unknown and unknowable substrate or thing-in-itself, which the subject-forms of intelligence never reach. This conclusion is a reductio ad absurdiim of the premise on which it rests. The science of knowledge has nothing to do with unknowable objects. It has no ground on PHTI.OSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 45 which to posit their existence. It has positive ground for absolutely denying their existence, for knowing that they do not exist, since the very conception of them is a pseudo-conception, i. e., a false and impossible one, like that of a square circle or a piece of wooden iron.'' The science of knowl- edge is the science of experience, and not of that which contradicts the very nature of experience; of reason, and not of unreason; of intelligence and consciousness, and not of that — viz., abstractions, creatures of a self-deceiving imagination — which gives the lie to intelligence and makes of con- sciousness a nightmare. The object of sensible con- sciousness is within and not without consciousness; and be it that there are good reasons for terming this object — i. e., the object in its characteristically sensible aspect — phenomenal, yet the noumenon, the absolute reality, which, as men say, "corresponds" to it, is not concealed by it. The phenomenal ob- ject is not a vail or screen effectually to shut out from us the sight of the noumenal object. Nor is the former separated from the latter by an im- passable interval. On the contrary, to thought it instrumentally reveals the true object — as we shall have occasion more expressly to see in a subsequent lecture. At present it suffices for us to note that in the phenomenal object, which alone sensational- ism and critical idealism permit us to know, we have not an object standing in merely mechanical relation to the forms of our knowledge. Its fun- damental relation to them is, the rather, wholly 46 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. organic. To begin with, the so-called material of sensible knowledge — the "matter of sensation" — enters, in knowledge, into an active, synthetic, or- ganizing process of knowledge, just as the raw materials, upon which the plant subsists, are taken up by the organic forces of the plant into the pro- cess of its own life. And then the "forms" of knowledge themselves — time, space, and the cate- gories — are as the members — hand, foot, etc., or root, branches, and the like — of a living organism. All of them are easily demonstrated to have no absolute independence of each other, just as root and branch can have no such independence. Though different, they yet have something in common. That which is the source of their common life, activity, and nature, is reflected in each of them, but adequately represented in concreto by none of them. What this source is, we must presently inquire. But first let us gather up the results of what has thus far been said. I. Within the realm of experience or of real knowl- edge, or more especially of sensible experience — for it is this alone that we have thus far been consider- ing — the forms of the subject are the forms of the object, and vice versa. What is of the subject, is not, for that reason, not of the object, and vice versa. On the contrary, the subjective is eo ipso, and mutatis fnutandis, objective, and the objective in like manner subjective. In this consists their organic unity. And so, in the realm of sensible knowledge, knowledge consists just as much in finding the subjective re- PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 47 fleeted in the objective as, vice versa, in finding the object reflected or imaged in the subject. 2. Knowledge consists in a unifying process. For it is synthesis, and synthesis is nothing but the com- bination of the manifold in one. Knowledge, then, is the reduction of multiplicity to unity, and of the manifold particular to the single universal. Or, just as truly, it \s findmg unity in multiplicity or the uni- versal in the particular. But by this process the manifold and particular are manifestly not abolished. On the contrary, they are reaffirmed. Indeed, it is only in this way that they can be at all, even in the first instance, affirmed. The manifold and the par- ticular are gathered up into the universal — they are not cast away — and it is only in this way, as the science of knowledge has shown us, that any knowl- edge of them is possible. We understand, then, what the ancients meant, and what the moderns re- echo, by the saying that science — enidrrjut], knoivledge as such — is only of the universal. But not, I repeat, of an abstract universal — an universal abstracted or separated from the particular. Such an universal intelligence cannot think. In pretending to think or assert it, it pretends to think or assert absolute unreason and absolute unreality, or the absolutely absurd. The most perfect illustration of the abstract universal is the sensationalist's unknowable sub- strate, or thing-in-itself, or "force," which is at once supposed to contain all absolute reality and yet to be exclusive of all known reality." It is the abstract (Eleatic) one, which is separated from all 48 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. plurality and has consequently no power to explain the latter. It can enter as a term into no science. It is not only unthinkable, contradicting intelligence; it is also useless. It h'as nothing to do with science. It is no "result" of science. Knowledge, then, is of the concrete universal. The true universal alone is concrete. The particu- lar, to which only this name ("concrete") is so often given, is, as such, indeed abstract. It is sep- arated, abstracted — or looked at in separation and abstraction from — the universal to which it belongs. As such, it is termed a mere "brute fact," which is not known, comprehoided, rendered intelligible or an object of science, because viewed in abstraction from all but its immediate individual self. It is like the accidentally discovered member of an unknown or- ganism, which cannot be truly known until the idea of the whole organism is seen reflected in it and is read in or from it. The whole organism involves, includes, or comprehends it. The law of the whole is its law, and it is only through our knowledge of this law that we in turn compreliend the isolated fact or part. In purely physical science, of sensible phe- nomena, the reflected image or counterpart of the concrete, organic universal is law of co-existence or sequence, — scientific law. And a sensible phenom- enon is approximately knowji and comprehended, only when some such law has been discovered for it. The forms of knowledge or intelligence, now, were said above to be as members of one common organ- ism, sharing in a common life. And, indeed, it is PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 49 obvious that they could not be forms or denote pro- cesses of intelligence if the reverse were true. They denote, as we have seen, activities, synthetic activi- ties, and an activity denotes an agent. Now if we were to suppose each activity to denote a separate agent, it is obvious that we should be introducing into the subject of intelligence just that unconnected diversity, which we had to escape from in the imme- diate sensible object of intelligence, in order to render the latter in any way possible or conceivable.^^ And we should also be flying in the face ot obvious fact. Each subject of intelligence is immediately aware that all the forms and products of his intelligence are his, that they belong to him, as one individual self, and not to another. The particular acts of synthesis, which follow the forms of the fundamental "categories" of intelligence, are themselves again combined in the all-inclusive active synthesis of self-consciousness. In every act of conscious intelligence self-conscious- ness finds itself reflected — or, rather, realized. Self- consciousness is that "light" of intelligence, which we mentioned near the beginning of our inquiry. And if the special forms of intelligence are the mem- bers of an organism, self-consciousness represents this organism in its wholeness and entirety. It is the source of the common life and the common na- ture of all the members. And it is a pure, ideal ac- tivity. It is a ''pure'' activity, having no substrate; that is to say, it is not a mode of motion, which, as such, cannot be conceived and does not exist without something — some sort of "matter," whether ponder- 50 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. able or imponderable — which is moved and which presupposes — or is relative to and, as men say, con- ditioned by — time and space; which latter are, the rather, demonstrably dependent functions, rather than independent conditions, of self-consciousness. It is an '■'■ideal" activity, for none other can be or- ganic, diffusing itself through many members and yet always remaining the same — the one in and through the many. The activity of self-conscious- ness is also spontaneous; not that it is independent of its conditions, terms or factors, but that it is their mistress. It iises them — not, is used by them. It is not simply — it, as such, is not in any sense — their mechanical resultante. But its material or objective content, so far as it is purely given in sense-con- ditioned consciousness, does result from the fore- mentioned conditions in a way that, in its first form and appearance, is for self-consciousness contingent and mechanical, or independent of its choice.'^ Yet sensible consciousness, as we have seen, does not be- come real consciousness until it is enfolded in the embrace of self-consciousness, or — more accurately expressed — until it is wrought, as a term, into the organic process of self-consciousness. This then is the state of the case, as regards the relation of "ob- jective" consciousness to self-consciousness in man. Objective consciousness becomes real, only when it becomes subjective, or a part and function of self- consciousness. And, on the other hand, self-con- sciousness becomes real, only when it finds an object and finds and realizes itself in that object. So far as PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 51 the object is given in apparent independence of self- consciousness, we have just as much right to say- that the subject finds its forms in the object as that the subject puts its forms on the object. The one is just as true as the other. The individual, there- fore, as a knowing agent, finds himself set in the midst of an intelligible world, of which he is a part, or to which he is akin, and not placed as a knowing machine, over against a world, which is wholly un- related to him and refuses to have anything to do with the forms of his intelligence. The forms of his intelligence are the forms of the world's existence as a given object of intelligence, and vice versa. We can understand thus what Aristotle meant by term- ing the soul the "place of forms" and declaring that it knows by becoming in some sense its object or one with its object. The form of the (particular) object becomes for the time being — in the act of knowl- edge — the (particular) form of the subject. The sub- ject knows, recognizes, itself in and through this form and in and through the same form has — possesses and knows — its object. The important inferences, which this state of the case authorizes and enforces respect- ing the real nature of both subject and object may ever now be foreseen, but their development must be reserved for our next lecture. But the "forms," the univ^ersal, are recognized only in the light of self-consciousness. Their recog- nition is the work of a self-conscious activity. We must never forget that the forms in question are according to the experimental science of knowl- 52 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. edge, nothing-, or at best only dead abstractions, when viewed independently of the self-conscious activity of which they are in their very nature or- ganic members. But the organic activity of self- consciousness is a spiritual one. It is personal. It is the radiating or expansive centre of a process Avhich extends over the whole world of intelligence without ever losing itself. Wherever it goes, it is still "at home."" And yet, as we have seen, in man it is not an absolutely independent centre. On the contrary, it is dependent. It is only con- ditionally^ relatively, quasi-mechanically dependent on so-called objective conditions. These are, for the rest, as we have already seen, nought but its other self Or rather, they are organically, ideally one with the dependent forms of itself. But self-con- sciousness in man is intrinsically dependent upon an absolute self-consciousness. Man is, indeed, like the Leibnitzian monad, potentially a mirror of the whole universe. The latter is all potentially con- tained in his intelligence. But only potentially. The realization of intelligence implies a patient and long-continued labor, and the end is still always incomplete. Man finds himself, after all, only as an organic part of an intelligible world, in knowing which he assumes, with reference to it, the attitude of its organic head. This role, however, he only assumes; he does not fill it. Not only is it true that he never completely fills it; it is also impos- sible for him not to suppose that before he assumed it and while he still fragmentarily or incompletely PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 53 fills it, it was and is eternally and absolutely filled by an absolute subject, an absolute self-conscious- ness, that neither waxes nor wanes, and is "without variableness or shadow of turning." The light of his own self-consciousness reveals itself as a bor- rowed light. It is organically dependent upon the light of an absolute self-consciousness, and, being organically dependent, the life and law of absolute self-consciousness are read in it. And again, being thus organically dependent on and hence depen- dently one with the absolute self-consciousness, the essential truth, in kind, of its own forms and of the normal results of its own labor, is guaranteed to it. Let us see how the case stands. The forms of sensibly objective knowledge, the forms of that knowledge whereby the world exists for us, are forms of intelligence; they are forms of the subject's intelligence. They are at once form and conditional result of a synthetic activity of intelligence subject to, or in organic dependence on and union with, the spiritual, personal process of self-consciousness. Of this much we may assure ourselves by following the track of Kant's demonstrations. But, on the other hand, they are not the peculiar forms of the indi- vidual subject. Not even Kant, with all his theo- retical subjectivism, would go so far as to admit that his "Critique of Pure Reason" was, after all, only a critique of his own — viz., of Immanuel Kant's and of no other person's — reason. On the contrary, the scientific nature and value of the results reached 54 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. by him depended on their being demonstrably valid, not for one man, but for all men. Human intelli- gences are many; human intelligence is one." But now, the world is not created by our intelligence. Nor does it exist as many separate times as it is known. It exists independently of our individual intelligence and independently of the intelligence of the whole aggregate of finite and knowing indi- viduals in the universe. It only remains, therefore, to suppose that the individual subject's synthetic activity in intelligence is not simply or primarily creative, but the rather recreative, not productive, but reproductive. The forms of synthesis, of intel- ligence, of universality, of law, nay, of spirit, are somehow there in objective existence, before we know them. Not being there by virtue of their dependence on and organic involution in the per- sonal self-consciousness of any finite individual, and yet being demonstrably inconceivable, except in such relation to some self-consciousness, it only remains possible — and the facts render it absolutely necessary — to see in them indices of a self-conscious- ness which is not subject to the limitations of fini- tude, but is infinite, not relative and dependent, but absolute and independent, not dependently particu- lar, but universal. And so the organic unity of object and subject — of the world of objective form and of subjective, ifidividiial intelligence — on which the possibility of knowledge was seen to depend, will itself be possible only because both object and subject, world and finite mind, are alike in living, PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 55 organic dependence on absolute intelligence. The "light" of individual intelligence will be seen to exist only by reflection from, or through participa- tion in, the light of absolute intelligence, and we shall see with what perfect reason Aristotle could declare that the "active reason" of man, the true organon or agent of science^ the faculty of the uni- versal, was " something divine," belonging not to the individual, as such, but entering into him "as by a door." And so we shall perhaps perceive that St. Paul was not speaking anything, but literal truth, when he denied "that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of our {individual) selves; but our sufficiency is of God " — who is the Universal and Absolute Self, and whose consciousness is the con- dition of all true consciousness, or of all conscious- ness of truth. We may conclude, then, by way of recapitula- tion, that the philosophic science of knowledge demonstrates — 1. That knowledge is inexplicable on the sensa- tional theory of subject and object, in knowledge, as only different, or mechanically distinct, from each other; knowledge is therefore not a purely mechanical, sensible, or physical process; 2. That subject and object, in spite of their nu- merical difference, must be organically one, and that they are indeed thus one in a spiritual pro- cess of self-consciousness which conditions, rather than is conditioned by time and space and their relations; 56 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 3. That finite self-consciousness involves and re- veals its dependence on an absolute self-conscious- ness, which, provisionally, we can only call, in agreement with philosophy and religion, the self- consciousness of an absolute and divine Spirit. LECTURE III. THE ABSOLUTE OBJECT OF INTELLIGENCE; — OR, THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. A GERMAN historian, of philosophic mind, ex- -^ ■*- presses a truth, that, in our first lecture, we have already briefly encountered, by saying that " the end of philosophy is the absolute, and the ab- solute is the beginning of theology."* In otherwords, theology and religion presuppose, or, rather, claim livingly to possess and exhibit, that truth which philosophy conquers only after a laborious siege against the strongholds of error and a prolonged and systematic approach to the citadel, where truth herself sits enthroned. Or, in still other words, the presupposition of religion is the highest fruit, or, at all events, the highest ideal, of intelligence. Re- ligion always claims to be a practical expression of the truth, of tJie truth par excellence, of the highest and last truth for man. Philosophy is, or aims to be, the reflective and systematic analysis and dem- onstration of absolute truths, — of truths which com- mand and comprehend all other truths, and of real- ities which bear a like relation to all other realities. It is only because of this relation of religion and 58 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. philosophy to the same object, that the temporary or occasional appearance of conflict between them is possible. And it is only because of this same relation that in true philosophy — /. e., in the fruits of comprehensive, catholic, thorough, and genuinely experimental inquiry respecting the universal nature and object of intelligence — true religion necessarily finds her own lineaments prefigured and the security of her own foundations demonstrated. That such is the relation of Christianity to the demonstrable results of philosophic inquiry — this is the main thesis of the present course of lectures. The two main subjects of philosophic investigation are — as has been previously indicated — the Science of Knowledge and the Science of Being or of Reality. From the result of our discussion of the former of these topics, one may, I imagine, already feel somewhat the close connection between philosophic inquiry and religion, and the immediate bearing of the former on the foun- dations of the latter. But before going on to con- template this connection and bearing more explicitly, and in special relation to Christianity, it will be nec- essary, in the present lecture, first to indicate in outline what conception philosophy establishes re- specting the absolute nature of reality. We have seen in brief what is the nature, and what are the ideal presuppositions of intelligence, as a "subjective " process. We have now to see what philosophy's impartial and complete examination of man's actual, living experience shows respecting the absolute na- ture of the object, or objects, of intelligence. THE PHILOSOFHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 59 Mr. Matthew Arnold in one place refers to the question as to "what being really is," as a "tyro's question."^ To the tyro it is, no doubt, a tyro's ques- tion, and, in the tyro's superficial way of conceiving and answering questions, is at once trivial and easily answered. But science and philosophy are not the affair of tyros, and in the view of science and phi- losophy the question referred to is the most funda- mental and comprehensive of all conceivable ques- tions. On the answer given to it depends logically and fundamentally the complete enlightenment or the total confusion of intelligence, and the everlast- ing quickening or the deadening paralysis of all the springs of man's most characteristic life — his life in love, and joy, and hope, in free society, in art, in re- ligion. Intelligence may indeed exist and be culti- vated in narrower spheres, without any express ref^ erence to the ontological question. But in this case it is not complete. It does not wholly know itself, and its own implications, nor all that is really implied and given in its immediate objects. And since, after all, the ontological question is sure in some way to be raised and answered by every man— ^if not consciously and "theoretically," then unconsciously and '^practi- cally," no assurance is furnished, in the case supposed, that the answer may not fall out to the practical con- fusion of intelligence. The highest question of intel- ligence cannot be answered at haphazard, or, if thus answered, is almost sure to be answered wrong; and the wrong answer is, in this case, like the cloud that pernianently obscures the sun and rnakcs men finally 60 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. to be perversely in love with darkness, rather than light, and even to mistake the former for the latter. It leads them, for example, expressly or practically to see in mechanical sense the standard and limit of organic intelligence, and in "sensible objects" the type of absolute reality — and a greater "con- fusion of intelligence" than this was never known. And so, again, practical life, in individuals, and in societies and nations, may be, and often is, covered with the fairest blossoms and fruitage of a noble, ideally determined civil polity, of genuinely inspired art, of morality and religion, while yet " the tyro's question" as to "what being really is" is never ex- pressly raised and consequently never expressly an- swered. But the fact is that such life really contains the true answer to the question. The answer is given, not in the abstract terms of a mere definition, but in concrete illustration, in living fact and act. True life is true being. But let, now, one who is born into the atmosphere of such life, have doubts and queries raised in his mind as to "what being really is." Let him, further, see no way to avoid admit- ting the conception, ever more or less prevalent among scientific men, of the world as pure mechan- ism, whose roots are in blind force. Then, since what is thus true of the world as a whole is true of all its parts, and since man, the individual, must regard himself as part and parcel of the world, the individual is forced to regard all the apparently spontaneous play and earnest purpose of his life as themselves pure mechanism; freedom is then neces- THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. Gl sarily viewed as an illusion, responsibility as a phan- tom, and existence is robbed of all its dignity and privilege. Is it not obvious that the practical bear- ings of ontology are of tremendous consequence ? One point has just been indirectly alluded to, which here, at the beginning of our discussion, needs to be more expressly emphasized. It is what is called the wiity of being. The practical conse- quences of ontology, on which we have just been touching, flow, as is seen, from the assumed unity of existence. When we determine the fundamental and universal nature of all existence, we determine, by necessary inclusion, the fundamental and univer- sal nature of human, and of all other particular, existence. Of what nature the unity of being is, and how it is to be conceived, has already been partly indicated or prefigured, in our examination of the theory of knowledge, and will subsequently be more concretely illustrated. At present I re- mark only that the notion of the unity of being — in some sense — is fundamental and essential to all science. It is the express or implicit presup- position of all science. And everything depends, in ontology and theology, on the way in which this unity is understood. In the largest generalizations of physical science, no attempt is made to reach an absolute unity, but only a relative one — the unity, namely, of the sensibly phenomenal or material universe. Thus the earliest Greek inquirers, turning their atten- tion only to questions of speculative physics, only 62 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. presupposed and attempted to demonstrate the unity of the physical universe in its proximate, or sensible essence, as consisting of water, air, fire, or the like. Of precisely similar nature, or scientific quality, is our modern nebular hypothesis, with its accompany- ing theory of cosmical evolution. The unity which is sought in such theories is, we may say, not the unity of essential being, but of its sensible form or appearance. Attention is directed upon one sphere or aspect of existence, the so-called physical or sen- sible one, and search is directed for the one phenom- enal mode of such existence, which underlies all others and is the " unity " of all. Thales said that this mode was water, Anaximenes called it air, Heracli- tus fire, and Anaximander t6 aitsipov — the indefinite. Precisely so, modern science terms it unqualified, undifferentiated matter, in the "indefinite" form of a nebula. And it then seeks to trace the modal, but by no means the causal process, whereby from the originally homogeneous and indefinite condition the present heterogeneous and highly differentiated state of things came into existence. It constructs, as well as it can, the phenomenal history of the phy- sical universe. But what is the original nebula.'' What is matter.'* Wherein and by what power does it consist.-* What is the nature of that force whereby "matter" evolves — or, under material forms there is evolved — the varied and wonderful universe.'* Phy- sical science, as such, does not answer these ques- tions — its highest and last generalization, which transcends and includes even such theories as those THE PIIILOSOrHIC THEORY OF REALITY. G3 just referred to, being that all that is physically knowable, in the absolute and final sense of the term, is figured space and motion. Note it well: not matter, as absolute substance, but figured space — a purely ideal form; and x\o\. force, but only the phenomenon of force, viz., motion. Matter, or abso- lute being in any form, is, for pure mathematical and physical science, confessedly " unknowable," and force is "inscrutable."' Thus physical science finds, and, in truth, seeks, no absolute, but only a relative, unity of being, and that, too, not in the undivided realm of absolute or universal, but only of sensible or phenomenal exist- ence, and this, again, not in respect of real substance, but only in respect of phenomenal or appar-ent form or mode. And yet, as is seen, within its peculiar and limited sphere, and in its peculiar way, physical science illustrates the truth that being is one, and that the unity of being is the presupposition upon which alone any science is possible. This state of things, it will be remembered, was prefigured in our last lecture, where it was shown that all real science, all real knowledge, consists in a reduction of the par- ticular to the universal or in a comprehension of the many in the one. Or, otherwise, expressed, science exists only by virtue of its perception of the one in the many. Now, before leaving this point, let us advert once more to the circumstance, already rendered obvious, that the universal, to which physical science leads us, is an abstract one. Not only does pure physical sci- 64 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. ence make abstraction from all inquiryor profession of knowledge concerning the fundamental ontological conceptions of absolute or substantial bcing?i\\di potver, but also, in ideal or tendency, from the infinitely varied forms of sensible existence itself, as contained in our actual experience. In the language (substantially) of a recent German writer, the world, as it exists for all the other senses, is reduced to the blank mo- notony of a world existing only for the one sense of sight, — and this, too, not for our actual, living, va- ried, color- and form-distinguishing sight, but for an " ideal eye," capable of seeing everywhere nought but moving lines and points in space.* To this mo- notonous description is omne scibile reduced in the ideal of physical science. The physical universe, thus viewed, is originally nothing but an indefinite aggregate of undifferentiated parts — a side-by-side of particles, indifferent to each other — not an organ- ism of differentiated members, which imply and point to each other. Being is reduced to its own shadow. But, now, suppose that such a conception be, for whatever reason, adopted as the final and absolute, universal and all-comprehensive conception of exist- ence. Here the abstract finite and particular are elevated into the rank of strict identity with the con- crete infinite and universal, or, rather, the latter is degraded into identity with the former. This is the ideal of that kind of " pantheism," which the relig- ious consciousness universally and violently repudi- ates, and which, on grounds of scientific, experi- mental demonstration, is rejected by philosophy THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 65 itself. This is the pantheism of purely phenome- nalistic mechanism; and it is real atheism, because it banishes spirit from the universe. Generically one with this — in spite of apparent differences — is the pantheism of the First Book of Spinoza's " Ethics." The fault which philosophic science finds with such a doctrine, is not that it asserts (in terms and in form) the unity of being, but that in it being is really not comprehended. The conception of "be- ing" employed is formed by abstj^actioii from reality. The real and truly substantial is not included in it. As a consequence, the "unity "in question is not the true unity of real being, but an abstract and formal one. It is derivative, and not primary — a quasi-unity, or a so-called mechanical unity, not a real, viz., an organic one. More than once has phi- losophy furnished the demonstration that the con- dition of all perception or conception of mechanical unity — the unity of a mere sensible, or time-and- space-conditioned aggregate — is the express or im- plicit perception and conception of organic unity. Mechanical unity is abstracted from and hence always presupposes organic unity, and the true unity of being must hence be of this latter kind. Our present inquiry concerns immediately and especially the "absolute object of intelligence, or, the philosophic theory of reality." In the phrase, "object of intelligence," it is important that we put stress on both of the substantives employed, "ob- ject" and "intelligence." That abstract quasi-phi- losophic science which, borrowing its method and 66 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. presuppositions and hence receiving its limitations from mathematical and physical science, issues vari- ously in Spinozistic dogmatism, in materialism, and in English agnosticism, stops short with the demon- stration of an apparent ''object of (so-called) intelli- gence," but does not raise this into an " object of {\.x\!i€) intelligence" The expression "agnosticism," adopted by a large section of the votaries of such " science," is a voluntary and truthful confession of this fact. That intelligence has, and must have, an object, it requires little or no science to demonstrate. Any one capable of the slightest degree of analytic reflection, recognizes at once the truth in question. Apparently the simplest, and certainly the first and most obvious illustration of it, is furnished in the case of sensible knowledge. Every one knows that there is no sigJit without objects of sight, and, in gen- eral, no sensible knowledge without objects of such knowledge. Every one, too, is endowed by nature with the power of looking at and directing all ap- propriate senses upon such objects, and of distin- guishing them, comparing, recognizing them, and describing the phenomena with which they present themselves. This one may do without necessarily inquiring or in the least knowing zvJiat that process of intelligence is, whereby he knows — and what are its implications — any more than, in order to walk, one must first explicitly know all about the mechan- ics of walking and the anatomy and physiology of the human frame. Now this process of analytic description may be carried on indefinitely, or up to THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. G7 the very final limit of purely sensible knowledge (or, what amounts to the same thing, of "pure physical science, 'y with the like essential ignorance of the science of knowledge as such. The question con- stantly is, and is only, respecting that which we either actually or constructively see, what we fi)id, what is v(\&z\i-A.r\\z-3\\y presented ox given for external observation. And the knowledge, which we thus acquire, seems to us so satisfactory — so certain, so real, so final — that we heartily and credulously take it for the type and standard of all true knowledge — exclaiming, with the poet, ^"■Knowledge is of what we see," thus, as it were, making mechanical sight the genus of which knowledge is to be considered as a species, or, making knowledge a mechanical result of seeing, rather than sight a spiritual-organic function and dependently instrumental condition of knowledge or intelligence. And yet this very "knowledge," car- ried to its final issue, corrects and refutes itself. It corrects and refutes the assumption of the eye that it sees colors, of the ear that it hears sounds, of the mouth that it tastes sweet and bitter objects, and of sight and touch combined that they see and feel ab- solute, objective, per se existent matter. It denies that we sensibly perceive and hence (from its point of view) know the power of the mind or any other power or force whatsoever. Sensible knowledge, apparently so rich and full and concrete, thus again demonstrates itself to be in reality, when taken purely 68 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. by itself, in the highest degree abstract and empty. Not only, namely, does it, as above noted, abstract from the ontological conceptions — and realities — of essential, substantive being 2,xi<^ power — the ^'belief' in which accompanies the sceptical physicist or ag- nostic to the very end of his inquiries, but his ulti- mate positive conceptions (" configuration and mo- tion,") or the final ''object ^/his intelligence," remain empty of significance/(?r intelligence. And "empty" in a double and triple sense: (i) by reason of the ab- straction just noted; (2) because "configuration and motion" are not themselves principles of or for intel- ligence, whereby the so-called evolution of the actual universe from them may be explained; they are ab- stract modalities, and not real and efficient essences; (3) because the so-called sensible ultimates, motion and configuration, when closely viewed, as objects of purely or characteristically sensible knowledge, turn out to be, not what they were first supposed, viz., absolutely non-mental objects of intelligence — separate from and independent of the latter — but "modifications," and so identical parts of intelli- gence (— here, sensible consciousness') itself. Sensible knowledge thus finds itself finally con- fronted with a paradox, which, as our last lecture showed us, it is, of itself, unable to explain, viz., that its object is no real indepejidcnt object — is not inde- pendently objective — but is, the rather, identical with, or " a modification " of, the subject. Even its alleged ''object of intelligence," appears not to be a true object. But the point which it is more important for us to THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 69 note here is that, admitting the alleged object to be, in its way, a true object, it is yet not an "object of intelligencer For this is what we must say respect- ing all objects which appear in the guise of mere ob- jects, inherently unrelated to or separate from the subject, — or respecting all objects concerning which the utmost which we can say is that they are given. And this is the case with "configuration and mo- tion," regarded from the point of view of pure pJiys- ical science^ or sensible knowledge, alone. They are given, are facts, presented, apparently, in indepen- dence of intelligence. Intelligence simply accepts them. With reference to intelligence they are acci- dental. Something else might just as well have been given, for aught intelligence here perceives. They present (from the point of view which we are now considering) an inherent contradiction, inasmuch as they assume the/i?rw of unintelligible objects of in- telligence! The state of the case with reference to the objects of sensible knowledge, as such, is some- times aptly expressed by saying that they are facts and not truths. But the field and the true atmos- phere of intelligence are truth. Intelligence is the active and living organ of truth — its true nature be- ing embedded in truth — its only possible and real objective nourishment being the truth. Mere facts are only signs of truth, not truth itself, and the lat- ter alone can be and is the true and final — not merely quasi and provisional — object of intelligence. The predicate beijzg is applied to the object of intelligence. The object (in the first instance) is 70 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. alone held to be real. In other words, that is which is knozvn. Knowledge and being are correla- tive terms. When we know therefore what is the true object of knoivledge, we know what is the final and absolute significance of the terms being and reality. We have just spoken of truth as the true object of intelligence. If, in so doing, we spoke truly, then it will follow that tnitJi, being, and reality, are synonyms. Only, it will be necessary to determine in what sense the word truth is to be understood. Obviously, we may anticipate that it cannot have, as thus ontologically applied, the ab- stract and dead significance which belongs to the term in purely formal logic. In what sense it is to be understood, will presently appear. That "configuration and motion," as the ultimate facts of sensibly-conditioned — or pure physical- science, are not per se, or independently consid- ered, intelligible, or true and final objects of, or sub- stantial truths for, intelligence, is shown by the cir- cumstance that the physicist himself is compelled, in his description and explanation of the physical universe, to speak the metaphysical language of materialism and dynamism. In other words, he speaks, and is practically obliged to speak, in every breath of "matter" ("atoms") and (blind) "forces." He knows, and confesses that he knows, nothing of absolute matter and force, and that in employing these terms he merely employs artificial symbols, like the x and y of algebra. But sometimes phys- ical science forgets its own limitations — or rather, THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 71 its self-appointed interpreters forget them, and then speak as if matter — intrinsically inert and atomically constituted — and blind force were known as that in which true, objective being resides/ Still more often is this error committed by the popular consciousness, which knows little or nothing of the limitations of physical science and is too generally accustomed to look to the latter for final and authoritative illumi- nation respecting the ultimate problems of intelli- gence. But even if matter, as above described, and blind force were known to exist — and in a certain, relative way of speaking, it is true to say of them that they do exist — yet it could, and can, only be said of them, as of motion and configuration, that they exist only as immediate, relative, and depen- dent objects, but not as objects of intelligence — not as constituting the object of intelligence, not as the truth, but only as signs and symbols, or " the lan- guage " in which truth and reality are expressed. It is time for us, after all this negative prepara- tion, to revert to the results of our inquiry (in the preceding lecture) respecting