I N ^ \ Mi ' \ HISTORY OF THE ARGUMENTS l-OR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD, AARON HAHN, Rabbi of the Tifereth Israel Congregation, Cleveland, 0. (Genesis xxviii. 16) ; HIPP (Ethics of the Rabbis ii. 19) ; Dl^lp^^ D^nttf TO JTP The BLOCH Publishing and Printing Company. CINCINNATI, 1885. e. 6. Uuduiukj 57 St. Clements A OXFORD England Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1885, By AARON HAHN. In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. PREFACE, This book, a portion of which was published in the American Israelite in 1SS3, is intended to show the efforts that the human mind has made to solve the great problem of the Divine, existence. It is safe to say and were it for no other reason but be- cause Atheism can never succeed in proving the impossibility of the existence of God the attempts to argue the Divine existence will be renewed and continued in every genera- tion, no matter how much there will be said or written against it. It has been often maintained that the triumphs of natural sciences in our century have shaken the foundation of all proofs of the Divine existence. That is not so : just the reverse has been accomplished by the scientifically proved idea of the " Unity of Nature." This idea, which means that the laws of nature are all- embracing, that the most distant planets have some of the same kind of minerals that the earth contains, and that heat, light, electricity, magnetism and chemical affinity this pentarchy of physical force are so intricately related that they can be converted into one another, implies the ideas of the five main arguments for the existence of God. The "Unity of Nature," with regard to its origin, is the cosmological proof; with regard *to its aims, plan, products and means, is the teleological proof; with regard to that 2094O66 PREFACE. sameness of the human mind that makes comparative psychology possible, is the ontological proof; with regard to the organism of history as a whole, is the historical proof of the existence of God. God is not to he identified with that " Unity of Nature." He is the cause of it. Without a cause it could not have arisen. There are some who, like Algazali, Juda Halevi, Rousseau, Jacohi and others, do] not lay much stress upon the philo- sophical argumentation for the Divine existence, and think the only proof of God is man's religious feeling, man's spiritual sense, man's innate consciousness of God. Rous- seau called this spiritual sense " lumieres primitives,'' and Jacohi " testimonium spiritus." Whether the philosophical argumentation can engender in man the "spiritual sense" or not, this much is certain: it cultivates it, it strengthens it in the struggles with skep- ticism, and it refutes the counter-evidences of Atheism. This hook is offered to the public not without the hope that the views presented may be interesting and useful to its readers. THE AUTHOR. CLEVELAND, O., June, 1885. CONTENTS, PAGE. INTRODUCTION, - 1 I. THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT, - -22 II. THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT, 35 III. THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT, - 69 IV. THE MORAL ARGUMENT, 87 V. THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT, - 103 VI. THE ARGUMENTATION OF THE JEWISH THEOSOPHY, - 133 VII. THE ARGUMENTATION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, - 182 VIII. THE ARGUMENTATION OF THE MOHAMMEDANS, 196 E RR AT A Paee II line :'.() for "Baron " read Bacon. 4:{ " 18; page 54, lines 10 and 11 for " eternal " read internal design. 123, 23 for " evidence " read evidence. " 131, " 17 for impose " read imposes, 171, " 31--for " of Maimon's " read of .Vnimonides. 178, " 24 for ' phenomena" read phenomenon. ll, " '.U for " that idea" read Hie idea. " -Sfi. " 6 for " Algazali (born 105'J) in" read Algasali born (1059) tn. INTRODUCTION ber Slbneigung ber gegentwrtigen geologic gegen alle iiffen fdjaftlidjm 23etoeife, biirfte e nad? ttrie t>or, unb toielleidjt ntetyr aI3 \l, etne ikbenSfrage fiir fie fein, ob fid) ba3 Safein otteS beiuetfen laffe ober nidjt."* No subject in the whole range of human knowledge has been of such great moment in the history of man's thought and progress as the idea of God. Ever since reflection commenced to dawn in man's mind, God or gods have been the object of faith and love, hope and fear, speculation and adoration. The history of the idea of God is closely con- nected with the history of the moral and intellectual prog- ress of the human race. The idea of God stands for everything that is great and good, glorious and pure, wise and majestic. In nature it stands for the principle of all laws ; for the wisdom that forms and guides, and for the goodness that preserves and sustains all. In history it stands for all the ideas and principles of truth and justice, progress and morality, traceable in the sea of events and in the waves of tendencies. In life Theism stands for all that boundless wisdom, goodness, power, love and holiness are to man's thoughts * " Gottund die Natur," von Dr. Ulrici. 2 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. and feelings, will and convictions, sentiments and con- science. The difficulties besetting a fair treatment of the Theistic problem are great. Proof of this are not only the great differences existing between the God confessed by lips and the God worshiped by the heart, between the God of theo- ries and the God of man's moral conduct, between the God of popular theology and the God of rationalism; but also the history of misapprehensions and errors of the meta- physicians. An adequate treatment of this theme must never be expected, for the finite man will never comprehend the infinite, absolute Being in its total. The more thought and study one gives to the Theistical problem, the clearer will become to him not merely its real intricacies and its real mysteriousness, but also the fact that a final solution, the way the large mass of people would like to have it, will never be reached. Cicero relates that the poet Simonides was questioned by the king Hiero " what God was." He asked the king for one day's time to consider. The day passed, but, being unable to make the answer, he asked for two days' more time to consider. It was accorded. Upon asking again for more time to consider, the king Hiero became impatient and desired to know the reason for his delay. Simonides replied : " The more I think of God, the more dark and unknown he still is to me." The answer of Simonides, expresses to the present day the confession of every earnest, thoughtful and profound thinker. The philosophers of the nineteenth century have more knowledge and a deeper insight into the fabric of nature, but as to the essence of God they can not tell much more than old Simonides could. INTRODUCTION. " Silence is the becoming praise to thee, God ! " are the words of the psalmist. " Who shall name Him And dare to say, 'I believe in Him?' Who shall deny Him And venture 'o affirm, ' I believe in Him not? ' "* The futile attempts and the hopeless efforts to unveil the great mystery of the Divine nature and attributes have induced a great many to give up reasoning on God and his relations to the world, and to advocate, in its stead, the traditional teachings of popular theology, or agnosticism. Fully aware of this difficulty were also the metaphysi- cians Ibn Bachya (in the eleventh century) and Moses Maimon (1135-1204), but nevertheless they considered it not merely praiseworthy, but even man's duty, to reason to his. utmost capacity on God's nature and ways. Their idea was, if man can not know all about God, then let him try to know at least as much as there is within the reach of his comprehension. Ibn Bachya uses the following illustration : A king ap- pointed as his treasurer a man fully equal to the demands of the office. Somehow or other, this treasurer was pre- vailed upon by the king's officers to trust blindly their words, and to take the coins without any further weighing or examining. For this credulity the treasurer was re- proved by the king, who would have excused such gulli- bility only in a treasurer deficient in the requisite qualifi- cations for the office, but not in one who was fully qualified. * Goethe, "Faust." 4 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE or GOD. Thus Ibn Bachya thinks only people unable to reason for themselves are excusable in following the traditional guid- ance of others, while men capable of reasoning logically ought to exercise this great preference of their mind. The same view was shared by Moses Maimonides in saying, " Our love of God is on the increase in proportion to our knowledge of him." Concerning the excesses both of the sentimentalists and the rationalists, in treating of God and his nature, the famous French metaphysician, M. Cousin, truly remarked : " Theodiccea has two rocks one is abstraction, the abuse of dialectics ; it is the vice of schools and metaphysics. If we are forced to shun this rock, we run the risk of being dashed against the opposite rock. I mean that fear of rea- soning that extends to reason, that excessive predominance of sentiments which develop in us the loving and affection- ate faculties at the expense of all others, throws us into anthropomorphism without criticism, and makes us insti- tute with God an intimate and familiar intercourse, in which we are somewhat forgetful of the august and fearful majesty of the Divine Being. * * We escape these opposite excesses of a refined sentimentality and a chimer- ical abstraction by always keeping in mind both the nature of God, by which he escapes all relation with us, necessity, eternity, infinity, and at the same time those of his attri- butes transferred to him, for the very simple reason that they came from him." Those who have relinquished reasoning on God and on his relation to the world on account of the great differences of views prevalent among the philosophers themselves, ought to consider that, no matter what the deficiencies are in the systems of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, etc., these metaphysicians have done INTRODUCTION. incalculably great service to the intellectual progress of mankind and to the investigation of Truth. Each one of them has drawn by the golden buckets of his genius a few drops of truth from the ocean of the manifestations of the Divine Being; and this is about all that can be expected of mortals. Man can not explore the whole sea of the Divine Infinity ; at best, he can only catch a few glimpses of the Eternal's glory. The incongruity and discrepancy of the philosophical systems would not be nearly so great if every system, instead of being looked upon as the final solution of the great metaphysical problems, would be considered merely the solution of a certain side to those problems. Each system is only one ray of the great sun of philosophy. Every metaphysical system is, to a certain extent, right, and again, to a certain extent, wrong. For man there is in every truth an. occult seed of error, and in every error there is a grain of truth. God is conceivable only by his manifestations in nature, history and the human soul. They are .the signs and evi- dences of his existence. The wonderful discoveries and the marvelous results of the modern natural sciences have had such a dazzling effect upon the minds of a great many that they can not see the glory of God in the universe. They can not see how the first Cause can be connected with the secondary causes, and how the metaphysical world can be implied in the physical. Among this class of people atheism arose, the same way as it did among the contemporaries of Plato. " The cause of all impiety and irreligion among men is that, reversing in themselves the relative subordination of mind and body, they have, in like manner, in' the universe, made that to be first which is second, and that to be second which is first ; for while, in the generation of all things, 6 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. intelligence and final causes precede matter and efficient causes, they, on the contrary, have viewed matter and ma- terial things as absolutely prior, in the order of existence, to intelligence and design ; and thus departing from an original error in relation to themselves, they have ended in the subversion of the Godhead."* This censure of Plato holds good of the modern mate- rialistic literature, in which the confusion of the primary and of the secondary causes is carried on systematically. The assertion that natural sciences had banished God from nature, and that their results were incompatible with Theism, is entirely false and groundless. The natural sciences have co-operated in ridding mankind of narrow anthropornorphistic notions of God, but the pure conception of God as an infinite, spiritual, omniscient, wise Being has rather gained in corroboration and proofs by the so wonderful disclosures of modern astronomy, geology, chemistry, dynamics, pneumatics, anatomy, etc. Nature is at present, no less than ever before, the flaming Sinai of the divine manifestation and revelation. "The modern idea of law, of the constancy, and, therefore, of the trustworthiness, of natural forces." says the Duke of Argyle, "has been known, not indeed scientifically, but instinct- ively, to man, since first he made a tool and used it as the instrument of purpose. What has science added to this idea except that the same rule prevails as widely as the universe, and is made subservient in a like manner to knowledge and to will? In the enthusiasm awakened by the discovery of some new facts or of some new forces, and in the freshness with which they impress the idea of *DeLeg.,X. INTRODUCTION. such agencies on our minds, we sometimes very naturally exaggerate the length of way along which they carry us toward the great ultimate objects of intellectual desire We forget altogether that the knowledge they convey is in quality and in kind identical with knowledge long in pos- session, and places us in no new relation whatever to the vast background of the Eternal and the Unseen." * There is no denying that modern natural philosophy is incompatible with dogmatical views of the churches ; and that is the reason why priests and dogmatists have always been the enraged antagonists of the progress of the modern natural sciences. But there is no cause for fearing the influences of natural philosophy if religion means mainly the belief in a wise supreme Preserver of all, and the Father of mankind ; the belief in man's responsibility, and the belief that God is to be worshiped by man's dutifulness toward himself, toward his fellow-men, and toward Him whom we shall know, and love, and teach to others. Science treats the biblical creation -theories as mere legends; but that mysteriousness which religion sees in the creation of the world, science does admit to be real. Science has destroyed the belief in miracles, but it has in their stead pointed to the real mysteries of the phe- nomena of the universe which form the portals to the infinite temple of the Most High. The mysteries of the origin of things and of the preser- vation of the universe will always defy atheism. Professor Dr. Noah Porter. President of Yale College, attributing the spread of atheism and agnosticism more to the materialistic and skeptical tendency of the 3cttgctft * Eeign of Law, p. 115. ARGUMENTS' FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. -spirit of the age than to anything else, says truly: " The new universe of modern science has indeed become immensely expanded to man's certain insight, and been made immeasurably more impressive to his instructed and quickened imagination. Its spaces stretch out in every direction before the eyes in immeasurable tracts, which the imagination falters in its attempts to traverse. But the instructed eye finds in these most distant provinces exam- ples of order, beauty and goodness as brilliant and over- whelming as in those which are near. New agents have been discovered in the far and the near, the products and actings of which have made science familiar, even to the uninstructed minds, as the minister and magician of art. It would seem at first that these brilliant discoveries, these verified facts and these determined laws have made the old theory of a self-existing, creating and loving intelligence more necessary and more .acceptable to the scientific intel- lect. At the least, we might conclude that the logic of atheism would find no advantage in modern science above the logic of Theism. Such, at least, is the judgment of the unsophisticated intellect, when first confronted with the facts and relations which modern science reveals. It be- comes, therefore, a question of more than curious interest, by what process of intellectual legerdemain has the new atheism become so plausible, and by what subtle transitions of thought have the atheistic and agnostic theories so largely taken possession of the 3ettgetft of the present generation." * The assertion that natural sciences have dethroned God in nature is false, and will remain an error while there will be the least vestige of mysteries in nature, and while there * Science and Sentiment, p. 461. INTRODUCTION. 9 will be traces of mathematical calculations and geometrical relations and arrangements in the universe. The French astronomer, Lalande, said : " I have searched the heavens, but did not find God." Indeed ! a strange way of seeking, with a telescope in the hands, the invisible God ! Lalande betrayed by his words that he had no con- ception of a spiritual, infinite God. Lalande was a great astronomer, but a poor philosopher. His God was a mere phantom, an idol. The true God can not be detected by means of a mechanical telescope. The true God can be detected only by the telescope of mind and heart, earnest and well prepared to seek the truth. The prophets and the met iphysicians who proclaimed the existence of God, de- tected him by no other instruments than a reasoning mind and a pure heart longing for something higher and better than mere temporalities and sensual enjoyments. Lalande could not find God with a telescope, but Galileo Galilei, when he directed for the first time the telescope toward the sky, and saw the marvels of the celestial bodies, could not help but exclaim in amazement and awe : " How great are thy works, O Eternal ! " Science has scaled the heights, sounded the oceans, opened the caverns and beds of fossils, detected the paths of the whirlwinds, analyzed substances, discovered uni- versal laws, disentangled their concatenations, espied the constituents of the planets, numbered the stars, scanned the silvery pavement of the milky way, and has made sub- servient to man's purposes the elements and the laws of nature. However, in spite of all these wonderful results, it did not succeed in explaining the order, or the cause, or the essence of the laws and elements of nature. In other words, despite all the light that natural sciences have ARGUMENTS FOR THK EXISTENCE OK GOD. shed upon the phenomena of nature, the universe itself is at present just as great a mystery to man as it ever was. " In all directions," says Herbert Spencer, u our investi- gations bring us face to face with an insoluble enigma. We learn at once the greatness and littleness of human intellect, its power in dealing with all that comes within the range of experience, its impotence in dealing with all that transcends experience. We realize with a special viv- idness the utter incomprehensibleness of the simplest fact considered in itself. The scientific men, more truly than any other, know that in its essence nothing can be known.'' * But even those who believe that natural sciences have dethroned and banished God from nature can not help admitting that God's throne is as firm and as well founded as ever in the human heart and in the consciousness of mankind. The idea of God agitates the human mind at present, no less than in previous ages. Even the agnostics, who abide by the dogma of the " Unknowable," take the liveliest interest in the Theistical problem. This is so because the idea of God, being constitutional in man, is an indestructible part of his nature, and can not be discarded at mere pleasure. Arguments to the effect that the idea of God is irrational, a weakness in man, a product of fancy, an heirloom from the past, etc., may weaken or shake, to a great extent, the belief that a great many have in God's providence; but the time will never come when materialism will succeed in the extirpation of that idea from mankind's consciousness. "There are two great enemies to mate- rialism," says the Duke of Argvle, "one is rooted, in affec- tion, the other in the intellect. One is the power of things hoped for a power which never dies; the other is the evi- * First Priiici|i'ee. INTRODUCTION. 1.1 dence of things not seen and this evidence abounds in all we see." The idea of God is so inherent in the human heart, and so essential to the intellectual constitution and instinct of man, that to a great many, among them also Lord Bacon de Verulam, it was incredible that man with intelligence and feeling could be so destitute of every religious idea as atheism implies. Yet they were mistaken in that. Men like Von Holbach, the author of u La System de la Nature," D'Alambert and Diderot, the heads of the encyclopaedists, were atheists, not merely with their lips, but also at heart ; they were conscious atheists. When, in 1746, David Hume said to Baron de Holbach that he doubted very much whether there are real atheists, and assured him that he had never seen one, the Baron de Holbach replied : " Sir, you dine just now in a company of seventeen real atheists." With some the idea has become prevalent that the belief in God is the outgrowth of human ignorance. They say, people being ignorant about the causes and effects of forces and the natural course of phenomena, accounted for every- thing with the intervention of gods or God. People who do not disregard the facts of history and who do not like to be partial must not repeat the view that ignorance is the mother of the belief in God. Those who know only a little about the history of human thought must know that the greatest thinkers and the greatest poets were no atheists and no materialists. The giant minds of the human race, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Bruno, Ibn Sina, Maimon, Bacon, Newton, Des- cartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Cudworth, Kant, Dante, Shake- speare, Pope, Byrou, Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Goethe, 12 ARGUMENTS TOR THE EXISTENCE or GOD. Longfellow, Tennyson, Emerson, etc., were anything but atheists and materialists. It is true these philosophers, scientists and poets vary greatly in their definitions and conceptions of God, but nevertheless they all agree that the highest and greatest idea man can think of is God, the infinite, spiritual and most perfect Being. *' If," says Professor Frohshammer, " the idea of God were not innate in man, and if man were not constitution- ally religious, the grossest ignorance could not have brought him to the consciousness of God. All the ignorance in the world could not have prevailed upon man to believe in God, had he not been organized to that effect. The animals are ignorant enough, and yet they have never arrived at the idea of God."* By way of ignorance man certainly would not have come to believe in God ; and it is even doubtful whether mere ratiocination and speculation had sufficed to effect that. Professor Lichtenberg's opinion, that it is questionable whether mere reason, if not influenced by the heart, would have ever come to the idea of God, is not too paradoxical after all, but it must be somewhat restricted. It has also been asserted that the idea of God arose from the political expediency of kings. In order to have the work of ruling easier, and to make it effectual, the kings went into close alliance with the priests. It can not be denied that religion was made a great agency in bridling and ruling the people, but that does not at all warrant the assertion that the idea of God originated solely from po- litical scheming. The belief in God or gods is undoubtedly much older than political institutions ; it is as old as the * Christenthum und Wissenschaft, 316-318. INTRODUCTION. 13 hopes and fears, gratefulness and perceptions of human individuals. Had the idea of God been merely an invention of political schemers, it would have ceased to be a power in those states and governments where despotism and oppression, extor- tion and tyranny lost their sway. It is true the belief in God was also abused for political purposes ; but has there ever been an idea, or a principle, or a feeling, or a system, or an invention, or any object whatever, which escaped the fate of being abused, at least at a certain time, by somebody? If there are cases in which the idea of God was made instrumental to do wrong, there are, on the other hand, a great many cases where the idea of God was made instrumental to serve the cause of justice, truth, virtue, liberty, etc. Moses, the prophets and a great many other champions of liberty and justice pleaded the cause of the oppressed and persecuted, in the name of God, the Father of mankind. Those who believe that the idea of God is a mere fiction and invention ought to consider that errors and falsehoods do not last forever. Every fallacy, falsehood and error sooner or later destroys itself. " If," says Professor Fechner, " God and hereafter were nothing but fables, they would not have retained so long their hold upon mankind. Both error and truth can be transmitted historically, but, while the truth is gaining, spreading, and finally triumphant, the error has certain limits where and when it must recede and must make room for the truth. Error is doomed to decrease and to disappear. The idea of God has always been everywhere and among all classes of people, and it has done undeniably much good for the cause of the enlightenment, refinement, unification and progress of mankind. Its hold on mankind 14 ARGUMENTS FOB THE EXISTENCE or GOD. at large is at present not less than ever before. This is a proof of the existence of God." Since man and everything around him are subject to inexorable and unchangeable laws of nature, and since these invariable and immutable laws of nature are not interrupted and checked by any miracle, a great many scientists dropped the belief in God and substituted for it the " Reign of Mechanical Law." The universe is to them a mechanism, the formation and arrangement of which was brought about, not by an internal principle of development and organization, but by mere external causes and acci- dental impulses. The French astronomer La Place, the author of the ;< Ex- position du Systeme du Monde," is considered the first representative of the theory that the universe is a mere mechanism, brought about by adventitious causes. Being asked by Napoleon I. why he, in his " Systeme du Monde," nowhere referred to God, he replied : " Sir, je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothese." These words of La Place have been repeated innumerably, and have been considered the motto of modern atheism, without being examined as to whether there is in them really a cogent and a conclusive idea. A description of the universe, as La Place's " Systeme du Monde " is, does not presuppose necessarily a reference to God as the primary Cause of all. Alexander von Humboldt also excludes, in his description of the universe, the " Cosmos," every reference to God. and treats only of secondary causes. However, no sensible man will hold that, because La Place and Humboldt ex- cluded from their descriptions of the universe the reference to a first Cause, and because of their treating exclusively only of second causes, there is no such thing as a primary INTRODUCTION. !"> Cause and that such, a thing as a causality of the law of nature is not conceivable. No matter what effect La Place's answer had upon Na- poleon I. or upon thousands of others, one thing is sure . it did not shed any light upon the mysteries of the creation. The beginnings of the inorganic as well as of the organic beings remained just as great mysteries shrouded in dark- ness after La Place made that answer, as they were before. La Place and Alexander von Humboldt are considered by the materialists and atheis's as the representatives of the theory of the mere mechanical self-construction of the universe. The following quotations from their own works make it doubtful whether they really believed in a mere mechanical arrangement of the universe : In the " Essai Philosophique surles Probabilities" (Paris, 1814), La Place not only admitted the existence of a su- preme Being, but also argued its omniscience in the fol- lowing way : " Reason knowing for a certain moment all * the forces working in nature, and knowing the mutual re- lation of the beings constituting the universe, and being also able to analyze them, could comprehend by that very same method the movement of the hugest bodies as well as of the lightest atoms. Nothing could be uncertain to him, and past and future might be open before his eyes. The human mind from what it has accomplished in astronomy may be considered a weak type of such a mind." * That Alexander von Humboldt did not consider the uni- verse a mere mechanism, caused by mere external impulses, is clear from his definition of nature and his views on the * L'esprit hurnain offre dans la perfection qu'il a su donner it 1'as- tronomie une faible esquisse de cette intelligence. Hi AHGUMKXTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. main object of inquiry. Right on the first page of his " Cosmos " it reads : "Nature is to the reflective observation a unity in the diversity of phenomena; a harmony blending together all forms and mixtures; one great whole of objects and forces animated by the breath of life. The most important result of a rational inquiry into nature will be to establish the unity and harmony of this stupendous mass of force and matter, to comprehend all the individual pa- is of all dis- coveries the past offers, to analyze special cases without succumbing beneath the weight of the whole, and to be mindful of the high destiny of the human race, namely, to comprehend the soul of nature which is hidden under the cover of all phenomena." * Ilumboldt was no atheist, as it has so often been held that he was. Besides, his use in the Cosmos of the terms "creation," "created," which presupposes a creator, there is also his religious creed, deposited in his "Memoiren." It reads: "The clergy considering God and Nature two subjects entirely separate might find offense in my views, and in'order to avoid persecution I shall not express them publicly. "And yet my views are only those which were, since the * ,,$>ie 9totur ift fur bie ben!enbe S3etrad)tung (Sinfyett in ber SUelfyett, 3Ser= binbung beS Wannigfaltigen in ft-orm unb SMifdjung, ^nbegriff ber 9iaturbinge unb 'Naturfrafte, ate cin lebenbigeS a n 5 e S. 2)a iuidjtigfte 9tefultat be* fumigen pbtyfifdjen gorfdjenS ift bafyer biefeS : in ber 9)tanmgfaltigfeit bte Gtnfyeit $u erfennen, Don bem SnbittibueUen alle gu umfafjen, tva bte (nt= bedungen ber lefcten ^eitalter un barbteten ; bte (Sinjelfyciten ^ritfenb ju fon= bern unb bod; nidjt ityrer 3DJnffe su untetltegen. 3)er ertyibenen SBefttntmung be^ Wenfdjen eingebenf, ben & e i ft ber 9t a t it r ju ergreifen, iwelctjer unter ber 25ede ber 6rfd;einungen ber^iillt Uegt. 2luf biefent JBege retc^t unfer 33e= ftreben iiber bie enge renje ber innentoelt b,inauS." (umbolbt'3 KoSmoS, Ginleitenbe Semerfungen.) INTRODUCTION. 