the science of knowl- edge, and on this the only solid basis for our present inquiry, to develop succinctly the positive results, of which we are in quest. The science of knowledge shows us subject and object, or intelligence and being, in organic unity. It follows hence (i) that the distinction made be- tween intelligence and being is a purely formal or logical one, not real. Being, in other words, in- cludes intelligence, or intelligence and being have 72 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. something in common. But, (2) if this be so, then the nature of being is primarily revealed in intelli- gence. It is revealed, I say, in other words, to intelligence from within, from the inner depths of its own nature or precinct, and not from without. A revelation absolutely and unqualifiedly from with- out were impossible and is a pure, or rather, an im- pure, figment of the unreflecting imagination. Such relative revelation of being from without as is made to us in sensible perception is only initiatory, super- ficial, and symbolic, and possible only because that which is symbolized is organically one in its being with the being which is revealed within intelligence. (3) The revelation of being in intelligence necessar- ily takes — as must at once be seen — the form of self-intelligence, self-knowledge, or self-conscious- ness. These various terms are all designations of one and the self-same activity, and this activity is the fundamental activity of living spirit. They are designations, I say, oi one activity. But when I say one, I do not mean mechanically single or simple, as though the activity in question were like the mo- tion of a point in a straight line; (such motion, for the rest, is in no true or fundamental sense an ac- tivity, but at most only the sign and effect of one) It is not simple, but complex. And not complex, again, in the sense in which a so-called system of motions, that tend to one end, is complex; for (not to mention that a complex system of mere motions no more constitutes a true activity than does a single motion) the unity of such a system is not organic, THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 73 internal, and essential, but mechanical, external, and superficial; it is only the apparent and perishable uni- ty of parts which are per se indifferent to each other and may conceivably be separated without losing their identity. No, the unity in question is a living one. It is a unity, not simply in spite of, but by very virtue of complexity, an identity, the very con- dition of whose existence is diversity. The one and indivisible ego, self, or spirit, whose function is in- telligence, is one in, tJirough, and by virtue of its self-intelligence, which latter is a complex process: the same permanent reality — variously styled "sub- ject," "spirit," "self," etc., — distinguishes itself as subject and object {it, as subject, knows itself as object), and this as the very condition upon which alone it can know itself to be one, and can in fact be one. Here we have an ideal activity which (paradoxical as this may sound) constitutes the agent: the agent is only through its activity? (4) Being, like knowledge, is thus primarily re- vealed as a spiritual activity. Almost the first lesson which the beginner in philosophy has to learn is this, that nought essentially exists by mere inertia. Existence, as snch, or absolutely and truly considered, is in no sense whatever passive, but is absolutely and only active. When Leibnitz declared activity to belong to the very essence of substantial existence,' he seemed to utter a paradox, but ex- pressed in fact a truth which has been, in substance, familiar to, and demonstrated by, real philosophic science, in every age in which such science has 74 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. existed, and which deserves to be set down as first and foremost among the permanent achievements of genuine, truly experimental philosophy. The dif- ficulty of learning it arises only from the force of a prejudice or habit, precisely Jike that which stood in the way of the acceptance of the Copernican as- tronomy. Just as, per demonstrations of physical science, the whole sensible universe would at once collapse into the blank nothingness of indistinguish- able night, were all motion to cease, so philosophic science demonstrates that were activity — i. e., the Life of Spirit — to cease, existence itself, including time and space, would absolutely vanish. Where there is no doing, there is no being. It is doing, activity — the Aristotelian kvdpyEia and kvreXexEia. — which constitutes being or reality, — and activity, I have just said, is "Life of Spirit" (reversing Aris- totle's phrase, " Life = Activity of Spirit");® or, it is the reality of Spirit. Or, in other words, absolute being, and all " being as such,'' is spiritual. It is the application of these truths to the inter- pretation of physical science and its conceptions, that excites at once the greatest curiosity, the most invincible incredulity, and the most passionate re- sistance. Curiosity and incredulity, because a spir- itualistic interpretation of the physical universe, — nay, the very pretense that it is susceptible of such interpretation, (not to say, that this is the only possible one,) runs so decidedly counter to that which, to most men, seems at first most immediately and irrevocably certain. But the incredulous forget THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 75 in this connection, thcit certainty and truth may be, and, in the present case, are, separated by a wide interval. All of our immediate sensible conscious- ness is certain; it certainly exists; we are directly and unqualifiedly certain of it. But, in possessing this certainty, we are not necessarily in possession of any substantial truth. This distinction, between certainty and truth (the same as the one above mentioned, between fact and truth,) is of the great- est practical importance, and is one which we easily forget, if indeed we ever reflect upon it or even be- come explicitly aware of it at all." And yet the distinction does not necessarily amount to real op- position. On the contrary, in spite of the wide in- terval which may separate them, certainty, rightly viewed, is but implicit truth; and truth is developed — explicated — certitude. The opposition between them is in reality only apparent, not real, and ex- ists rather between a premature and unscientific — hence inexperimental and unjustifiable — interpreta- tion of that which forms the immediate subject-matter of our certitude and the true interpretation, than between this subject-matter and the truth which philosophy — or absolute scientific inquiry — estab- lishes concerning it. In our immediate sensible consciousness we seem to be directly certified of the existence of a world of absolute matter, the scene of blind physical forces, and it is to this apparent certitude that we tenaciously cling, incredulous of a truth which not so much merely overthrows, as purifies and explains it. Our immediate sensible 76 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. consciousness, then, is unquestionably " certain," but this by no means carries with it the certainty of the existence of an absolute form of being, called matter, whose fundamental attribute consists in an inert and impenetrable occupation of space. On the contrary, physical science itself, which presents noth- ing but the results of an exact analytic exploration of the immediate content of sensible consciousness, declares, as we have seen, that such consciousness contains — so to express it — nothing but itself, or its own modifications — which latter, in their subjective aspect, are called mental phenomena, and in their objective aspect, are all comprehended, not under the conceptions of absolute matter and force, but only under those of configuration and motion." Sensible consciousness, now, can be certain or can give rise to true certainty, only concerning that which it really contains, — this, surely, no one will doubt, — and if it contains no real evidence of the existence of an absolutely non-spiritual, material world, it certainly must be a mistake for us to sup- pose that through it we are made certain of its existence. The fact that we assume and pertina- ciously believe in the existence of absolute matter, in spite of the fact that it is not contained in our immediate sensible consciousness, simply shows that sensible consciousness does not fill up the whole circle of human intelligence and requires something outside of itself for its own complete explanation.^'^ And in the case of any explanation to be offered, all that can be demanded in the name THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 77 of sensible consciousness — or " pure physical sci- ence " — is that the principle of explanation shall not directly or indirectly conflict in its application, with the immediate facts — phenomena, laws — of sensible consciousness itself The " passionate re- sistance" above mentioned as being made to the spiritualistic interpretation of physical conceptions which philosophy offers, is inspired mainly by the fear lest the foregoing demand should not be re- spected — a fear which is surely wholly needless. The conception of absolute unspiritual matter is an unrealizable one and absurd, because in direct conflict with the fundamental law of intelligence as established in the science of knowledge. This law requires subject and object, while different and apparently opposed, to be nevertheless organically one. The difference, in other words, must be only relative, not absolute." But the supposition of ab- solute matter, and of this as known, or as an object oiintelligence, is an hypothesis in direct and abso- lute conflict with this law. No wonder that the putative object of this conception — matter — remains wholly unthinkable, "unknowable," and its exist- ence without shadow of demonstration. But the unthinkableness and indemonstrableness of absolute matter by no means demonstrates the truth of sub- jective idealism, or that the physical universe exists only in the form of transient phenomena of individ- ual consciousness. This supposition is no less un- thinkable than the former and is opposed to another part of that same law of intelligence, with which the 78 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. supposition of absolute matter conflicts. For if one part of that law required that subject and object should be joined together in a bond of essential unity, (and thus excluded the supposition of abso- lute matter,) another part of the same law requires that subject and object shall be really distinct; and with this requirement the doctrine of subjective or phenomenalistic idealism stands in conflict. No, the physical universe is not a mere dream or phantas- magoria; it is not a picture in my and your brain, — a picture, for the rest, which, if the theory of abso- lute subjective idealism were true, would have to be regarded as a picture of nothing. The physical or, as it is called, the material universe is a true and ideal object of intelligence. As such it possesses being, but not, as per results of the science of knowledge, a being which is incommensurate with or opposed to intelligence, but a being which is, in spite of difference and distinction, of the same kith and kin with intelligence itself. Its being, in other words, is in its foundations — its source and its goal- living and spiritual — it is a manifestation of the " life of spirit." It is a manifestation of this life, not con- centrated in the form of personality, but dispersed in the form of externality, and realizing itself subject to the law of a temporal process. Its being, there- fore, is not independent and original, but dependent and derived." The most fundamental physical conceptions are those of externality, or Space and Time. The ex- istence of space and time, it is said, is the condition THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 79 of the existence of matter. And those who believe (or, rather, think they believe) in the being of abso- lutely non-spiritual matter, find, or have often found, a difficulty in conceiving how any existence what- .ever — and especially the existence of God — was con- ceivable, unless it were supposed to be conditioned by space and time, and hence " material." Such per- sons show that their whole and only conception of absolute being is materialistic, sensible, mechanical, i. e., in fact, abstract, inexperimental, ''a priori^' and "metaphysical;" of spirit they know nothing but the name. Matter exists only in space, as the contained exists in the container. This is the first and obvious state of the case, as it presents itself to immediate sensible consciousness. Matter — thus the case is substantially viewed — exists as one thing, and space exists as another thing. If matter exists, much more must — in the estimation of a naive materialism — space be held to possess absolute and independent existence. But how it, the impalpable, can exist, and that as the condition of all palpable existence, this is one of the questions which materialism is never able to answer, and remains as one of its final " in- explicabilities." It can only continue with blind and pertinacious obstinacy to assert \.\\q fact of the exist- ence of space (and time), while confessedly unable to utter one rational word with reference to its how or what, or with reference to its " truth."'* Materialism, with its naive, inexperimental, and unscientific way of looking at ontological questions is compelled to regard space and time as two pecu- 80 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. liar and special kinds of being; whereas they are not (independent) kinds, but only dependent modes, of being. Such existence as matter possesses, it pos- sesses indeed only in dependence on space and time, and so the existence of matter is a doubly dependent one. Space and time are the proximate condition of matter; but the condition of the existence of space and time themselves is the absolute being of living, active spirit. The being of space and time and matter is revealed to experimental, philosophic inquiry as dependently and organically one — not mechanically or numeri- cally identical — with the absolute being of Absolute Spirit. ^^ Materialism, in its conceptions of matter and space, errs with blind and absolutely unscienti- fic, unintelligent dogmatism, against the first and simplest principle of ontology and of intelligence, viz., the principle of the unity of being. Space, in its view, is one kind of being, and matter is another, and the two are conceived as indifferent to each other. Thus it is imagined that the nature of matter is out of all relation to the nature of space, so that space might contain it just as well, even if its nature were quite different from what it actually is, and so that, as matter of fact, it does " contain " indeed another kind of being, viz., spiritual being (provided, of course, that such a kind of being actually exists at all)." But this view is wholly and naively dogmatic, being flatly opposed to the results of scientific, experimental inquiry and in absurd and violent contradiction with the first principles of thought and of being. (Unity THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 81 of being and unity of knowledge.) Philosophy de- monstrates the ideal-real — /. c, the spiritual — nature (the spiritual derivation) of space and time. It shows them to be equally subjective and objective, hence, in their sphere, universal, or at once indepen- dent and inclusive of the particular (individual) sub- ject and objects of our sensible consciousness. They are, therefore, living, constantly-maintained products of an absolute activity, which transcends and includes ail subjects and objects, — the activity (in the last re- sort) of absolute spirit, or, rather, of the Absolute Spirit, of God. I cannot, of course, be expected or permitted to enter here into all the details of the explanation of matter, as furnished by philosophic science. It suffices to say that the proximate root of matter is found to consist in "force," and force is, for philosophy, nothing but a function of spirit. Ma- terialism says. Where there is no matter there is no force — making matter the creative condition of force. Philosophy says, on the contrary, and proves that force is the creative condition of " matter." It shows the necessary and conditioning relation of force, as a spiritual function, to space and time, as themselves also spiritual functions. It finds in the sensibly ob- servable manifestations of force, with their fixed me- chanical laws, evidences of the omnipresent and ever-present and all-sustaining activity of immuta- ble, effective, spiritual being. The "mechanical" means, etymologically, much the same as the " in- strumental." And so philosophic science finds, in- deed, that the mechanico-physical universe, as such, 82 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. is instrumental. It is instrumental as serving to ex- press symbolically, — and hence, like all symbolic expression, in a way which "half reveals, and half conceals " — the thought, /. e., the power and nature, of the Absolute Spirit, which is the Being of all beings, the original and originative essence of all existence. But it is also instrumental in a more immediate and obvious way. The whole mechanism of material or phenomenal existence reveals immediately its tele- ological nature, or that it exists for a use or pur- pose, and that use not a remote and extrinsic one, but an immediate and intrinsic, or "immanent," one. Aristotle of old saw clearly, and pointed out, how every thing that exists "by nature," exists only as it actively realizes its existence, and realizes its ex- istence only as it fulfils a law, or process, which is the law or process of its existence.'* It performs a "work" — or, a work is performed in it — and this work is none other than the realization of its pecu- liar type or idea, its good, or purpose. Indeed, Aristotle perceived how motion itself, (which we are accustomed to think of only in its most abstract form, as mere change of place, or, at most as a merely " mechanical" product of time and space, — viewing it, for the rest, simply as a brute, inexplicable "fact," and not seeing, or, perhaps, ever imagining that any one ever did or could see in it anything else, any " truth") Aristotle, I say, perceived how motion, even thus conceived in its most abstract or ideally empty form, presupposed and was conditioned by that other kind of " motion," which consists in the THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 83 realization of a type or idea, and which is thus shown to be an ideally conditioned and hence a spiritual process; or, otherwise expressed, Aristotle saw, or at all events saw and said enough to enable us, if we will, clearly to perceive, that the genus of mo- tion is not eiiange of place, but fulfilment of purpose.'* However this may be, the activities of organic nature present to us a scene, in which not only the "fittest" — which is nothing other than that which is best adapted to its purpose — " survives," but also (which is much more to our present purpose) in which the law, type, and nature of intelligence are visibly re- produced, in a magnificent " object-lesson," before our very eyes. Intelligence, self-consciousness, is, as we saw, a process in which the one subject iden- tifies with itself its many objects. It goes out among its objects and never loses itself It makes them at once instrumental to, and also integrant portions of, its own life and being. This process we have al- ready termed "organic." For indeed it is just such a process, in kind, that is set before us explicitly in what we are pleased to term, especially, " organic " nature, (as though all nature and all existence were not in a radical sense organic — /. . These are serious and weighty questions, on the right answer to which the whole edifice of Christian doctrine ^yould seem to depend for its security. A doctrine which expresses the essential truth respecting the absolute principle of all being and of all intelligence, cannot but be full of illumination for all derived or dependent intelligence and for the comprehension of all derived existence. In the ab- solute the derivative must find itself, not confounded, but explained. In the knowledge of it, it should find and feel itself at home, and not as if in an ut- terly strange and unknown land. The intelligence, as well as the moral nature, of man should find in God its "strength." The Church was, in my judg- ment, — and I believe that I express the true historic verdict of philosophic science in this matter, — guided by a true instinct, or a true inspiration, in making BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 141 the doctrine of the Trinity the corner-stone in the confession of her faith, and is right in praying that she and her children may evermore be kept "stead- fast in this faith." It is, or involves, to my mind, the very key to all true illumination for the intellect as -well as to all solid and saving comfort for the soul. But it certainly is not this, — on the contrary, it is purely and justly "a stumbling-stone and rock of offence," — when it is preached only as a sort of mystic or magic formula, which all the faithful are to repeat, but into the meaning of which they are warned, as they value the stability of their "faith," not to inquire too closely. And now, before proceeding with the positive portion of our inquiry, we may mention, first, that trinity does not simply mean threeness. Trinity means three in one, — a unity, the very condition of which is multiplicity, or, in particular, triplicity. Such unity is not unknown to experience. On the contrary, we have already, in a previous lecture, ob- served such a unity lying at the basis, and constitut- ing the ever-present condition, of all our conscious experience; and we shall subsequently have occasion more amply to explain and illustrate it. But trinity, it must be noticed, is a spiritual category, and not a sensible one. It is a category of the noumenal and absolute, not of the sensibly phenomenal, as such, and "relative." The attempt to translate trinity into terms of the sensible, to find for it a purely sensible image, and to think or conceive it by means of such image, must and does therefore 142 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. necessarily fail. What is thus imaged is not and cannot be trinity, or three in essential unity, but — if I may again be allowed this expression — mere three- ness, or three which are joined in a unity that is at most only accidental and superficial, not essential Sensible unity is unity in or of time and space. It is, as such, or abstractly considered, without inher- ent difference or even extension, and its type is the mathematical point. When several unities are joined together, their union, if we consider them purely on their sensible side, as conditioned only by time and space, is a union of mere aggregation. It is purely accidental and relative, not essential and absolute. Each unit is no less that which it is, or its inherent nature is not a whit changed, even though it be separated by an interval of indefinite extent in time and space from all the rest. Take, for example, three members of the human species, considered simply as so many different, sensibly visible individ- uals. You find them together and say that these constitute one group. But you would say the same thing if their number were four, or ten, or ten thou- sand, etc. Let them scatter to the four quarters of the globe, and the one group, as such, is no more, yet the individuals remain without change the same. Their common unity, considered as members of one group or collection, was accidental and superficial, and dependent on no particular number. There is, indeed, a unity which, after their dispersion, still holds them together. But this is not a sensible uni- ty, but an intelligible one. It is the unity of kind, BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 143 or of a common humanity. And yet this unity, too, is independent of any particular number in the sen- sible individuals comprehended under it. Humanity, considered as an ideal kind, is just the same, whether the race be restricted, in the number of its sensible individuals, to an original pair, or contain, as at present, its hundreds of millions of such individuals. In short, sensible analogies, or analogies subject to mechanical and sensible conditions, are absolutely incompetent to illustrate for us the notion of trinity. They have nothing to do with it. And yet most, if not all, of the difficulties which have been met in the attempt to comprehend it, have arisen from the obstinate determination to comprehend it only through the use of such analogies. The. real diffi- culties thus lay, not in the notion itself, but in the subjection of the inquirer's mind to sensible preju- dices. Trinity, I repeat, is not a sensible, but a spiritual category. It denotes, not a mechanico- sensible relation, but an organic and vital one. It is absolute and essential, and not merely relative and accidental, unity in and through triplicity. It is dynamic, and not static. Trinity is not mere three- ness, and "trinitarianism " is not mere " tritheism." Trinity is, in a word, concrete unity. It is unity in, through, and by very means of difference. Its attribute is, like that which the Scriptures ascribe to God, " fulness," in distinction from emptiness. It has (unlike the "mathematical point") a content. It has a meaning. It is something, or has definite character. It is real; it is experimental; it is knowable; and it 144 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. is, consequently, the type of the only sort of unity which is recognized in real objective science anii philosophy. And it is all this in distinction from that abstract, inexperimental, contentless unity, which constitutes the empty ideal of theological ag- nosticism. A perfect specimen, I repeat, of this ab- stract unity is furnished in the conception of the mathematical point, which is, by hypothesis, some- thing in and of space and time and yet has abso- lutely no content of space or time. The conception is framed, namely, by abstracting from all exten- sion of space or time, i. e., from all concrete or real space and time. It is a quasi-sensible conception, and yet it is wholly unreal, because wholly abstract: it is formed by abstracting from the fundamental and constitutive conditions of sensible reality and of sensible consciousness. Here, now, we have that which many are pleased to term absolute unity, or unity which is absolutely separated from intrinsic or extrinsic difference. But in having it, we have ob- viously nothing, except a shadowy figment of the imagination. Of this kind is the unity which theo- logical agnosticism requires us to realize in thought, as a condition of the possibility of knowing God. We are called upon to abstract from all that is concrete, from all definite relation, or, in other words, from all the demonstrable conditions of objective and sub- jective experience, and the result is to be the One (so-called) God, whose nature is, obviously, to have no nature, whose existence is the illusion of exist- ence, the everlasting Nay, Nirvana. BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY; — THE ABSOLUTE. 145 This abstract unity, it scarcely need be repeated, is no unity of orforconcretescience. Where it begins, science and existence end and nescience and the ab- solute unreality of pure abstraction begin. Real sci- ence, absolute science, philosophy, knows no unity that is not concrete; and it' is one of the peculiar merits of Christianity that it effectually guards its intelligent followers against the danger of attempt- ing to think or worship an abstraction, of the sort mentioned, under the name of God. God, for the Christian consciousness, is concretely one. He is one, because he is triune; he is triune, because he is really, concretely — not merely abstractly — one. We have seen that God is, according to the bibli- cal conception, absolute Spirit. As such, he is pure, essential activity, and of this activity we have seen that intelligence, life, and love are three organically inseparable attributes. Now each of these — intelli- gence, life, and love — viewed concretely and experi- mentally, or in its living reality, and not in that death-bringing crucible .of abstraction which formal logic^ provides, is fundamentally and characteristi- pally a triune process. Intelligence, first, is the living function of a self. Its supreme form and condition is — not the mere so-called, superficially resultant state of conscious- ness, but — the fundamental and essentially constitu- tive ^^/zVzVj of j-^//"-c<3;wc/6'?/j-«<:'.y.y. And this activity is, essentially, not merely triadic, but triune. Its terms are necessarily three, and its nature is just as necessarily one. Its terms are subject, object, 146 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. and the synthesis or organic identity of subject and object. The first term in ideal order is subject, which in order to know itself must convert itself into its own object, or must become to itself the diametrical opposite of that which it first was: it must become to itself, in form, another, its own other. There is an ideal movement (so we are obliged, by an im- perfect sensible analogy, to describe it,) proceeding from the term called subject to the term called ob- ject. But then, in order that the movement may be complete, or that there may be a real and com- plete act of intelligence, the movement must not terminate in the second term of the series — the term called "object" — but must return to its original starting-point in the term called "subject." Only in this way, obviously, can the subject be aware of its object, or of itself as its own object. And this "ideal movement," as we have termed it, is not, as the language of our description would seem to imply, purely successive, or a movement purely and simply in time, and hence absolutely conditioned by time, or having time for its "form." On the con- trary, instead of being thus conditioned by time, it is itself, as the philosophic examination of the foundations of conscious experience demonstrates, the eternal condition of successive time. The whole "process" of the act of self-consciousness "takes place," or is complete, in a non-temporal Now. Its form is the form of eternity. In it a process, which in the form of time would fall apart into a successive series of acts, or movements, is compressed into one BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;~THE ABSOLUTE. 147 act. Here beginning and end cannot be separated by space or time; otherwise there were no sclf- consciousness. In the technical language of phi- losophy, the subject which starts out on this career of self-conscious activity, must, throughout its whole progress, nevertheless remain "by" or "with" itself, or "at home." It goes out from the station termed "subject" to the station termed "object," and at the same time never leaves its starting-point. It "loses its life" and in the same indivisible instant "finds" it. In describing such a process, which is a process of spirit, the language of sense and of sensible rela- tions can be applied only metaphorically and at best cannot but seem paradoxical. And yet nothing is more demonstrably the language of absolute and immediate truth, than this language as we have thus applied it.' Moreover, the description which we have given does not, as may perhaps at first be thought, apply only to the case of an abstraction called "pure self-consciousness," conceived in complete but im- aginary, separation from all definite and particular, empirical consciousness. On the contrary, it is of universal application, since there is no consciousness whatsoever that is not conditioned by and contained in the organism of self-consciousness; and there is no self-consciousness that does not realize itself in "objective consciousness." The distinction of sub- ject and object is not merely formal and artificial; it is also, if I may use this expression, material; it is real and essential. And yet their "identity" is none the less real and essential. Only, this identity 148 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. is not abstract, but concrete. It is not a sensible identity. It is not the identity of a mathematical point with itself, nor of a line or surface or solid or any other sensibly individual object, as such. It is not sensible, but spiritual; not dead, but living iden- tity. It is not identity excluding difference, but iden- tity which is conditioned by, and so exists in and by very means of, difference. It is unity, but it is also trinity. It is true and living unity — real, objective, experimental, concrete, and not merely (like the unity of the mathematical point) abstract, hypo- thetical, and imaginary — for the very reason that it is trinity.* (We may mention parenthetically, in passing, that the fate of the pure sensationalist, in dealing with the facts now under consideration, is full of negative and warning instruction for us. The sensationalist not only admits, to begin with, the distinction of subject and object, but insists on it also with exaggerated energy. Recognizing, and being able to deal with, none but purely sensible categories of thought and experience, distinction means for him absolute differ- ence, and nothing else. Subject and object are dif- ferent: this means, for the sensationalist, that they are completely and mechanically separate from each other: where the one is, the other is not. But then — • such is the implicit argument — nothing can act where it is not: all action depends on contact. In view of the mechanical separation of subject and object, an action of the subject, whereby it should cognize the object, is impossible; and this is the first alleged BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 149 ground of philosophical scepticism ! But then, hav- ing gone thus far, sensationalism is immediately com- pelled to recognize the other side of the case, and to admit the necessary identity of subject and object in knotvledge. But, having none but purely sensible categories of thought at its command, it is unable to think this identity as any thing other than a baf- fling mystery. The actual object is held to be a "modification" of the subject itself, and the actual subject is the same "modification." Subject and ob- ject are thus viewed as abstractly and sensibly, not concretely and organically identical, and so the question, which the experience of immediate and ob- vious fact forces the sensationalist to raise, namely, how the actual subject, which by hypothesis is it- self nothing but a simple conscious state or con- tingent series of such states, can yet be aware of or know itself, whether as past, present, or future, — this question, I say, is not answered, because from the point of view of abstract unity it is unanswerable, but is simply and arbitrarily put aside as insoluble. Such is always the result of the attempt to construct theory independently of experimental fact, instead of making it the faithful transcript of such fact, and nothing else). Man, as spirit and as intelligence, is thus himself created "in the image" of the triune God. And it will be observed that we find this image, not prima- rily in any (to first appearance, accidental) triad of psychological faculties or functions, but (thus far) in the form, nature, and conditions of the fundamental 150 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. and universal activity of intelligence itself, whereby man is effectively constituted a living spirit. The like image of God, the Absolute, is found, secondly, in all his works, so far as they in any way partake of Life; — which is not strange, for we have found Scrip- ture and philosophy agreeing in ascribing to the Ab- solute, life, as an es sejit idl di\.tr\h\xie, and in regarding life as the energy of Spirit. And so indeed we find that all life, all living-, is conditioned upon a triune process. It, like self-consciousness, involves at once the distinction and opposition and also the organic union or identity of apparent opposites. Philosophic science finds the rudimentary analogon of life — nay, let us rather say, as we may, that it finds the pres- ent power and the remote, but not wholly misleading image of the Absolute Life — under sensible conditions in the molecule which at once repels and attracts its neighbor, its alter ego, and repels, as the very condition of its attracting. It is only through this essentially non-temporal process that it maintains itself, its individuality, in existence. It is only thus that it, as alleged molecule, exists. In higher stages of natural existence, in what is known as peculiarly the organic realm, the same thing is more conspic- uously and fully illustrated. To Goethe, the poet- naturalist, the process of life was especially manifest in the metamorphosis of plants. Here one organ ap- parently transforms itself into, or goes out into and under the form of, organs other than itself. It goes out from itself, and yet remains constantly at home or "by itself." It goes out into its other, and lo, in BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 151 this other, or in the completed, complex organism, which includes both it and its " other," it finds noth- ing but its full and completed self. It loses, but to find. The final result is identical with the beginning, with this difference, that the former contains expli- citly, or in developed fulness, what the latter con- tained only implicitly, or in compressed and undevel- oped fulness. The process of life is strictly a process of the potential universal transforming or dispersing itself into the particular, and yet not changing its own nature, — the rather, simply realizing it under the form of time, or of a temporal process. And yet the process just described is, like the process of self- consciousness, per se a non-temporal one, and the non-temporal, here, as in the other case, is the con- dition of the temporal, — a fact which physiological metaphysics overlooks, and so is led to seek for the living among the dead, by attempting to find the root and essence of life in various successions and trans- formations of sensible motions, i. e., of motions which are purely conditioned by the forms of time and space. It seeks the cause in that which is in reality only a product. Absolute Life is triune, and temporal life furnishes a serial itnage of this triune nature. But the life of absolute Spirit, which, as such, is the cre- ative condition of time, is, also as such, not in time or subject to its form. It is not serial. It has not to await the full development of its nature from the hands of time. It is only eternal, non-temporal, life. In other words, it is real and genuine life, without limitation or qualification. The absolute process of 152 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. life and the absolute process of intelligence are in form and nature one. Each is in form triune and each is eternal. (It is " eternal," i. e., absolute life, and, thus, a participation in absolute being — a "par- taking of the divine nature " — which accrues to them who receive "power to become the sons of God"; being " born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.") Finally, the same logical and substantial de- scription, which belongs to intelligence and to life, considered absolutely, belongs also to love. If in- telligence and life are, not merely accidental and phenomenal modes of existence, but genuine on- tological principles — principles of absolute being, or of the being of the Absolute, — the same is true of love. As such philosophy, both in ancient and in modern times (but philosophy, as such, knows no distinction of time!), has recognized it, and as such the Scriptures declare it. Of God it is said, not simply that he loves, or that he is loving or capable of loving, but that he is Love. By as much as God is, he acts. His being is doing, is activity. And by as much as the law and the reality of absolute activity are the law and the reality of intelligence and life, by so much are they also the law and real- ity of love. Like intelligence and life, so love loses itself in an object other than itself, with the result of "finding," and so first becoming and being, its true, completed, and real self. Like them, it "scattereth, and yet increaseth" (Prov. xi. 24). More than they it seems to express the fundamental energy of being, BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 153 SO that, from this point of view, we may say that it is in love that intelligence and life find their com- pletion. Like them, again, it is organic. It is a whole, an universal, that realizes itself in and through its objects, which are as its organic members. And so, like them., it is an ideal-spiritual process, non- temporal — superior to time, — and triune. Now all these processes, or this one process under three different names, we have described in accord- ance with the demonstrative analyses which phil- osophic science furnishes of the deepest, yet ever- present, foundations and conditions of human experience. Human experience is dependent, par- tial, incomplete. At its best, it is only a fragment. "Now," says the Apostle, "I know in part" (i Cor. xiii. 12). But the divine experience, if I may employ this phrase, is not thus limited. It is independent, complete, absolute. But it is not thus rendered wholly foreign and alien in its nature to human experience, so that no inference may legitimately be made from the latter to the former. On the contrary, just because our experience is a "frag- ment," and a fragment of a living, organic whole, we may read in it the law and the nature of the whole. ^ What human experience, therefore, is de- pendently and incompletely, that the divine "ex- perience" is independently, completely, and without