17 remotest antiquity, entertained by all who interpreted the Bible in the light of natural sciences. "At a very early age people have come to know that there is only one great and mighty power of a creative, pre- serving and destructive nature. It is the same power which even to-day we call, according to its effects, electricity, light, fire, vital force, etc. " It is dormant while an absolute unity, a Parabrama. In order to know itself and to work, it resolves itself into two contrasting poles. Then it is the Jehova and the Asasel of the Mosaic writings ; the Brahma and Shiva of the Hindoos ; the Ormuz'd and Ahriman of the Persians ; the Zeus and Hera of the Greek legends." * No matter how much fault the theologian may find with this view of Humboldt assuming a duality in the Godhead, this quotation is an authentic testimonial, showing plainly and cogently that he was no atheist and no materialist. There are scholars who reject the theory that the mechani- cal construction of the universe is the work of mere acci- dental, external causes. They believe rather in an evolu- tionary progressive principle, animating the matter and workings from within. They believe in the " Reign of Laws," and yet they deny the existence of, a presiding Intelligence in the universe, because all in nature is so or- derly and because no- miracles and no intercession from out- side take place. How strange a logic this is ! The govern- ment of order and of laws, which makes science possible, they do not attribute to a presiding Reason ; but the government of disorder, of interruption by miracles, they would capri- ciously ascribe to a supreme Wisdom. It sounds as if a man would say the running, the working, and the keeping * Memoiren von Alexander von Humboldt, I., 365-366, Leipzig, 1861. is A HOLM EMS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. of a machine in good order is not the work of an intelli- gence ; but the disorder of a machine is to be attributed to an intelligent, wise power. Some people account for everything with the phrases "that is nature," or il it is the law of. nature." These phrases do not shed any light whatever upon the origin, preservation, and operation of the phenomena of the uni- verse. They rather imply the confession of man's ignorance in this regard. The term '* law of nature " allows of a great many defini- tions, but as to the causation of the law of nature, it is of the greatest importance to take it in the sense meaning a definite regularity of causes and effects, of numbers and measures, of relations and reciprocal actions and reactions. It is incontrovertible that there exists u laws of nature " in this sense. Now, can a sensible man think that the laws of physical and chemical changes and properties, and of geo- metrical relation and mechanical powers have become so definite and immutable, as they really are, by mere hap- hazard, by mere chance, by mere concourses of atoms? The k; laws of nature " presuppose a creator, a regulator, a methodizer, and at all events a qualifier who has fitted the matter and force, the properties and conditions for their efficacy and functions, and who endowed them with their tendencies of combination, disseveration, etc. Benedict Spinoza was also in the habit of accounting for every phenomenon and event by the u law of nature," but occasionally he gave the following explanation : " The laws of nature, according to which everything takes place and is determined, are nothing but the eternal decrees of God. If we say everything takes place according to the laws of nature, or everything takes place according to God's de- crees, we say one and the same thing. Further, the power INTRODUCTION. 19 of all things of nature being nothing but the power of God, which alone can make everything, it follows that all that man who is only a part of nature acquires for his sub- sistence, or what nature furnishes him with, without his co-operation, must be considered as given him alone by God/' * The Danish professor, Oersted, who secured historical immortality bv the discovery of the "electro-magnetism," considering all existence a dominion of reason, expressed his opinion about the " Reign of Laws," as follows : "All natural laws form together a unity, which, viewed in their activity, constitute the essence of the whole world. If we investigate these laws more closely, we find that they har- monize so perfectly with reason, that we may assert with truth that the harmony of the laws of nature consists in their being adapted to the dictates of reason, or rather by the coincidence of the laws of nature and the laws of reason. " The chain of the natural laws, which, in their activity, constitutes the essence of everything, may be viewed either as a natural thought, or more correctly, as a natural idea ; and since all natural laws constitute but one unity, the whole world is the expression of an infinite, all-compre- hensive idea, which is one with an infinite reason, living and acting in everything. In other words, the world is a revelation of the united power of creation and reason in the Godhead. We can now first comprehend how we can recognize nature through reason, for reason again recog- nizes itself in all." f It is noteworthy how all naturalists and philosophers of * Spinoza's Correspondence, t The Soul of Nature, Bonn's Edition, 450-451. 2o AK bie Unwblicfyfeit on felbft ober mufe fie trgenb>o am S^rone ber 2Ulmacfyt befeftigt fein, urn burdj biefe ^erbinbunfl mtt bent notfyioenbigen SBefen in SBirflicbteit fommen unb erfyalten n>erben ju fonnenV"* K.\i>eriene(! and reasoning teach that all subjects and events in the world are both consequents and antecedents. One would think that there is nothing more natural for people seeing every day existences and events not merely proceeding from causes, but also again becoming causes for other existences and events than the putting of the ques- tion whether there has been in the world an endless process of causes and effects without an ultimate cause, or whether all the secondary causes operating in the universe originate from one parent cause. Hut, strange enough, it took a long time for this question to urge itself upon mankind and come in the foreground. It did not exist for the Ionic philosophers. To them any of " the elements "the water, the fire, the air were the fundamental principles of all. The matter of which all things arise, into which they dissolve, and which, in the midst of all changing conditions, remains essentially the same, they considered the beginning of all. And even Anaxagoras * Moses Mendelssohn's Morgenstimden. THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 23 and the Eleatic school, though they assumed that cosmical matter is shaped by an intelligence, yet they had no special inducement to reflect on this problem, because to them that world-shaping intelligence was coequal with the cosmical matter. They were Monists. God was to them no inde- pendent being ; nor did they consider mind and matter in the light of an antithesis. Also Plato did not penetrate to the problem of a first cause. He conceived God in a two-fold relation : as substance and cause. All that is depending upon space and time is not so perfect as that which is immutable and universal. The real essence of all things he termed "the ideas," which are immutably universal and form the essence of God. Upon the form of these eternal " ideas " was shaped the order of things, and they constitute the eternal types and imprints of all forms. The Being, of whom all these eternal ideas or types form the essence, has been operating upon all that is changeable, and is on that account to be called the cause of all forms. This theory is the keynote of Plato's theology. Plato treats only of a formative cause, but not of a first cause. This was reserved for Aristotle, the man of wider generali- zation, deeper reflection, and of a farther penetration in the phenomena of nature, their concatenations and relations to one another, than any of all his predecessors. Considering nature a connected system, the parts of which, being united into a whole by one mind and directed by one will, he was led to the question whether there is not behind the endless play of causes and effects an ultimate cause enveloping the origin of all phenomena. "It is ^lear," says Aristotle, " that all depends upon the knowl- edge of the first cause, for only he knows an existence who knows its first cause.'' * * Metapliysics, I., 8. 24 AlUiUMENTS FOK THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. Uy cause Aristotle understands something that explains the origin and the nature of an existence. He (Meta- physics, I., 3) analyzes causes into four kinds : the material causes, which he, like the Ionic philosophers, was seeking in the principal elements of fire, water or air. The efficient causes, producing change and motion. The formal causes, being the real and invisible essence of all forms; or, as Plato termed them, the "ideas." The final causes, which are the designs in nature or the reasoned ends of the phenomena. Above all these causes there is a first cause moving all, but is itself unmoved. Matter, being too inert and too passive, could come into motion only by an outside force, which Aristotle termed Proton Kinoun the first motor, the primum mnvens. This reasoning is called the cosmological proof. The assumption of an endless series of causes and effects with- out a first absolute cause, Aristotle considered an absurdity. The theory of Aristotle's " first cause " was for centuries adopted by the Jewish, Christian and Mohammedan meta- physicians as safe, sound and self-evident. Special attention was given to the " first cause argument " by John Donus Scotus, an acute metaphysician (died 1308), who was the first to separate philosophy from theology, reason from faith, and natural from supernatural theology. According to Scotus, the existence of Clod can not be inferred from the mere idea man has of him (ex terminus), nor can it be proved a priori. The a posteriori arguments he considered sound and! reliable. He divided his demonstration of a first cause into three parts, of which the first one treats of the premises, that THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. all products are brought about either by nothing or by- themselves, or by an exterior cause. He comes to the conclusion that as of nothing nothing can arise, nor can anything make itself, it must be assumed that all existences are the products of an exterior force, which is God. However, he thinks the existence of a first cause i& not so self-evident as to be admitted without any further argumentation. To that effect he classified the causes in-- essential ones causarum essentialiter when the causes and' effects are simultaneous ; and into accidental causes causarum per accidens when the causes and effects are not simultaneous. The accidental causes proceed from the essential ones, an endless series of which is unimaginable.. In the second part of his demonstration he argues that coequal with the first cause are also the ultimate designs and the prime perfection. The more comprehensive the first cause is, the more comprehensive must be also the ultimate design. In the third part of his demonstration Scotus argues that the three primordials the first cause, the ultimate design 1 and the prime perfection are essentially connected, form- ing the modes of the manifestation of the same Being. Since Aristotle it was maintained that the nature of the Divine existence must be essentially different from the na- ture of the existence of the creatures. Scotus controverted this view by the dilemma : If God's mode of existence is essentially or entirely different from that of the creatures, then the inference is correct that either God does not exist or the creatures do not exist. The great nominalist, William Durandus de St. Touraine (died in 1332), argued for the existence of God in three ways : jr. AlMil'MKXTS FOR TUK ExiSTENCK OF Gol>. Via cminentix, there are all grades of perfection in ex- istence, but God is the most perfect grade of them all. Via causalitatis, every effect is produced by a cause, and no matter how far back the vista of effected causes reached there must be an ultimate cause where the chain of the efficient or secondary causes commences. Via necessitatis, from nothing nothing can come, nor can anything come into existence of itself. In the century in which Scotus and Durandus made such great exertion to fortify the cosmological proof, there lived also their antipode, William Occam (died 1347). He was the chief representative of the principle of the "double truth." according to which one may deny in the capacity of a philosopher what he believes in the capacity of a theologian, and vice versa. William Occam was the first one who attempted to undermine the cosmological proof advanced by Aristotle. Jn his book Centilogum Theologum he expressed a great distrust in all n posteriori argumentation* His starting- point was that no apodictical knowledge must be expected from the mere sensuous perception. The senses merely intimate that there is something existing, but through them alone one can not arrive at clear conceptions. Thus, through senses we perceive the smoke, but we do not always see the fire producing it ; or, we hear the groans, but do not see the pain causing them. More reliable than the sensuous per- ception is, to Occam, the intuition which gains the necessary truths by mere reasoning, without any assistance from the external observation. It being impossible for him to arrive at the conception of God by intuition, he did not consider the existence of a Supreme Being of a logical cogency ; but nevertheless he THE COSMOLOOICAL ARGUMENT. 27 was so far from denying the Divine existence that he did not think even a plurality of Gods impossible. His belief in God he rested upon the preservation of the order and harmony and upon the preservation of the universe. He maintained that it is not necessary at all to assume that efficient and formal causes must emanate from a first cause. Like Occam, Peter de Aily (died in 1425) would, by means of the chafing undulation of skepticism, wash away the rock of the cosmological argument ; but he did not succeed better. Furthermore, he holds that an infinite series of causes and effects was not unimaginable, there being things which cease to operate without an external cause ; and so also a beginning without an external impulse, was to him not unimaginable. Both William Occam and Peter de Aily did not deny the existence of God ; they merely disputed the Aristotelian theory, it being absurd to assume that the cosmical matter <-ould have come into motion without a first impulse from an exterior cause, and that an endless series of causes and effects without a connection without a first cause was unimaginable. It is onl}' a pity that they have not cor- roborated their views by facts. These ideas of Occam and Peter de Aily were resumed by Hobbes and Locke. They considered the whole causation theory only a psychological necessity or a mere mode of human thought; and this theory gained such a hold upon the minds of the scholars that Leibnitz considered the cos- mological argument lost if it be not given another more rational meaning. Leibnitz tried to do it in this way : All the phenomena of the world are contingent and changeable and have not the real cause of their existence in themselves. Now, AlUJl'MKNTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GoD. where is that first cause? It can be either within or with- out that contingent world. In that contingent world it can not he, else it would be also changeable or contingent; consequently it must be without and independent of that world which is a complex of contingent and changeable phenomena. The first cause is not merely the first link of the chain of causation, but it is that absolute, self-sufficient power, qualifying the elements and laws of nature, and befitting them for their relations and functions. Connecting and permeating all contingent and change- able things into a total, that absolute, self-sufficient, primi- tive cause is the sum of all possible realities, or the .sufficient cause the causa sufficient.