limiting qualification. What we now "see through a glass darkly," that same God sees and is in the eternal radiance of absolute truth and absolute reality, and that same we — we, our identical selves, 154 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. with an intelligence not changed in nature, but only perfected and completed in kind — may, and the Apostle declares that we shall, " see face to face." That which we now perceive to be the ideal and essential nature — however hampered by finite conditions — of intelligence, life, and love in us, that God, the Absolute, is in unqualified reality. If each of these so-called "functions" is, demonstrably, within the limits of our immediate, as well as of our widest, human experience, a process which involves a triad of terms, the same holds true of these same functions in God. If, further, in each case the three terms are not simply so many sensibly discrete in- dividuals, separated by time and space; if, even in the case of us men and of our intelligent experience they do not and cannot simply follow each other as wholly independent terms in a temporal process, but are also, in another and more essential aspect, coetaneous or joined together in a relation with which time has specifically nothing to do (on which, the rather, time derivately depends); if they are in- separably united, and that in such a way that either, taken without the others, is a dead and unreal ab- straction; if each, while ideally and really (not sen- sibly) distinct from the others, is no less livingly and really identical with the others; if the identity of each depends on its organic identity or union with the others, so that each is the other (this par- adox of sense being thus the essential truth of spir- it); if, I say, all these things are true, as they de- monstrably are, within the sphere of our dependent BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 155 experience, not less, but all the more, are they true within the sphere of the absolute experience of God, in intelligence, life, and love. In this diviner sphere all these things are true without limiting qualifica- tion. That Trinity, of which man and all created existence bear, not the sensible, but the spiritual, image, is with God, the Absolute One, the ever- lasting and unqualified fact. Human consciousness or intelligence is, as we have seen, more perfect, the more perfectly it finds itself in, or one with, its object. But human intelligence does not at once thus find itself. On the contrary, its object appears to it at first rather as an unknown and alien limit. The temporal growth or develop- ment of intelligence in the individual or the race (and it is only this, namely, the temporal history of intelligence.that empirical psychology contemplates), consists thus, of necessity, in the process of overcoming or breaking down this limit and reducing the object of intelligence into organic unity or oneness with itself, the subject. The "growth of intelligence" is thus but a process of the realization of intelligence, — a de- monstration or unfolding, in the dependent order of time, of that which intelligence /^r se, or independ- ently of this order and in its absolute and non-tem- poral nature, is. But in God, who is, precisely, absolute intelligence, this process of growth or de- velopment in time both need not and can not be. Consequently that which we have just seen to be the condition of the process — viz., the finding, or seeming to find, in the object of intelligence a pure 156 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. limit, or something absolutely alien in nature and in being to the subject of intelligence — can not here exist. We have seen, indeed, that the limit is for us not an absolute one. Of this truth the whole progress of human intelligence, whether in the in- dividual or in the race, is a constant demonstration. The limit simply appears to us as an absolute one, or the object of intelligence appears to us at the outset as if it were purely and only alien from the subject, because our intelligence, subjected to the form of time, is thereby rendered necessarily subject to the law of growth or development. From an initial state in which it exists only in implicit or potential form, it has to await the explicit demon- stration, unfolding, or manifestation of its own na- ture, and thereby of the real nature of its apparently limiting object, as the result of a temporal process of evolution. But with the divine or absolute intel- ligence of God, this is not so. Here the limit in- deed exists, but not as an absolute one. From the first moment — if I may thus speak, in reference to a relation which is strictly non-temporal — from the first moment of its existence, the limit exists only as a limit which has been overcome. By the very act by which the divine intelligence is aware of its object, that object, while still remaining true object, ideally other than the subject and differentiated from it, is nevertheless recognized, in agreement with what we experimentally see to be the perfect nature of intelligence, as not foreign to, but con cretely one with, the subject. BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 157 The collective object of human intelligence is, in the first instance, that which we term " the world," a universe whose substance, as we first conceive it, consists of brute, unintelligible, and absolutely non- spiritual matter. But with the progress of philo- sophic or real intelligence, the world assumes for us another nature, or, rather, is revealed for us in its truer nature, as a divine language, the mechan- ical expression of the divine Word, which was in the beginning, was with God, and was indeed God. The world, according to its first intention for us, the world as a mechanico-physical object, the phys- ical universe, known as pure physical science knows or aims to know it, is not the world as it exists for absolute intelligence. Physical science knows the appearance of the world. It knows it as a sum total of sensible phenomena. Absolute intelligence, on the contrary, knows the truth of the world. It knows the world as existing purely and only by, through, and for the divine Word. And this "Word," again, cannot, in agreement with the philosophic and experimental science of intelligence, be a mere abstraction. The science of intelligence requires the perfect object of intelligence to be connatural with the subject. But the true subject of intelli- gence is not an abstraction, but a living spirit, a person. The true object must therefore be also personal and spiritual. The contrast between hu- man and divine intelligence is then this: the former has for its first or immediate object the physical universe, as a language, the true reading of which 158 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. brings it to the present knowledge of the divine Word, as the truth, or absolute causal reality of the universe; the latter, on the contrary, has for its first object, the absolute object, the Word, and only — if we may thus express it — in the second instance, or through the Word, by and through whom alone the physical worlds subsist, has it these latter for its object. God knows the world only according to its truth, viz., as the phenomenal expression and work of his own "other." And this other, in the concreter language of the Bible, is spiritual, is per- sonal, and is called his only and eternally begotten Son. But with the recognition of the distinction of Father and Son, the nature of the Absolute, or of God as absolute Spirit, under the attribute of in- telligence, life, or love, is not exhausted. In any proper trinity, or image thereof, such as intelligence, life, or love in man,® we know that the living, actual whole, the concrete unity, does not consist in any mere collective union or summation of the first two terms that philosophic science discovers therein. The third term, the "synthesis," as it is called, of the other two, were not, it is true, without the latter, but it does not result from their mechanical composition. It were not without them, but it is not abstractly identical with them. It has reality only in and through them, but its reality is not absorbed in them. On the other hand, it is just as true that the first two, taken either singly or to- gether, in separation from the third, are dead, un- BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 159 real, inexperimental abstractions. They, too, on their part, have their reality only in and through the third, while yet their reality is not absorbed in the latter. Translating that which is strictly non- temporal into the language of a temporal process, and doing this, as we are aware, at great risk of misrepresentation, we are compelled to speak of what we call the third term as that in which, pecul- iarly, any spiritual process or reality is completed. Intelligence is, for example, peculiarly the name of the " third term," or active " synthesis," in which subject and object become, not mere abstractions — such as they necessarily remain when separated from this tcrtium — but real. The third term con- cretely exhibits what may be called the substantial truth, both of subject and object, and also of itself. It thus comes, in consequence of the temporal order of our apprehension, to stand not only for itself (as "third term" or "synthesis"), but also peculiarly for the synthetic, concrete, actual, and living whole, in which both it and what we term its antecedents or component factors are included in organic iden- tity. The like is to be said respecting the third term in the sacred formula, by which the Christian Church expresses the nature of the triune God. The Holy Spirit is the name of the "third person" of the divine Trinity, as distinguished from the other two. And it is also the name by which the concrete reality, or the whole nature, of all the "persons" is peculiarly and explicitly expressed. Man, in respect of his intelligence, is a spirit and an image of the 160 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. divine Trinity, not as mere " subject," nor as " ob- ject," but as the living synthesis of the two. And so there is a sense, in which it is peculiarly true to say that the Holy Spirit is the completing bond of the divine perfection. It is the spirit and bond of " holiness," which, among other things, means the bond of wholeness^ of " the fulness of God " (Eph. iii. 19; cf. John i. 16); it is the bond of knowledge, of life, and peculiarly of love, which latter is itself called the "bond of perfectness" (Col. iii. 14). "Subject" Father and "object" Son are organically one (John xvii. 21: "thou. Father, art in me, and I in thee ") in the — or, as a — Holy, an absolute, a perfect and unqualified. Spirit, or as love. I am, and can be, only too painfully aware how much, remains to be said, in order to render humanly complete the account of the subject that we have been considering. I would fain hope that I have at least said enough to demonstrate that the topic not only demands, but will richly repay, the most studious and faithful attention. I add only one or two observations in justification of the language which the Church adopts, in speaking of " three persons in one God." We men, relying ever too much upon, or giving too absolute a significance or worth to, the sensible analogies, in the midst and by means of which the development of our intelligence neces- sarily begins, are led to connect with the notion of personality the ideas of differentiation, limitation, contrast, opposition. We forget, if indeed we ever BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 161 realize, that personality is a spiritual, and not a sensible, category of thought and being, and that in the sphere of spiritual being the very condition of true differentiation and limitation is essential com- munity, communion, or organic oneness. The true citizen of the state, for example, — he who is a citizen by and in the spirit, or as a true and proper man, and not simply as an irresponsible cog in an immense voting-machine, — develops his true personality, in thi^ direction, not by separation from the common life of the state, but by intelligent, voluntary, and hearty identification of himself with it. The spirit- ual substance of the state becomes and is revealed, as his own true substance as a citizen, and that, not to the detriment or diminution, but to the ful- filment and completion, of his own proper political personality. The state is a spiritual organism "mixed," as Aristotle might say, "with matter"; and this means, simply, subject to the limiting conditions of exist- ence within space and time. The sphere of the state is a sphere of imperfect or conditioned spiritu- ality. It can furnish, therefore, only an imperfect illustration of that which must hold true within- the realm of divine or absolute spirituality. Still, we see that in the sphere of the state (as of any other social organism) community of consciousness and life is the fundamental basis, the necessary condition, nay, the essential content of true individual person- ality. And we see that this is so, just because, and so far as, the substance of the state is a spiritual 162 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. reality, and in spite of its subjection to the contin- gencies and limitations of existence within space and time. In other words, just so far as the state is truly a spiritual reality, it illustrates, as in a dis- tant image, what the Church holds to be the truth, in the realm of absolute spirituality, respecting the divine Trinity, viz., that Father, Son and Holy Ghost are three persons, not in spite of their being one God, but because they are one God. But the image is only distant and imperfect. For instance, the number of persons who may participate in the common life of the state, or of any similar moral organism subject to the conditions of develop- ment in space and time, is contingent; it is not limited to three; and, if it were, it would still not be a perfect image of the divine Trinity. For in the cases supposed, the three persons would still remain sensibly individualized and sensibly distinguished from each other, and in this respect would possess, not the concrete unity which is essential trinity, but only the superficial and abstract unity of an accidental mechanical aggregate. It is owing to the like reasons, too, that in the state the complete realization of a single public or common conscious- ness is and must always remain a problem, an ideal, only partially — and, indeed, very incompletely — realized. But the Absolute, the Absolute Spirit, we must remember, transcends and is the creative condition of space and time. Here, therefore, the perfect law of spirituality must be perfectly realized. Here no BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 163 contingency in the number of terms or "persons" involved can exist. The number must be that which is essentially necessary for concrete unity; the number vvhich, for such unity, may rightly be called the "perfect" one; and that, as we have seen, is three. The three terms, further, must be distinct. The ground of distinction, not being sensible individu- ation, can only be found in personality. This is the only ground of distinction which is known to us in the realm of pure spirituality. (Even among us men sensible individuation is the instrument and vehicle, rather than the true and essential ground, of distinction, which latter is, the rather, truly found only in spiritual personality.) And here, finally, in the realm of absolute spirituality, where no limit- ing barriers of sensible distinction exist, nought can prevent the ever-complete and perfect actualization of the one life and the one consciousness of the ever- blessed Three in One. In short, then, it would appear that the absolute personality of a God concretely — /. e., really — one, must and can only be conceived as essential tri- personality. LECTURE VI. BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. BY " the world " we mean, in the first instance, the universe as known to physical science. Or, we mean the whole realm of the finite, so far as finitude consists in subjection to the conditioning forms of space and time. We mean, in short, the universe as the realm of sensible phenomena. Such, at all events, is the way in which we must at the outset designate the object chosen for our present consideration. For it is as a sensible uni- verse that, in the temporal order of our knowledge, the world is first known to us. This is its first ap- pearance. It is, we may say, according to this its first appearance that we first kncnv .^ythe world, and hence we are led to designate it accordingly. And yet it is not with the world according to its first appearance that we have primarily to do to- night. Not the world, as it is simply externally ^' known of,'' but the world as it is internally known^ or knozuable, — not the im.mediate sensible appear- ance, but the absolute reality or truth of the world, — this, and the biblical conception thereof, is what we wish now to consider. We want to know what (164) BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 165 the sensible universe, as a realm of the finite and relative, is per se and in its relation to the Infinite and Absolute. This is the question, with which alone, as regards the physical universe, philosophy is directly concerned, and the answer to which is of vital consequence for religion. At the risk of needless prolixity and repetition, let me say, more precisely, that of the physical universe there are, at least in ideal, two sciences, which may be characterized, with regard to their respective points of view, aims, and subject-matter, as, the one phenomenal, relative, immediate, the other noumenal or substantial, absolute, and final. The former of these may be termed pure physical science; the latter, the philosophy of nature. The former, as I have indicated in a former lecture, is abstract: it abstracts, in considering the universe, from all but its sensible appearance. Its object, if I may so express myself, is to ascertain and demon- strate the sensible or phenomenal What, and the mechanical How, of the physical universe. Its pur- pose is accomplished, when it has clearly seen, and truthfully reported and registered, all of the im- mediate or sensibly demonstrable facts or, as they are otherwise termed, phenomena, which alone are presented within its chosen field of observation and which alone constitute the subject-matter of its inquiry. But these facts are knowable and observ- able only in and through certain relations — not as purely isolated and separate facts. And the rela- tions, in and through which they are known, are all 166 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. relations of space and time, of co-existence and sequence, or of "configuration and motion." These relations, once determined and expressed, are recog- nized and described as "rules," "or laws." The re- lations are mechanical relations; for it belongs to the very essence of a mechanical relation to be a relation of and in time and space. They are, I repeat, relations, rules, or laws of co-existence and sequence. How useful, nay, how necessary, for a prosperous material existence and so, indirectly, for the higher ideal prosperity of mankind, the ascer- tainment and knowledge of these rules is — this is something on which I need not stop to enlarge. About it there can be no question; but, also, this is not the point now in question for us. Our present need is only to have before us a clear conception of the intrinsic nature and scope of "pure physical science" as such, and then to perceive that with the method by which the results are reached, ajid with the particular nature of the results themselves, neither philosophy nor religion has any sort of im- mediate concern. Physical science ascertains what are the precise sensible facts that fall within the realm of her inquiry, and it is not these facts, with their mechanical laws, that concern philosophy and religion, but the interpretation and comprehension of them, with reference to their deeper significance. Their concern is, not with the immediate phenom- ena, but with the reality which the phenomena denote. The interest of religion in this respect is more indirect, but not less vital and real, than that BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 167 of philosophy. For, that other science of the phys- ical universe, of which I made mention above, is an essential part of philosophy itself, and may be termed the Philosophy of Nature. This is the science which inquires respecting the essence and foundation of natural, or, "physical," existence, and respecting the real significance, the origin and end, of nature's laws or "rules." More especially, nature, or the physical universe, is never at a standstill. It is involved in ceaseless and — even where the first appearance seems most to prove the exact contrary — in absolutely universal change or motion. Further, the various particular motions in the universe are not severally isolated and separate from each other. On the contrary, they constitute a system, in which each part implies and depends on every other. They constitute a whole, and their several movements combine in one grand collective movement, respecting the law and significance of which intelligence requires and de- mands illumination. It is in the attempt to answer the question thus raised that physical science, on the side of its widest generalizations, and philoso- phy approximate most closely to each other, and it is here that the complementary nature of the rela- tion, which really subsists between physical science and philosophy (or that part of philosophy which is termed philosophy of nature) is most conspicuously illustrated. What, namely, the "law" in question is, or what is that grand and all-comprehensive law which, as a visible rule of order among phenomena, 168 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. includes all other more special laws and is illustrated in them all, — this is a question, the answer to which may and must be sought in accordance with the method, and without going beyond the peculiar sphere, of physical science itself. For it is a ques- tion relative to the temporal, and indirectly the spatial, order of phenomena. That is to say, it is a question concerning something which in kind is susceptible of sensible, and only of sensible, demon- stration. It is a question of historic fact. But be- yond the demonstration of the law as an immediate fact — a rule of temporal order — physical science, as such, is not competent to advance one step. Here it is met by the natural ontological limitations, which bound its peculiar sphere. Just as, in virtue of these limitations, pure physical science strictly demonstrates and knows no material substance, but only, instead, figured space, and no real or sub- stantial force, but only motion, so, in the niatter of the mechanism of spatial and temporal relations among phenomena, it demonstrates and knows only the fact of this mechanism, the fact of these special and general laws of order, but nothing respecting their ulterior significance. It, as such, cannot say by what power, from what source, or to what ration- al end, this moving mechanism exists, or whether indeed it exists by any power, or from any source, or to any end whatsoever. It cannot say this, be- cause its eye is methodically turned away from all such things as power, source, and end, or (in brief) ultimate and absolute reality. From all these things BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 169 pure physical science abstracts, by the very act by which, choosing for its own peculiar sphere and sub- ject-matter the realm of sensible phenomena as such, and choosing its method accordingly, it re- solves not, and renders itself positively unable, to attend to or to see any thing else. These limita- tions — it need hardly be said — are not the fault, but rather the merit, of physical science; they are not to it a mere check or hindrance, but rather (as the history of science has shown) the conditio sine qua non of its prosperous existence. But when they are forgotten, and when men, speaking ostensibly in the name of physical science invoke her authority in support of opinions respecting that which lies strictly beyond her purview, then the reign of mere opinion, or rather of positive confusion and error, sets in. Nay, I will even say that then it is when that intellectual sin called "anthropomorphism," and which to so many men now-a-days seems to be the only unpardonable one, stands in most dan- ger of being committed, and with most dangerous results. For instance: When, from the circumstance that to pure physical science, as such, with its pe- culiar and self-imposed limitations, no ultra-phe- nomenal or sub-phenomenal, i. e., no non-sensible, reality is or can be known, it is inferred and declared that no such reality is in any way known or know- able, then the reign of intellectual confusion — other- wise termed sophistry — begins and, in proportion as the declaration is credulously received by a pub- lic destitute of critical information respecting the 170 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. constitution of science, extends. Even were such declaration true it would not be so for the rea- son alleged in its support. But it is positively not true, unless human experience is an illusion and philosophic science, as the interpretation and exact demonstration of the content of that ex- perience, is all a myth. And no one, to say the least, can affirm with reason the truth of this last supposition, who shows himself destitute of the most elementary knowledge concerning the specific na- ture, methods, and results of philosophic science and only alleges, in support of his opinion, reasons which are in no sense germane to this science or to its pe- culiar subject-matter. But again : When, from the circumstance that phys- ical science finds, and so demonstrates, that the sen- sible universe, as such, is one vast and unbroken net-work of mechanical relations — relations (other- wise termed "laws") of co-existence and sequence — so that in the one word " Mechanism " all the results and all the knowledge of pure physical science may be summed up, — when, I say, from this circumstance it is ostensibly inferred and is asserted, not only that mechanism is the highest and ultimate category of all knowledge and of all existence, but also that it is identical with a blind, all-compelling and all-com- prehending fate, then the intellectual sin of "an- thropomorphism " is committed. Physical science finds in nature, as contemplated by her, no fate, nor, as we have seen, any o\.\\(tx power, whether real or fancied. The man of physical science, as a man, BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 171 though not as a physicist — i. e., as one whose whole personal " experience," like that of all other men, never is, as matter of fact, or can be purely and ex- clusively " physical " — has at least an abundant prac- tical knowledge of " power," and confesses it. Nay, more, in the chosen language of his science he speaks — he finds himself compelled to speak — at every turn of " forces," just as though (so a super- ficial observer would say) he knew all about them. But such knowledge he, as physicist, disclaims, and explains that the word "force," in his scientific vo- cabulary, is without positive significance for him; it is only a non-significant part of his mechanism of expression, like an algebraic symbol, or, better, like the auxiliary verb employed in conjugation. It is unquestionably true, nevertheless, that in and through the mechanism of the sensible universe power is man- ifested. And the question as to the true nature of this power has to be taken up and answered by a science less abstract than physical science. It has to be answered by a science which does not, like physical science, abstract from the major and funda- mental part of experience, but considers experience on all its sides and in all its concrete fulness, the science which is par excellence and without qualifica- tion the science of experience as such, or Philosophy. The conception of universal mechanism, therefore, as it comes from the hands of physical science, car- ries with it no positive notion or knowledge of power, whether as fate or in any other form. The philo- sophic mechanist who, speaking professedly in the 172 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. name of physical science, represents the case in a different Hght and declares, in particular, that the physicist's knowledge of mechanism is tantamount to the absolute, positive knowledge and demonstra- tion of an universal fate or blind automatism, by which not only the movements of nature at large, but also the self-conscious actions of men are determined, — this one, I say, is guilty, not only of logical fallacy, but also, in particular, of anthropomorphism. He views nature, not with the eyes of science, whether physical or philosophic, but with those of mere hu- man prejudice. He likens her, in effect, to an Orien- tal despot, whose irresponsible word or decree {^fa- tiim, " fate ") rides on pitilessly and unchangeably to its execution, in blind disregard, as well of all reason, as of the fears and entreaties and will of those whom it may affect. That which specifically concerns philosophy, then, is not the determination of nature's particular me- chanical laws; — this is the work of the special sci- ences; — nor of her universal mechanical law, — this is the task of pure physical science, considered on the side of its greatest generality; — but the ascertain- ment of the power, by whose presence and agency the mechanism of sensible phenomena is to be ex- plained. Philosophy looks for the inner reality, the controlling reason, and looks for this, not in an in- experimental vacuum of pure abstraction, but within the present and by no means inaccessible depths of man's real, concrete experience. And now it is all- important to note that the interest of religion, in this BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 173 regard, is in kind identical with that of philosophy. Accordingly the Bible, as a text-book or manual of religion, is found to be in no sense a text-book or manual of the physical sciences. The special and general results of these sciences are not germane to the nature and purpose of religion. And those who have, in tlie supposed interest of religion, sought to find pure physical science in the Bible and to use what they have then professed to find for the purpose of controlling or forestalling the methods and results of inquiry in such science, have accordingly always come, and will unquestionably always in the future come, to grief. What religion presupposes with re- gard to the physical universe, and that, therefore, which, in this regard, must be true if religion is to be true, is not any dogma whatsoever respecting the general or special mechanical laws of nature, but a belief concerning the inner reality of nature, or re- specting the absolute ground and end, and the sub- mechanical law, of her existence and of her life. A question of essential interest and importance for re- ligion is, for example, not whether man is allied by evolutionary derivation to the other and so-called lower orders of animals, but whether such sayings as these are true, viz., " The Lord preserveth man and beast," and God " filleth all things." Hamann, the "Magus of the North," said of na- ture that it was, to intelligence, like a text written in Hebrew, without vowel-points; the work of intelligence was to find and supply the vowel- points and so render the text intelligible. In par- 174' PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. ticular, this is the work of philosophic intelligence. The work which philosophy thus proposes to do, re- ligion supposes to have been already done. How, and with what general results, the task is undertaken and accomplished by philosophy, has been indicated in outline in a previous lecture. We have now to compare, with philosophy's reading of nature, the reading which is presupposed and demanded by relig- ion, and especially by Christianity. Only, we first add, by way of reminder, and as furnishing a fitting connecting-link between the thoughts that have just been occupying our attention and the considerations upon which we are about to enter, that philosophy, in connection with this conception and fact of uni- versal natural mechanism, — the consonantal " He- brew text," — which physical science demonstrates, does not forget that the word mechanism has an etymology, and that it is derived from a Greek word meaning "instrument," " engine," or "contrivance," and this meaning of the original, philosophy finds, is not lost in the derivative. Not only does mech- anism mean something that is purely instrumental, but the mechanism of nature is purely instrumental. Its essence is not fate, nor self-directing power, — though it implies or points to the latter. It is simply a dependent and inherently passive means. Mechanism philosophy finds to be but the dress or garb of organism, its instrument or necessary means, and also its product. The dead is at once the crea- ture and the servant of the living. And Life is energy, or self-asserting and self-maintaining reality, BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 175 of Spirit. Where mechanism is, there is also or- ganism, there is Hving power, there is the power and purpose of Spirit. Mechanism is the sure, the ever-present sign of organic energy of intelli- gence. The former is phenomenal; the latter is sub- stantial; and it is only through her recognition and demonstration of the latter that philosophic science vindicates for nature her reality and her meaning, and saves her from vanishing away, for human intelligence, in that spectral dream of" subjective idealism " which necessarily results from any and every attempt to in- terpret nature in the light and with the aid of the mechanical categories of* pure physical science," and of these alone. Nature, for philosophy, is real; it shares dependently in the absolute reality, and only thus can it be truly and inherently real. It is real because, and so far as, there is present in it the living and substantial power of Absolute Spirit. It is indeed "relative," but that to which it is relative is God. 0( its relation to God we may say, — using the in- adequate language of sensible analogies, — that the place of nature is in God, rather than that the place of God is in nature. The Lord, we may say, with the confident assurance that no violence is thus offered to the sense of Scripture, — the Lord has been her dwelling-place in all generations. Some- thing of the precise meaning which such a statement has for philosophy's exact thought, you may catch, if you will recall the demonstration that philosophy furnishes of what is called the ideality of space itself. Space and time, which are the essential condition of 176 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. all sensible existence and the substance of all mechan- ical relations, are shown, as you will remember, by the philosophic science of experience to be not themselves sensible objects, but dependent functions of Spirit. The place of space itself — if the use of this expression may be pardoned — is thus in spirit, and, speaking absolutely, in God. What is thus true of space and time, is necessarily true of those so-called sensible objects, whose ex- istence they condition, and of those mechanical relations of the sensible universe, whose essence they constitute. But this is no case of pantheistic "absorption," whether of nature in God, or of God in nature. By as much as the full, fundamental, and concrete conception of experience, both on its subjective and on its objective side, is the organic conception, and by as much as the definition of the relation of the relative to the absolute, or of nature to God, can result only from the philosophic science of experience in its fullest and completest sense, it follows that the pantheistic notion just mentioned has no rightful place in philosophic science. For this notion results only from the attempt to define the relation between God and nature with the use of none but mechanical conceptions, i. e., as we have seen, of conceptions which do not correspond to and represent experience and the object of ex- perience in their concrete fulness and reality, but are formed only through abstraction from all that is fundamental and of absolute significance in the realm of intelligent experience. Applying these BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 177 conceptions, and these alone, no alternative is left but to regard the whole universe of existence as one vast mechanical aggregate, all of whose parts are — thus to express it — of the same ontological rank, both among themselves, and as compared with the whole of which they are parts. The term " God, or Nature," — to repeat the phrase which con- stantly recurs in Spinoza, — is then but the name for the whole aggregate of existence, considered on the side of its wholeness or totality. The ostensible relation between God and nature thus becomes one of abstract or literal, numerical iden- tity. The distinction between them is obliterated. But in this way both God and nature are changed, in our conceptions, from that which they were dem- onstrated to be into that which they are not. God, who was a Spirit, becomes only a name, and nature, whose reality was demonstrated to be a reality of spiritual power and purpose, is identified with the realm of her mechanico-sensible phenomena; the shell is taken for the kernel — "abstracted" from the kernel. In one word, mechanical distinction or mechanical dependence involves no true ontological distinction. The terms or objects, between which a purely mechanical relation subsists, are, as such, of the same ontological nature, of the same "sub- stance," or, ontologically identical. God, standing in none but a mechanical relation to the world, and known or knowable only in such relation, were identical in nature with the world. But organic distinction and dependence is real, existential dis- 178 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. tinction and dependence. The relative, in organic dependence on the absolute — nature, in organic de- pendence on God — exists and lives by and through the present power of the absolute, but is never- more capable of literal or immediate identification with it. It gets and keeps its true reality through concrete union with the absolute; by mechanical absorption in it — were this abstraction, for the rest, capable of being realized in thought — it would be- come unreal. Finally, the essence of the world and its relation being of the nature thus indicated, it is seen how and in what sense building men up in true intelligence is, as religion itself claims, the same as building them up in the knowledge of God. The finite bears on its face the evidence of the infinite, which is its active condition. The relative is through the indwelling power of the absolute. The true knowledge of the one involves at the same time knowledge of the other. All finite existence is, truly viewed and known, a Theophany. The Christian Scriptures, now, represent the world as dependent on God for its existence. It is, in its very essence, to God as the dependent to the independent, as the relative to the absolute. There is an Alpha of existence, an absolute order of ontological priority in the whole realm of being; and this Alpha is, not the world, but God. " In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." " Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God " (Ps. BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 179 xc. 2). The world is, but its being is not absolute. The world, as distinguished from God, exists, not independently and by itself, or " from everlasting to everlasting," but in dependence on divine power. " He hath made the earth by his power " (Jer. x. 12). So much, then, is certain: the Scriptures regard the world as the dependent work of the divine power. But the more important question is, in what sense is the world the divine work? Is this work instan- taneous or continued ? Did God, as a mechanical "First Cause," in one instant miraculously "make" the world and then separate himself wholly from it, leaving it to get on henceforth as best it could with- out him? Could and did he give it power to be in independence of him? What did God put into the world? Was it only "brute matter" and "blind forces?" Had he a reason for "creating" it? If so, what was and everlastingly is this reason, and what, consequently, is the absolute law of the world's existence? And, finally, has the world a predestined end, to which it tends; and, if so, in what sense is this true, and what is the end in question^ ? It is obvious, without argument, that that is a thoughtlessly inaccurate and unjustifiable way of speaking of the divine work of creation, which those adopt, who represent it as resulting, so to speak, from the casual occurrence in the divine mind of a motive similar to the empirical motives, which are the immediate determining ground of most human actions. A man, for example, builds a house, and his motive or reason for so doing may be one of 180 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. several. He may build it for his own shelter, or as a means of profitably investing his money, or, finally, simply because the ennui of idleness is unendurable and he feels that for his own happiness 'he must be busy about something or other. This last seems to correspond most nearly to the con- ception respecting God's reason for creating the world, which is involved in many popular represen- tations of the subject. The omnipotent Being had nothing to do, and so, rather than be eternally idle, concluded to "make" a world. He had all power and was alone in existence; he was therefore re- sponsible to no one for the use — if any — which he made of his power. It has even been expressly held by some theologians that he was not — if we may thus express it — responsible to himself, or to his own nature, for the way in which, and the result with which, his power was used. And so this hitherto " otiose Deity" resolved to busy himself for an in- stant, or at most for a few days, with the creation of a world; — which, accordingly, he did, with results in which, though there may be " rhyme," {i. e., order, otherwise termed law or rule), there is no "reason." The world, it is either practically or expressly held, is, and is such as it is, because it is. No reason, it is alleged, can be deduced from the divine nature or discovered in the nature of the world, for the ex- istence of the latter or for its possession of the char- acter which, as matter of fact, it does possess. If it is good, it is good because God " made" it, and not good per se; if it is in any sense rational, it is for the BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 181 like reason(?), and not because its own nature or the nature of God discloses for it the slightest raison d'etre. The world and its laws constitute simply- one vast though complex fact, and are to be ac- cepted purely as such. Moreover, whatever may be conceded as to their first origin, they are by very many " thinkers " treated as now constituting a fact — or realm of fact — which is independent, in existence as well as nature, of its source. The world, with its assumed blind forces and its so-called inflexible (/. e., automatically self-executing) laws, is practically or expressly conceived as now sufficient unto itself, any active connection with it and its affairs on the part of God, being resented as an impertinent and dis- turbing intrusion. Nay, more, the mechanical uni- verse comes to be looked upon as that, of whose real and practically independent existence alone a disciplined intelligence can have the fullest assur- ance; while the admission of God as a quondam or so- called " First Cause " is greeted as a great and most edifying concession to the claims, not of religious and philosophical knowledge, but of religious feeling or, as it is even also called, the "religious conscious- ness " of man (and especially of unscientific men)." AU this is a travesty upon philosophic intelligence, as it is also a profanation and degradation of true religious conceptions. This is one of the most de- praved and senseless forms of agnostic and pseudo- scientific "anthropomorphism." Philosophic science shows that the very root-conception of being — when this term is understood in its concrete sense — is 182 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. activity. Absolute being is absolute activity, ab- solute doing. Whatever absolutely is, and -in pro- portion as it absolutely is, performs a work; or, at all events, a work is performed or goes on in it; so that its existence depends on the work. The activ- ity therefore, ceasing, the reality also ceases. If philosophy knows anything, it knows that the activ- ity of the Absolute is itself absolute. Its activity is perfect. In Aristotelian phrase, we may say that the activity, and, consequently, the being, of the Absolute is perfect, because it never leaves, for an instant, any of its potentialities unrealized; and it is precisely in this that the pure, unqualified, and infi- nite being of God, the absolute Spirit, differs from the finite being, of his dependent creatures. In short, absolute being is — more concretely expressed than before — absolute Spirit, and absolute Spirit is absolute life, energy, work: the Absolute accom- plishes, and only realizes its own being on condition of its accomplishing, an absolute work. And the conception of the divine nature which is presented to us in the Christian Scriptures differs in no respect from this. It was precisely the Hebrew prophet's sense of the ever-wakeful — nay, let us rather say, the absolutely wakeful — activity of the Maker of heaven and earth, which gave their tone of con- scious irony to the words with which he " mocked " the prophets of Baal, saying to them, respecting their (anthropomorphic) god, " Peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked " (i Kings xviii. 27). The same thought inspired the Psalmist's comforting declara- BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY; — THE WORLD. 183 tion: " He that keepeth thee will not slumber" (Ps. cxxi. 3). And so, too, the Christ, whose name is called "Emmanuel, God with us," the Logos, the active and effective Reason, the substance-giver of the world, declared to those contemporaries of his who still retained the word of God only in the form of a dead letter, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work" (John v. 17). " Hitherto;" not from a cer- tain time in the past, before which he was idle, but "hitherto" without qualification, i. e., eternally. It is as though Christ had defined God as par excel- lence the Worker, and himself as "equal with God" (in the language which his adversaries immediately thereafter proceeded to employ against him), the true Son of God and one with God, just because and only so far as he too worked, sharing in and work- ing the work of the Father. And, finally, man him- self, according to the Christian conception, fulfils the requirement to become "perfect" — /. e., to be- come perfect man — and to that end becomes a "partaker of the divine nature," not in idleness, nor simply by working mechanically for God, but by being, in living, organic union, a colaborer with him. — For the rest, all that was shown in our last lecture concerning the philosophic and scriptural conception of God as Intelligence, Life, and Love, has so obvious and decisive a bearing on the point now in hand, that we need attempt to add nothing more in regard to it. I need only further remind you, once more, that what is thus true of God, as absolute Being, is also 184 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. true, mutatis imitandis, of all relative or finite being*. Of it, as of God, it is true that it is, only as it does. Its being is conditioned on its doing. Only, its "doing" is dependent, while that of God is inde- pendent. But, above all, the being of the relative or, especially, of the so-called physical does not consist in any dead abstraction such as that which is termed "mere matter." Just as mechanism is the dependent product, instrument, and garb of organ- ism, so, too, matter is nothing but the purely phe- nomenal product — the manifestation — of living, or- ganic, spiritual forces. It is incapable of being known as anything else, and as this it is as matter of fact known. Now, the Scriptures do not deal in abstractions (such as "mere matter" and "blind forces") how- ever natural and, in their proper sphere, legitimate these may be. Still less do they profess to reveal the independent and substantive reality of any such abstractions. The speculative — or, rather, the dog- matic — materialist can find no support for his fanciful doctrine in the Christian's scriptures, any more than in the results of real philosophic inquiry. Moreover, whatever we may yet find scriptural reason for holding true with reference to the relation of the world to the eternal "work" of God, there can be no doubt that the present relation of God to his work is represented as both active and incessant. It is living and, according to the conception which we have now formed for ourselves of the divine na- ture, godlike. It is a constant witness to the glori- BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 185 ous activity of the divine intelligence, life, and love. " Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it," says the Psalmist (Ps. Ixv. 9). In language, that is dear and beautiful to every Christian heart, the Master of Christians assures them that their Heavenly Father feeds the fowls of the air and clothes in a glory su- perior to that of Solomon the lilies of the field. The processes of organic nature — in other words — do not go on of themselves alone, but in dependence on the present power and activity of the Lord of all. But the processes of organic nature are built up, as we know, out of processes, or on the basis of the so-called forces, of that which we are pleased to term inorganic nature. The power that sustains the former must therefore bear a like relation to the latter. And as motion, change, process, activity, IS, according to the testimony of both physical and philosophic science, an universal category — a cate- gory of all finite existence, — it follows that nothing vvhatever in physical nature is withdrawn from that "operation" (y— working) of the divine "hands," in giving praise for which the Psalmist declares that he will rejoice (Ps. xcii. 4. Pr. Bk. version). The works of nature, no less than those of grace, are, according to the truly philosophical view of Scrip- ture, not only "begun," but also "continued, and ended," in God. The " heavens " are not simply the finished " work " of his " fingers" ; they are also, and far more characteristically, the constant working of the divine hands. Their " fulness " is not their own, but God's. " Do not / fill heaven and earth.^ saith 186 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. the Lord" (Jer. xxiii. 24). Viewed by itself, as pure physical science views it, the physical universe re- veals itself, not as full, but empty, not substantial, but phenomenal. It can be viewed in its fulness only as it is viewed in God, the Absolute, who " fiUeth all in all." The world is rich, and not poor; yet not by its own power or in its own right; it is full of the riches of God (Ps. civ. 24). The world is a speech, uttered by day unto day, and by night unto night. And the alphabet of this speech is adapted to spell out but one name, and that one not the name of the world, but of God, whose name alone is, in King David's language, " excellent \i. e., cojispicnous, and full of substantial significance] in all the earth" (Ps. viii. i). "That thy name [and here ' name ' stands for the person, the being, sig- nified by the name] is near [not in the remote and inaccessible distance of a mechanical 'First Cause'], thy wondrous works declare" (Ps. Ixxv. i). And they that know this name, with all that it signifies, will put their trust in God (Ps. ix. 10). For this name stands for a "goodness of the Lord," of which the earth is declared to be full (Ps. xxxiii. 5). It stands for universal beauty: " He hath made every thing beautiful in his time" (Eccl. iii. 11). It stands for a majesty of divine glory, of which heaven and earth are full {Te Dcinn, and Ps. Ixxii. 19). It stands for the mercy, of which the earth is full (Ps. cxix. 64), for the power by which the earth is made, the wisdom by which the world is established, and the discretion by which the heavens are stretched out BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 187 (Jer. X. 12, and Prov. iii. 19). It stands, in short, for the eternal and alone absolutely and independ- ently substantial Spirit, who hath stablished the heavens for ever and ever, and hath made a decree — a system of "laws" — that shall not pass (Ps. cxlviii. 6); from whose presence nought can flee away, except it were into nothingness, since it is in him, who is in all and through all, that all things live, and move, and have their very being; and whom all his works, not only " shall," but do, " praise " (Ps. cxlv. 10, and Ps. cxlviii.) Such being the world, the knowledge of it is not something to be shunned, but to be sought out by all them that take pleasure therein (Ps. cxi. 2). The so-called "atheism of science" is not the atheism of science, but only, at most, the non-theism of partial science; and that " love of the world," which a Christian Apostle declares to be incompatible with the love of God, is not the love of the world as it is known to complete, i. e., philosophic science and as the Christian scriptures also conceive and describe it; it is not the love of the world in its full and concrete and true reality, but of that abstrac- tion which men have before their minds when they think of the world on the side of its apparent differ- ence or separation from, and independence of, God. And — let me remark again right here — pantheism, too, that peculiar and just horror of the religious mind, consists, not in finding God, the true God, or God as absolute and eternal Spirit, in all things, but in first forming one's conception of the absolute 188 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. after the analogy of things as they appear when God, as just defined, has been abstracted from, and then calHng this false and insubstantial absolute after the reverend name of God. For indeed — and this now brings us to the dis- tinct recognition of another aspect of the world, which secular science confirms and which is also included in the Christian conception of the world — it is also one of the characteristic things about the world, that it can be looked upon apart from God, abstracting from God. And this possibility is to be regarded as founded, not in any peculiar and acci- dental infirmity of human intelligence, as distin- guished from some real or fancied ideal of absolute intelligence, but in the nature of the world itself. If the world, considered ontologically, or on the side of its absolute reality, is founded in and bears witness only to God, — or, if the world has a side by which it is pro tanto, or according to the measure of its being, in organic union with God, — yet no less truly, and no less characteristically, it has another side of difference from God and even of opposition to him. It has a side of corruptibility and change. By the world, thus regarded, we understand espe- cially the whole realm of the so-called phenomenal, the relative and finite, as such, and more particularly the whole realm of things which are specifically characterized by their subjection to the forms and conditions of space and time. The universal and inherent destiny of such things is, not to abide for ever, but- to pass away. They are a vesture which BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 189 shall be changed (Ps. cii. 26). Thi§ is, in reference to the physical universe at large, that " corruption of the creature," of which the apostle speaks; this is its "subjection to vanity" (Rom. viii. 20, 21, and Eccl. i.) "They shall perish, but thou shalt en- dure" (Ps. cii. 26). Surely, the world is not God. And, yet, is then all God's work for nought .'' Is it indeed to be wholly lost, and not, the rather, saved.? Is there no well-grounded " expectation of the crea- ture } " Does the whole creation groan and travail in pain (Rom. viii. 22), in the vain hope of a birth that shall never be t These questions bring us again face to face with the broader question concerning the rationale of creation, which we have already propounded, and the distinctively Christian answer to which we must now consider. The Christian doctrine of creation is inseparably connected with the doctrine of the Trinity or of God as Absolute Spirit and especially with the doctrine respecting the nature of the Christ, as the second person therein. The New Testament scriptures specially connect the existence of the world with the second person of the Trinity. " The worlds were framed by the word of God," — thus we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews (xi. 3). The initial words of the Old Testament, " In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," are re- peated, as we may say, in an amplified and explan- atory version, in the opening verses of the Gospel According to St. John. " In the beginning was the Word." "All things were made by him." "He 190 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not." And so, in the first verses of the Epistle to the Hebrews, we read again that God "hath in these last days spoken to us by his Son by whom also he made the worlds." It is this Son who, in the following verse is repre- sented as " upholding all things by the word of his power." The divine Word, then, or "the eternal Son," is set before us in the distinctively Christian conception of the subject as the direct and especial principle of the world's existence and subsistence. But he is represented as being this in no merely mechanical and external fashion. The notion of mere fabrication is even further removed from the New Testament conception of creation, than from that apparently contained in the Old, by as much as the former is more explicit than the latter. Not only in its origin, but also in its end, and in all its destined historic fortunes, the world is represented as standing in the most constant and intimate rela- tion to the Divine Son. He is its heir: him hath God "appointed heir of all things" (Heb. i. 2). The apparent bankruptcy of the world is no loss; it is the enrichment of Christ, of the Son, — the fulfilment of the divine Word. The "perishability" of things — their changing, apparently evanescent nature — which to a purely sense-conditioned science seems to constitute their whole nature — is not their whole truth. To mechan- ical sense the entire universe, with all its significant richness of developed detail, is but so much world- BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 191 dust, without inherent rationality, life, or purpose. This is but the symbol of existence, not existence itself; or, more truly, it is but the symbol of a poten- tiality of existence, the active principle of whose re- alization is not to be found in "world-dust" as such.' Nature is thus viewed in abstraction from that in- ward process of an ideal, self-realizing life, which, to the more comprehensively and completely experi- mental eye of reason, or of philosophic intelligence, constitutes her real essence and meaning. For com- plete science, then, and for religion, whose genuine instinct is the instinct of life and of essential reality, the whole truth about nature is summed up, not in any such conception of a purely phenomenal product^ or atomically-constituted "element," as is "world- dust," but in the conception of an organic, living and purposeful process, the total significance of which is summed up in the phrase, "realization or fulfil- ment of the divine Word." In the accomplishment of this process — the writing of this wonderful and all- significant Language of Nature — the atomic world- dust serves but as an insubstantial mechanism of alphabetic symbols. The constitutive source and essence of the process, and its causal principle, are found in the eternal Word, Life, Power, Spirit, among whose "treasures of wisdom and knowledge" are in- cluded all the thoughts that Nature strives to utter. In brief, then, and employing the experimentally accurate language of Aristotle, natural existence is a compound of potentiality and actuality; or, more strictly, every natural existence is involved in a pro- 192 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. cess, whereby a definite, typical, ideal potentiality pro- ceeds towards its own realization.* In the Scriptures the living and all -controlling source and end of all such processes is declared to be, not a blind, impersonal, brutely persistent force, — still less, an " unknowa- ble" one,- — but the living, personal, spiritual Logos, who is no4t only knowable, but is also the very prin- ciple of intelligence and of all knowledge. By Him, in organic dependence on Him, the potentialities of nature are realized or, in scriptural language, "re- deemed," or " saved." Thus, then, the true process or history of the uni- verse is not one of bankruptcy, but of rescue, of redemption, of realization. This is expressed in Scripture as follows: "All things are of God," and " God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto him- self" (2 Cor. v. 18, 19). "Reconciling the world," says the Apostle; and then, as if this statement were not sufficiently explicit, we find him declaring still more roundly and expressly, in another Epistle, that it pleased the Father by Christ "to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven " (Col. i. 20), to the end " that nothing be lost." The process of the world, I repeat, is a process of redemption. The conception of redemption is a cosmical con- ception. That life of the world, for which, in the profound symbolism of Scripture, the Christ is repre- sented as giving up his own, is a life through re- demption. The very reality of the world, its sub- stantial being — and this, as we have seen, is by no BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 193 means identical with its merely phenomenal, sensible quasi-being — and its substantial significance are a reality, being, and significance in and through re- demption alone. Viewed in separation from the Redeemer, by whom alone they "consist" (Col. i. 17), all things are indeed nothing worth, and vanity. Their very essence is, not to be, but to perish. This is that irony of "fate" which rests on all things temporal, so far as they are viewed only as tem- poral or subject to the form of time. It is from this point of view that, in Goethe's " Faust," Mephisto- philes, "the Spirit of Negation," can say with truth, • ' Alles, was entsteht, 1st werth, dass es zu Grunde geht." (The due of every thing, that originates in time, is that it perish. Or, in other words, the substan- tive value and significance, nay, the very being of all that has its origin in time and is considered only as it is subject to the law of time, must and can be ex- pressed only in symbols preceded by a minus sign; its very being, thus viewed, is a piece of irony; for it, as such, to be, is to cease to be.) And it is because this point of view is not the only one, it is because it is the point of view of relative and partial, and not of complete and absolute, science or knowledge, that the next words of Mephistophiles are wholly false: — "Drum besser war's, dass nichts entstUnde." (It were better, therefore, that nought should originate in time.) But philosophy and religion, 194 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. whose point of view is precisely this larger one of completed knowledge, respectively demonstrate and declare a more excellent truth about the world. The declaration of religion is that "all things were created" not only "by him," but also "for him" (Col. i. l6). All things, therefore, in consisting by the Son (ib. 17), i. e., in having their very being and reality by him, are not merely so many independent and finished products, with which his workmanship has nothing further to do. No, they really "con- sist," only as they are, through a continuing process, rescued or redeemed from this state of apparent in- dependence and indifference in relation to their creator and are indeed " for him." Nothing is, which does not in some true sense live, and nothing truly lives, which does not "live unto God." The temporal is real, only as far as it bears the form or image of the eternal. "Creation" is not the com- munication of bare independent existence in time. Such "existence" is a bare and unreal abstraction. Creation is the giving and sustaining of life. In short, "creation" is not merely "creation" by; it is also " creation fo}'." It is not instantaneous and transitory, but progressive and continued; it is not a dead and mechanical process, but living and or- ganic; and creative work is, in its very essence, re- demptive work. We have yet only to see how the "reason" for this work, as a work progressing and continuing in time, is founded, according to the Christian concep- tion, not in any casual, empirical impulse or deter- BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 195 mination on the part of him, the essential and con- stitutive process of whose nature, being non-temporal, is exalted above time and is eternal, but in this very- nature itself. We have to see how creation, as a temporal process, is grounded in creation as an eternal process.' In the same breath, in which St. Paul declares Christ to be "the image of the invisible God," he also calls him "the first-born of every creature" (Col. i. 15). Christ, the creator of all things, is thus himself represented as first or chief of things created. He is not merely the maker, but also the head of the creation. Man is accustomed to think and speak of himself as the head and the quintes- sence of the created universe; and so, from a certain point of view, he may do with perfect right. But the head of man himself, the "Son of Man," the Man pa7' excellence, is the " Son of God." Of man, considered not simply in his distinction from and above all other orders of created existence, but as the microcosm, in whom the essence of all orders of created existence is summed up, Christ is the elder brother. Christ is the "only-begotten Son of God," according to the powerful and significant symbolism of Scripture. But this generation of the Son is not represented nor to be conceived as having occurred " once on a time." It is not a temporal act, but an eternal one; it is a part of that eternal doing, wherein the eternal being of God, the Absolute Spirit, consists. And its result is an other than God (" the Father,") and yet an- 196 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. other that is God's own Other, in whom God's own fulness is made to dwell; in whom, therefore, God realizes or manifests himself; and on whose part, by a further consequence, it is no robbery that he make himself equal with God. It is an Other, which is rescued or redeemed from the quality and condi- tion of pure otherness (distinction from and opposition to God) in that eternal process of the divine Intelli- gence and Love, of which, in our imperfect, because sensibly conditioned, way of speaking, we may with equal reason say that it is at once condition and re- sult. It is an Other which, as representing the place of the "object" in the divine intelligence and love, is — as shown by an analysis in a previous lect- ure — not simply distinguished from the subject of this intelligence and love, but is also, in proportion to the perfection of these functions in God, made inherently one with the "subject" (or with God the "Father") in the concrete unity of an absolute, triune life. The process of the divine nature, then, which is really signified for us by the word Trinity, is in kind a process of creation and redemption. Only, this process is not a finite process. It is not a process in time. It is not subject to the law and conditions of time. It is not a developmental pro- cess, advancing from stage to stage of relative in- completeness and imperfection before it becomes perfect and complete. No, it is the process which is the eternal condition of all time, as it also is of all creation in time. It is an absolute process and is eternally complete. It is, I repeat, the process of BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 197 the divine and absolute Love, which ceasing, all Being also ceases. Creation and redemption, then, in the very largest and deepest sense of these terms, — creation and re- demption, two names for one fact or process, — express the eternal nature of God in his concrete unity, of God as Intelligence, as Life, or as Love, of God as triune, — in short, of God as Absolute Spirit. They express this nature; their "reason" is this nature. And so Christ is for us "the image of the invisible God," not as viewed in abstraction or sep- aration from the world, but only in relation to it, as its Creator and Redeemer. Hence to ask why he should create the world amounts to the same thing as asking why Christ, the eternal Son, should be the image of the invisible God; and this, again, would be the same as requiring us to retrace once more the steps of demonstration which we have already twice trod. The Son, who is "the image," is "with God," and "is God." For him to be, i. e., to be the image of the invisible God, is to create and redeem; and precisely the same truth is expressed in the statement that his being is Love. But, it will be said, in creating the world God in Christ gives con- tingent, time-conditioned existence to things which in form and apparent substance seem contradictorily opposed to him; nay, more, the men whom he has formed are capable, it will be said, of openly and consciously resisting and denying him. Without stopping to remark on the qualifications, with which alone the statement of these facts by the objector 198 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANTPY. can be accepted, the answer to them (substantially in another's phrase) is simply that it is indeed only God, or Absolute Spirit, who can endure this con- tradiction against himself, within himself, /. e., within the realm of his own intelligence, love, and power. And he can do it, nay, he must do it, because of the glorious love that constitutes his very being. Of his absolute love the statement is true without qualification that it hath respect unto the lowly. The more it can give, the more perfectly does it demonstrate at once its riches and its unbounded perfection. The lower it can descend, the more perfectly does it realize its own nature and show it- self indeed godlike. The absolute love of God must descend to an absolute depth, and there is no grade of existence so poor and mean, but that God, as love, can and must create and redeem it. Think the world out of existence, and you set effectual limits to the Absolute, as Christianity conceives it, — /. e., to the absolute Love.* Is then, it will be asked, the creation and conse- quent existence of the physical universe without beginning or end } Here a distinction must be made. Ancient and modern theories of "evolu- tion," or of the temporal history of the universe, have made us familiar with the conception of aeons in that history, or of "ages," during each of which the physical universe is held to pass, from an initial state of universal homogeneity, into and through a series of states of, first increasing, and then decreas- ing, heterogeneity, until at last it returns to its BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 199 original homogeneous condition, — then to begin anew and repeat the same round as before. If we accept this conception, the account of creation given in the Book of Genesis may be — as it has suc- cessfully been — interpreted as an account of the successive steps of development or creation in the present aeon. " In the beginning" may thus mean only in the beginning of this aeon. But when, on the contrary, Christ is said in the New Testament to have been in the beginning with God and as Creator to be "before all things," the sense is cer- tainly different. The relation here expressed is that between the Creator and the created, as such. He who is thus in the beginning of, or "before," all things, is this, not as the temporal, but as the non- temporal or eternal and ideal prius of all things. He is prior to them, as the condition is prior to — • while at the same time and in the same degree it is contemporaneous with — that which is conditioned. "All things" means whatsoever has for its nature to be within time, to be bounded by time, to be subject to the form of time as such. "All things" are, in technical phrase, the " content of time." Now, just as the content of time, abstracting from time itself, is nought {i. e., is an impossibility), so time, abstract- ing from its content, — or, time without any content, — is nought. Whenever time is, then "things" are, or the "physical universe," in one state or another, is. If time is without beginning or end, then the same must be said, apparently, of the divine work of world-creation. But time is something which is 200 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. conditioned, and which has its eternal condition in the eternal, that is, in God himself. There is there- fore no reason for setting limits to its extent, whether in the past or in the future, and conse- quently no reason for setting similar limits to the work of cosmical "creation." In vain do we seek to put a limit of this or any other kind upon the Abso- lute. Philosophy repudiates the attempt, and the Christian religion, certainly, is not guilty of it. But, you may again ask, is not the foregoing ex- position of the scriptural conception of creation "pantheistic".? I have by implication' already an- swered this question. Here let it suffice to say that it is indeed on the one hand, the scriptural Christian view that God must be "all in all:" but that also, on the other hand, it is only this view — which in so far perfectly coincides with the demonstrations of philosophy — that really and ef- fectively excludes the pantheistic conception. Pan- theism, as I have already twice indicated in this lecture, results only from an abstract or partial and essentially mechanical and sense-conditioned view of the world. It results from a view which, not being concrete and hence also complete, abstracts from spirit and its attributes, and re- duces the essence of all things to the abstract mechanical unity of an inherently undifferentiated, and absolutely homogeneous substance. Then in- deed all things are reduced to unity with a ven- geance, — with a vengeance, namely, that wipes out the whole significance of the characteristic differences BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 201 of things among themselves and, especially, of the difference between the relative and the absolute. Then indeed all is "God," or, more truly spoken, all is nought, is essential vanity. But to the concreter and more complete view of Christianity, as also of true philosophy, while God is " all in all," yet all things are not absorbed in God, as in a numerical unity, nor is God simply merged in and dispersed among the plurality of dependent existences. The recognition of the experimental fact of the organic- spiritual dependence of the world on God puts an effectual barrier in the way of any attempted literal identification of the former with the latter, at the same time that it accords to the latter — to God — the sole occupancy of the throne of absolute being, and denies to the former — to the world — the possi- bility of possessing any substantial being that is not held in dependence on God. I only remark in closing that it must now prob- ably be sufficiently obvious both that, and why, the questions raised in purely scientific theories respect- ing the temporal order or history of the physical universe — theories of physical evolution, and the like — are destitute of substantial interest and im- portance for the mind whose specific point of view is that either of philosophy or of religion. Such theories are per se perfectly legitimate and perfectly harmless; and, so far as they are experimentally verified, they are to be unquestioningly accepted. They become false and justly offensive only when they are stretched — whether on the part of their 202 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. authors or of their critics— beyond their true scien- tific meaning and made to do duty for that, from which they are specifically and totally different, namely, for the philosophy of nature. Whenever this is done, it is done on the basis of a false dis- tinction between what is called " nature and the supernatural." The natural and the supernatural, the physical and the metaphysical, brute or soul- less mechanism and living organism, matter and spirit, these all are set over against each other in a "hard and fast" opposition, the one being held, in each case, to be the contradictory opposite, and only the contradictory opposite, of the other. The partisan of "evolution" then becomes, not simply an "evolutionist" — i. c, a believer in the truth of the law of evolution as an historic fact, — but a fatal- ist and mechanist in philosophy, who banishes the so-called supernatural, metaphysical, living, and spiritual from all his conceptions of reality. The unintelligent, but popular, critic of the mechanis- tic evolutionist, on the other hand, instead of cor- recting the error of his ostensible adversary, does really the rather perpetuate it, inasmuch as, while he nominally sets himself up for the defence of all that the mechanist denies, he yet also insists that the " supernatural " is distinct, and only dis- tinct, from the "natural"; that the former occupies, therefore, none but an essentially mechanical re- lation to the latter, and that, by a still further consequence, the power of the supernatural over the natural is only a brute power to "interfere" BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 203 and by sheer might to direct, as from without. In this way the "supernatural" is degraded into an equality or identity of rank with the "natural"; and this is next door to pantheism, as above defined. The mechanist and his opponent alike thus deal only in abstractions. The truth of nature is the true "supernatural." Or, nature, viewed as purely "physical," is an abstraction. That this is so, phi- losophy demonstrates, and true religion presupposes. In sum, then, we find Christianity declaring, and philosophy assenting to and confirming the declara- tion, that all things live and move and have their being in God; but not that they constitute God. LECTURE VII. BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY; — MAN. '' I ^HE subject of this lecture is strictly continuous, -^ though not identical, with that of the preced- ing one. Man is, on the one hand, part and parcel of the created universe. If, according to the con- ceptions reached in the last lecture, the direct result of all creative labor in the universe is not an im- mediately finished work, existing thenceforth in self-sufificient independence of its source, but ra- ther a divine possibility, which requires evermore to be redeemed from the vanity or emptiness of mere possibility by the incessant and universal act- ualizing energy of the absolute and divine Spirit, the same is also true of man. The nature of man, like that of the physical universe to which he be- longs, is bipolar or two-faced. On the one side, man, like physical nature, is subject to time and to its law of mutability and corruption, and is so repre- sented in the Christian Scriptures. " Man that is born of a woman, is of few days He Com- eth forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not " (Job xiv. I, 2). "Man being in honor abideth not: he is lilce (204) BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— AIAN. 205 the beasts that perish" (Ps. xHx. 12). "The first man," /. e., man viewed according to his first or immediate appearance, "is earthy" (i Cor. xv. 47). He is turned to destruction (Ps. xc. 3), and " goeth to his long home" (Eccl. xii. 5). "He cometh in with vanity, and departeth in darkness " (Eccl. vi. 4). This is the side by which man, like nature, is, so to express it, turned away fi-om God or fi-om absolute reality. This is the side of man's relative emptiness or pure phenomenality; — the side fi-om which alone if we contemplate man, he, like nature, appears as an insubstantial " shadow." But man, as also na- ture, has another side, which, as we may say, is turned toward God. He is not altogether and only fleeting. He is not wholly swallowed up in the apparently all-devouring " maw of time." He has a side of reality which is exalted above the assaults of time; a side whereby he takes hold of God, the Absolute Reality, or, rather, whereby God takes hold of him, and wherein he, like nature, is sus- tained only by that creative-redemptive agency of God, which is the universal condition of all truly substantial finite existence. And so man is "part and parcel of the created universe." But, on the other hand, man has also his side of specific difference from and distinction above the universe that surrounds him. If in all things else a " divine possibility" is lodged, in him there dwells a still diviner one. If nature is, in the hands of her Creator, as the clay to be fashioned by a divine art, in man this art proposes to itself a still more won- 206 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. derful work. While nature bears and reveals every- where the name of God, man is to be made in his express image. To this end man must be and is made to bear the image of the divine absoluteness and independence. Like God, he must be an inde- pendent "worker." Like him he must be and is a self-centred, self-conscious personality, and has within the sphere of his own being a precinct, in which his sway resembles by its absoluteness the sway of God. He must have, and he has indeed, a power of self-determination and a sphere for the act- ive exercise of this power. And this sphere, as just intimated, lies close at hand and is identical with the realm of his own self-conscious personal being. Here he has a personal, independent work to do. It is a work which it is impossible that another should do for him. It is a work, in the performance of which no one has any power to stay his hand, and to which also, on the other hand, no one can compel him. It is a work which bears the image of the creative-re- demptive work of God himself. For the work com- mitted to man's hands is none other than the realiza- tion, the rescue, the redemption, the salvation of the divine possibility that is lodged in him and is en- trusted, as a talent, to his keeping. "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling" are the words that are addressed to him (Phil. ii. 12). In other words, the true and perfect being of man is depen- dent on his doing. He cannot be himself, or, man cannot indeed be man, by merely and inertly " ex- isting." Thus existing, he is man only in name and BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 207 in outward appearance. He is man only in semblance, but not in effective reality. He is as yet only the bare possibility of a man, and in order to be a man in fact, in order to have in him the reality of true human sub- tance, he must be up and doing. He must act. He, I say, and not another, must act. By his own self-con- scious, self-determining, purposeful activity, he must redeem and realize the divine possibility that resides in him. In order to be himself, he must create him- self. Thus