* Of this cosmological argument, as set forth by Leibnitz, the English metaphysician, Dr. Samuel Clarke, availed himself in the formation of his proof, which reads : " First, then, it is absolutely and undeniably certain that something has existed from eternity. This is so evident and undeniable a proposition that no atheist in any age has ever presumed to assert the contrary; and therefore there is little need of being particular in the proof of it. For, since something now is, it is evident that something always was; otherwise the things that now are must have been produced out of nothing, absolutely and without cause, which is a plain contradiction in terms. For to say a thing is produced and yet that there is no cause at all 1 for that production, is to sav that something is effected when it is effected by nothing ; that is, at the same time when it is not effected at all. Whatever exists has a cause, u reason, a ground of its existence (a foundation on which * Princip. Philosophique, 36-41. COSMOLOGIGAL "ARGUMENT. 29 its existence relies ; a ground and reason why it does exist rather than not exist), either in the necessity of its own nature, and then it must have been of itself eternal ; or in the will of some other being, and then that other being must at least in the order of nature and causality have existed before it. " That something, therefore, has existed from eternity, is one of the most certain and most evident truths of the world, acknowledged by all men and disputed by none. Yet, as to the manner how it can be there is nothing in nature more difficult for the mind of man to conceive than this very plain, self-evident truth. For, how anything can have existed eternally, that is, how an eternal duration can be now actually past, is a thing utterly as impossible for our narrow understanding to comprehend, as anything that is not an express contradiction can be imagined to be, and yet to deny the truth of the proposition that an eternal duration is now actually past, would be to assert some- thing still more unintelligible, even a real and express contradiction." * After a dilation on the difficulties of knowing God, Clarke made the argumentation just stated, the basis of his second cardinal principle in the following words : ''There has existed from eternity some one unchange- able and independent Being : for, since something must needs have been from eternity, as has been already proved and is granted on all sides, either there has always existed some one'unchangeable and independent Being, from which all other things that are or ever were in the universe have received their original ; or else there has been an * Samuel Clarke's Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, 8-9. ;.{(| Aui.l MKNTS FOR THK EXISTENCE OF GOD. infinite succession of changeable and dependent beings pro- duced from one another in an endless progression, without any original cause at all. Now, this latter supposition is so absurd that, though all atheism must terminate in it, a& it accounts of most things, yet I think very few atheists were ever so weak as openly and directly to defend it. For it is only impossible and contradictory to itself. * * * But if we consider such an infinite progression as one end- less series of dependent beings, it is plain that this whole series ran have no cause from without its existence, because in it are supposed to be included all things that are or ever were in the universe ; and it is plain that it cart have no reason within itself of its existence, because no one Being in this succession is supposed to be self-existent, but every one dependent on the foregoing ; and where no part is necessary, it is manifest that the whole can not be neces- sary. Absolute necessity of existence is not an intrin- sic relative and accidental demonstration, but an inward! and essential property of the nature of the thing which so exists. "An infinite succession, therefore, of merely dependent beings, without any original independent cause, is a series of beings that has neither necessity nor cause, nor any reason of ground at all for its existence, either within itself or from without." * A new assault was made upon the cosmological argument by the great German metaphysician, Kant. Being resolute to try his utmost in refuting it, he did not take it in the sense given it by Leibnitz and Clarke ; it was easier work for him to invalidate it when taken in the old Aristotelian sense. However, Kant failed even in that way. * Demonstration, pp. 11, 12. THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 31 Like William Occam and Peter de Ally. Kant also thought an infinite series of causes and effects imaginable,, and, also like them, he did not advance any conclusive evidence in support of this view. It will be borne in mind that Kant had no atheistic tendencies at all. His main objection to all a priori and a posteriori proofs was that, by way of speculation, man can not succeed in demonstrating apodictically the existence of God. His sincere belief was that only the ethical nature of man teaches the knowableness of God. This assertion was so much to the taste of the theologians, that they over- looked all the criticism he passed on the cosmological. theological and ontological arguments ; and, indeed, there has never lived a philosopher of an original turn of mind who was less persecuted and molested by the theologians than Kant. With all his ingenuity and acuteness, he could not suc- ceed in showing that a first cause was unimaginable ; on the contrary, he admitted the possibility of a first cause, and his main criticism concerned merely the nature of that first cause. Human experience, he propounded, being only limited,, does not warrant any other than a cause commensurate with the effect. It does not warrant that that first cause was an unconditioned, perfect being. That first cause may be a fate, a necessity, a purposeless cause, a blank essence. It is true, the experience made in one sphere is not always and necessarily applicable beyond that sphere ; but ihe very concession of Kant that there is a first cause, is of the greatest importance to theology. This concession is a starting-point for the theologian. Kant ought to hav& considered that there have been a great many phenomena and events predicted and foreseen in history and natural :J2 AWH-MENTS FOB THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. science, though experience did not warrant them. La Verriere predicted the appearance of Neptune, though it was not warranted by past experience. The reasoning from the conditioned upon the uncon- ditioned, from the contingent upon the absolute, from the finite upon the infinite, from secondary upon primary causes is so obvious, that all caviling, dialectical hair- splitting and sophistry will not prevail to eradicate from man's souml common sense the belief in a "first cause," or, as Leibnitz calls it, the "sufficient cause." Dr. Asa Gray, Professor in the Harvard University, one of the greatest naturalists and, in America, at present the greatest Darwinist, said : " The notion of an eternal se- quence of cause and effect for which there is no first cause, is a view which only a few sane persons can long rest in.* And John Stuart Blackie, Professor in the Edinburgh University, thinks : " The wretched cavil about invariable sequence, which David Hume introduced and John Stuart Mill made fashionable for a day, will no more do away with the idea of causality in the great mass of normally constituted minds than the assertion that the regular going up and down of a piston in a cylinder renders the supposition of a constructive reason in the person of a James Watt superfluous, in order to explain the existence of a steam-engine. If physical science can put its fingers on nothing but a series of sequences, it merely proves that science is no philosophy, and is altogether a subordinate affair; but when philosophers, with their acute spectacles, can see nothing in the world but an infinite series of invari- able sequences, the sooner they give up their profession of wisdom the better ; for it is just the invariability of the * Darwiniana, 58, 1876. THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 33 sequences which forces the reasonable mind of man to assert that there is a cause within them or behind them, which makes the invariability possible." * Modern physical science has been revolutionized and put upon an entirely new basis by the discovery of the con- servation of forces and continuous motion. The conserva- tion of forces means that matter is not, as was believed in former ages, destructible, but that the quantity of matter and force has always been the same in the one or the other form, and the theorem of the continuous motion means, that there is no real stand-still in forces and no tendency to entire rest, as was the opinion formerly, but that all is in a state of motion and subtle transformation. These two brilliant discoveries in modern physical science have been advanced as evidences against the exist- ence of a first cause. Now, it is claimed with a triumphant air, if matter and force have been in continuous motion and transformation, then this does away with the idea a first cause being necessary. This is no conclusive evidence whatever. The objections raised to Kant, as to the nature of the first cause being perfect, are applicable also to these two theorems. Xo sensible man will infer, that because matter and force are indestructible and in continuous motion in the sphere of our experience, that they are so also outside the narrow sphere of our observations. If the causation idea concerning the first cause is not founded in nature outside our mind, but is merely a mode of our thought, a psychological necessity, then the ideas of the indestructibility of matter and of a continuous motion * Natural History of Atheism. ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. niav also be only modes of our thought and psychological necessities, because it is impossible for us to believe that, in a natural way, there can become of something nothing and of nothing something. It is a gross mistake to think that the modern theorems of indfstructibility of matter, of continuant* motion and of correlation of force* have banished and wiped out the theory of a first cause as an error. Just the reverse is the case. These theorems imply the idea that back of #11 changes and effects is something that is unchangeable,, persistent and absolute. All transformations of the natural phenomena are only modes of manifestations of that something that is unchangeable, persistent and absolute; and to that something" the character of a first cause may be assigned. It is 'Above all things, below all things; Around all things, within all things ; Within all, but not shut in ; Around all, but not shut out ; Above all, as the Ruler; Below all, as the Sustainer; Around all, as all-embracing Protection ; Within all, as the Fullness of Life." * * Hildebert de Tours, in J. Clark's Ten Religions. Vol. II. II, THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT, " Ceux q-ui'ont dit qn'une fatalite aveugle a produit tous les eft'ets que nous voyons . dans le monde, ant dit une grand' absurdite : car quelle plus grand absurdit<5 qu'une fatalite* aveugle qui aurait produit des Otres intelligents." * The great order, harmony and wisdom displayed and manifested in nature, urged imperiously and overpower- ingly upon man's reflective mind the idea that the structure- of the physical universe was the work or the product of a Supreme Intelligence, and was brought about with a design. The regularity of the seasons and of so many remarkable phenomena; the forms and constructions of organized beings ; the individual, domestic and social instincts of the animated kingdom ; the relations and adaptations of the- parts of the bodies to the whole in short, the entire- architecture of the universe impressed man as being so- wonderfully devised, that it was impossible for him to think of accounting for the existence of all this otherwise than by the assumption that a presiding intelligence produced, or, at least shaped it all. Cicero said : " I will not believe that the world is the product of mere chance till I shall see that boxes of let- ters, used to teach children the alphabet, will arrange * Montesquieu, Esprit de Lois, I. ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. themselves, by merely being overturned, into well-reasoned treatises." Nevertheless, in every generation there have been people living who either overtly or covertly denied the Providence in nature. They did so from no other reason than because so many and so great evils, anomalies and perturbations were allowed to take place. They reason : If there were a Providence, cases like earthquakes, inundations, shipwrecks, storms, murders, robberies, madness, idiocy, etc., would never occur. People reasoning thus ought to bear in mind that there are no absolute evils. All evils are only relatively so. Evils, or the law and principle by means of which those ^vils occur, may be in some instances quite horrible and appalling ; but in many cases, or in general, they may be of the greatest benefit nay, even indispensable for the development and destination of the creatures and for the regulation and harmony of the world. The truth is, the evils are not for the sake of the evils, tmt they are in the household and economy of the universe productive of much good, often where we expect it the least. The evils of the world, even in their total, can not be considered of sufficient conclusiveness to prove anything against the existence of Providence. In an immense world of all imaginable and unimagin- able tendencies of elements, forces and laws, collisions, though fatal to individual existence, are unavoidable. And the more one reflects on the office and agency of the physical and moral evils of the world, the readier must he be to say with the English poet, Pope, "Presume not God to scan." Man judges merely by the impressions of the moment and by his personal advantages, while God rules with regard to the whole and to eternitv. THE TKLEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 37 "The existence of evil,'' says Professor Blaikie, " is no proof that there is no God ; but it is by this overcoming of evil constantly that God proves himself to be God ; and man proves himself to be godlike when, in his subordinate sphere, he does the same. The only real e\il in the world is , the negative carping spirit the Mephistopheles of Goethe's Faust which, for lack of will to use the given material in the given way, gratifies an unreasoning rest- lessness in blaming everything and doing nothing." The Bible teaches that all works of God are as perfect as he would have them. The very fact that this is the view of the Bible, has been an inducement for many to contra- dict it and to try to find fault with almost all works of God. The following, from Robert G. Ingersoll s lecture on " The Gods," is a specimen of that kind of fault-finding : "A very pious friend of mine, having heard that I had said the world was full of imperfections, asked me if the report was true. Upon being informed that it was, he expressed great surprise that any one could be guilty of such presumption. He said that, in his judgment, it was impossible to point out any imperfection. ' Be kind enough,' said he, ' to name even one improvement that you would make if you had the power.' ' Well,' said I, ' I would make good health catching instead of disease.' '' This argument, advanced by the grandiloquent Mr. Ingersoll with so much self-complacency, is just as irra- tional as if he had said, "if I had the power to make improvements, I would make vinegar taste as sweet as honey and sulphur as fragrant as incense.'' Contagiousness is nothing but a chemical process. To desire that the contagious diseases shall not be catching, means to desire that the laws of nature underlying those chemical processes shall cease to work. FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. Mr. Ingersoll's words imply the idea that, had he the power to make improvements, he would put an end to the natural causes and effects in nature, and would rather perform miracles. As to the office of evils in nature, Mr. John Stuart Mill thinks : "Along with the preserving agencies there are destroving agencies, which we might be tempted to ascribe to the will of a different Creator; but there are rarely appearances of the recondite contrivance of means of destruction, except when destruction of one creature is the means of preservation to others. Xor can it be supposed that the preserving agencies are wielded by one Being, the destroying agencies by another. The destroying agencies are a necessary part of the preserving agencies : the chemi- cal compositions, by which life is carried on, could not take place without a parallel series of decompositions. The great agency of decay, in both organic and inorganic sub- stances, is oxidation, and it is only by oxidation that life is continued for even the length of a minute." * The argument for the existence of God, derived from the vestiges of design and finality in nature, is called the teleo- logical or the physico-theological ; and the first metaphysi- cian to apply it was Socrates, the great monotheist among the Greeks. It is true that before him Anaxagoras believed in one God, but to judge from the censures passed upon him by Socrates and Plato, he must yet have entertained a very deficient notion of a Supreme Being. While the God of Socrates was a spiritual Being and the absolute Creator and Ruler of the universe, the God of Anaxagoras was a mechani- * Three Essays on Religion, 1874, page 186. THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 39 cal power, a mere mover of the matter, a purposeless force, a deus ex machina. Nor did Anaxagoras attribute to his god any moral qualities. This was done first by Socrates, who considered God a supreme judge and .lawgiver, an adorable Being that can be worshiped only by love, good- ness and dutifulness. In proof of the existence of God, Socrates referred to the structure of the organized living beings ; the parts of their organisms are so adapted and subserve so well to the whole, that one can not help to pronounce it the work of a supreme wisdom, called God.