is man in the image of God and like God. But only like God, not equal with him. The power lodged in earthen vessels, independent and godlike as it is, is not one that can separate itself absolutely from God, except to its own destruction. Its own initiative must be followed up and sustained by the power of God, or all its labor is worse than lost. And so it is that, while man is called on to work out his own salvation, he has also the assured knowl- edge that God works in him both to will and to do of his good pleasure. The great glory of man, ac- cording to the Christian conception of him, is that he is a colaborer with God. In this consists the di- vinity of man. On the other hand, the pledge of man's possible success in accomplishing the work committed to him, lies in the circumstance that God, the Infinite Love, condescends to be a coworker with him. Such, stated in general terms, is the Christian conception of man. Such is the Christian idea of man's nature, on the one hand as compared with the nature of the created universe at large and, on 208 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. the other hand, as related to God and the divine nature. We may say that the greatest immediate practical interest of Christianity centres, and is by the Scriptures made to centre, in its conception, its theory, of man. Christianity is not, in its theory, merely a Theology. It is also, as we have seen, a Cosmology and, as we are about to see, an Anthro- pology. And my assertion is that, in the order of immediate practical interest, the anthropological element occupies the most prominent place. From this point of view we may say that the theology and cosmology are there for the sake of the anthropol- ology. They are there because no true and com- plete theory of man is possible without them, or because man cannot truly know himself or be made to know himself without taking into account as well the side of his unity with, as of his distinction from, both God and universal nature. Or, in still other words, the theory of the Christian religion is (among other things) essentially an eth- ical one. Ethics is, in the most comprehensive sense of these words, the Science of Man. Its province is to demonstrate and define the essential nature or character of man, — of man so far as he is " true to himself," i. e., so far as he is indeed man and not merely the semblance of man. The province of ethics, I say, is to demonstrate and define this, and also to demonstrate and define the law of practical activity whereby man realizes his true and essential nature or whereby man makes himself to be, and is indeed, man. This is ethical science, and nothing BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 209 less than this is that theory of the Christian life which is taught both by precept and by amazingly per- fect example, in the Christian Scriptures, and most of all in those which are most distinctively Christian. We may say, as we are accustomed to say, with a relative truth that Christian ethics is especially the science of the Christian man or of Christian man- hood. But this mode of expression, notwithstand- ing its unquestioned relative justification and even its practical necessity, is nevertheless likely to mis- lead us, as indeed we know it does mislead thous- ands, into the false supposition that after all the so-called Christian man is only one among many possible and really existing kinds of men, the pe- culiarity by which he is distinguished from other men consisting in certain eccentricities of belief and practice, which are not essential and indeed have no relation to the constitution of intrinsic and perfect manhood; so that the Christian is not more, or more truly, a man than anyone else; he is not the perfect man in kind, but only a man of a peculiar sort. And then, as we know, such plausible grounds for main- taining and perpetuating this singular view are fur- nished by the actual or apparent character borne by a considerable and conspicuous number of those who call themselves "Christians." One could al- most wish that the word Christian had never come into common use. Certain it is that this word does not belong to the common vocabulary of Scripture or of the ethics therein contained. There we are bidden to mark, not the "Christian," but the "per- 210 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. feet man." The words of Jesus himself are an in- vitation and an exhortation to us to be, not "Chris- tians," but "perfect" (Matt. v. 48). And the like description belongs to the ideal set before us by the Apostles, who drank deeply and immediately of the spirit of Jesus and all whose labor and instructions are to the end that those whom they address may simply be perfect men; that they may " be perfect and entire, wanting nothing" (James i. 4); and then — as showing wherein, particularly, the perfec- tion of man consists — that they may " stand perfect and complete in all the will of God" (Col. iv. 12); that they may be " perfect in Christ Jesus " (Col. i. 28) ; "till we all come," through "the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (Eph. iv. 13). He, the divine Man, in whom was found no sin, nor any defect, exemplified, in all its "fulness," the "measure of the stature" of the "perfect man"; and to the attainment of this stature the follower of Christ, in dependence on his "ready help," is called upon to aspire. The theory of what we are pleased to call the Christian life, as contained in the Christian Scrip- tures, and as constituting the substantial kernel of " Christian ethics," is then, ostensibly only a theory of the perfect life and of the perfect man; and the "laws" which it contains are the laws, in pursuance of which man is made or becomes, not perfect God, nor perfect beast, nor even perfect "Christian," but simply perfect man. Or, otherwise expressed, Chris- BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY; — MAN. 211 tian ethics offers us the theory of the " Christian " man and of the "Christian" life only because, and so far as, the term "Christian" is a synonyme for "perfect," and may be and is employed as a more concrete and hence more definite and expressive substitute for the latter. The Christian Scriptures, now, on the side of their ethical content, or as containing and illustrating the- theory of the perfect man, are extremely rich. Heie nothing is conceded to, or advanced under the name of, " mere theory." In other words, the whole the- ory is strictly experimental and in so far complies perfectly'vvith the requirements of a scientific theory. Its lessons are all taken from life. It teaches no doctrine of human corruption, or of the possible per- version and ruin of the divine possibilities resident in man, for which it is not able to offer in evidence an immediate, actual illustration. And it sets up no ideal of the perfect man, of which it is unable to illus- trate the practicability. Its great teacher is also its perfect exemplar and has only to say to his disciples, " Follow thou me." The further evidence of its truth is found in the circumstance that the genius of hu- manity has recognized itself in the picture drawn in the Christian Scriptures and, thus inspired, has gone about to realize itself in a civilization, which, whatever its deficiencies and how great soever its blemishes, contains in it far more of " man true to himself," or of genuine humanity, than has ever been witnessed in non-Christian centuries or under non-Christian climes. The "measure of the stature of the fulness 212 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. of Christ " has in practice been found to be the mea- sure of the stature of the perfect man. Through the knowledge of Christ man has come to the best knowl- edge of himself, and through the imitation of Christ he has, thus far, most successfully realized himself But not only is this true. It is also true that, just as Christian theology — I employ this word here in its more literal or etymological sense, as denoting only doctrine of or about God — rather corrects and sup- plements, than contradicts and absolutely over- throws, the theology of the classic Greek philo- sophy, so Christian ethics, or the Christian theory of Man, rather completes and is confirmed by, than opposed to the best of non-Christian conceptions. God has not left man without the means of knowing himself, even in times and places not reached by the words of the Christian Scriptures or by the influence of specifically Christian ideas. And the part of wis- dom for the Christian teacher is, doubtless, not to forget this fact, nor to remain in ignorance of the ex- tent of its truth, but the rather to be in full and com- plete knowledge of it, and to make use of this knowl- edge, as well he may, for the purpose of demonstrating the fuller and deeper truth of the Christian conception of man. On the other hand, and from another point of view, there exist in our day peculiar reasons why the teacher of Christian ethics — and every Christian minister is called upon, in his peculiar way and place, to be such a teacher — should have a full and complete sense of the strictly experimental BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 213 and theoretic truth of Christian ethics, considered as Science of Man, and should be prepared, upon occasion, to demonstrate the same. Whether with or without reason, there can be no doubt that, in the minds of a large body of influential men, — men whose sincerity of purpose and conviction is not to be questioned, and who occupy conspicuous positions in the world of science, — the impression prevails that the laws, ideals, and sanctions of Christian morality are not made for man as he actually is, nor dictated by a knowledge of the true and immediate nature of man and his relations. The morality of Christi- anity is held to be the morality of other-worldliness, i. e., of man as an alleged denizen of an other, non- natural (or so-called "supernatural,") world, in which, as a matter of immediate experimental fact, he does not find himself existing, and of which he can know nothing except on the faith of an arbitrary and wholly unverifiable "revelation." The whole ob- ject of Christian morality, it seems to be thought, is to dehumanize man and to make of him, not a perfect man, but an angel, — i. e., something too good for this present world, and about which, for the rest, man must forever remain in substantial ignorance, so long as he continues to inhabit the earth. Christian ethics is thus viewed as a system of arbitrary " moral injunctions," in the form of " divine commandments," whose sanction and au- thority are derived exclusively from " their supposed sacred origin." I am now citing phrases employed by Mr. Herbert Spencer in the Preface to his " Data 214 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. of Ethics." In view, now, of the fact that — accord- ing to Mr. Spencer's belief, and in his language — " moral injunctions are losing the authority given by their supposed sacred origin," this author holds that the " secularization of morals is becoming im- perative." What Mr. Spencer means, and what his followers believe that he has accomplished, by the "secularization of morals," is well expressed by one of his sympathetic Italian expositors. Prof. Traina, of Turin, who, in a recently published work, main- tains that "the modern method" — as he calls it, and of which he regards Mr. Spencer as the most illustrious living representative — has "humanized ethics."^ The "secularization of morals," then, means the same as the " humanizing" of morals, and the demand for such secularization is equivalent to the demand that ethics shall be treated and cul- tivated as a science grounded in the living, actual, experimentally knowable natijre of man. This de- mand, considered in the abstract, is surely perfectly justifiable, and ought to be quite unnecessary. For, if I have above correctly defined the subject-matter and scope of ethics, it is obvious that there can in no proper sense of the term be any science of ethics, which does not meet the mentioned requirement. But the demand in question is significant, if we may infer from the fact of its being made that the morality of Christianity is or has been currently set forth, by any whose office it is to expound and apply it, in such a manner as to convey to men who are not without intelligence, and who cannot BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;-~MAN. 215 be supposed capable of wilful and perverse intention to misrepresent, the impression that it does not deal with the real, inmost, and experimentally- demonstrable nature of man, but is (in Spencer's phrase) "supernatural," /. e., as he understands this word, preternatural, and deals with presuppositions, laws, and ideals that are foreign to man as he really or actually is or can be, and are hopelessly remote from the sphere of human inquiry and demonstra- tion. If this inference is well-founded, there can be no question that the fact to which it relates is a real scandal; that the view indicated respecting the nature of Christian morality is a travesty upon "the truth as it is in Jesus"; and that it is immedi- ately and urgently incumbent on all those, whose special office it is to know and promulgate this truth, that they remove forever this rock of offence. For the rest, I have not here to enter upon a dis- cussion, on the one hand, of the extent to which occasion may really have been given for the fore- mentioned misapprehension of the true nature of Christian ethics, and, on the other hand, of the extent to which the quasi-philosophical presuppo- sitions of Mr. Spencer and his followers may have determined and unconsciously warped their own perceptions. Only, of this I am sure, namely, that whatever may have been, or may still be, the notion of Christian ethics conveyed by any class of pro- fessed Christian teachers, the conception of the nature of man and of the law of his perfect being, which is contained in the Christian scriptures and 216 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. is essential to the Christian religion in its purity, is infinitely deeper, richer, and truer, and hence by so much more truly and genuinely " human," than any which has been reached by the so-called " modern method."^ And this I venture to say in the name and with the authority of philosophy, whose "method" knows no distinction of "ancient" (or "antiquated") and "modern," and whose ideal is simply that of the complete recognition and demonstration of the whole content of experience. In distinction from the ethics of philosophy and Christianity, I venture to assert that the self-styled " scientific " ethics, which thus laudably aims and claims to "humanize ethics," abstracts in tendency and, to the greatest extent, in reality, from all that is most essential and substantial about man. In- deed, is it not the well-known and universal con- tention of the school in question, that only the phenomenal can be known by man, and that the absolutely real is forever unknowable .'' Does not Mr. Spencer himself seek to persuade us that, not only all other existence, but also, in particular, our own is involved in impenetrable mystery .'' Is not to him the very belief in " self," though inexpugn- able, yet wholly inexplicable and incomprehen- sible .-* And so, the ethics, which corresponds to this view and to this " method," contemplates, in fact, rather the simulacrum of man, than man him- self, and sets before us rather the phenomenal and contingent than the substantial and eternal law of man's being. It presents us with just such a picture BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY; — MAN. 217 of man, as pure physical science gives us of external nature. Just as the latter does not penetrate into the inner being and spiritual reality of nature, but stops short with the ascertainment of her external phenomena and of their mechanical relations, just so, in theory, does the former proceed with regard to man. I cannot therefore but call it abstract, rather than concrete, ethics, " metaphysical," ' rather than philosophical, and partially and superficially, rather than completely and deeply, experimental. And I say all this, without wishing to ignore — the rather, desiring fully to recognize and commend — all that, within its peculiar limits, has been solidly accom- plished for ethics by the followers of the " modern method." Let us return, now, to our main theme, and con- sider more in detail what is the Christian or Biblical conception of man, and of the law and condition of man's perfection. The general nature of this con- ception I have already indicated, at the beginning of this lecture. I have also indicated, in particular, that, in accordance with the proper and substantial sense of the word being, taken universally, man can be, and is indeed, truly himself only through an activity, whereby he actually realizes himself; that, by necessary consequence, antecedently to such real- ization man is but a "possibility," though a "divine" one; that the realization or "rescuing" of this pos- sibility depends on an activity, which, in its univer- sal nature, may strictly be termed creative and redemptive; and that to man, by virtue of his self- 218 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. conscious personality, the direction of this activity is, under God, committed. All this, I say, I have indicated, with the intimation that it is in agreement with the fundamental conceptions of Scripture. What, now, we must first inquire, is the "possibility" in question ">. What is the ideal of man, the specific type, or definable " nature," which, according to the view of Scripture, man must actively realize, in order to be man indeed, and not only in name, and in pro- portion only as he realizes which he is truly himself.-* The answer is simple and clear. ]\Ian is man only as he realizes in himself the image of God, He is perfect man only as his perfection resembles that of his " Father which is in heaven " (Matt. v. 48). But God is a Spirit; the perfection of man will therefore be characteristically a spiritual perfection. Is, now, man, so far as, realizing this perfection, he becomes truly man, an independent rival of God .'' By no means. Not in separation from God — still less in opposition to or rivalry with God — but in living, or- ganic, effective union with him is man made perfect. The perfect man is a partaker of the divine nature (2 Pet. i. 4), a partaker of the Holy Ghost (Heb. vi. 4), of the everlasting and absolute, divine Spirit. God is his inheritance, receiving which, and so first and effectively becoming a son of God, he first ac- quires the right to be called in downright and un- qualified fact a "son of man." Further, the condition, on which the realization of the perfection described depends, is an activity on man's part, — an activity of the spirit, founded on spiritual knowledge, subject BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAJV. 219 to the will of God (which is but another name for the law of absolute being), supported by the activity of God himself, and manifesting itself in the "fruits of the spirit," the collective and all-comprehensive name for which is love, or " charity." And, finally, the fulcrum, the point of support, for this activity on man's part — the necessary resisting surface, so to express it — and the sphere for its manifestation, is the " flesh " and the " world." Each of these points we must now consider some- what in detail, proceeding from the last to the first. With respect to the negative side of man, or that which I have termed, in effect, the necessary resist- ant condition and the immediate place or sphere of his spiritual activity, comparatively little needs to be said. It is simply not true, as the critics of Christian ethics often seem to imagine, that Chris- tianity, or true religion, any more than true phi- losophy, abstracts, in contemplating man, from his surroundings and conditions in time and space, with a view to regarding him solely as the predestined denizen of a realm — a Kingdom of Heaven — which lies wholly beyond the realm of time and space and into which man cannot and must not enter here and now, if at all. The apparently contradictory state- ments of Scripture on this point are easily reconciled with each other and with the general order of truths demonstrated in these lectures. It is, thus, indeed true that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the king- dom of God:" "corruption" cannot "inherit incor- ruption" (i Cor. xv. 50). Yet it is also true that 220 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. the body of the true man is, here and now, a "tem- ple of the Holy Ghost " (i Cor. vi. 19), of the " living God" (2 Cor. vi. 16), and is, in "reasonable service," presented as "a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God" (Rom. xii. i). The state of the case is simply this: it is not by as much as man is flesh and blood that he inherits the kingdom of God; it is not by simple virtue of his physical constitution, as such, that man is or can be man, i. e., a living spirit; but, on the other hand, this inheritance is his, and he is such a spirit, not without the body: the latter is the necessary mechanical basis and instrumental condi- tion of man's spiritual self-realization and so of his present and immediate entrance into the kingdom, at once of God and of man. The relation is pre- cisely analogous to, though in- content much richer than, the one that we have already observed as existing in nature at large between what may be termed her outer and her inner sides, or between the ever-changing (and so inherently "corrupti- ble"), mechanical, physico- phenomenal garb or "first appearance" of nature and her permanent and inward, living, spiritual substance. To the very conception of nature — to the completely con- crete and experimental conception of nature — we found that the notion, the recognition, of the one side was just as essential as that of the other. From neither side was it possible to abstract except at the cost of rendering our conception of nature herself abstract, inexperimental, hollow, and dis- torted. The like is true with regard to man. Only, BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY; — MAN. 221 man is differentiated from nature in this, that, if I may thus express myself, his spiritual "filHng" is richer than hers; it is more obvious, explicit, com- plete, and concrete. It is plainer that there is, in Job's words, "a spirit in man," than that there is one in nature. For, in nature, to employ an ancient figure, the spirit seems to sleep, while in man it is awake. In the former it seems unconscious, while in the latter it is self-conscious. In the one case, it appears as though it were seeking to hide itself, while in the other it comes clearly forth from its concealment. In short, that is only implicitly in nature, which is explicitly in man. The abstrac- tion, therefore, of which I spoke above, customarily and not unnaturally takes, when indulged, a differ- ent form or direction, according as the subject of consideration is nature or man. On the one hand, men, looking, through the glasses of pure physical science, at that side of nature which at first lies nearest at hand and seems most characteristically and obviously "natural," — viz., at the purely me- chanical and sensible side, — form a conception of nature as mere dead and automatic mechanism, devoid of living, spiritual substance. On the other hand, others, looking through the glasses of an equally one-sided and abstract "metaphysics," or of a misinterpreted " Christianity," at that side of man's nature which is most characteristically "hu- man" — viz., at its ideal-spiritual side — have formed the abstract, spectral, and inexperimental concep- tion of man as consisting, properly speaking, of 222 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. nothing but a so-called " immaterial soul," out of all intrinsic relation to the body and its physical en- vironment, and to which the body and all physical conditions are rather a clog and burden than at once a necessary and a helpful instrument. Both of these abstractions are equally unphilosophical and irrbligious; and, in particular, they are not scriptural. The Christian man — to confine our- selves now to the immediate subject of discussion chosen for this lecture — not only lives in the con- fident assurance that in his flesh he shall see God, but he also believes that he has seen and evermore sees the Word made flesh, God manifested in the flesh (i Tim. iii. i6), the invisible in the visible. Instead, therefore, of his regarding " the flesh," or " matter," and, in general, a physical constitution of things, as something inherently corrupt and pol- luting, something foreign to God and inimical to the perfect being of the spiritual man, he sees in it simply the language in which God speaks to man and the mechanism through which God manifests himself and so really and effectively is or exists for man. And so, too, he is compelled to see in the fact of his own participation, through his bodily or- ganization, in the ph}-sical constitution of things, not the evidence of a mistake on the part of his Creator, but rather proof of a gracious intention that man should, here and now, in the flesh, be a coworker with God, that he, too, should in his turn, through his life and activity in the flesh, speak to God {^' Laborare est orare'') and, as in a reflected BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY; — MAN. 223 image, reveal him; and, in short, that through the due mastery and use of his "members" — not by ascetic neglect and mortification of them — he should at once develope and demonstrate his own spiritual nature and the true relation of his members to that nature, by rendering the latter "servants to righteousness, unto holiness " (Rom. vi. 19). The Christian rejoices in the leadership of a master, by whom not only the worlds were made, but who, himself incarnate, came, and, by his spirit, ever- more comes, into the world, not to condemn, but to finish and redeem and possess, his own work. He rejoices in the saying of that Master, "As I am, so are ye in the w^orld." Not outside the world, not in some fancied, but as yet unrealized (and in fact inconceivable), state of existence in complete sepa- ration from a mechanical constitution of things, but " in the world," participating in its life and mastering its uses, does the perfect man, the spiritual man, the partaker of the divine nature, " possess all things." And even the future glory, which he anticipates, is subject to conditions of essentially similar nature. Then, as now, " all things " become his, not through their annihilation, nor by his absolute removal or separation from them, but through his and their "redemption," "salvation," preservation. The flesh, then, is given to man, in the view of Scripture, not that he may abandon and hate it, nor yet that he may identify himself wholly with it, but that he may, so to speak, the rather identify it, as a necessary instrument, with himself, through the 224 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. normal and proper use of it. He, I say, must use it, and not allow it the rather to use him. It must be his servant, and not he its servant. To this end an activity is required on his part, an activity which proceeds characteristically from the spirit, and not from the body, and yet which, if I may so express myself, proceeds, not away from, but toward the body and, through it, toward that mechanical order of things, of which the body is as an organic part. It is an activity which finds in the flesh and the world the necessary resistant foil and the lever, whereby it is itself at once rendered possible and definite and real, so that the agent employing it fights not vainly, as "one that beateth the air." The further nature of this activity, with its conditions and its law, are to be presently examined. Here it is important for us first to notice that the possibility just suggested, viz., that the flesh, being more than a mere dead instrument and endowed as if with a power of its own, may reduce its rightful master into bondage to itself and so even prevent his existing in any other form than that of an unrealized or perverted potentiality, — that this possibility, I say, is one, to the recognition of which an important place must be given in any completely experimental science of man, and which indeed occupies a position of fun- damental importance in the anthropology of the Christian Scriptures. The Scriptures recognize, namely, a distinction between the "natural man" and the "spiritual man," — a distinction which reap- pears under such other forms of expression as the BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 225 "outward" and the "inward," the "old" and the "new," the "first "and the "second," man, or, briefly, the "flesh" and the "spirit." The former of these comes first in the order of time. It is man as he is first made, man as, independently of his own volition, he is first physically constituted and landed, a help- less stranger, on nature's breast. It is the earthen vessel, as to whose destination, whether for honor or dishonor, nothing is at first determined. It is, considered antecedently to any free and independent activity on the part of the man himself, simply the potential or possible man, the nominal man, sensibly individualized, — defined and located in relations of time and space. It is, thus viewed, the sign of a hu- man possibility, not of a human reality. But it is also, I repeat, something more than this. It is also a power, that resists, and that may enter into suc- cessful rivalry with, the true, the spiritual man. Its resistance we have indicated as necessary to the real activity of the spirit. Its successful resistance in- volves the spirit's ruin. " To be carnally minded is death" (Rom. viii. 6). It is only nominal, not real, manhood and life. The subject of it is, morally and most essentially, a spectre, a corpse, a veritable "body of death." In the flesh there is "no good thing;" and this, in the first instance, simply because the flesh is neither the seat of any good nor of any evil thing; it is morally indifferent. Its action is blind, mechanical, and irresponsible. But when, and so far as, resisting and warring against the spirit, it meets with unchecked success, its work is 226 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. the abomination of moral desolation. He, whose whole life is absorbed in the service of the flesh, who, not a master, but a real slave, yields submis- sively to all the motions of the flesh, is not, and can- not be, in the kingdom of God or of Man. Nor does he demean himself as a member of the kingdom of Nature. For then, harmlessly following the normal impulses of nature, and being guided in his course by that universal providence which is to nature as her soul, he would, like the fowls of the air and the lilies of the field, simply fulfil, unreflectingly and spontaneously, the universal law of nature, in a life at harmony with itself and with its surroundings, — a life of relative beauty and service. But this he never does, and the fact that he never does it is one evidence that he cannot do it. He cannot do it, be- cause, though visibly born from the womb of nature, he is not all of nature or for her. He has another birth, which is of the free self-conscious spirit, and is of God. By this he is specifically differentiated from nature. By virtue of this a specific work is given him to do, a work, the doing of which is essential to the realization of his own proper and complete be- ing and which nature cannot do for him. The nec- essary result, therefore, of his seeking to identify himself wholly with the purely natural man and de- livering himself over to follow none but carnal im- pulses, is and can be only the perversion and the ruin, both of the natural and of the spiritual man. It is a human monstrosity, and its works — since no epithet from the realm of God or nature can be found BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 227 for the purpose of characterizing them — can only be called devilish. They are at enmity, both with na- ture and with nature's God. In them the image of God is not to be found. And they are also a crying ontological absurdity; for they contradict, as far as is possible, philosophy's universal and experiment- ally-founded definition of all true and genuine being as grounded in the consistent and regular fulfilment of a definite, typical, and purposeful activity. Hence also, as above noted, the condition which they de- note is rightly termed in Scripture one of death rather than life. He who ostensibly "lives" in them, is in reality dead, and not alive. The true man, with the specific marks and substance of gen- uine manhood, is not there. In fact, he has not yet begun to be; he has not yet been born; and, in order that he may at last really be, and not merely coun- terfeit, or, still worse, present nothing but a wretched travesty upon, the true being of a man, he must, in the expressive language of Jesus, be "born again." He must be "born of the Spirit," and "of God." The "birth of the Spirit": this, to sense, with its abstract mechanical categories, is that incredible and so-called "supernatural" wonder, in which thought, with its more concrete and completely experimental categories, sees, not the contradiction, but the ful- filment, of nature and of her prophecies. Here the full meaning of creation and redemption — please re- call, from the last lecture, how these two concep- tions necessarily involve each other — -becomes ex- plicit ^nd Qbyiqus. Here the work o.f Cfeation first 228 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. becomes complete. Herein is fulfilled the word of the Lord, spoken by the mouth of that ancient prophet who, more than all others, seems to have been endowed with the power of "spiritual under- standing," saying, "So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void; but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it " (Is. Iv. 1 1). That divine word, which, being spoken, goes forth into and creatively constitutes the external uni- verse, and whose sound is heard, even as also its characters are read, throughout the world, returns not to the everlasting speaker " void," or merely as an empty and substanceless echo. It returns in- deed, but not until, with the birth of the spirit, all its implicit meaning or content has been explicitly developed, manifested, concretely realized, in the world, and so the thing, whereto it was sent, has been accomplished. It returns in the form of a cre- ation, which, conscious of its true self, can, as na- ture with her veiled consciousness can not, be con- scious of the Absolute Spirit who is imaged therein; a creation which, relatively self-centred in its own personality, can perceive that the absolute centre of all its conscious life and of all its being is there alone where absolute being is to be found; and which, therefore, looking God in the face, can spiritually return to him and say, " Thou art my Father," and be welcomed back to the embrace of the divine life and love. But we are anticipating our conclusion. The birth BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 229 of the spirit is indeed man's true birth, and his only- true birth. The spiritual world, in the energetic language of the elder Fichte, is indeed man's " true birth-place." Here first he begins to " have life in himself," and so to have not merely the outward semblance, but also the inward substance, of human- ity. From the grave of the flesh, with its dead works, proceeds the resurrection of the spirit " to serve the living God." But the resurrection is not itself the service. The " birth " of the spirit is only its begin- ning, not its completion. Fresh-born, it is not yet stablished in the image and by the power of the "free Spirit" of God. It is, as yet, only a glorious possibility, the rich content of which has yet to be rescued, redeemed, created, realized, by an appro- priate activity. And this activity, I have said, is "an activity on man's part, an activity of the spirit, founded on spiritual knowledge, subject to the will of God (which is but another name for the law of ab- solute being), and supported by the activity of God himself" First, it is a spiritual activity on man's part, or proceeding from man himself A spirit is not made; it is self-made. It realizes itself. Self-determina- tion is the universal form of all spiritual activity. The image of self-determination is presented to us in the processes of nature. With the accomplished accuracy of a scientific expert Aristotle described the process, by which a natural existence is real- ized, and is maintained in existence, as one which has the form of self-realization: a typical form real- 230 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. izes itself in and by means of the material that it finds lying at hand.