* Plato, the disciple of Socrates, resumed the theological argument of his master, and extended its application to the celestial orbs. The rapidity and harmony in the movement of the siderial bodies were to him an indisputable evidence of a design in nature. To Plato, God was the consumma- tion of goodness, wisdom and of all moral qualities. But just on that account he was perplexed by the question : If God is the consummation of goodness, purity and wisdom, why does he allow so many irregularities, anomalies and evils to take place? In solution of it, he held that the evils do not come from God, but originate from the primitive matter, which was co-equal with God. Inherent in that primitive matter was a tendency to irregularity, disorder, confusion, chaotic changes and heavings ; but it was God who, in the capacity of a world-builder, forced the primitive matter into that arrangement of harmony, proportion and mathematical forms and relations which is manifested in nature. Though God in doing so was actuated by mere goodness, which is essential to his nature, being merely the architect * Xenophon's Memorabil., I., 4. 10 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. a ml not the world-creator, he could not succeed in forcing the matter so* entirely as to make all irregularities im- possible. Such a forcing would have destroyed the nature of the primitive matter; hence the evils and the blind necessity in the world. Plato's disciple, Aristotle, did not treat of the moral nature of God at all. God was to him an object of the greatest interest to reflection and speculation. He regarded only the metaphysical wants of man. Plato considered goodness, while Aristotle considered reasoning, as the prime attribute of God. It was one of the dogmas of Aristotle that God and nature do not do anything in vain.* He considered the world an eternal system, in which matter and form have always been operating ; but the first impulse to that operation came from without, from an intelligent, immaterial, perfect Being. He did not consider God the creator of the world Having given merely the first impulse to the inert matter to come into motion, his relation to the world was that of a mere regulator, keeping the world in order and harmony. f God can not be made responsible for the evils, anomalies and irregularities in nature, as he has given merely the impulse to nature to work, and has not created it; and consequently, Aristotle accounted in this way for the failures and shortcomings in nature. In a moral respect, Plato's conception of God as a con- summation of goodness stands higher than that of Aristotle, while metaphysically Aristotle's conception of him, as bring independent of matter, conforms more nearly to * De Ca-lo, I., 4. tMetaphy., XII.,10. THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 41 the perfection of a supreme Being than to the Platonic God-architect or matter-shaper. The teleological arguments of Socrates, Plato and Aris- totle had a great effect upon the popular belief of their contemporaries. Just as the ethical teachings of Socrates were a death-knell to the fallacies and caviling . of the sophists, so was also the teleological argumentation of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle a severe blow to the atomistic theory, according to which blind force, the concurrence of atoms and the fortunate chance had, in a long series of combinations, brought about all the phenomena of the universe. The teleological arguments of Socrates and Plato were to carry the monotheistic conviction into the minds of the Greeks. The atomistic theory is nothing but an absurdity. Granted that the improbable event should have happened and a fortunate chance should have brought about some reasonable effects, would it not be utterly absurd to think that the endless variety of wonderful phenomena and of reasonable effects owes its existence to a fortunate chance? And would it not be equally absurd to think that mere chance and blind force can keep and sustain the world in such an order and harmony as it really is? The atomistic hypothesis of Democrit, Lucretius, Holbach, Diderot and others , has been disowned and declared absurd by the representatives of the modern school of atomists. Its greatest authority, Professor Fechner, maintains: "The atoms themselves do not contain anything of space, time, law and spirit, nor can they produce anything of this kind ; but they owe their existence to their relation to and connec- tion witli the Eternal Mind, and by means of this relation and connection they form existences. * * * Our theory 42 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. of atoms explaining the formation of the phenomena does not hinder us from assuming an absolute Being, whose essence is the oneness, combining and connecting all. This r;j mi/iVwiMiwM* i* no idle fancy, but it is the ground of all real being. Above all changeable causes there must be an eternal, unchangeable cause ; above all dead rules and laws there must be a pulse of life ; above all finite aims there must be an ultimate, eternal, highest aim." * The same opinion is also entertained by Dr. Lotze, another great representative of the modern school of atomists. The atomists of old, as a matter of course, have disputed that there is a design in nature; nay, the Roman poet, Lucretius, advanced the opinion that the theory of final causes inverts the order of causes and effects, so that the effects are taken for the causes and vice versa. His words read: "But before all, be on your guard against too com- mon an error believe not that the shining orb of our eyes has only been created to procure for us the sight of objects ; that these legs and these movable thighs have only been reared on the basis of the feet to give greater extent to our paces; that the arms, in fine, have only been formed of solid muscle and terminated by the right and left hands, to be ministers of our want and of our* preservation. By such interpretation the respective order of effects and causes has been reversed. Our members have not been made for our use, but we have made use of them because we have found them made. Sight did not precede the eyes; the words were not formed before the tongue- on the contrary, language followed long after the origin * Die Physikalische Atoinenlehre., 64, 1BG. THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 43 of that organ ; the ears existed long before sound was heard, and all our members long before we made use of them." * This theory of Lucretius is, in principle, the same as that of the modern materialists, who, like Dr. Buechner (Gottes- begriff, page 25), say : " The stag has not long legs in order to run fast, but he runs fast because he has long legs ; or, as others say, the ducks have not palmated feet in order to swim, but they swim because they have palmated feet." All these views do not prove anything against the design proper in nature. The truth is the eyes see, the legs walk, the hands work, the palmipeds swim, because it is the immanent finality of these organs and because it is their natural function. Consequently, man does not speak be- cause he has invented language, but because speaking is the natural function of the respective organs. Every organ has its end in itself, though with regard to the whole it is often only a means. This is the idea of the eternal design, or the immanent finality. Intervals between the origin of the organs and their functions, are no ends in themselves, but they are the occa- sions and the states necessary for the qualification of the organs for their functions. Had the creatures arisen of themselves, the materialists would be right in asserting that the organs of their bodies can make only that use of themselves which their inherent faculty incidentally allows ; but being created by a supreme Intelligence, there is a design inherent in them, and that design is manifested in their natural function. Notable are the views of Baron de Verulam on the final * De Rerum Natura, 324. 44 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. causes. They are memorable, not merely because he is the father of the experimental and inductive methods prevalent in modern physical sciences, but because he has been mis- represented by a great many as having denied the finality in nature. Bacon approved of the classification into four kinds of causes the material, the efficient, the formal and the final, made by Aristotle but he was opposed to the substitution of the final for the efficient causes and to the false notion arising from it, which he styled " the idols of the tribe." * Bacon does not deny the existence of final causes in nature; he only compares them to "vestal virgins, not productive indeed but dedicated to God." Causarumfinalium slerilis est et tnnquam virgo Deo consecrata nihil parit. He meant to say they ought to be excluded from the study of physical sciences, and to be assigned a place in metaphys- ics. The reason he had was that, the study of final causes in physics diverts the attention from the efficient causes, to the great disadvantage of natural science, f The office of natural science is the investigation of the phenomena of nature in all their relations and constituents ; but this, he thought, could be done thoroughly only in the light of efficient and physical causes. Dr. William Whewell, the author of the masterwork, ' : History of the Inductive Sciences," is more competent than Bacon was to decide whether the study of final causes is really disadvantageous to the study of physical sciences. His opinion is that the study of final causes is not only not disadvantageous to natural science*, but that, on the contrary, * Novum Organum, II., 2; I., 39-45. t De Aug. Scientiarium, III., 4. THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 45 "almost all great discoveries which have been made* in physiology have been made by the assumption of a purpose in animal structures.* Of the same opinion is also Professor Dr. Noah Porter. * * * Final cause is so far from being barren that she deserves to be honored the Alma Mater of the inductive philosophy itself." f In corroboration of this assertion, Professor Porter furnishes evidences from mathematics, psychology, goology, paleontology, anthropology, ethics, etc. Descartes, though he did not deny the existence of design in nature, did not approve of Bacon's view to relegate the study of final causes to the domain of metaphysics ; and he opposed the study of the design altogether, for two reasons : In the first place, man is not competent to find out exactly what the real design is ; and secondly, the study of final causes leads man to the anthropocentric view, con- sidering himself the end of the whole creation. * But Descartes qualified his opinion when the semi- materialist Gassendi,|| with reference to instances like the wonderful arrangement of the valves of the heart, con- fronted him with a dilemma either to admit that there is finality in nature recognizable, or to declare frankly that there is no Providence. Boyle wrote to Descartes : " Suppose that a peasant, entering in broad daylight the garden of a famous mathe- matician, finds there one of those gnomonic instruments which indicate the position of the sun in the Zodiac, its declination from the equator, the day of the month, the length of the day, etc. ; it would no doubt be a great 'pre- * Volume II. t Human Intellect, 618. i Princip., III., 2; Med., IV. II Objections a la 4th Medita. 