* The form, I say, of this process is that of self-determination. But the substance, which this form necessarily implies, is self-conscious- ness, or, still better and more explicitly, consciously self-determining spirit. And it is because of this re- lation, and because the "substance" mentioned is not found immediately in nature, that to thought, the spirit's organ, the form of nature's life proclaims unmistakably the reality of an omnipresent and ever- wakeful, divine consciousness, — the self-conscious life and activity of God. In the case of man, who is a spirit and destined, so far as he becomes truly him- self, to be in the image of God, the Absolute Spirit, form and substance of self-determination cannot be separated. The mere form, or image, will not suffice. By this alone man were in no sense discriminated from pure nature; he were only " sleeping spirit," no better than a bare potentiality. No; in man, if he is to be really man, there must be present the living, energetic reality of self-determiination. He must, like his Heavenly Father, be spiritually awake; and this, too, not for a moment only, or from time to time, but constantly. Not a single act of self-de- termination only, nor that act spasmodically repeated at uncertain intervals, but a sustained process is re- quired, — a process that knows neither haste nor rest and through which the spirit, the real man, finding means and (so to speak) assimilable material in all the changing circumstances and opportunities of his existence, patiently and persistently realizes him- BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 231 self in and through the same. " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." In these words is sounded the key-note of the human spirit's supremest obli- gation and privilege. For in order to be, it must do, — it must work. It must work out its own " sal- vation"; it must realize itself. Secondly, the condition of the self-determining activity in question is spiritual knowledge. The object of this knowledge is " the truth," the truth as such, the universal truth. The knowledge spoken of is not mere erudition. It does not consist in mere information, however encyclopedic the latter may be conceived, respecting the particular facts or phe- nomena of nature and history and the laws of order — of co-existence and sequence, — by which these facts are rendered at once possible and real objects of human intelligence. It does not indeed exclude, nor is it necessarily prejudiced by, such " wisdom of this world"; nay, more, for purposes of practical application this " wisdom," in greater or lesser meas- ure, furnishes a needful supplement to spiritual knowl- edge; but the two are not identical, and the latter of them is the one thing indispensably needful. The knowledge in question is the knowledge of that whereby all things consist; it is the knowledge of Spirit; it is the knowledge of God, the Absolute Spirit. "The Spirit is truth" (i John v. 6). This is " the truth," not only in form, but also in its ever- lasting substance. This is the truth, the knowledge of which is to man, the spirit, as "shield and buck- ler" (Ps. xci. 4). This is the truth, with which he 232 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. has his loins girt about (Eph. vi. 14), against which he can — except at the cost of spiritual self-destruc- tion—do nothing (2 Cor. xiii. 8), and which dwells in him and shall be with him forever (2 John 2). It is the truth, in and through the understanding of which we are to be, and can alone be, "men" (i Cor. xiv. 20). And then, more particularly, this truth is to be known " as it is in Jesus," who, by reason of his complete organic oneness with "the Father," is entitled to call himself "the truth," and whom truly, i. e., spiritually, to have "seen," is to have seen the Father. Finally, the immediate result of his knowledge of the truth is man's freedom. " Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John viii. 32). Positive, substantial freedom, the freedom of genuine self-possession (truly posses- sing one's true self) and self-mastery through self- knowledge, is a part of the completed spirit's very being; nay, it is identical with its being; and the Psalmist employs no vain metaphor, when he as- cribes this attribute to God and prays, " Uphold me with thy free Spirit" (Ps. li. 12). Or, again, the re- sult spoken of is "eternal life," a life whose form is not purely phenomenal, consisting in involuntary duration, but transcends the form of time and is absolute, real, substantial. "This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent" (John xvii. 3). I have said that, according to the voice of Scrip- ture, (as also of philosophy,) there is needed, in order that man may be truly man, a spiritual ac- BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 233 tivity on his own part, and an activity founded on spiritual knowledge. And how indeed, if man's being depends on his own doing, — if, in order to be himself, he must, in an essential sense, make himself, — how, I say, shall he accomplish this work, if he know not what he has to do ? How shall he make himself a spirit, and the image of God, with- out knowing what a spirit, and, more especially, what God as a Spirit, is ? But the language above employed might lead the superficial observer to imagine that the Scriptures are guilty of that ab- straction and exaggeration which are attributed to Socrates, who, rightly recognizing knowledge as the condition of virtue, seemed, in occasional expres- sions, forthwith to identify the condition with that which it conditions, or with virtue itself. But that knowledge, which is either unto Socratic "virtue" or unto eternal life, by no means ends or is absorbed in " bare cognition." There is a profound truth in the thought that one can deeply and fully know only that which one, by life and action, is and ex- emplifies. Of spiritual knowledge or the knowledge peculiarly appropriate and necessary for the perfect man, it is even more profoundly true than of any other, that it is founded in and must be confirmed by experience, — taking this latter term in its truest and original sense, as denoting, not a mere passive reception of impressions, but an active "testing," " trying," or " finding out," and that, too, whether with or without the express and conscious aim or intention of " acquiring knowledge." The first con- 234 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY, dition of a genuine knowledge of the truth is, ac- cording to Plato, not mere mechanical intellection, but the active and unquenchable love of the truth. The accomplished mathematician, even, does not become such by merely hearing of and assenting to general mathematical principles, but by work- ing out the problems of mathematics for himself; and this he never does without an enthusiastic and moving interest in his work. And so, too, truths of life — the truths of man's perfect being — can only be, in any proper and adequate sense, known, ay they are actually lived; and they can be lived only as they are loved; for, as Fichte says, " What a man loves, that he lives." Accordingly, what the Scrip- tures require of the perfect man, and that upon which they represent his freedom as conditioned, is not simply that he possess and give his assent to cor- rect information about the truth in general, but that he do it, that he carry it out in practice, in his particular sphere. He is to "walk in the truth," and he that "walketh in the truth," " walketh in love." He must first hear and understand the voice which says, "This is the way," and then obey the command, "Walk ye in it" (Is. xxx. 21). And consequent upon such obedience is to be that fuller, more complete, personal, and experimental knowledge of "the way, the truth, and the life," which shall fnake him "free." " If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God" (John vii. 17). A spiritual activity founded on knowledge, or, in other words, a personal working out of the problem of BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;~MAN. 235 man's true and spiritual being in life, this is at once condition and proof both of one's freedom and of one's spiritual knowledge. Thirdly, I have said that the activity, whereby man realizes himself, is scripturally viewed as an activity subject to the will of God, and supported by the activity of God himself. Man's being, as we have seen, is only in and through his doing. The law of his perfect doing is identical with the law of his perfect being. And this law is identical with the will of God. The divine will is not arbitrary. God is not a monstrous and unnatural task-master, capable of taking advantage of his own omnipotence to impose upon man the obligation to obey laws which are out of all relation to the nature of man, and which receive at most only a quasi-justification, and one that borders closely upon the blasphemous, when it is alleged that they are instituted exclu- sively for the "glory" of God. The will of God concerning man is, that man should "stand fast in the liberty" of spiritual manhood; that thus he should be a member of the Kingdom of Heaven; and this law is, accordingly, summed up by its au- thoritative expounder in the exhortation, "Be ye therefore " — not something other than yourselves, not stocks or stones, not machines, not beasts, nor devils, nor demigods — but "be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect." The will of God is nothing other than the law of absolute or perfected being. It is the law of the most perfect realization of the spiritual nature. And the activity, I say, by 236 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. which, as it regards man, this law is carried out, is supported by the activity of God himself. We approach now the conclusion of the whole matter. Man is not an absolutely independent be- ing. He is not a little God by himself. He belongs to the realm of creation and, consequently, of re- demption. He belongs to a realm which does not belong to him as an individual, but belongs to God. And the active sovereignty in this realm is never for an instant abandoned by him from whom it proceeds and to whom it returns. The culminating error of a purely mechanical philosophy consists in the supposition that the world, with all that it con- tains — including, of course, man, — having been "first caused" or "created" by a divine artificer, is then left to run on, automatically or otherwise, by its own "laws," unaided and unharmed by divine "in- tervention." But thus, as we have seen, the real relation of things is in conception completely re- versed and turned topsy-turvy. The created uni- verse is thus practically put in the place of the Absolute, and God, the true Absolute, is repre- sented as nothing better than a casual outsider, to whom the dubious compliment is paid of admitting that he has the power to "interfere" in the world's affairs, but of whom nothing less can in justice be required than that henceforth he keep his hands off; the world, once existing, is held to be able to take care of iself. This conception, we have already seen, is superficial, being capable of being entertained only by him whose point of view, in contemplating the BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY; — MAN. 237 universe, is such as to allow him to perceive only the first surface-facts about the universe. The so- called automatic regularity of physical phenomena is but one evidence of the immutable activity of him, in whom it has its being. The withdrawal of the divine activity from the world, the cessation of the divine work, were the contradiction of the divine nature. And it would also — since the relative or finite subsists only through the activity of the Ab- solute and Infinite — be tantamount to the instan- taneous annihilation of the world. No, the world is the incessant divine work, in which indeed no one " interferes," unless it be man himself The divine work in and through the world is, as we saw, a displaying of the "riches of God," and becomes complete when, in a finite spirit like man, the im- age of God himself is realized. And now we have been considering the responsi- bility for the realization of this image as resting on man himself. This we saw to be not only scrip- tural, but also from the nature of the case necessary, since man cannot be in the image of God, he cannot be a spirit, except he really possess and exercise the power of self-determination. In order really to be man, he must be responsible. But, I repeat, the power that he uses is not self-given or self-created. It is a power of God, lent or committed to him as a sacred trust. The individual is not absolute. His highest privilege, and his highest possibility, is to be a coworker with God. He is to carry out the divine work. He may indeed neglect or even work against 238 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. his divine calling; but, so doing, his work comes to nought. The result is, not positive, not realiza- tion of the true self, but negative, or self-destruction. "The wages of sin is death." God, the Absolute Being, the source and foundation of all existence, is, per se, or independently of and antecedently to any voluntary activity on man's part, man's "strength." And man makes himself then to be truly man only as he consciously and with full knowledge and intent, "makes God his strength." Beneath him are, without his will, "everlasting arms." He is, in love and trust and with all the energy of a fully self-determined will, to lay hold upon those arms. His own activity becomes genu- ine, substantial, and effective, only when it is thus " supported by the activity of God himself." We have represented that the true object of man's will is the " true self" It must now be evident that the true self is something far different from that which is ordinarily understood by the " purely in- dividual." The type of the purely individual is, as we have previously pointed out, the mathematical point, which is without inward difference or complex- ity and equally without external relation to aught other than itself; unextended in time or space, and complete in itself; — complete, the rather, in its ab- solute incompleteness or substancelessness. It is, or it is conceived as being, without or independent of anything else. In general, the individual is the sensible, that whose relations are, at the most, only external and superficial. A "thing" is individual. BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY; — MAN. 239 A person, a spirit, is more than that. Instead of excluding its neighbor, its "other," it includes it. Its essential side is the side of its universality. Thus if we look only at the sphere of man's consciousness, we know that here the self is not to be identified with any one of the myriad different conscious states, through which it passes. The self is rather the uni- versal form and condition of all particular states. But, further, these states are, as such, only the means whereby the self is placed and maintained in relation with a world, which at first confronts man as a stranger — as something wholly and only foreign to him, the conscious subject. With deepening in- telligence, however, he comes to see that in this world he is no stranger, but really at home. Nor is it foreign to him, but, in a very strict sense, as it were bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. On the one hand, he sees in this "world" an organized sys- tem, in which he is a member; a system, therefore, which in a very real sense is necessary both to the idea and to the concrete reality of himself; and a system, also, to whose completeness he himself is necessary. On the other hand, he becomes prac- tically so identified with his particular " world," the world of his special, individual environment, that, separated from it, he, as individual, withers and dies. It thus shows itself to be very effectively identified with, or a true part of, his empirical self But again, man sees in nature, when he looks more deeply and closely, simply the welling up, as it were, and the manifestation under the most varied forms, of a life 240 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. and substance which he recognizes as one with his own spiritual life and substance. In a deeper sense, therefore, than before, he finds himself in nature, and nature in himself. He finds in nature, not a limita- tion, but rather a fulfilment, of his own real self, of his personality. And yet not its direct, nor its com- plete fulfilment. Nature, as such, is not that spirit that man sees in her, but rather its transparent sym- bol and its constant work. Man, we have been saying, must will and realize his true self, and we want to know wherein this self consists, or what it is that man wills when he wills and realizes his true self. And we have said, first, that the true self is nothing purely individual, but something universal. Secondly, the point we wish to make now is that while, in a very essential sense, the self of the individual comprehends, rather than excludes, the world of nature, of which it is a part and to which it is immediately related, yet man ob- viously does not find himself in nature in any such sense or to any such degree that he may say of it, " This is the self that I will and that by my own self- determining activity I realize." He cannot, I say, be said thus to find himself in nature, if you consider her on that side by which she is differentiated from the Spirit which is the source of her life. For, thus considered. Nature herself is also purely individual; nay, hers is the peculiar realm of the individual, the particular, the finite, and hence not of the universal which we seek. The object of our quest is to be found, not in anything that is particular, finite, purely BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 241 individual, nor in any sum total or mere aggregate of such particulars, but in that which is the source and condition of all that is particular and finite. Not in willing the finite, relative, and dependent does a man will his true self, and not in realizing them, as such, does he realize his true self, but in willing and realizing the infinite, absolute, and independent. In this he finds his real substance. From this, nought can separate him, whether principalities or powers, or things present or things to come. For to this, the everlasting and absolute and ever-present source of his being, he is immediately related. With this he is connected by the inmost springs of his being. It is in this that he immediately lives and moves and has his being. With all else his connection is indi- rect. With all things finite he is substantially con- nected only through the common dependence of all things upon the same Absolute, which is the only true foundation of his own being. And this Abso- lute is God. In him alone man finds his true home, his " dwelling-place." Man finds himself and wills himself, in the truest and most unqualified sense of the terms, when he finds and wills himself in God, and God in him. Then can he say, in the fullest sense, " Lo, I come to do thy will, O my God." And then at last is he, not merely phenomenally and em- pirically, but substantially, genuinely, and absolutely free. That freedom, which is limited and deter- mined by the empirical necessity of choosing among various finite particulars, or so-called alternatives, but half deserves its name. It is, at most, only an 242 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. outward and formal and accidental freedom. Tt is not substantial freedom. It is not the "liberty" in which the perfect man "stands fast." It is not pos- itive and unqualified j-^^-determination. On the con- trary, when this so-called empirical freedom of choice among various finite particulars is the only freedom that one has, one is not really free at all, but only a slave. Losing sight of the Absolute and of his es- sential relation to it, and practically identifying him- self with that in and about him which is finite, chang- ing, transitory, he is effectively separated from all genuine, abiding spiritual substance; he is separated from his true self, and knows it not; and he is the slave of sin. The life which he ostensibly leads and which he calls his, is an essential illusion, and on its "death" depends the salvation, the rescue, the re- demption of his true life. To him, therefore, if he can but understand them, the words of Jesus are full of a tremendous significance, when he says that he that saveth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life shall find it. That ostensible life, which is founded in nothing deeper than the thought and love and will of the particular and contingent must be " lost," or one is eternally dead. It is with reference to this " life " that the Christian Apostle says, " I die daily." This is that death unto sin, from the grave of which arises the true and eternal "life unto God." The will, therefore, which identifies itself with the will of God, — the will which, primarily or in the first instance, wills nought but God, and then wills all else from the point of view of God or of the absolute BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 243 and divine will, — possesses that absolute substance of freedom, wherein consists the perfected reality of the spirit. This is freedom through knowledge, love, and practical realization of '* the truth." It is a steadfast freedom, for it is founded on the only- rock that never moves. It is unlimited, for the rea- son that it is the attribute of a will whose object is the Absolute, — /. e., that which itself conditions and so transcends all limits, — and that in so doing, — or in willing him in whom are the very springs of its life, — it has willed itself It is strong, for it makes God its strength. This is the freedom of those who can say, "Of his fulness have we received;" of those, whose bodies are "temples of the Holy Ghost;" of those who, dwelling in love, dwell in God and God in them (i John iv. i6), and who, increasing in love, "increase with the increase of God" (Col. ii. 19). These are they who, though dead — dead, namely, to their former, illusory selves, to the "old man," the " finite, selfish ego " — have yet found and saved their true selves. Though dead, they are al- ready risen with Christ. Dead unto sin they are alive unto God, through Jesus Christ (Rom. vi. 11), They are -dead, and yet they still walk the earth. They are not in the grave. They simply look no longer on the mere fact of their "walking the earth," enjoying its transient pleasures, and engag- ing in its changing occupations as that wherein their true selves and their absolute life consist. They are dead, and yet their true life is saved, being "hid with Christ in God" (Col. iii. 3). 24:4 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. Before leaving this inexhaustible theme — over which we have already lingered too long — there are two points, on which it is indispensable that we say a word, however hurriedly. Of these, one is the connection which the Scriptures ascribe to Jesus Christ with the work of man's substantial redemp- tion and self-realization (or "salvation"); and the other is the absolute remoteness of scriptural ethics and its doctrine of the perfect man from anything like what may be called fanatical, anti-worldly quietism. (i) We have but to recall from the last lecture the view which we there reached respecting the Incarnate Word, as the Creator and Redeemer of all things, " whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven," and then to extend it to the case of man, at the same time taking into the account the differ- ence by which man has been exhibited as distin- guished from and above " nature," — we have, I say, but to do this, in order to perceive in what special sense Christ is scripturally regarded as the Redeemer and Saviour of mankind. The world, as we saw, is represented to us in Scripture as created and re- deemed by the divine Word in no merely mechanical sense. It is created, not simply by God in Jesus Christ, but in him. The relation involved is not simply eternal and — thus to express it — theatrical, but internal, intrinsic, vital. The divine Word, the Son of God, gives himself,. in order that the world may be^ and that, being filled with his riches, it may be, not only outwardly and, as it were dramatically BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 245 and scenically, but inwardly and really, through the completion of its very life and being, to the praise and demonstration of his glorious and infinite love. In like manner the redemption of man is accom- plished, not simply by, but in, Christ Jesus. Man "works out" his "own salvation,"/, e., the rescue and the realization of his true self, in inward, organ- ic union with, and intelligent, voluntary, and loving dependence on, God who " worketh in " him. Thus he becomes a " new creature " or, simply, a " perfect man, in Christ Jesus." The relation is organic, and not merely mechanical; it is ontological and essen- tial, and not merely spectacular and phenomenal. The Master himself has expressed this most clearly and effectively by the well-known comparison of the vine and the branches. " I am the vine, and my Father is the husbandman." "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, and ye are the branches" (John xv. i, 4, 5). And the perfection of man, the realization, and not the destruction, of his personality, — the rather the fulfilment of his personality through the realization for it and in it of its true, universal, and infinite content, — is re- presented by the Christ as dependent on the same condition of organic unity. For his prayer is, " that they all may be on&; as thou. Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us I in them, and thou in me, that tJiey may be made perfect in one'' (John xvii. 21, 23). And in the con- 246 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. sciousness of the fulfilment of this prayer the "be- loved apostle" writes: "We are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life" (i John v. 20). Again, St. Paul declares, "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit" (i Cor. vi. 17). This, I must repeat, is the completion of the spiritual personality, — not its destruction through a fancied pantheistic absorption in one abstract, universal, and so-called divine es- sence or " substance." It is at last having real and genuine " life in one's self." Besides, this " conclu- sion " is not merely reached in some far-off and un- observable future, but also here and now: thus it has ever been from the foundation of the world and thus it shall ever be. It is reached and confirmed and verified in the present experience of mankind, or else the whole tale is as an empty sound; and surely no such pantheistic absorption as just men- tioned is ever witnessed in man's experience. That some such relation between the individual and the Absolute as that which we have been contemplat- ing, must needs be conceived as essential to moral perfection, is illustrated in all moral theories that have even in the slightest degree the/"^rw of philo- sophic completeness. Thus, in the " philosophy of evolution," an absolute and universal Power is re- cognized, the essence and particular nature of which are held to be unknown and unknowable, but of which we do know that the universal law of its operation is the law of evolution. The category of evolution is thus made the highest category of posi- BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 247 tive, substantial human thought. Evolution, so far as our positive knowledge extends, is made to oc- cupy for man the place of the Absolute. But now, it is held, man is only the highest product of evolution. His moral nature is its most perfect work. And man's business, as a moral being, is simply to know this law and consciously to indentify himself with it. It is his strength and his substance; and he is consciously and voluntarily to make it his strength. He, the dependent individual, is to become his true self, by adopting for his own the law and, as it were, the life (if it were permitted in this connection to employ so characteristically spiritual a category as that of life) of the universal {i. e., of evolution). The attempt to build up the science of man on a basis which abstracts from the spiritual nature of man, may well excite regret at useful labor lost; and that the result of it is the " humanization of ethics" may justly be doubted. But the result shows that the philosophic impulse cannot be pres- ent and operate, however blindly, in man, as he seeks for self-knowledge, without his seeking, in one form or another, for the Absolute and looking to find in it the spring and the strength and the law of his true life and being. All this philosophy and religion — which, unlike, philosophic mechanism, look at concrete wholes and not a<" parts — find, not in the unknowable, nor in the mechanical law of its sensible activity, but in the Everlasting Spirit, the Father of our spirits, and the very principle and light of all knowledge. 248 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. The peculiar nature of the redemptive work as- cribed by the Scriptures to Christ in his relation to man, arises from, or, at all events, corresponds to, the peculiar nature of man himself, as heretofore set forth. It has relation to man as, in distinction from external nature, a self-conscious and responsible being, capable of error and of sin and of knowing his error and sin. Man, sinning, feels in himself the beginning of moral ruin, of moral self-murder; and thus is sown in him the seed of a despair which, unless counteracted, must cut the nerve of all his resolution and all his effort. He has sinned against himself, and his first feeling is that he can never either forgive or recover himself But he has also, on the other hand, sinned against God, and, think- ing of God as of one like unto himself, imagines that his arm can no longer be stretched out, except for vengeance and punishment. And now the divine problem is to bring redemption to such an one. Ob- viously, this cannot be accomplished by mechanical might, but only (as saith the Lord) "by m.y Spirit." The agency must be a purely moral and spiritual one. It must be used so as not to destroy, but to restore freedom. And this is done, not by representing God as taking pleasure in the sin of man, or interfering to prevent the moral self-destruction of any who wil- fully persist in transgression; — this were obviously impossible; — but by exhibiting him to man in his absolute nature of love, as one who is able to "en- dure such contradiction of sinners against himself," without contradicting his own nature and falling BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY; — MAN. 249 forthwith into a state of implacable anger; as one whose arm is always stretched out to save; as one who, instead of coldly waiting to see whether man will "repent" and seek forgiveness, is ever actively seeking to compass the completion of the divine creative-redemptive work in man. With the work of man's redemption the Scriptures represent the life and death of the Incarnate Word on earth as especially connected. And yet the work of Christ on earth, eighteen hundred years ago. is not to be considered as the demonstration of a new disposi- tion on the part of God, or of a new determination on his part with reference to man, but only as a new and most effective demonstration of the ever- lasting disposition and determination of God with regard both to nature and to man. It is a demon- stration, or demonstrative exhibition, of the truth that in the eternal nature of God who is the Alpha and the Omega of existence, the fountain and the goal of all true being, the reconciliation of the world and of man to God has everlastingly its potential and efficient foundation. It brings home to man, in the most impressive and effective way, the truth that the perfection and the supreme privi- lege of his essential humanity lie in his spiritual union with God, the Father of his spirit, and that the way to this perfection lies in his determined will to become reconciled, through knowledge, love, and obedience, to God (2 Cor. v. 20). He is peni- tently to abandon, and then to forget and "lose" his former, fancied, individual, finite " self," with all 250 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. its moral wounds and putrefying sores, with the end of finding his true self, in larger and diviner fashion, in God. " Forgetting those things which are be- hind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before," he is to " press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." And "as many as be perfect" are "thus minded" (Phil. iii. 13-15)- (2) This doctrine of Christian ethics is jio doctrine of mystic quietism or asceticism. The Christian vic- tory is not won through an attempted withdrawal from the world, but by overcoming it; — by remain- ing in the world and conquering it. The " universal self" of man is not an abstraction, but, like all true universals, a power to realize itself in and through the materials of particular circumstance and oppor- tunity, in the midst of which the individual may be placed. Far from being privileged to withdraw him- self from the world's work, the "perfect man" real- izes that it is only through him that the world's work can be truly done. Adding to virtue knowl- edge, he seeks, therefore, to know the world and its ways and laws by every means, and then takes the leading part in its work, doing all things to the glory of God and so turning the world's life and work into a sacrament. But, above all, he is not the mere slave of ways and means and laws; he is rather their master, to learn and know and then use them. There is therefore in him something which is higher than, though not opposed to " law." This is love. Through love — not through ignor- BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 251 ance, nor merely through abstract knowledge — through love he fulfils the law. Teaching the world this more excellent way, he makes heaven and the will of God to reign upon earth. Finally, if the foregoing account is correct, it will be seen that religion according to the Christian con- ception, does not simply consist in being informed of and then formally accepting a " scheme " of rescue from the damning consequences of sin. It is not merely salvation from something; it is also the sal- vation (9/ something, viz., of the true man. It is the creative-redemptive realization of the perfect man, in living union with the Absolute, with God. And if the ethics which it involves is not ''human ethics," then no such ethics ever existed or can, without an essential change in the nature of man, ever exist. LECTURE VIII. COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. THE preceding lectures have, I trust, done some- thing to deepen in us the conviction that re- ligion universally, and Christianity in particular, is by its very 'nature, a thing which is essentially "of and for intelligence." Other accounts may be, and not infrequently are, also given of religion, — such as that it is an affair of feeling or emotion; or that its realm is identical with that of the poetic imagi- nation, in which realm it strews the flowers that poesy plucks and kindles the fires with which all artistic genius glows, etc., etc. And all these ac- counts may be, in their way and measure, very true, without overthrowing our initial statement. Nay, rather, whatever of truth is in them may be, and is, conditioned upon the larger truth of our state- ment. For the being — man — in whose feeling or imagination religion is alleged to have its home, is a being having the attribute of self-conscious- ness and thought. Religious emotion is the emo- tion only of thinking beings, just as also it is only the imagination of thinking beings, that is crea- tively poetic. In reality, all these and other sides (252) PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 253 of man's active nature are combined within this nature, in a living organic unity, and are conse- quently all necessary to the whole and complete man; and inasmuch as religion — in the words of another* — is "an affair of the whole and undivided life of the human spirit," it follows that it will dis- play its life and power in all the directions, or on all the sides, of this life. But of self-conscious in- telligence it has to be admitted, that it is not merely one among the several different sides of man-s spir- itual nature, but that it is also the fundamental one. It is the one common to all and conditioning all. The other sides are as particulars, to which intel- ligence is as the unifying and self-determining uni- versal. So that religion is, (for example,) an affair of human "emotion," only because human emotion is conditioned by human intelligence. When we say that religion is of and for intelligence, we say that which, in kind, if not in degree, is equally true of all the other characteristic functions or works of specifically human activity, such, for example, as artistic -creation or the founding and rearing of states. And in each of these cases we mean to affirm, not merely the insignificant truism, that the agents concerned are "intelligent" in the sense of being empirically conscious individuals, but rather the significant truth, that what the genuine artist or statesman does — his activity and the result of his activity — is, partly with, partly and perhaps still more without, his consciousness, determined by and, in its way and measure, a revelation of the absolute 254 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. nature and the absolute objective or ontological conditions of intelligence. What I mean is this: the genuine artist, engaged in productive work, acts, not with or from one of the superficial sides of his nature, abstracting from all the rest; he does not create his work of art merely by dint of intellectual reflection, or of pure feeling, or of some special, ac- quired technical knowledge or skill. Not by any one of these, nor by all of them, considered as a mere aggregate of "faculties" or acquired "accom- plishments," does he act, but by something that is deeper than these, — something in which all special faculties are fused and to which they are subordi- nated. His action proceeds, not from the outside of his nature, but from the inside: not from the part, but from the whole. His whole being — which is wider than mere reflective consciousness, or pure feeling, or any and all "accomplishments," though not exclusive of them — is engaged. He works better than he knows and better than he feels. His work is thus a revelation to him, as it is to others. But it is a revelation of and for intelligence. In the presence of a work of art one feels, not startled and bewildered, as if confronted by something wholly foreign and hostile to, or incommensurate with, one's self, but supremely at home. Intelligence is not offended and put to confusion, but satisfied. It finds its petty, hard-learned laws of technical detail not violated, but, along with other laws that its re- flective consciousness knew not of, respected and observed in masterly perfection. The artist's whole PHILOSOnilC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 255 being, I say, not only his outward but above all his inward being, has been at work. And as his " whole being " is not a little absolute entity by itself, in effectual mechanical separation from all else that exists, but rests on and is in organic con- nection with the true and only and universal Abso- lute, it follows that his work, while it is his, is also the work of that Absolute in which, as artist, he lives and moves and has his being. It is as true in art, as in religion, that " it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." The "walking," the work, is his, but he feels and knows that it belongs to him, not as a mere finite individual, but as an infinite personality;- that is to say, it belongs to him as a spiritual being, whose personal reality and substantial independence are fulfilled, not by pantheistic-mechanical absorption in one universal "substance," but by organic union with an absolute Spirit. The true artist, then, as the common phrase has it, is "inspired." A "divine afflatus" is said to fall upon him, '^ Patitur DciimP His own genius is at the same time a divine inspiration. Now what I started out to illustrate was the statement that the true artist's work and activity are " determined by and are a revelation of the ^ absolute nature of intelligence and of the absolute objective or ontological conditions of intelligence." It will now perhaps be sufficiently understood in what sense this statement is intended. It may per- haps be otherwise expressed as follows: — True artis- tic activity is prompted by the instinct of intelligence, 256 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. and of intelligence taken in the most comprehensive sense of the term. And by as much as this is true, it is also true — in view of the organic oneness of intelligence and being — that the activity in ques- tion is prompted likewise by the instinct of being, or of reality, these terms, in like manner, being con- sidered in their most comprehensive and absolute sense. The work of the artist, considered both as process and as product, becomes therefore an expression at once of the absolute nature of intelli- gence and of the absolute object of intelligence. It is, so to speak, in its peculiar way an objectified expression or incarnation of the absolute nature and object of intelligence. It may hence be called, in an especial sense, one of the "texts" of philosophy, ■ — a kind of document, which contains implicitly, or expresses in symbolic characters, the sense which it is the whole business of philosophy to render explicit and make manifest for reflective conscious- ness. It reveals the infinite in the finite and the organic oneness of both these terms. And so it is that a philosophy of art, in the true sense of the term, is possible, or that art is a true text, subject, or datum for philosophy.' What is thus true of the working and the result of artistic genius is also true, imitatis vnitandis, of the work accomplished by the genius of humanity in all its other directions, as, for example, in the foun- dation and nurture of states. It is above all true respecting the life and work of man in religion. But the case of religion is distinguished by peculiar dif- PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 257 ferences from the other cases, to which we have referred. In working out and seeking an expression for his religious ideas, man is more consciously and distinctly determined by the thought, or by the dim sense, of the universal problems of exist- ence and by the felt need of discovering their so- lution, than when working under the influence of an artistic or politico-social inspiration. Different, too, is the form in which the results of this religious activity are finally expressed. For while art — and, most immediately, literary and poetic art, as \x\. "sacred writings" — enters naturally, as a means of formal expression, into the service of religion; and while the state, too, may and does furnish an ob- jective medium or instrument for the realization of religious ideas; yet neither the work of art, as such, nor the state, as such, is the most direct and characteristic result or expression of what we may call the working of the religious genius in man. This " result or expression " is found, the rather, in what are termed religious ideas — opinions, views, beliefs, dogmas, expressed and, according to the belief common to most forms of religion, divinely communicated to man in the form of myths, stories, historic narratives, songs, prophecies, proverbs, and precepts, which are, in form and language, adapted, as nearly as may be, to the comprehension of the minds of all classes: — " he who runs may read," and he who reads will understand, or, at least, will think and believe that he understands. Further, religious ideas find symbolic expression in rites and ceremo- 258 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. nies, which serve, among other things, as impres- sive and effective object-lessons in the system of re- ligious instruction. But it also belongs to the very sense of religious ideas that they are held, not simply as conscious intellectual possessions, and objects of a purely abstract and uninterested intellectual assent, but as a power to mould the heart and direct the life. They are, in short, not merely theoretical, but also practical. And so it is that their formative and directive influence reappears, always implicitly, if not also explicitly and to immediate observation, in every sphere of human life and activity, whether private or public. Still further, the subject-matter of these ideas is, in varying degrees, man and his absolute relations to the universe in which he finds himself placed, the powers of the universe, its origin and destiny, — its meaning, its essential reality, its gov- ernment, and all of these with special reference to the nature and possibilities, the duties and the priv- ileges, of man. In brief, religious ideas relate, as, in the particular case of Christianity, we have al- ready seen, both directly and indirectly to the same topics which are the characteristic and final object of philosophical inquiry. The difference is simply this: religious ideas, speaking universally, express that which has the appearance of being the instinc- tive judgment of mankind respecting subjects, about which philosophy seeks to reach a reasoned, demon- strative conclusion. In religion man apprehends or claims to apprehend that which philosophy aims to comprehend. And, further, religion involves the PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 259 living and practicing of that which philosophy, as such, only contemplates and endeavors, with cool and unbiassed judgment, to understand.