4(5 AlKil'MKNTK FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. sumption on his part, ignorant alike of mathematical science and of the intentions of the artist, to believe himself capable of discovering all the ends in view, for which this machine, so curiously wrought, has been constructed ; but when he remarks that it is furnished with an index, with lines and honorary numbers in short, with all that con- stitutes a sun-dial, and sees the shadow of the index mark in succession the hours of the day, there would be on his part as little presumption as error in concluding that this instrument, whatever may be its other uses, is certainly a dial, made to show the hours." The first of the modern metaphysicians who denied decidedly and entirely the finality in nature, was Benedict Spinoza. He approved fully of all the objections raised si gainst the design theory by the Roman poet, Lucretius but he did not deny, as the atomists did, the existence of a first cause. With stern logic his negation of the finality in nature followed from his system, according to which all that exists has to exist by the necessity of the nature of God, from which it issues, irrespective of the effects, whether bene- ficial or noxious. Spinoza's system deals only with causes, but not with ends, and especially not with well-reasoned ends, as God, the cause of all, is, according to Spinoza, no free Being, but a substance, producing all by the necessity of its nature ex necessitate naturae. A refutation of Spinoza's negation of finality presupposes a refutation of his whole substance-theory. His denial of the design-theory gave an impulse to the study of teleology, which, since the days of Spinoza down to the beginning of the present century, was a paramount subject of inquiry in the school of the English deists. ' THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 47 Edward Herbert, John Tolant, Anthony Collins, Shaftes- bury, Bolingbroke, Pope, and others, held that the goodness, wisdom and power manifested in nature were irrefutable evidences of the existence of a Supreme Being. Unlike the orthodox theologians, who saw the finger of God especially manifested in the perturbations of nature, in the appalling events of history and in the deficiencies of human life, the English deists revered, on the contrary, the finger of God in the great harmony, order and wisdom displayed everywhere in nature. This tendency of the deists was productive of excellent works on natural theology, tracing the vestiges of a design in the construction of the creatures, the adaptation of the parts to the whole, and in the provision for the existence- and regeneration of the organized beings. Among the best deistical writers on teleology of that epoch were Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, Robert Boyle, John Ray, Nehemiah Green, William Derham, and others. Spinoza's disteleology agitated also the German scholars. Christian Wolf and Herman Samuel Reimarus wrote ex- cellent works on the design in nature. Of ho little interest is Voltaire's article, "Causes Finales," in his "Dictipnair Philosophique." Like all ^deists, Vol- taire was a decided finalist. As the infallible criterion of the real end for which a cause acts is the taking place of that effect at all times and in all places (Pour qu'on puisse s'assurer de la fin veritable pcur laquelle une caXise agit, il fault que cet effet soit de tous les temps et de tous lee lieux) for instance : It can not be said that the ocean has been made for vessels, for there have not been vessels at all times and on all seas it would be ridiculous to think that nature had had in view, from the earliest times, the adjusting itself to our inventions, which are only of a later- -4.S ARGUMENTS FOK THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 4 Auiir.MKNTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. Often its end is to serve also the whole, and then it may be the end and the means simultaneously. The organized products of nature do not possess, like a machine, only moving power, but they are distinguished by the formative or organizing power assimilating all they take in from the outside world ; by the reproductive power perpetuating the kind, and the reparative power, by means of which nature, being the physician, helps itself. The external design may be explained by mechanical and physical causes, but the eternal design never. The eternal design, or the immanent finality, being a natural organization, can be explained only ideologically, that is to say, it is under the guidance of the principle of final causes. This theory of an internal finality, being a real law of nature and not merely a subjunctive view, does not exclude the existence of an ultimate cause, but it presupposes it. Kant called this cause the iniellectm archetypus, which knows the whole by way of intuition, and has not to start, like man, in a discursive way, from parts, advancing gradually to the cognition of the whole. The theory of an " internal finality," some think, is not compatible with the view of a transcendental cause. They are mistaken in so thinking. The terms transcendence and immanence are opposites only to a certain degree, but not totally. The idea of a cause, above and distinct from nature, does not exclude the notion of a cause immanent at the same time in nature; nor does the doctrine that nature is endowed with internal activity and that it works with design, contain anything that was exclusive of a supermundane cause. The theory of transcendence implies something of im- manence, and the theory of immanence contains vestiges of THE- TELEOLOGIGAL ARGUMENT. 55 transcendence, so that God, the Supreme Cause, can well be conceived at once, outside of nature. The Bible itself teaches that God is above and distinct from nature, and at the same time it teaches that he is present in all, knowing all, working through all and connected with all. Even the. pantheists, who identify God and nature the causes and the effects, the noumen and the phenomena make a distinction between the things and individuals, and their causes and reasons. The cause of the individuals is not in them, but in the species, which always remain, though the individuals pass away ; and again, the cause of the species is the archetype, constituting the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and the cause of these archetypes must be sought in the idea of life. Having set forth, with all the force and cogency of his logic, the theory of the internal finality, Kant made the surprivsing remark that there is no way of proving that the design in nature was produced intentionally. A more gifted mind than man's, which would not necessarily have to investigate into nature, by a discursive way, proceeding from parts to the comprehension of the whole, but which, by way of intuition, would know the phenomena of the world in all their relation and succession, might find that nature, or the intellectus archetypus, was not guided by a design in the formation and production of the phenomena. This opinion of Kant, presenting the internal finality of nature as a mere subjective view of the human mind, must be taken as his personal view, and is a hypothesis contrary to the facts and evidences he advanced in support of the internal finality. The internal design theory is indisputably established and proved as a law of nature, and, consequently, it pre- 56 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. supposes u designer. When the existence of a design is proved, the inference of the existence of a designer is inevitable. Kant did not draw this inference, because, in so doing, he would have given up his consistency in the appliance of a principle which forms the main peculiarity of his criticism, referring all and everything to the con- sciousness of man. Until Kant, it was generally believed that cognition was dependent upon the subjects and phenomena of the world, but he was the first to hold just the reverse, that the cogni- tion was dependent upon the mode of human thought. This theory of his own he applied to the fullest extent in his "Critique of Pure Reason," where he makes the cognition dependent upon the categories of the human mind. Now, for consistency's sake, and to establish that theory of his own by as many cases as he thought fit, he, at the end of his philosophical researches, and in contradiction to facts and evidences he had previously advanced, assumed that the " design in nature " was only a mode of the human mind. This hypothesis of Kant was contested by the great philosopher, Herbart, a very decided advocate of the validity of the teleological argument. If, says Herbart, finality in nature was nothing else but a mere necessary sense- intuition, for instance, like space and time, then it would also be applicable tp all things as it is with time and space. This is not the case. Besides that, if the finality is merely the sense of necessary convenience of the arrangement of nature, then why is it made evident only in certain cases? Why not in all cases? Why can we not account by it for many a mechanical regularity? Why does that mode of THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 57 mind not also guide us reliably in the field of mechanics and technics?* Herbart's criticism of Kant's hypothesis of the sub- jectivity of design, was resumed and continued by the modern Aristotelian, Friedrich Adolph Trendelnburg.f His criticism is, in essence, as follows: Kant's reasoning was wrong in believing that nothing that is subjective could also be objective, and vice versa. Kant thought the finality was necessary, in order to reduce the phenomena to rules ; but if the finality was merely of a subjective character, then it is the reverse of the efficient causes, and must be a source of confusion and distortion of realities. The theory of the internal finality of Kant was resumed and developed by Hegel, whose teachings regarding it were reduced, by Professor Janet J and by Dr. I. S. Diman, to the three fundamental points : 1. " There are final causes in nature, and not only so, but the final cause is the sole veritable cause, for it alone has in itself the reason of its own determination. The domain of efficient causes is simply that of blind necessity. 2. " It is not, however, necessary to conceive the final cause in the form which it assumes in human consciousness, that is, an anticipated representation of the end. There are two ways of attaining an end one voluntary and the result of conscious choice, like that in man ; the other rational but unconscious, the activity of nature. 3. u The finality of nature is immanent and internal where the cause, the means and the end are simply three terms of * Einleitung in die Philosop., Sect. 132. t Logishe Untersuchungen, p. 47. t Final Causes, 334-335. The Theistic Argument, 210. 58 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. one process, the cause attaining its end, without going out of itself, by self-development. In nature all is united in the same principle the end realizes itself. The cause attains its end by self-development. The image of this develop- ment is in the seed that contains the whole being that it was to realize. It attains its end without going outside itself. It may be said of entire nature what Kant said of the organized beings, that in it everything is reciprocally end and means. Internal finality thus becomes immanent finality." Hegel was opposed to all frivolous criticism passed on the proofs of the Divine existence in the name of enlighten- ment, as these proofs and their history show the course of elevation and progress toward God which the human mind took. Hegel made the Kantian " internal finality " instrumental in refuting Kant's view that the design in nature warrants only the assumption of a world-architect, but not a creator of the world ex nihilo. Hegel argued : %l If God was a mere world-architect, then the matter he had to shape was ' dead matter.' Such ' dead matter ' is not imaginable, as it would be a matter without the properties of matter constituting it. These properties come directly from God, who permeates and encompasses all."* God is, consequently, not merely the shaper, but at the same time the creator of the world. To the theory of the immanent finality, Hegel added the doctrine of an unconscious finality, which achieves in nature definite ends without any conscious choice of pur- poses ; that is the case, for instance, in the animal instinct of bears, beavers, etc. * Vorlesungen ueber die Philos. d. Relig., II., pp. 29, 30, 1832. THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 59 Hegel's "unconscious finality" does not involve the negation of an intelligent creator. It is only a mode of final activity side by side of the conscious purpose. This Hegelian theory of the unconscious finality was applied by Schoppenhauer to the rise and formation of all phenomena, to the entire exclusion of the conscious pur- pose. His "will theory" is an unconscious finality. Eduard von Hartman combined the " will theory " of Schoppenhauer with the " logical idea " of Hegel, and maintained that the will and the intelligence, constituting the substance of all that exists, and being two sides of one and the same thing, co-operate in nature in an unconscious way. The whole philosophy of the unconscious finality is nothing but a system of one-sidedness, derived from the unconscious finality, which Hegel co-ordinated to the immanent finality of Kant. In the " Critique of the Faculty of Judgment " (Sec. 75). Kant makes the remark : " It is quite sure that it is im- possible to explain organized beings and their internal faculties in the light of the mechanical theory. Boldly and with equal certainty it may be maintained that it is absurd to hope a new Newton will one day be able to explain the production of a blade of grass by natural laws, over which no design has presided. Such a knowledge must absolutely be denied to man." Modern monists, like Professor Kirch- man and others, think that Kant was grossly mistaken, and that Darwin is that new Newton who explained the exist- ence of organized beings by mere mechanical principles of nature. Those who have compared the real <( evolution idea " of Darwin with the " internal finality " of Kant and also with the " immanent finality " of Hegel, will find that all these theories mean essentially the same, and that Darwinism, fiO ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. just on that account, can not be pronounced an atheistic view. It is decidedly false to hold that the Darwinian theory was incompatible with design in nature ; or that the Dar- winian teachings had eliminated once for all every objective basis of teleology. Darwinism is, generally speaking, to the present day nothing but a hypothesis, all assertions of its enthusiastic votaries to the contrary nothwithstanding. Darwinism is to the present day so much a hypothesis that despite all that has been said and written in its behalf the following remarks of the American poet, William Cullen Bryant, de- serve consideration : " But allowing all that Darwin says of the consanguinity of man and of the inferior animals, ad- mitting that we are of the same flesh and blood as the baboon and the rat, where does he find his proof that we are im- proving instead of degenerating ? He claims that man is an improved monkey ; how does he know that the monkey is not a degenerated man, a decayed branch of the human family, fallen away from the high rank he once held, and haunted by a dim sentiment of his lost dignity, as we may infer from his melancholy aspect? Improvement implies effort : it is up-hill work ; degeneracy is easy : it asks only neglect, indolence, inaction How often do the descendants of illustrious men become the most stupid of the human race ! How many are there, each of whom we may call ' The tenth transmitter of a foolish face ! ' and that face growing more and more foolish from generation to genera- tion. I might instance the Bourbon family, lately reigning in Spain and Naples. I might instance the royal family of Austria. There is a whole nation, millions upon millions our Chinese neighbors of whom the better opinion is that THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 61 they have been going backward in civilization from century to century."* But suppose Darwinism was no hypothesis. Suppose, for argument's sake, that it was a universal, conclusive, matter- of-fact theory, why should it then be incompatible with de- sign, and why should it then exclude final cause? Darwinism is a system of principles, and as such, whether of a progressive or degenerating tendency, it implies a method, a plan, and consequently a design. Darwinism is evolution ; evolution is development ; development is a ten- dency to an end ; and that is exactly what finality means. '' Darwinian Evolution," says Prof. Asa Gray, the greatest Darwinist in America, " is neither theistical nor non-theisti- cal. Its relations to the question of design belong to the natural theologian ; or, in a larger sense, to the philosopher. So long as the world lasts it will probably be open to any one to hold consistently, in the last resort, either of the two hypotheses, that of a divine mind or that of no divine mind. There is no way that we know of by which the alternative may be excluded. Viewed philosophically, the question only is, which is the better supposed hypothesis of the two?" * * * "Darwin's theory concerns the order and not the cause, the how and not the why of the phenomena, and so leaves the question of design just whe-e it was before."f Darwin himself did not contest the teleogical view. His own words read : " I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of any one. It is satisfactory as showing how transient such impressions are, to remember that the greatest discovery ever made by man, namely, the law of attraction, of gravity, * Prose Writings, Volume II., pp. 292, 1884. t Gray's Darwiniana, pp. 379, 149. 02 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. was also attacked by Liebnitz, as subversive of natural, and, inferentially, of revealed religion. A celebrated author and divine has written to me that he has gradually learned to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to be- lieve that he created a few original forms, capable of self- development into other and needful forms, as to believe that he required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the creation of his laws."* In treating the question as to the origin of species and individuals, Darwin, in the " Descent of Man," remarks : " The birth, both of the species and of the individual, are equally parts of that grand sequence of events which our minds refuse to accept as the result of blind chance." It has been said that Darwin's remarks on the religious question are too general and sometimes also somewhat con tradictory. That may be so, but Darwin, restricting him- self scrupulously to the investigation of nature, did not con- sider it his business to give his opinion on religious subjects. Besides this, he might have feared that religious utterance would embroil him in controversies incurring hostility and depriving him of the time he preferred to devote to the study of natural sciences. The fact that Darwin did not utter in all his works any- thing against religion, marks him as a naturalist, conscious of the boundaries of religion and physical science, and also as a man convinced that a harmony between religion and physical sciences is possible. If his utterances concerning religion seem sometimes somewhat contradictory, it must be regarded that he ex- pressed them under momentary impressions as a naturalist, * Origin of Species, pp. 421. THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 63 without having contemplated to furnish the world with materials for a compact system of cogent religious truths. Darwin was a naturalist who scrupulously abstained from acting the role of a theologian or philosopher. The German Professors, Albert Wiegand and K. E. von Baer, contest the Darwinism selection theory merely from a scientific point of view.but they do not consider it a theory incompatible with religion. Much has been said and written about the elimination of the design theory in nature by means of the physical sciences. If, as it is claimed by the materialists, the de- sign theory was disproved, then why do they not give up entirely the idea of all that sounds like it, as obsolete ? Why do modern monists, like Haickel and Baer, torture their minds in devising new terms for a principle which is to sub- stitute the old design terminology ? The Professor K. E. Baer substituted the term design with ''Zielstrebigkeit" (aim). This shows that even the opponents of the design theory can not help admitting there is in nature a principle that is higher than mere mechanical force. But there is so much confusion regarding this point, that while Professor Karl Ernst von Baer thought he had done something great for science in having given expression to a progressive scientific idea by his proposal to substitute "Zielstrebigkeit" (aim) for " Zweckmsessigkeit" (design) there came another great German Professor, Dr. Emil Du Bois-Reymond, and says he can not see any advantage or merit in Baer's proposed term.* This shows clearly that even the opponents of the design theory can not help admitting that there is in nature some principle higher than mere mechanical force, and it is per- * Reymond's Darwin Versus Gallani. 04 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD, fectly true when Dr. Noah Porter, President of the Yale College, says : " We have already seen that the belief in the laws of nature, in regularity of their action, or the mutual and study adjustment of one force to another, is but another form of assenting to the truth that design and thought are supreme. The circumstance that scientific men often stop short with these laws, without asking themselves what the belief in laws imply, proves nothing except that they are so occupied with a special line of inquiry as to leave little leisure or occasion to inquire whether a purpose underlies law. The exclusiveness of their occupation, with the very concentration of their inquiries within these limits, and the current religious 'belief which connects nature's laws with the Supreme Being whom they worship, render superfluous any speculative thought upon the import of designs of nature. Now and then it happens that a very able and truth-loving student forgets, in the fervor of his faith in law, that any inquiry in respect to the grounds of this faith is required or admits of a rational answer. Others con- found laws with forces, personify the confused concep- tions of both, and assume a position of contemptuous de- fiance toward any thinker who asks them to give a reason for their faith in these abstractions. Notwithstanding all this, the fact remains true that modern science has myriads or more occasions to believe that nature is palpitating with thought than had ancient or modern common sense or ancient science. We observe, in conclusion, that the truth that design controls the universe alone furnishes science with a satisfactory conception of nature, of man and of God. If man assumes too much in finding design in nature, then, by the same rule, he assumes too much in finding anything in nature, force or law nay, even finding in it number and THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 65 geometry. To deny design in nature because it is anthro- pomorphous, requires us to deny force and law as well."* The wonderful construction of the human eye has always been considered as the most conclusive evidence of a design, and such a one it indeed is ; but of late Professor Helmholz tried to demonstrate that from an optical point of view the eye ought to have been more perfect, and that, as an ap- paratus, it is full of imperfections and defects. Professor Helmholz may be right, that the eye has many imperfections and that there are optical instruments which, as works of industry and art, are of more precision, but that does not make the eye a less conclusive evidence of the final causes in nature. As long as the eye responds to its purposes in practical life and is appropriated to its optical uses, it shows a design, no matter what its imperfections may be in the light of the modern progress of optical science. And this is, in fact, all that theology regards and is interested in. It has been a favorite idea of the French deists to demon- strate the design theory by means of the analogy of a watch. The famous watch illustration of William Paley reads as follows : " In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone and were asked how the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever ; nor would it, perhaps, be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how that watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that, for anything I knew, the watch had always been there. Yet why should that answer not serve for the watch as well as for the stone? Why is it not admissible in * Science and Sentiment, pp. 284, 285, 287. (>; AnorMKXTs FOR THK EXISTENCE OF GOD. the second case as in the first? For this reason, and no other, when we come to inspect the watch we perceive what we could not discover in the stone that its several parts are framed and put together for purpose; that they are framed and so adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day ; that if different parts had been differently shaped and of a different size, or placed after any other manner, either no motion at all would have been carried on, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it. * * * This mechanism being observed, the inference, we think, is inevitable that the watch had a maker ; that there must have existed at sometime and at some place an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose for which we find it actually to answer, who comprehended its construction and designed its use. * * * Man would be surprised to hear that the mechanism of the watch was no proof of contrivance, only a motive to induce the mind to think so ; that the watch was anything more than the result of the laws of metallic nature, in exclusion of agency and power/' * In this way Paley continues his illustration to show that the wonderful construction of the world presupposes a designer. Much praise was bestowed upon Paley for the masterly and elaborate manner in which he applied this illustration. This was a too favorite analogy to be overlooked by the antagonists of teleology. Professor Huxley was the first who attempted to prove that the demonstration of design by the analogy of a watch, referred to so often by the English and French deists, was * Natural Theology. THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 67 resting merely upon a fallacy, and he argued against Paley as follows : " In Paley's famous illustration, the adaptation of all parts of the watch to the function or purpose of showing the time, is held to be evidence that the watch was especially contrived to that end, on the ground that the only cause we know of, competent to produce such an effect as a watch, shall keep time, is contriving intelligence and adapting the means exactly to that end., Suppose, however, that only one had been able to show that the watch had not been made directly by any person, but that it was the result of the modification of another watch which kept time but poorly, and that this again has proceeded from a structure which could hardly be called a watch at all, seeing that it had no figures on the dial and the hands were rudi- mentary, and that going back and back in time we come at last to a revolving barrel as the earliest traceable rudiment of the whole fabric. And imagine that it had been possible to show that all these changes had resulted, first, from a tendency of the structure to vary indefinitely, and, secondly, from something in the surrounding world which helped all variations in the direction of an accurate time-keeper and checked all those in other directions, then it is obvious that the force of Paley's argument is gone." * The argumentation of Mr. Huxley is fallacious. It does not refute Paley at all, because it ignores the primary cause and the evolutionary principle working from within, and accounts for the existence of subjects in discussion with physical efficient causes and with mere mechanical forces. Whether the world or, by way of illustration and analogy, the watch, or any other piece of workmanship, is considered * Lay Sermons, XIII., pp. 301, 302. (58 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. a work or a product ; whether it arose by a fiat or by a gradual evolutionary process; whether it counts its ages by thousands or by millions of years, is of no considera- tion so far as the existence of a supreme, intelligent Cause is concerned. All this concerns only the mode of the pro- duction of the world, but can by no logic in the world affect the belief in the existence of an ultimate cause, from which the all is originating. There must be a presiding Intelli- gence. If the design displayed in the laws of optics and acoustics, in the properties of the elements, in the geo- metrical relations and algebraical calculations of the planetary systems, in the laws making zoology, botany, psychology, meteorology, etc., sciences, arose of itself, then why can not order, regularity, geometrical relations, alge- braical calculations, technical works, etc., also arise of themselves in the sphere of human activity? Until this will be the case, the design theory as illustrated by I'aley's watch and as displayed in the adaptation and adjustment of means to purposes and of causes to effects, is irrefutable, and the argument for the existence of a God from the design in nature will remain valid, all that is said by materialists and atheists to the contrary notwith- standing. "All nature is but art, unknown to thee ; All chance, direction which thou canst not see ; All discord, harmony not understood ; All partial evil, universal good; And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, One truth is clear, whatever is, is right." POPB. III. THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. " Intelligi necesse est, esse deos, quoniam insitas eorum vel potius innatas cognitiones habemus. De quo autem omnium natura consentit, id verum esse necesse est." * The cognition of the first principle, which is also funda- mental and ultimate, is of the greatest importance, both from a metaphysical and ethical point of view. If the first principle be a mere blind force, then the destination of man can be nothing higher than what the " prudent and smart men" please to make of him ; how- ever, if the first principle be a conscious Intelligence, then man is an image of that intelligence, and that intelligence is his ideal, and as such the guide of his conduct and as- piration. The Ionian philosophers had in that question only a physical interest, and, in explanation of the problem of the world, they set up the material principles, air or water, or fire. From this rude view the Pythagoreans broke off and assumed that the numbers, remaining the same in all changes, were the essence of all things. A real metaphysical interest in the problem of the first principle was taken first by the Eleatic school, represented by Xenophon, Permanides and Zeno, who assumed that the "pure being" was the ultimate principle. The "pure * Cicero, De Natura Deorum, I., 17. ARGUMENTS FOR THK EXISTENCE OF GOD. being" was to them the negation of all divisions in time and space, the rational unity implying all real substan- tiality and the oneness of thought and being. An ethical significance was attributed to that problem first by Socrates, the great Greek monotheist. The Eleatic school, being a school of pantheism and monism, did nothing directly for the argumenation of the existence of God, but so much more indirectly. The argu- mentation of Xenophon, the one being necessarily infinite ; of I'ermanides, the non-existence being inconceivable; and of Zeno, that the manifoldness of phenomena as a modifi- cation of the necessarily indivisible and infinite being was without a real existence of its own, were a preparatory schooling for the later discussions of the a priori proof of the Divine existence. The ontological argument is the proof a priori or from intuition. The father of the ontological argument is Anselm de Canterbury. From the very fact that man has an idea of God, he inferred the objectivity of the Divine existence. Anselm argued that even the atheist can conceive a Being encompassing all and manifested in the perfection of all being, as the highest good and the most real perfection. If the conception of an absolutely greatest existed merely in the intellect of man, then there would be the possibility of conceiving something still greater, actually existing in the external world. A being, which is not merely in the intellect, b'ut in the external reality of such a nature that no other one can be thought of as higher, more absolute and more perfect, is God. Being the most perfect, God can not be thought of otherwise than existing in reality. In the second chapter of the Proslogion, Anselm sets forth : " It is not the same that the thing shall be in the intellect and that we should understand the thing to be. For when THE ONCOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 71 a painter thinks beforehand of that which he is about to make, he has it indeed in his intellect, but he does not yet understand what he had not made. However, when he has painted it, he has it in the intellect and also under- stands what he has made. Therefore, even the fool when he says in his heart there is no God is convinced that there is in his intellect something, than which nothing greater can be conceived of; when he hears the term God he understands its meaning, and whatever is understood is in the intellect. But, assuredly that, of which nothing greater can be conceived, is in the intellect alone, for, if it is in the intellect alone, it may be conceived as being also in reality. If, therefore, that of which nothing greater can be conceived is in the intellect alone, that very thing than which nothing greater can be conceived, is where something greater can be conceived. But this is impossible. There exists, therefore, beyond doubt, something than which nothing greater can be conceived, both in the intellect and in reality." * This argument, though indorsed by the high authority of Anselm, was not allowed to pass into the records of history without a close examination and strict criticism. A con- temporaneous monk, Gaunilo, wrote a refutation, " Liber Pro Insipiente," setting forth that it was a folly to infer from the mere conception of a perfect supreme Being that such a Being also exists in reality. The conception of the absolutely greatest does not exist in man's intellect in any other sense than any other subject we know of; it was just as logical and rational to assert that a certain monster or mythological figure, or an island of unsurpassed beauty and * Mediaeval Philosophy, hy F. I). Maurice, p. 102. 