* This being the case, the sense of the expression, "philosophic content of religion," and the propriety of its employment become obvious. We may see what truth there was in the abstract principle enun- ciated at the beginning of the Scholastic philosophy as a premise justifying the use of "reason" in the attempt to comprehend and demonstrate the sub- stance of "faith," — the principle, namely, that true religion and true philosophy agree, and are indeed the same. This, of course, was tantamount to a dec- laration that faith could and must bear to be ques- tioned — examined — by intelligence. And the res- olution of the Scholastic Doctors to proceed with the application was a testimony of the highest kind to the sincerity of their conviction that Christianity was "true religion." So, too, one of the early Fa- thers of the Church, inspired by a like conviction, could declare that faith was abbreviated knowledge, while knowledge was faith in the form of intelli- gence.' It is only, as we have before remarked, be- cause, and so far as, faith'and philosophy thus stand on the same ground and deal with the same subject- matter, that the appearance of a conflict between them is possible; while, on the other hand, it is also only for this reason that true religion can and does find in genuine philosophy an appreciative and efifi- cient defender. If the relation between religion, or faith, and phi- 2G0 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. losophy, or intelligence, is such as has been stated, two or three qviestions naturally present themselves, which we must briefly notice. First, if faith is abbre- viated knowledge, what need — it may be asked — is there of seeking to have it expanded into the forms of explicit and demonstrative intelligence ? In what respect — so some one may express himself — is the modest and humble "abbreviation" inferior to the twin-sister, bearing the more pretentious name of knowledge ? An other and more serious question is the following: Just us we may say that comprehen- sion depends on prior apprehension, so may and must we not say that, to the very existence of phi- losophy, the prior existence of religion is indispen- sable ? Can philosophy exist without the data that religion furnishes ? Let us look at the latter question first. Philoso- phy can certainly not exist without data. Philoso- phy is science, is knowledge, and a necessary pre- condition of the existence of science or knowledge is the existence of an object of knowledge. No true science makes any pretence of mechanically creating its own object. In this sense, as we have previously insisted, no science is or can be " a priori." While, in the order of absolute intelligence, there can no more be an " object " prior to a " subject," than vice versa, — both object and subject being, the rather, as has been shown, organically one, — yet, in the order of the development of dependent human intelligence, subject and object have the farm of separation and mutual independence, and then their union in in- PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 261 telligence, or, in other words, the actualization of in- telligence, depends in the first instance on what may be termed the essentially mechanical process of bringing them together; the subject must find its object, or the object must be "presented" or "given," as it were ab extra, to the subject. The peculiar object of philosophy — I repeat now what has been said in a previous lecture — is the experience of man, in its whole nature and extent; — not of some part of experience, considered in abstraction from the whole; — and, in particular, of experience as a living whole, a complete and active process, and not of that abstraction which is conceived and de- scribed as purely passive and merely mechanically receptive experience. Experience, then, is the datum which philosophy must first have (pardon the appar- ent paradox) before it can itself exist. If religion is a necessary part of this datum, or of man's concrete and complete living experience, considered as it ex- ists prior to and independently of systematic philo- sophical inquiry, then we must unquestionably say that its existence prior to philosophy is essentially necessary for the first existence of the latter. Now, with regard to the empirical question of fact, there can be no doubt, which is worth discussing here, that mankind universally have been distinc- tively religious, or have had " religions," before they have proceeded to engage in what is distinctively termed and known as philosophical inquiry. So much for the question of historic order. Regarding the further question, whether religion is a necessary 262 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. part of the pre-philosophical experience of man, — • i. e., of that experience which, we have admitted, must be " given," before philosophy can begin, — there can, obviously, also be no doubt that it must be an- swered in the affirmative, unless the nature of re- ligion has above been wholly misrepresented. In- voluntary apprehension and spontaneous reflection, grounded in the living experience of man, relating expressly or implicitly to the ultimate grounds and ends of that experience, winged with imagination, reacting on the emotions and the will, and event- ually moulding and determining conduct and prac- tice, — these primary conditions and first fruits of re- ligion, whether actually contained in any degree in the " experience " of every individual among the low- est savages or not, do, most assuredly and obviously, constitute a necessary part of that experience which must be gone through before men can pass on to such voluntary reflection, and to such comprehension through demonstration, as philosophy contemplates and demands. But we have not yet touched the point which doubtless gives to this question its chief interest in the minds of those who raise it. It is, according to my observation, not unfrequently declared by Chris- tian preachers that philosophy had, in ancient times, before the advent of Christianity, reached the ut- most limit of achievement which was possible for her in independence of "supernatural revelation," and had, through her failure to find the true or complete solution of the great problems of existence, demon- PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 263 strated the essential impotence or limitation of" hu- man reason," and, consequently, the absolute need of light miraculously given from on high, in order to lead man where reason herself is quite unable either to lead or to follow. I suppose, now, the question we are considering to amount to the inquiry, whether the foregoing assertion is not strictly true ? I remark, in reply, that the foregoing assertion contains, by its form, much that is equivocal and misleading. It seems to presuppose, contrary to the words of Scripture itself, as also to the voice of philosophy, a complete and essential mechanical separation between human and divine intelligence, or between "human reason" and the divine mind. It seems to posit an opposition between the finite and the infinite, the natural and the supernatural, and, in each case, a degree of independence on the part of the former with reference to the latter, which, unless all the demonstrations of the foregoing lec- tures are at fault, both Scripture and "reason" re- pudiate. The Bible ascribes human understanding to the "Spirit of the Lord"; and "human reason," in the mouth of its worthiest and best-accredited spokesman before the advent of Christ (Aristotle), ascribed its own origin and power to God.® Reason claims no power of her own, out of organic depend- ence on the Absolute Spirit. But she does not, because by her own confession thus dependent for her power, therefore conclude that she has nothing to do except to lie absolutely inert upon the breast of the Absolute and so supinely wait for God to do 264 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. for her her own proper work of intelligence; any more than according to Christian ethics, because God " worketh in " man, the latter can expect spirit- ually to prosper unless he also " work out" his own salvation. Reason, now, being the active function of a spirit thus divinely-created and divinely-sus- tained, did indeed accomplish far more in ancient Greece than is ever understood by those who thus glibly speak of its lamentable "failure." And it did this, not by attempting to soar away into far- off, inexperimental, and hidden mysteries, but by examining and, in its measure, truly knowing the world, as it lies at man's feet and exists in his experience, and man, as he exists for himself in self-consciousness, in intelligence and will and emo- tion, in society, also, and in religion. And the result was, further, the discovery of the true infinite revealed through the finite, of the Absolute as none other than the absolutely good, as perfect reason, as royal and divine mind, as God; the discovery, also, that the finite or " natural," exists and has its nature through " participation " (according to Pla- to's expression) in the ideal-absolute or (according to the Aristotelian description) in and by virtue of a process, which is prompted by instinctive "love" of God and tends to reproduce, in the natural prod- uct, "so far as possible," the divine likeness; and so, in particular, that the highest duty and privilege of man, his perfection and his virtue, consist in be- coming like God, — and "to be like God," says Plato, "is to be holy, and just, and wise." Greek PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 265 philosophy was not a failure. It was, in its way and measure, a demonstration of the experimental and everlasting truth of spiritualistic idealism, — a demonstration, of which the world can never afford to lose sight, and which Christian theology, to its lasting credit and profit, learned in its early days to turn to its own great advantage. And so it is safe to say that the Christian consciousness, on the side of its intellectual content, or, so to express it, of its intellectual self-consciousness, was richer and more thoroughly and manfully master of itself in those first centuries, when it was defining for itself and the world its grand dogmas, such as Trinity and Incarnation, than in many a subsequent century, when not only the freshness and power of its first inspiration had been largely lost, but philosophy also, swamped in the muddy shallows of pure mech- anism and of agnosticism, was no longer able to be to it anything but a thoroughly false guide. Now, Christian theology was able to use Greek philosophy as it did, only because — if I may thus express my meaning — the subject-matter of the former was continuous or, broadly speaking, of one piece with the subject-mater of the latter. Perhaps I shall presently be able to make my meaning plainer. Let me say, then, that the one great fact, the sense of which seems to me to be blurred in the form above given to the question under considera- tion, is this, that the revelation of God in Christ and in the Christian consciousness is not the con- tradiction, but the fulfilment, of the revelation of 266 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. God in nature and in the universal or generic con- sciousness of man. " Christian experience," in the genuine sense of this expression, is the experience £)f " the perfect man." Christian knowledge is com- pleted knowledge. The perfect differs from the im- perfect, and the completed from the incomplete, rather in degree than in kind. Christian experience is an experience in which God is, confessedly, im- mediately concerned. But the experience of man- kind at large before the coming of Christ, and even to-day in regions where Christ is not known, neither was nor is an experience wholly without God, Greek philosophy was an attempt to comprehend, or to demonstrate the whole ideal content of, pre- Christian experience. It dealt with the only posi- tive data at its command; and the substantial result was to such a remarkable degree in harmony with the new and fuller consciousness which Christ ush- ered into the world, that Christian apologists have justly seen in it a striking "preparation" for Chris- tianity, while natural historians (as they may be called) of human intelligence have professed to see in it the root, from which Christianity could be explained as simply the necessary growth. It would seem, then, and it is undoubtedly true that all speculations as to what philosophy might discover without the aid of Christian experience are thoroughly idle. Philosophy, w^e must again re- peat, is nothing independently of experience; it claims to do nothing but comprehend experience; and if in Christianity human experience is filled up PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 2G7 and rounded out to a greater degree of perfection and completeness than in any of its non-Christian forms, philosophy is ready and quick to perceive and acknowledge this and gratefully to draw from it the fuller lesson that it teaches. Yes, philosophy did need the light of Christianity, and her only protest can be and is against the notion that she, or that mankind at large, — one of whose noblest functions she is, — ever was, or is, or can be, something wholly profane and undivine, completely separate from and opposed to God, as, according to the shallow con- ception of a purely mechanical theology, the .finite is said to be separated from and only opposed to the infinite. In short, this whole business of setting re- ligion, on the one hand, and philosophy and science, on the other, over against each other, as if they were per se quite independent and rival, or even hostile, functions, should come to a perpetual end; for it all amounts simply — no matter who it is that is guilty of it — to a case of arbitrary, unnatural, and wicked putting asund-er, on man's part, of things which God has joined together. These different "functions," as I have termed them, are not simply like so many tools, which a man may take up and lay down at will, — one of which has nothing what- ever to do with the other, and all of which have no necessary and essential relation to him that uses them. On the contrary, they are all organically one in, and all equally and essentially necessary to, the completed life and reality of man. The whole man implies them all, and each of them implies, for 268 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. « its ideal completeness, the whole man, in the com- plete and healthy exercise of all his functions. All of these distinctions of functions are abstractions, necessary, no doubt, in practice, but thoroughly misleading to him who forgets the purely practical necessity, in which they originate, and so treats them as absolute. The Christian Master did not say, "re- ligion" or "philosophy," but "the truth shall make you free." And this truth, as we saw, was to be both lived and known. It was to be present at once in the practical and in the theoretical "experience" of the "perfect man." It was to be the very life and substance of this experience, and of man himself. In the order of time, and especially of the time- conditioned experience of man, we may rightly say that life and practice precede theory, just as sensa- tion precedes intelligence. But the scientific exam- ination of experience, as conducted by philosophy, shows that the absolute or ideal condition of sensa- tion is intelligence itself. And so, universally, the final object and end- of" theory," or "knowledge," or "philosophy," with reference to all "life and prac- tice," or with reference. to all "experience" whatso- ever, is to show how the latter, all contingent as at first it appears to be, is itself conditioned by the non-contingent Absolute and Eternal, which it im- plicitly contains and reveals. This, as I have pre- viously indicated, is, "spiritual knowledge," for it is the knowledge of the Absolute as Eternal Spirit, and of "all things" as existing through and by Him, — not in the way of mechanico-fatalistic necessity, PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 269 nor of mechanico-pantheistic identity, but in a spir- itual relation like that of the child to the father, where "limitation" is seen to be, not the obstacle, but the condition of substantial independence and freedom. This is knowledge of " the only true God," and "eternal life." And now, that the subject-mat- ter of this knowledge is written in infinitely larger, more legible and unmistakable characters "in the face of Jesus Christ," than anywhere else, I do not hesitate, in the name of Philosophy herself, to as- sert. That philosophy "needed" this object-lesson, may be asserted with equal confidence. "The life" needed to be "made manifest," in all its fulness, in order that in all its fulness it might be known. Not that it was previously wholly unmanifested, by any means. God never left himself without a witness. He "by whom the worlds were made," the "eternal Son," was never absent from his work. It was not first eighteen hundred years ago that he became "the light of the world." No, from the creation of the world he — "God in the flesh," the infinite in the finite — was ever with the world and in it, as a spirit- ual, creative-redemptive, sustaining presence. Of the glory of this presence all men were, whether consciously or unconsciously, witnesses, so that those who denied it were "without excuse"; while philoso- phy loudly and effectively proclaimed it. And yet the light was partly veiled; the life was not made fully manifest; so that, in more than one most im- portant respect, the devotion of the most pious heart and the worship of the clearest head were addressed 270 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. to a God "unknown," (/. e., incompletely known). Then Jesus came and, by living "the life," demon- strated that he tvas the Life, as well as the Truth and the Way; and that he was the true Life, not as pure individual, in separation and distinction from God, but in organic union and oneness with God; and not, again, in hostile separation from the world, but the rather as the One, the everlasting Word, who eternally gives himself for the life of the world, — the One who, were he to cease to "give," and to give himself, the world would cease to be. And how wonderful was the human consciousness which Christ awakened, the consciousness of human emptiness and of divine riches, the hungering and thirsting after righteousness, fainting for the bread of life; and how wonderfully did he show himself, and God in him, to be the "bread of Life," the very "bread of the world! " The potentialities of human experience were all now fulfilled. What had been before only implicit became explicit. The true and complete and perfect life of man, the "salvation," nay, the realization, of his true being, as something to be ac- complished by simply taking God for one's strength; the losing of one's life, in order to find it, or, the penitent abandonment of the finite self, with all its load of weaknesses and sins, in order to find the true self in the spiritual infinite; the reconciliation of the world and of man to God, and the possibil- ity of such reconciliation as founded on the eternal mediation of the incarnate Word (of which Christ's death on the cross was the most signal and the PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 271 practically necessary demonstration) ; all this blessed content of spiritual and of absolute theoretical truth was contained in the perfect object-lesson of the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. To the world and to man, as the scene and the home of the growing finite, — of the finite, namely, as involved, in human consciousness, in the still unfinished process of real- izing to itself its own and the world's infinite con- tent, — this lesson had all the value of an absolutely new revelation. And yet the substance of the truth revealed was, in itself, in no wise new; for it was eternal. The life and death of Christ — as I have once before said — were in no sense the revelation of a new disposition or of a change of nature, whether in the everlasting and unchangeable God or in the nature of things. They were rather a new and com- plete demonstration of the eternal nature of God and of the eternal "counsel of his will." The demon- stration was needed, and "in the fulness of time," — or, when the time for this wonderful fruitage was fully ripe, — it came. The revelation was made, through forms of sense and in events of space and time, of spiritual truths and realities that transcend and condition and explain space and time, with all that these contain. Then the revelatory demonstra- tion was fulfilled, not only of that which was spoken by the prophets, but also of the creative Word of the Lord, as present in the world itself and in the hearts and thoughts of men. And this revelation still con- tinues. It did not end with the death of Jesus. The rather, it first fully began after his death. His mis- 272 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. sion was to show men "the Father." "He that hath seen me," he declared, " hath seen the Father." And yet, as he plainly intimated, (and as we have already noticed in a previous lecture,) the true sight of him had nothing to do with physical vision, but was the rather hindered by it. The true sight of him was spiritual sight. " A little while and \t]ieii\ ye shall see me; because I go to the Father." When he was out of their physical sight, the true sight, the sight through and of the Spirit, was to begin, and to lead them into all truth. Then would occur the full and real "revelation." And this revelation, I say, still continues. For it is, I repeat, something spiritual, and therefore living. The revelation is a spiritual light. And it was, and evermore is, "the life " — not mere words, or physical presence — that is "the light of men." Far be it from me to detract, or to seem to detract, by the utterance of a single syllable, from the unspeakable value and significance of the re- corded words of the Master of the Christian world. But this value and significance will be wholly missed, if there ever comes a time when the life that they express is no longer lived. "Ye are the light of the world," says Christ, to all those in whom the Chris- tian life, the Christian experience, the Christian con- sciousness, has been kindled and in whom it continues as a vital flame to glow. When Christianity is no longer lived, it is no longer capable of being under- stood. When Christianity is no longer lived, the "light of the world" is extinguished. The practical demonstration, then, of the "Chris- PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 273 tian religion " is Christianity itself as a living power in man, illuminating his understanding, purifying his will, and restoring him, from the lowest depths to the topmost heights of his living experience, to him- self, z. e., to the possession, the mastery, the realiza- tion of himself in his true and perfect quality, as a son or daughter of the Lord God Almighty. This is called, pre-eminently, "religion," or "having re- ligion." The theoretical demonstration of it is " phi- losophy " — or call it, if you will, speculative theology or Christian knowledge. It is the demonstration of the eternal content and foundation of the Christian consciousness. And it is the demonstration that *' human reason " is not confounded by the content of the Christian consciousness, but is strengthened, illuminated, satisfied, nay, completed by it. It is not a demonstration that the Christian life, the " Chris- tian consciousness," can now be dispensed with. It is rather a demonstration of the absolute necessity of this life and consciousness to the completed real- ity and perfection of man. And so the life and the knowledge point to and imply each other; and both are inseparable in the realized ideal of the " perfect man," knowing the true God and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent. We are now prepared to admit the assertion of our imaginary questioner in this sense, viz., that the ever- lasting "light of the world" shone far, far less brightly in the experience of mankind before the coming of Christ, than thereafter; and that, as philosophy is nothing without the light of experience, it needed 274 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. the new and added light which Christianity brought. But the assertion must be decidedly repelled, if the meaning of it is that Christianity involves, in any sense, the miraculous supersedure of reason or its disgrace.' On the other hand, I trust that nothing more need be said by way of answer to the first question above raised, respecting the sufficiency of faith, as " abbre- viated knowledge," independently of the fuller and more explicit forms of reasoned intelligence. The idea to be inculcated is, of course, by no means that all Christians are to be philosophers; but that the leaders and teachers of the Christian world, by whom the judgment of the world at large with respect to Christianity is most apt to be determined, and from whom the tone of Christian life in the humbler ranks of the Church must, inevitably, to a large extent, take its coloring, should in the fullest sense know in whom they have believed, and be able to render, for the hope that is in them, the demonstrative reason which the nature of the case at once demands and supplies. Who shall overestimate the manly strength and comfort which come to all who seek to love and serve God, when their pastors, being after Jehovah's own heart, are able to feed them " with wisdom and knowledge ".'' Richer "food" of this sort than that which the true Christian pastor can offer is not to be con- ceived, if that is true which the Apostle says of the Christian pastor's divine Master, " In him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge " (Col. PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 275 ii. 3). That this saying of St. Paul is a true one, that Christ is indeed "the Truth," that the spiritual knowledge of him is the key to all absolute intelli- gence, and that in this knowledge lies the indispen- sable way to man's perfection, to his true, self-mas- tering Freedom and to eternal Life, — of all this I am profoundly convinced, and I shall wish that these lectures had never been delivered, if they accomplish nothing toward the propagation of this conviction. If Christ is indeed the Truth, if in knowing him as the Son of God we know God, the unconditioned and everlasting fount of all being, and in knowing him as the creative principle of all finite existence we are introduced to the knowledge of the essence of all such existence, it is obvious that the "Com- parative Philosophic Content of Christianity" is very great; — that, indeed, it is so great that a greater cannot be conceived. And it is obvious that philos- ophy, finding this to be the case, must admit and approvingly reiterate the claim of Christianity to be called " absolute religion." And this has indeed been done, through the mouth of the deepest, most com- prehensive, and most instructive philosopher of mod- ern times; — I refer, of course, to Hegel.' By what standard or principle is the philosophic content of a religion to be measured.' By none other, assuredly, than the one by which the content of phi- losophy itself, universally, is measured. And philos- ophy's standard is simply Reality, as apprehended in and through spiritual self-consciousness, — the true consciousness or knowledge of the Self, as Spirit. 276 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. All consciousness whatsoever, as we have seen, has the form of self-consciousness, and all knowledge, of self-knowledge; and the Real, which knowledge ap- prehends (or else it is not knowledge), must and can, accordingly, only be, iJi form, self-known. And we have tried to intimate — the present was no time for ex- haustive demonstration — how, along with, and condi- tioned upon, the development in man of his true, sub- stantial self-consciousness, comes the demonstrative consciousness or knowledge of the Absolute as Spirit, as Person, as God, and of the world as a reality, whose true significance, being divinely derived, is also, though dependently, spiritual. And this, of course, is possible only on condition that the self- consciousness of man contain, either explicitly or implicitly, that which some Christian psychologists call the element of "God-consciousness," as a part of itself, and, on the other hand, the universally ad- mitted element of " world-consciousness." And we have sought further to indicate how the self-con- sciousness of man, as a living spirit, may and does include both these elements — namely, by virtue of what may summarily be termed the organic con- nection of the individual with the finite universe, on the one hand, and with God, the Absolute, on the other — and how real knowledge of both God and the world may result from the development of the re- spective " elements," without our being necessarily forced to any such absurd conclusion as that man is mechanically and numerically identical, either with God, or with the sensible universe, from both of PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 277 which he distinguishes himself. Philosophy is thus the knowledge of God and the world, in and through the knowledge of man. The knowledge in question is living and spiritual knowledge. It is knowledge by a living and spiritual being, and has for its object varying degrees and forms of living and spiritual reality. Of this knowledge the ideal and the conditions are exemplified, nay, rather, actualized, in the Christ. The Man, whose thought was the divine thought, whose life was divine life, and whose very being consisted in his being "one with" the divine "Fa- ther"; the everlasting Word, who, as the principle of the world's existence, was and evermore is the true light and life of the world; how has he not indeed in himself " all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge } " How shall not he, who has spiritual "knowledge of the Son of God," who, united to him as the branch is united to the vine, participates in his self-consciousness and so comes to the true con- sciousness of "the perfect man" and "unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ," — how, I say, shall he, who thus has "the mind of Christ," and is " renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him," not be adjudged — unless all the principles of knowledge are to be denied — to be in the requisite intellectual position for knowing all things } Not that he, not that the " philosopher," is to be able all at once, or, perhaps, ever, to be informed about all the detail of the world or (in the same sense) about the unfathomable 278 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. riches of the divine nature; but that, in Aristotelian phrase, the What of the world and of the divine nature, the principle and conditioning, or spiritual, essence, shall be known to him and shall illuminate all his intelligence, — be the latter rich or poor in the knowledge of particular, empirical facts. The substance of the unlettered Christian's living faith — not of his merely abstract and formal "belief" — touches, though in an other way, the same goal with the philosopher's loftiest demonstrations. And this, I repeat, because both have to do with the whole substance of living reality, and not merely, like the special sciences, with some particular as- pect, phase, or department of reality, in abstraction from all else. The philosophic history of religion, now, notes in the different " religions," as also in the different "philosophies," the symptomatic expression of so many diverse stages reached by man in the en- deavor to attain to full and complete self-conscious- ness, and through this to reach the true knowledge of the world and of God; in this latter respect seek- ing "after the Lord," as St. Paul says, "if haply they might find him," who is " not far from every one of us" (Acts xvii. 27), and who "said not to the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain " (Is. xlv. 19). In other words, the conceptions of God, or of the Ab- solute, or of the absolute Power of the universe, and the like, which are contained in and determine the character of the different " religions," depend, ideally, on and correspond to the varying degrees to which PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 279 the founders and adherents of these religions have, or have not, come in practice to the consciousness of man's true nature and substance as a spiritual per- sonality. The like is true with regard to the differ- ent so-called philosophies, if in place of the expres- sion, "in practice," you substitute in the foregoing statement the words, " in theory." In all of them — religions as well as philosophies — so far as they are imperfect, we may thus see arrested attempts of man seeking to "come to him- self," and to be in feeling and in intelligence at peace with himself Another way of stating the case, as it regards especially the religions of man- kind, is to say that in all of them man is exhibited in the process of trying to find his spiritual centre. Not that he always is explicitly aware that he has such a centre, or that while he is seeking it he necessarily knows just what he is seeking. But always there is at least the vague unrest, the sense, variously manifested, of the individual's insufficiency in himself, of his need of supplementing or complet- ing himself by practically identifying with himself, for the supply of his needs and the aversion of his dangers, a power other and greater than, but yet in some way akin to, himself And at every stage the power in question is conceived after the image of the consciousness which man has of himself At the low- est stage where the " spirit in man " is scarcely more than an unactualized potentiality and the life of its nominal possessor is as nearly as possible a purely natural one, the power is conceived as a natural ob- 280 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. ject or as hiding itself in such an object, — a stone, a bush, the earth, the sun, or the heavens. At a higher stage, where man has arrived at the abstract, but, essentially, only negative, conviction that he is in in his essence not-natural, he has a corresponding conception of the absolute Power, by practical or literal identification with which he must secure pres- ent help and final release. "Release," I say; for the conviction that the "natural," as such, is foreign to him, carries with it the pessimistic sense of it as his essential enemy and as the seat of nought but evil, and subjection to it or association with it is necessarily looked upon as an evil and a burden. But as the conviction under consideration is only negative; since it only consists in the certain belief that the essential is not the natural, that the soul is not the body, that the Absolute is not subject to the forms of space and time, and that the latter, together with all that they condition, is purely phe- nomenal and illusory; and since therefore, the posi- tive conception of substantial spiritual personality, and of the natural as its not unreal matrix, its friendly foster-mother, and its willing instrument, is wanting; the conception of the absolute Power becomes equally negative; it is the everlasting Nay, Nirvana. The philosophic and the religious con- ception, it is seen, thus run hand in hand, I mention the foregoing cases merely by way of illustration. A complete account of all the cases possible, and that are illustrated in the history of religions, would require a volume. That in the PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 281 Christian life, and in philosophy, drawing instruc- tion from the Christian consciousness, man truly comes to himself, and so is, with reason, both in mind and heart at peace, — enjoying the freedom which truth, known and practiced, begets, and par- ticipating even now in eternal life, — this is a con- viction, to the confirmation of which in your minds I heartily wish that the present course of lectures may have contributed. May the God of Love enable us all, by an intelligent confession, to bear witness to the truth that Christ is "the wisdom of God"; and may the Lord of all power and might, who is the author and giver of all good things, graft in our and in all hearts the love of his name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and of his great mercy keep us in the same, to everlasting life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. APPENDIX NOTES TO LECTURE I. Note i, Page 6. L. Oscar, Die Religion zuriickgefiihri auf iJiren Ursprung, Basel, 1874, p. 2. Note 2, Page 6. Hegel, Vorlesungen fiber die Philosophic der Religion, WerkCy Bd. XI, Berlin, 1840, p. 3. Note 3, Page 9. H. Spencer, Synthetic Philosophy, First Principles, p. Note 4, Page id. I am, of course, not unaware that Mr. Spencer, as chief spokesman of Agnosticism in our day, is so far from seeing, or desiring to see, anything hostile to religion in his doctrine, that he, the rather, professes to find in the latter the impreg- nable bulwark of ' ' true religion. " That ' ' our own and all other existence is a mystery absolutely and forever beyond our comprehension, contains more of true religion than all the dogmatic theology ever written," {First Principles, p. 112). "True religion" consists, namely, in the recognition of the fore-mentioned absolute "mystery." Its "subject-matter is that which passes the sphere of experience " and so ' ' tran- scends knowledge" {ib. p. 17), /. e., the "Unknowable." So far, therefore, as religion professes really to know the object (283) 284 APPENDIX. of its belief, so far as its "subject-matter" is definitely and positively formulated as an object of ostensible knowledge, and so far, in particular, as it declares and claims to know the Absolute, or God, as Spirit, and the root and goal of "our own and all other existence" as themselves also spirit- ual, just so far must religion be pronounced the victim— or propagator — of illusion. Now Mr. Spencer is not to be charged with the slightest insincerity, or with any other impurity of motive. The nega- tivism of his religious philosophy follows of necessity from a certain theory of knowledge, which he holds in common with a long line of predecessors in the history of British speculation, extending from the Middle Ages down to the present day. According to this theory, all knowledge proper, whatsoever, is limited by sensible conditions. The conditions are not merely instrumental to knowledge, but are themselves held to be the final objective limit of knowledge. In other words, all real knowledge is held to be, in nature and method, mathematico-physical, and to have, for its only object, the sensibly ' ' phenomenal. " Now, admitting this theory of knowledge, it follows, with truismatic evidence, that the "subject-matter" of religion — provided that the latter be not wholly an illusion — must be the "Unknowable." But the true conclusion from this the- ory is, the rather, that religion is indeed an illusion. For, as has often been p>ointed out, (compare, among others, John Caird's Introduction to the Philosophy 0/ Religion, chap. i. ,) from the acceptance of the theory in question as an exhaustively true and complete account of the whole nature of knowledge it follows that the assertion of the existence of the Absolute Un- Knowable is impossible and absurd. And religion, so far as this is regarded as its true and only "subject-matter," is a pure hallucination. APPENDIX. 285 There have been many, among those theologians who have ostensibly stood for the defence of religion during the last few centuries, who have been inclined to coquette with the agnos- tic doctrine and some who have completely adopted it. The result, naturally, has never been a reinvigoration of "faith" or of the religious life. It is one of the happier signs of our times that the nominal "gift," which the Agnostic "Greek" brings to religion in our day, is looked upon with well-nigh universal suspicion. Note 5, Page 15. At the beginning, in the seventeenth century, of the mod- ern period in philosophy, the modern mind, in the persons of its most conspicuous intellectual leaders, sought, so to speak, to insulate itself, and, in particular, to cut itself off, as much as possible, from all connection with that historic past, from which it was in fact itself but an historic growth. The attempt was made to effectuate a solution of intellectual continuity, by placing the past under a ban of disgrace. This solution, breaking-up, or analysis, had its relative justification; but only its relative and temporary justification; and that as a step in a process which could become complete only in a final synthesis, enriched, indeed, by all the acquisitions of modern science, but not excluding the riches of the past; the rather, uniting past and present, or the synthetic and the analytic sides of human experience, in the concrete unity of one un- impaired and all-significant whole. To the achievement of this final synthesis the greatest and most significant contribu- tions have, thus far, been made in German philosophy. Brit- ish thought has to the greatest extent, until recently, remained in that " irretrievably analytic " frame of mind, which J. S. Mill recognized as having, in his own case, all the quality of a disease. It has remained practically insulated, with re- 286 APPENDIX. spect not only to Greek but also to German philosophy. And this insulation has been result, as much as cause, of that more radical separation or estrangement of the inquiring mind from the eternal problems of philosophy — which are also the perennial problems of life — that is necessarily connected with excessive devotion to the methods of mechanical analysis. Thus it is that in our day one of the most urgent of intellect- ual and spiritual needs is the revival, in philosophy, of the historic sense, and that as one of the most direct means for restoring the philosophic sense and so leading, ultimately, to the renewed and convincing demonstration of that solid ob- jective basis for the vital interests,— and realities— of human life, the very existence of which seems, nowadays, to be, for many men of serious and, in other respects, cultivated minds, a matter of grave doubt. NOTES TO LECTURE II. Note i, Page 26. To J. S. Mill the personally identical self is an "impene- trable, inner covering, " an "inexplicable tie" or "bond of some sort," which, says he, "to me, constitutes my Ego." See note to J. S. Mill's new edition of James Mill's Analysis of the Phenomena of the Himian Mind, Vol. II., p. 175. From the belief in this "bond" or "tie" it is, according to J. S. Mill, impossible to escape. But of it no rational account is said to be possible. It remains as a "final inexplicability." See J. S. Mill's Examination of the Philosophy of Sir William Hamilton, chap. vii. Herbert Spencer declares that the belief in self is one that "no hypothesis enables us to escape." See Spencer's First APPENDIX. 287 Principles, p. 64. On the following page Spencer affirms that this belief is one which finds "no justification in rea- son." This simply means that the search for a fundamental, spiritual, living, and absolute reality, like that of Self, by psychological inquiries pursued under the limitations, and determined by the presuppositions, of the method of purely physical science, must necessarily be fruidess. The very fact that the search, thus prosecuted, is hopelessly unavailing, while yet the "belief in self" persists in the mind of the in- quirer as one which "no hypothesis enables us to escape," should, apparently, be of itself sufficient to convince him and the whole cohort of his followers that the method in which he and they put all their trust, and which they style ' ' experi- mental," is — not, indeed, in its proper sphere, inexperimen- tal, but — abstract, partial, incomplete, and not commensurate with the whole nature and content of experience; requiring, therefore, to be supplemented by a larger and more liberal, but not less strictly scientific, method, which is not unknown to philosophy and which, not being arbitrarily conceived and forcibly imposed on experience, but simply founded in and dictated by the recognition of experience in its whole nature, is alone entided to be termed fully and without qualification "experimental." I may add, pertinently, that Mr. Spencer's confession of the inevitable necessity of the belief in self is, on his own part, purely theoretical, and without further or ulterior consequence for the development of his psychological and ethical views. His psychology remains a '' psychologic sans dme" and his ethics is made to conform as much as possible to the psychology. Take, for illustration, his treatment of the question of the "freedom of the will." If "free will " is a phrase having any positive, substantial meaning whatever, it means, or points to, a function of the true self, or "Ego." The true self, now, being, according to Mr. Spen- 288 APPENDIX. cer's confession, something which we must beHeve to be existent, but which is for him "unknowable," he is in strict reason debarred from all right to discuss the question of free- dom. He does ostensibly discuss it, nevertheless, and in so doing forgets all about the true, but "unknowable" self, pro- ceeding as though the whole and true self or Ego were com- pletely and only identical with the mechanical aggregate of " knowable " internal states, or "feelings," which at any given instant make up the sum total of the content of our empirical, sense-conditioned consciousness. The view of the conscious self thus obtained is only static, not dynamic, and it is not strange that the will, considered in relation to this "self," seems purely phenomenal, a substanceless, mechani- cally determined state or "point of view," and freedom an "illusion." The free-will " illusion, " says Mr. Spencer, con- sists in supposing that "at each moment the ego is something more than the aggregate of feelings or ideas, actual and nas- cent, which then exists" {Psychology, Vol. I., p. 500). But this supposition, as we have above seen, is precisely one that "no hypothesis enables us to escape." The members of the Scotch or Intuitional school, on the contrary, have the peculiarity and merit of insisting that the confession of objects of "necessary belief" shall not remain merely verbal, but shall bear fruit in the further determination of psychological and ethical notions. And so — to remain by the case in hand — they insist upon freedom, as an attribute of the true self But inasmuch as to them, just as much as to their opponents of the "necessitarian" school, there is wanting the full and substantial conception of the true self as a spiritual reality, whose essence is activity, and whose activity is organic {i. e. , takes the form and has indeed the nature of self-realization; — see further above, Lecture VII.), it results that they, too, are unable to vindicate for the word freedom a APPENDIX. 289 substantial meaning. The whole discussion is carried on by them in the terms and with the categories of pure mechanism. The resulting conception of "freedom" is purely formal, negative, contentless, and falls a too easy prey to necessitarian argument. (See again Lecture VII, above, and F. H. ^xz.<\- \&y?, Ethical Studies, Essay I, London, 1876). Note 2, Page 27. See Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part III, Sections 7, 8, and 10; and Part IV, Sec. 6. No scholar needs to be reminded of the existence of the edition of Hume's Philosophical Works, edited by the late Prof T. H. Green and T. H. Grose (London: Longmans, Green, & Co.) and of the very special value and importance of Prof Green's General Introduction to the same; but it is peculiarly needful that the attention of the beginner in philosophic studies should early be directed to it. In his Introduction Prof. Green examines the whole ground-work of the psycho- logical philosophy of Locke and his successors, exhibiting the ground of its weakness as a theory of knowledge. Here, says Prof J. Croome Robertson (in Mind, Jan., 1883, p. 7), ' ' Locke and the others are charged with assuming for the explanation of mental experience that which is itself unintel- ligible except as the result of a mental function." This state- ment covers also the ground of the objection made in our text to any attempt to find in empirical, or purely sensational, psychology, a substitute for the philosophic theory of knowl- edge. Prof Robertson adds that "so far as it bears against Locke in particular, the criticism, it must be allowed, is not to be repelled." Nor, he condnues, "did Berkeley and Hume define their ground with sufficient care, nor proceed far enough in the way of systematic construction, to evade the criticism as it was to be levelled also against them." It 290 APPENDIX. seems significant that Mr. Huxley, in his volume on Hume in the "English Men of Letters" series, makes no mention of INIessrs. Green and Grose's edition of the philosophical works of Hume. Note 3, Page 27. In all that I have to say in the text concerning psychology it will be understood that I think of psychology not as in- cluding all that, in possible agreement with the etymology of the term, may conceivably be comprehended under it. Thus, for example, Aristotle brings into his treatise "Con- cerning the Soul " his most important contributions to the philosophic theory of knowledge. I employ the word psy- chology according to the now prevalent usage, as denoting the analytic and inductive science of mental phenomena. As such science, psychology simply takes cognizance of the phenomena which it finds, noting their order of co-existence and sequence, and so determining their "laws" or rules of order. The ostensible "processes" which it thus observes and analyzes, — sequences and other changes among given mental states — are modal, and not causal; they are mechan- ical, and not organic. But as the modal and mechanical always depends on, and is but the symbol of, the organic and, if I may thus express myself, creatively causal, it appears that the apparent processes observed by psychology are, for pure intelligence, its own product. They are not the organic- causal process of intelligence itself On this whole subject compare the Article by Prof J. Croome Robertson, on "Psy- chology and Philosophy," in Mind, Jan., 1883. Note 4, Page 29. Mr. Spencer himself also has the notion of the final identity of the facts of physiology and the facts of ps)'chology — or, in APPENDIX. 291 his language, of "matter and mind" — in the "unknowable" Absolute. But the identity which he conceives is abstract, mechanical, and exclusive of difference, and not concrete, organic, and inclusive of difference. Note 5, Page 31. See Kant's Crilique of Pure Reason, passim. Note 6, Page 36. It is but a few years ago that Mr. J. S. Mill was entertaining and astonishing the reflecting world in Great Britain and America with the attempt to show how the matter-of-fact belief in the existence of both object and subject — respectively identified by him with "external world " and "mind " — could be justified, on the basis of a theory which reduces the whole substance and range of knowledge to a mechanical "series of conscious states." See Mill's Exammation of the Philosophy of Sir William Hamilton, chaps, xi. xii. Note 7, Page ■^7- See Leibnitz's Noiiveaux Essais sur lentendement humain. In this work, which is composed in the form of a dialogue, Leibnitz follows, Book by Book, chapter by chapter, and paragraph by paragraph, the course of Locke's discussion in his Essay on Human Understanding ; commenting, in a tone of utmost liberality, on the successive positions adopted by Locke; warmly applauding the many views of Locke, which meet with his own approval, but also laying bear the weak- nesses of Locke's theories with equal unreserve; and performing, too, in this latter connection, not merely the negative task of the purely destructive critic, but also the positive, constructive one, which he only can perform, who is deeply familiar with the past histor)' and the perennial nature of the problems of 292 APPENDIX. philosophy. Leibnitz used to say of the "monads," which played a fundamental role in his philosophy, that each of them was "big with the future." Of the mind and- doctrine of Leibnitz it may be said that they were equally fructified through absorption and comprehension of the best wisdom of the past and the minutest and most varied knowledge of his own times, and that they are big with germs that have borne abundant fruit in the subsequent progress of philosophy in Germany. It suggests no favorable comment on the philosophic interest of the countrymen of Locke that the above-mentioned reply of Leibnitz to Locke has never (so far as I can ascertain) been translated into English. Note 8, Page 40. See, in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, the first parts, under the head of "Transcendental iEsthetic" and "Transcendental Analytic." I think that I may properly and usefully refer any learner, who may be interested in the subject of this Lecture, to my critical version of the argument of Kant's Critique, pub- lished in Griggs's Philosophical Classics, Chicago, 1883. Note 9, Page 40. For, as I have already intimated, following the strict re- quirements of the method in question, no such form or faculty of synthesis as memory can be either posited or recog- nized as existing; and without memory no synthesis whatever of sequent "impressions" or " ideas" is possible. Note 10, Page 41. In the first, or constructive, half of his Critique of Pure Reason Kant proceeds as if the supposition mentioned in the text were, not only relatively, but absolutely and unquali- fiedly, true. APPENDIX. 293 Note ii, Page 43. Such as the theory of a realm of "things in themselves," assumed by Kant in accordance with the wholly arbitrary procedure referred to in the foregoing note. The "things in themselves " are "objects"' conceived in complete mechanical separation from the subject of knowledge, hence as wholly foreign to and inaccessible for it, and hence, again, as wholly "unknowable." The ground of this gratuitous and, strictly taken, unthinkable hypothesis lies, as I trust the further pro- gress of our discussions will make sufficiently evident to the reflecting, in Kant's naive but wholly inexperimental conception of the subject-agent of knowledge as, like its sup- posed object, a thing, and not as 2Lperson; as essentially limited, like the body or the brain, by and to a -definite locality in space and time, and not as a spirit which, by its intelligence, shares in a nature that transcends and conditions space and time and is in potential organic unity with all things, as well as with their absolute creative source and condition. Note 12, Page 43. Toward the recognition and full appreciation of this ex- perimental truth, in all its broad significance, Kant appears, in his several "Critiques," as one who is blindly, yet ener- getically, pushing forward; blindly, because clouds cast by the philosophical formalism and sensationalism of his age ob- scured and limited his intellectual horizon; yet energetically, because moved by the strong and faithful impulses of an unusually deep and vigorous living experience. The same struggle is significantly continued in Fichte; while, with Hegel, the truth in question obtains complete recognition. The same truth was clearly perceived and expressed by Aris- totle. See in particular Aristotle's De Anima, Book III. 294 APPENDIX. Note 13, Page 45, Existence means only being objective, and to be objective means to be in orgatiic correlatioti with a subjective, i, e. to be kncrwable. Note 14, Page 47. The case referred to in the text is one in which sensible imagination abstracts, or seeks to abstract, from all its own forms and contents, and still fancies, or tries to fancy, that it has a remainder or product, which, if germane to any fac- ulty of intelligence and so capable of being apprehended or known by any, is germane to it {i. e., to sensible imagina- tion). The remainder, naturally, is indeed nought (o), = Ding-an-sich, the "Unknowable." A case in illustration, where something does appear to re- main after abstraction, and which is therefore more easily seized, is that of the ordinar}', popular conception of time and space as real containers or receptacles, and nothing else; — "baskets," as it were, in which a world unrelated to them is contained. Note 15, Page 49. See above, p. ■^^ et seq. Note 16, Page 50. This means simply that the self-conscious intelligence of the individual is finite, or conditionally — not essentially — subject to limiting relations of space and time; or, again, that it has a developmental history. Eternal in its nature — as we have occasion more fully to notice in Lecture V, — it is temporal in its fortunes. There is, in other words, a particular time and place, when and where it first becomes aware of its particular objects. It is in this way, only, that it is subject to mechanical contingency. But the temporal his- APPENDIX. 295 tory of intelligence has nothing to do with its essential nature. Locke, however, and many others, who have followed him, seek (ostensibly) the absolute science of knowledge in its con- tingent (human) history. Note 17, Page 52. According to Hegel's truthful and beautiful definition of philosophy: — '^ Die Philosophic ist nur diess, sick Uberall zu Hause finden." Note 18, Page 54. And yet Kant considers the faculty of human intelligence as something which is wholly conditioned upon the particu- lar and contingent constitution of the human race, the latter being regarded, in agreement with our observation above, under note 11, as an aggregate of particular things or indi- viduals, who are the special "subjects" of this intelligence. It is this which Schelling has in view, when he says (in his Philosophische Briefe iiber Dogmalisfiius und Kriticismns, Werke, Bd. I, p. 295) that "in the Critique of Pure Reason the fac- ulty of intelligence is regarded as something peculiar, but not necessary, to the subject. " In other words, it is held that in an absolute subject of intelligence, such as God, intelligence is something wholly and absolutely different in kind and es- sential nature from what it is in man; so that no positive in- ference can be made from the latter to the former. The fact lis, the rather — and the total tendency of Kant's own demon- strations is wholly in the direction of this fact — that to com- pletely experimental inquiry human intelligence presents itself as possessing, in spite of the contingency of rnuch of its special subject-matter and even as the condition of its having any subject-matter whatsoever, implicitly and really an universal and I may even s^y an absolute nature; a nature 296 APPENDIX. which must be presupposed and understood, in order to understand the specific differences — such as they are — of "human intelhgence "; a nature, therefore, which transcends the peculiarities of the particular individual or race, and by his participation in which the individual transcends himself (as individual) and is truly an intelligent person, a spiritual being, in living connection with the Absolute Being, and so himself potentially infinite. NOTES TO LECTURE III. Note i. Page 57. Droyssen, Grundriss der Historik, 3d ed., p. 54. Note 2, Page 59. Matthew Arnold, Contemporary Review, xxiv. 988, cited by F. H. Bradley, Ethical Studies, London, 1876, p. 282. Mr. Arnold's original use of the expression cited in the text is innocent enough. His own subsequent treatment of the "question" is that of the philosophical " tyro " indeed. Note 3, Page 63. "Matter" and "force" are the names which physical science, as such, gives to the essence of physical existence only provisionally or, rather, symbolically. A "philosophy," which allows no authority but that of physical science and no conceptions but physical conceptions, is either materialistic, and dogmatically asserts the unconditional and all-conditioning validity of the conceptions of brute, inert matter and blind force; or else, it is, more warily and justly, agnostic, and APPENDIX. 297 declares the absolute essence or foundation of existence to be unknowable. The next step is to proceed by a short cut to the identification of the unknowable, but materialistically con- ceived, essence of physical existence with "God." This is a doubtful compliment to the divine being. Note 4, Page 64. See A. Bolliger, Anti-Kant, Bd. I., Strassburg, 1882, p. 223 et seq. Note 5, Page 67. Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, currently and legiti- mately employs the expression, "pure physical science" {reine Natwwisse7ischaft'), to denote the science of nature as a sensible object, or, all knowledge which is conditioned and determined, as to its content, by "sensible aflfection. " Com- pare Kant's Critique, of Pure Reason : a Critical Exposition, in Griggs's Philosophical Classics, chapter v, init. Note 6, Page 71. Compare above, Lecture VI. Note 7, Page 73. In demonstration and development of this truth the phil- osophical works of Aristotle and, more notably, of the German philosophers from Kant to Hegel, are rich. Note 8, Page ']},. See, for example, Leibnitz, Op. Philos., ed. Erdmann, p. 202 ; et passim. How, further, for Leibnitz, activity is not motion in space, but is an ideal-spiritual function, no student of him requires to have pointed out. 298 APPENDIX. Note 9, Page 74. h.x\%\.oi\Q, Metaphysics, B. XII, chap. vii. : ?/ ydp vov ivspysia Note 10, Page 75. This distinction is often adverted to by Hegel. See, for example, WerJie, Bd. XVII. p. 250. In his lectures on the History of Philosophy, the criticism which Hegel passes on Fichte is, that the final result of his demonstrations is some- thing "certain"; but what philosophy is after, adds Hegel, is not the certain, but the true. Note ii. Page 76. To the early demonstration, in modern times, of the onto- logical limitations of physical science such philosophers as Berkeley, Leibnitz, and Kant contributed most effectively. The recognition of these limitations is to-day a commonplace with pure physicists. Note 12, Page '](i. Compare, further, British Thought and Thinkers, Chicago, 1881, p. 296. Note 13, Page 77. ' ' Absolute matter " is conceived as, in its essence, abso- lutely and irretrievably opposed to the essence of "soul" or "mind." So, for example, by Descartes. Note 14, Page 78. Compare subsequent Lectures, and especially Lecture VI. Note 15, Page 79. This, in the correspondence of Leibnitz with Dr. Sam. Clarke, was the burden of the complaint of the former against the latter, and against Newton. ' APPENDIX. 299 Note i6, Page 8o. They live, move and have their being "in Him," i. e., in living dependence on God, the Absolute Spirit. Compare Kant's Cril. of Pure Reason, in Griggs's Philos. Classics, chap. ii. Note 17, Page 80. Of course, the acknowledgment of spiritual existence by the theoretical or practical materialist cannot, without self- contradiction, be otherwise than merely verbally made. But cases of such self-contradiction very often occur, especially in popular "thinking." Note 18, Page 82, See Aristotle's P/y-'j-Zfj-, ii. 8: A natural existence is "one which, receiving continuous motion from a principle within itself, attains to a definite end." The inward principle of mo- tion is here nothing other than the "end " itself, which latter is to the natural object as its "soul," its essence, its self-realizing life, and is the true force, of which all the "motion" of the object is but the insubstantial and fleeting phenomenon. Thus "final causation," or causation as a living and ideal process, whose form is the form of self-realization, is exhibited by Aristotle as the precondition, in natural existences, of that serial "causation" (i. e., rule or law of sequence among phenomena), which alone purely sensible knowledge, or "pure physical science," is able to recognize. Leibnitz, among other modern philosophers, is rich in demonstrations to the same effect. Note 19, Page 83. Aristode, J)e Anima, iii. 7: 7) yap KLyr}0ii tov drsXovi lyepyeia. 300 APPENDIX. Note 20, Page 81?. See, further, Lecture VIL Note 21, Page 85. Compare note 8 to Lecture IV, below. Note 22, Page 86. Compare p. 73, above, and Lecture V. Note 23, Page 87. Compare Lecture VIL NOTES TO LECTURE IV. Note i, Page 95, One of the pregnant sayings attributed to Buddha is, "All that we are is the result of that which we have thought." Note 2, Page 111. Full of significance, in this connection, are the words of the Psalmist (Ps. xlvi. 10), "Be still and know that I am God." Is it not as though the royal speaker were saying to us, " Put a quietus on your individual selves, in the matter of knowledge; learn that the individual factor in human knowl- edge is strictly subservient and instrumental to, and is condi- tioned by, an universal factor; so that all true knowledge is, by direct implication, the knowledge of Him who is the condi- tion of all knowledge, that is, of God, the 'free Spirit.'" It goes, of course, without saying, that what the Psalmist here requires is in no sense the negation or stagnation of thought, but rather, in reality, the highest, purest, and truest activity APPENDIX. 301 of thought: sham thinking, "free" thinking, thinking that has, so far as in it lies, separated itself from the absolute and universal conditions of thought, — this it is, to which the Psalmist addresses the just and imperial direction, "Be still." So Hegel {Philosophie der Religion, Bd. II, p. 227), discuss- ing the knowledge of God as Love, and as Triune, says: " God exists here only for the thinking man, who holds him- self back and is still {der sich still fiir sich zurilckhdli). The ancients called this Enthusiasm; to apprehend and be con- scious of the pure Idea of God, — this is pure theoretical con- templation, the highest repose of thought, yet at the same time the highest activity. " The purest and most perfect expression of the Christian consciousness, that is to be found outside the covers of the New Testament, is contained, to my mind, in the historic prayers of the Church. They are as a cup, full to overflow- ing with the richest vintage of the Christian life and with the soundest thought of the Christian heart. In one of them, which is nearly as old as Christendom, the relation, in true thought, between man and God, comes to expression in the following supplication: "Grant to us thy humble servants, that by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that are good. " See Book of Common Prayer, Fifth Sunday after Easter. Note 3, Page hi. But most of all to them that seek. No wisdom, no knowl- edge, in the genuine sense, is had without an active and sus- tained search. In this respect, as in others, the well-verified promise is, "Seek, and ye shall find."" Note 4, Page 118. Those whose view of the scriptural revelation is of this me- chanical nature are inclined and accustomed to lay stress on 302 APPENDIX. the fact that the revelation is from God, but do not appre- hend it as a real, living, and effective revelation ^God. Note 5, Page 119. And the notion of self, like that of personality, is a poten- tially infinite or all-comprehending notion. Note 6, Page 120. Just as, for philosophy, all final or absolute truth is truth of life — the Absolute Reality is an Absolute Life — so all gen- uine revelation is the revelation of a life; it "brings life .... to light"; and it must therefore itself, in order to be effective, be clad in or, rather, instinct with the life which it reveals. The true Christian revelation is the Christ himself In him was the life made manifest, and this life was the ' ' light of the world." Misunderstood or, even, verbally denied this light might be, and yet it — the light of the divine life — was there, in the minds and hearts of all men, as the very "light of the world." Those who, by dint of magnifying, whether theo- retically or practically, the finite, individual self, and ignoring the universal Self, in which they really lived, and moved, and had their being (and this is the abstract description of all sin), did not consciously have "God in all their thoughts" — i. e., , saw not, or even denied, the light that was in them — these found this light reflected and focused in the spiritual person of a perfect Man, and of one who, just because he was perfect Man, was God-man, Jesus, the Christ. And so the revelation was effected, not of something previously remote, far-off, in- accessible to human "faculties," and so (in particular) for ever and hopelessly beyond the grasp of human intelligence, but rather of a light divine, which was and is the ever-present and indispensable condition of all intelligence and is intrin- sically more "knowable," in the Aristotelian — and just — APPENDIX. 303 sense of this term, than aught else. — The Hving Christ, I say, is the true revelation; and the recorded words of Christ, and, in general, the words of Scripture, are primarily and most truly a revelation, only so far as they, being "words of life," awaken in man the sense of a life which is the true light of the world, is divine, and is "eternal." I cannot forbear, in this connection, to bear witness to the pregnant significance of the chapters on ' ' Revelation " in Mr. Elisha Mulford's work. The Republic of God (Qosion, 1881). The studious perusal of them is, in my judgment, to be heartily commended to all who possess a thoughtful interest in the subject. Note 7, Page 120. How love, in organic identity with intelligence, is of the very essence of spirituality, we shall have occasion to see in the next lecture. Here I mention only that for St. John, "dwelling in the truth" and "dwelling in love" are one and the same thing. ' ' We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true; and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life" (i John v. 20). "God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him " (i John iv. 16). A man of thought, approaching the consideration of this subject by the way of Philosophy, considered as Science of Knowledge — i. e. , by way of the very science of the nature and fundamental conditions of intelligent, living experience — says, "Love, in the most comprehensive sense, is a desisting from the limitation of the heart to its own pardcular point [to the purely individual self], and the reception of the love of God into the heart is the reception of the unfolding of his Spirit, in which all true and objective content of intelligence and of 304 APPENDIX. love is contained, and which, thus received, eats away all of the heart's [vainly self-centred] particularity" (Hegel, Philos. der Religion, ii. , 390]. By the flame of true, objective love (in distinction from merely subjective sentimentality), as by the flame of true, objective intelligence (as distinguished from the pure phenomenalism of mere "Subjective Idealism," or "In- dividualism "), the "gnats of subjectivity " are singed. Truly, "Spirit itself, named in the language of feeling, is eternal love. The Holy Spirit is eternal Love" {ib., 227). Note 8, Page 121. " Now, " says the Aposde, "I know in part" (i Cor. xiii. 12). St. Paul, obviously, does not mean that his present knowledge is to such degree partial knowledge that it is es- sentially false; and still less that it is as good as no knowledge at all. The difference between his present knowledge and the knowledge which is to come is one of degree, and not of kind. It is a difference, as we may say, not in respect of uni- versal principle, but only of special detail. From this point of view one may easily estimate the value of such not uncommon utterances as the following: "The truth can always be known only by the few " (E. von Hagen, Kritische Betrachtiing der wichtigsten Grundlehren des Chrisienthums, T^. 119). Per contra, the "truth," and nothing else, is of a nature to be known by all, if not necessarily in adequate expression, yet at all events in its practical power, significance, and reality. The more universal (in the true sense) it is, so much the more "know- able " is it, and so much the more is it adapted to simple ex- pression and to universal apprehension. Its complexity of detail in application is the "unsearchable" (inexhaustible) and difficult element in it. I must add that, in the phrase immediately following the one above cited from St. Paul's wonderful hymn to ' ' Charity, " APPENDIX. 305 there is contained, by obvious implication, a striking agree- ment with the final results of our ontological analyses, as founded on the science of knowledge. The Aposde says, "Then shall I know even as also I am known." The argu- ment which we may easily read into, or from, the writer's words is: — The first and immediate fact is that "I know," though only " in part." And the correlative truth is that, in the final and absolute "object " of my knowledge, I am con- fronted, not with a mere impersonal, dead and brute, unin- telligible and "unknowable" Somewhat, but (agreeably, as we must say, to the philosophic demonstration of the organic unity of subject and object in knowledge) with an object which is, like myself, a subject, a Spirit, and by whom "also I am known." The very condition of my knowing any thing is thus that I also be known; and he, by whom I am known, the absolute Object of my knowledge, is himself absolute in knowl- edge. When my union with him becomes perfect, being henceforth wholly mistress of the conditions of space and time, and no longer materially limited by them, " then shall I know even as also I am known." Then shall I have, not a new kind, but a new degree of knowledge: the imperfect will give place to the perfect; and whereas I now "see through a glass, darkly," I shall then see "face to face." NOTES TO LECTURE V. Note i, Page 138. The identity in essential kind and in generic description be- tween the process of love and the process of intelligence — as also the process of life — is indicated further on in this Lee- 306 APPENDIX. ture (Y). The express recognition of the truth that Love is, so to say, the energizing principle of the Absolute Intelligence and the Absolute Life, is due, in philosophy, historically to that practical explication of the implicit content of human con- sciousness or human intelligence, which was introduced in Chrisdanity. In ancient philosophy this truth, in all its am- plitude of significance, was not fully perceived and expressed, but it was not "belied." The rather it was positively, even if also only faintly and for the most part unconsciously, ad- umbrated. So, for example, in the Platonic conception of God as absolutely "the Good" and "without envy "; — it is in the unenvious goodness of God that Plato finds the reason of the world's existence. Aristotle finds the ascription to God of a positive, outgoing, and conscious relation to the world — such as love implies — to be inconsistent with the conception he has formed of the divine perfection. But he finds a nisus toward the divine to be the inherent principle of movement in all natural existences. " God," he says, "moves the world in the same way in which an object loved moves its lover. " An instinctive love of God leads all things to realize in them- selves, "as far as possible," the divine likeness. I need not attempt to follow the fortunes of the truth in question, in the history of philosophic thought during the Christian era. I mention only that in the essentially superfi- cial, mock-reverential, mechanico-deistical theology, which has monopolized — or, rather, strangled — so much of the nom- inally Christian thought of the last five centuries, God is at most only verbally recognized as love. A loving God means an Absolute, which does not separate and withhold itself from the relative and finite, but attests, manifests, demonstrates its own absolute and infinite quality by its constant creative and redemptive presence in and upon the relative and finite. But to a mechanical theology, where the relative is, there God is APPENDIX. 307 not. The relative is an impenetrable vail, behind which God is completely hidden. God is thus not Love; he is the Un- known and the Unknowable. Note 2, Page 145. Formal logic, considered as the simple application of the principle of abstract identity and contradiction, furnishes at most only the anatomy of thought. It grasps the skeleton, and not the pulsating life, of existence. It deals with the me- chanical relations of parts, and not with the organic articu- lation of a living whole. Formal logic lays its hand on a single part of an organism — and in the present particular case, I am thinking of the organism of intelligence — and calls it "A," and then on another, which it calls " B," and so on; and then views and demonstrates their mechanical relations. But the sense of "A" and "B" and of their relations, as instru- mental to and members in a " life of the whole" — or as ' 'par- ticulars," through which a living, "concrete universal" real- izes itself — is missed. The results reached are "correct" or "certain," as far as they go; but the concrete, vital truth of the case in hand is not reached. " the parts in his hand he may hold and class, But the spiritual link is lost, alas ! " —Goethe's Faust, Part i, Sc. 4. Note 3, Page 147. "We cannot naturalize the 'human mind' without pre- supposing that which is neither nature nor natural, though apart from it nature would not be — that of which the desig- nation as 'mind,' as 'human,' as 'personal,' is of secondary importance, but which is eternal, self-determined, and thinks." Prof T. H. Green, Hume's Treatise on Human Nature, Intro- duction, Vol. I. p. 299, London, 1874. 308 APPENDIX. Note 4, Page 148. This "trinity" — or, the concrete unity of human intelli- gence — is, nevertheless, and obviously, not absolute, because subject to the law of time and of temporal development. The mechanical relations of subject and object in human intelli- gence are, as we have seen, not only instrumental to such intelligence, but also constitute for it a (moving) limit; whence, also, as indicated in Lect. II., man, through his intelligence, only imitates, but does not fill, the role of the head of the universe. Or, as indicated in our text, man, through his intelligence, images, but does not reproduce, the divine trinity; he is "in the image" of God, but he is not God. Note 5, Page 153. We have seen that God, as Absolute Spirit, is the absolute correlative object to the relative human subject By the prin- ciple of the necessary organic unity of subject and object in knowledge, it follows that the absolute nature of the latter must be reflected in the former. Grant that seeing God in this reflection alone is seeing him in a glass darkly. The doctrine of the divine Trinity, as founded on objective facts, illuminates human intelligence by setting before it an object which is seen to meet the ideal and essential requirements of the subject. Note 6, Page 158. It is very necessary never to forget that intelligence, life, and love are names of processes, activities, whose form is that of self-realization. They are not "products," except so long as the conditioning and creative processes are maintained. APPENDIX. 309 NOTES TO LECTURE VI. Note i, Page 179. An important part of the answer to the last question in the text falls, for treatment, under the subject of the next Lec- ture (VII). Note 2, Page 181. The text indicates the way in which theological mechanism and agnosticism plays into the hands of ' ' scientific " agnos- ticism. For illustration, see H. Spencer's First Principles, Part L Note 3, Page 191. When sense has abstracted from all but that which it can perceive or imagine, the residue is pure, brute world-dust, or "bare matter." But as the conception of this residue is the result of a work of abstraction, and not of a process of concrete comprehension and demonstration, it follows that the content or putative object of the conception is, taken by itself, unreal. What is taken for ' ' bare matter " is but the phe- nomenon of the presence of an Absolute Life; and it is no wonder if the experimental "philosopher" sees in it some- thing more than "mere matter," viz., the "potentiality of life." Note 4, Page 192. The form of the natural process is, I say, the form of self- realization. The potentiality, which stands at the beginning of the process, and the actualit}', which crowns its end, have both the same definition. The movement of the process is thus, as it were, a movement from self to self. — On the con- 310 APPENDIX. nection bebveen the New Testament Logos-doctrine and the cognate conceptions of earlier Greek philosophy, compare, among others, G. Teichmiiller, Geschichte des Begriffs der Parusie, being vol. iii. of the author's Aristotetische Forschu7tg- en, Halle, 1873. Note 5, Page 195. In popular conceptions creation means the origination or sequence of the world in time, or, so-called "mechanical causation." The absurdities of this view I have not now to point out, nor have I to show how the essence of no truly causal or "creative" process is to be found in any temporal relation of sequence, whether "regular" and "invariable," or only "unique" or single. The fundamental element in the Christian conception of creation or causation is "redemp- tion," as, in the philosophic conception, it is (with change of term, but not of meaning) ' ' realization. " Note 6, Page 198, And also as philosophy must and does conceive it. It is only an abstract, sense-conditioned "metaphysics," knowing none but physico-mechanical categories, that can see in the existence of the world a possible limit to the divine absolute- ness and infinitude. NOTES TO LECTURE VII. Note i. Page 214. Tommaso Traina, La morale di Herbert Spencer, Torino, 1881, p. II. APPENDIX. 311 Note 2, Page 216. The generic identity of what is here termed the "modern method," with the method which in ancient times was applied by Epicurus to the determination of moral questions, is ex- pressly recognized by Prof Traina, as indeed it is by all those who employ it. Note 3, Page 217. The epithet "metaphysical," as employed in the text, is applicable to any ostensibly philosophical inquiry, which is carried on with the use of uncriticised and uncomprehended categories. Note 4, Page 230. Compare note 4 to Lecture VI. NOTES TO LECTURE VIIL Note i, Page 253. O. Pfleiderer, Religionsphilosophie auf geschichtlicher Grund- lage, Berlin, 1878, p. 255: Religion is " Sache des ganzen ungelheilten Geisteslebens. " Note 2, Page 255. Take the first book on the nature of art, or the first biogra- phy of a great artist, which may come to hand, and, if the work be executed with the slightest touch of philosophic in- sight, you will meet with recognition or illustration of the truth implied in the phrase, "infinite personality of the ar- tist" So, for instance, in one of the days when this course of lectures was in progress of delivery, I took up, by way of 512 APPENDIX. diversion, in an hour of leisure, a pamphlet entitled "Das Musikalisch-Schone : Vortrag von S. Bagge; Basel, 1882 "; and there I found (p. 20) the truth expressed that the "original- ity" of the artist does not always date from the beginning of his physical existence, or individual consciousness, "but is developed in proportion as the artist becomes more firmly self-centred and conscious," i. e., just in proportion as he de- velops his true personality, and becomes conscious of the same. And then I found the cases of the great masters of musical composition cited in a way to show that by the development of their personality they were not separated from the "spirit of their times," but were, the rather, identified with it; it be- came their own spiritual substance and their works expressed it; and yet more, I found that the greater these artists were, so much the more was their "genius," their "inspiration," or the spiritual substance of their personality found to be uni- versal, or identical, not merely with the "spirit of their times," but with the "spirit of the world." — It is but a special ap- plication of the same truth that Ruskin has in mind, when he writes, ' 'And so, finally, I now positively aver to you that no- body, in the graphic arts, can be quite rightly a master of anything, who is not master of everything ! " {Ariadne Floreniina, § 56). Note 3, Page 256. It is well known that Schelling found at one time in the philosophy of art the key, and the goal, for all philosophy. See Schelling's Akademisches Studiiim, last Lecture; and Transcendental Idealism, by Prof John Watson, in Griggs's Philosophical Classics, Chicago, 1882, chap. vii. Note 4, Page 259. From this judge the truth of such a statement as the follow ing: — "A religion is the philosophy of many; a philosophy is APPENDIX. 813 the religion of a few "; see F. Schultze, Philosophie der Natur- wissenscha/i. 2. Theil, p. 418, Leipzig, 1882. Note 5, Page 259. Clemens Alexandr. : Y2.\\h.=6vvTojj.o^ NEW ^ BOOKS. -> HOBODY. A story by the author of the "Wide, Wide World." i2mo $1-75 "Her style is felicitous, her humor delicate, her pathos sincere. If we must have novels, commend us to such a story as "Nobody," which leaves in the lips of the reader a taste of sweetness, and upon his breath aa odor of fragrance," -—Morning Star. UNIFORM WITH AND BY THE SAME AUTHOR. I. MY DESIRE. 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