72 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF Got>. treasures must exist, because man can give them an imagin- ary existence. Gaunilo's objection centered in the idea that necessary existence was one thing, and the idea of a necessary existence was another thing. Gaunilo's refutation was not considered by Anselm as an invalidation of his argument, but it was rather hailed by him as a good opportunity to express himself a little plainer and more definite, and he did it in his " Liber Apologeticus Adversus Respondentem Pro Insipiente." Anselm admitted that not all that is imaginable must necessarily exist, yet it was different with the idea of God comprising the absolute good, the absolute truth and the absolute being. The con- ception of the absolutely greatest and most perfect (praster quod inajus cogitari non possit) was above any comparison with any other conception, and on that account being an exception, he declared Gaunilo's counter-argumentation inapplicable and entirely out of place. Anselm considered it a matter of impossibility to conceive of the non-existence of God, as God's existence was involved in the idea of the absolute being, of the absolute truth, of the absolute good, and of the absolute perfection. Despite all the efforts of Anselm to prove the validity of the ontological argument, the great mediaeval scholastics, like Gilbert de la Poire, Petrus Lombardus, Hugo de St. Victor, etc., did not take any notice of it. All the more attention was given to it by the modern metaphysicians. Rene Descartes expressed the ontological argument in two modes. The one mode, containing essentially the idea of Anselm, reads about thus : A supreme Being of absolute perfection is conceivable and, consequently, also possible. A primordial Being is necessary, because without its presupposition there is no reality possible. The supreme Being can be no other THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 73 than the primordial one, and from this it follows that a supreme Being is real.* The second mode of the ontological argument, as expressed by Descartes,! is in essence as follows : All our ideas we derive either from without (adventitiae) or we have produced them ourselves (factitio), or they are inborn in us (insito or innato). Now, the idea of God as the most perfect Being can not be derived from without, for God is no object of a sensuous apprehension ; nor can it be produced by man himself, for the more perfection there is in an idea, the more perfection there must be in the cause that produces it. Man, a finite being, can not be the cause of the conception of the most perfect and infinite Being, consequently the idea of God must be innate in man and implanted in his mind by the Supreme Being himself. By way of illustration, Descartes remarked : As in the idea of a triangle is involved the idea that its angles are equal to two right angles, so there is involved in the idea of God his necessary existence. The Frenchmen, Bossuet and Fenelon, treated the ontological argument of Descartes with all the brilliancy of which their pens were capable ; and the great scholar, Leibnitz, added, in elucidation of the Cartesian theory that universality and necessity were the criteria of innate ideas. The "God-intoxicated" Spinoza agreed with Descartes that the idea of God, which encompasses all reality, all truth and all perfection, must imply implicitly the Divine exist- ence and is above comparison with any other idea. Spinoza, though he saw God in everything, did not argue for the existence of God from the very reasoning of man or from the theory of innate ideas, nor from the conception of * Principl. Philo., I., 3-50. t Principl. Philo., I., 18. 74 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. the finite world. He took no notice of all this. He took as a basis for his argumentation for the Divine existence his definition of God as the infinite, self-caused Being (causa sui). The following definition of God, he maintained, implied indisputably the Divine existence : "God, or substance, consisting of infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality, necessarily exists."* In explanation of this proposition, Spinoza advanced the following two proofs : "' Proof: If this be denied, conceive, if possible, that God does not exist ; then his essence does not involve existence. But this (by Prop. VII.) is absurd. Therefore, God neces- sarily exists." "Another proof: Of everything whatsoever, a cause or reason must be designed, either for its existence or for its non-existence e. g., if a triangle exists, a reason or cause must be granted for its existence ; if, on the contrary, it does not exist, a cause must also be granted, which prevents it from existing, or annuls its existence. This reason or cause must either be contained in the nature of the thing in question or be external to it for instance, the reason for the non-existence of a square circle is indicated in its nature, namely, because it would involve a contradiction. On the other hand, the existence of substance follows also solely from its nature, inasmuch as its nature involves existence. (Prop. VII.) "But the reason for the existence of a triangle or a circle does not follow from the nature of those figures, but from the order of universal nature in extension. From the latter it must follow, either that a triangle necessarily exists or * The Ethics, Proposition XI. THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 75 that it is impossible that it should exist. So much is self- evident. It follows, therefore, that a thing necessarily exists if no cause or reason be granted which prevents its existence. ^' If, then, no cause or reason can be given which prevents the existence of God, or which destroys his existence, we must certainly conclude that he necessarily does exist. If such a reason or cause should be given, it must either be drawn from the very nature of God, or be external to him that is, drawn from another substance of another nature. For, if it were of the same nature, God, by that very fact, would be admitted to exist. But substance of another nature could have nothing in common with God (Prop. II.), and therefore would be unable either to cause or destroy his existence. "As, then, a reason or cause which would annul the Divine existence can not be drawn from anything external to the Divine nature, such cause must, perforce, if God does not exist, be drawn from God's own nature, which would involve a contradiction. To make such an affirmation about a Being absolutely infinite and supremely perfect, is absurd ; therefore, neither in the nature of God, nor externally to his nature, can a cause or reason be assigned which would annul his existence. Therefore, God necessarily exists." Regarding this proof from mere definition, his great friend, Henry Oldenburg, the first secretary of the Royal Society of England, asked him : " Do you clearly and indisputably understand, solely from the definition you have given of God, that such a Being exists? For my part, when I reflect that definitions contain only the conceptions formed by our minds, and that our mind forms many conceptions of things which do not exist, and is very fertile in multiplying and amplifying what it has conceived, I do not yet see that from 7i; ARGUMENTS KOK TUP: EXISTENCE OF GOD. the conception T have of God I can infer God's existence. I am able bv a mental combination of all the perfections I perceive in men, in animals, in vegetables, in minerals, etc., to conceive and form an idea of some single substance uniting in itself all such excellences ; indeed, my mind is able to multiply and augment such excellences indefinitely ; it may thus figure forth for itself a most perfect and excel- lent being, but there would be no reason thence to conclude that such a being actually exists." Upon this question, which materially contains the same idea that the monk Gaunilo raised in objection to the ontological argument of Anselm de Canterbury, Spinoza replied as follows : " Not from ever} r definition does the existence of the thing defined follow, but only from the definition or idea of an attribute, that is, of a thing conceived through and in itself. The reason for this distinction was pointed out in the note to the three first propositions of the Ethics, sufficiently and clearly at any rate for a philosopher, who is assumed to be aware of the difference between a fiction and a clear and distinct idea, and also of the truth of the axiom that every definition or clear and distinct idea is true.* The propositions, to which Spinoza refers, are based upon the following three definitions, with which his " Ethics" start and have about the same meaning : O By that which is self caused (causa sui), I mean that of which the essence involves existence, or that of which the nature is only conceivable as existent "A thing is called finite after its kind, when it can be limited by another thing of the same nature ; for instance, a body is called finite because we always conceive another * Spinoza's Correspondence, Letters III., IV., Bohn's English Edition. THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 77 greater body. So, also, a thought is limited by another thought ; but a body is not limited by thought nor a thought by a body. " By substance I mean that which is in itself and is con- ceived through itself: in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception." The whole argumentation of Spinoza is centered upon the idea that the real perfection does not come from an external cause, but from the nature of the substance. The existence of such a perfect and infinite substance is its essentiality, and one can not be more certain of the existence of any- thing than of the existence of such a perfect and infinite substance or God. Moses Mendelssohn approved of the ontological argument and has, in his " Morgenstunden," attempted to refute all objections raised against the identification of the conception and of the reality of the Divine existence. He did not believe that every conception which does not involve a logical or a metaphysical impossibility must exist, but like Anselm he thought that the conception of God, the absolute Being, was incomparable with any other concept and that it was, by reason of its nature, real. The gist of Mendelssohn's argument is: The Supreme Being must be considered independent, and the dilemma arises either it does exist or it does not exist (Tertium non datur). If it does not exist, there must be some reason for its non-existence, and that reason must be either in it or outside of it. Outside it can not be, lest God would not be independent. Neither can it be in it, for, in the conception of a supreme, independent Being, there is no contradiction. There being no reason for the non-existence of God, neither 78 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. in God nor outside of God, it follows by necessity that He exists in reality. One of the most interesting chapters of the Kantian philosophy is that which treats of the four antinomies.* The four theses arc : The world has a beginning in time and space; every substance is composed of indivisible atoms ; there is besides a mere physical causality in nature also a causality of free will ; there is a necessary being. The four antitheses are, as a matter of course, just the reverses of these theses. The English philosopher, Hume, may be considered the representative of these antitheses, while Christian Wolf is the modern main-representative of the theses. Kant took a special delight in showing that both these theses and these antitheses are right and are wrong. He showed that human reason has no means and no ways of settling these problems definitely. Possessed and swayed entirely by this antinomic idea, Kant was bent on treating from such a standpoint the arguments for the existence of God. As to the cosmological and teleological proofs, in favor of which the phenomena of nature speak so much, he admitted that there can be advanced at least just as many arguments pro as con, but, since the ontological argument was ignored and contested by a great many mediaeval philosophers, Kant pronounced it the weakest of all arguments. The main objection Kant raised against Anselm was that he had confounded the mere existence of predicates with the existence of an absolute Being, the bearer of all predicates and perfection. The ontological proof was to Kant nothing more than the * Critique of the Pure Reason, II., 2. THE OXTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 79 assumption of a necessary existence, where only the assump- tion of the idea of a necessary existence is in place. Anselm and his followers considered the existence itself a predicate, and as such it was implied in the very conception of the Divine perfection. Kant, however, remonstrated : the existence was no real predicate, but the mere position of a subject. For instance, the judgment that God is omnipotent contains two concep- tions of an objective nature God and omnipotence; the copula is does not express an additional predicate, but it expresses only what the predicate omnipotent affirms of the subject, God. If one says God is, then this is does not confer upon or add to the conception of God a new predicate, but it only presents the conception of God with its predicate. Without this position and presentation, the subject would contain the same predicates in the same way as "owe hundred real dollars do not contain more than one hundred possible dollars." According to Kant, the contents of a conception is only that which is possible, while the being, the reality, are mere positions, presentations and modalities of the position of a subject for human comprehension. If the existence were a predicate adding anything to the contents of the subject, then the mere conception of the subject would be deficient, incomplete and inadequate. Kant's argument is in essence as follows : When we say that such or such a possible subject does not exist, then it is either an analytical or a synthetic judgment. An ana- lytical judgment is merely the full statement of what there is inclosed in the subject. Without adding or proving anything in this case, we give only the definition. A synthetic judgment adds something to the subject, and, in 80 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. this light, the existence of a God is not included in the mere conception of such a perfect Being. The real existence being the very opposite of the ideal existence, can not be in the latter, nor can it be inferred from the subject ; it must rather be added. The real existence is something that is added to the mere idea of existence. This argumentation of Kant was, without any special reference to him, pronounced by Moses Mendelssohn, in the last chapter of the " Morgenstunden," as absurd, on the ground that the very idea of a necessary being is non- sensical as long as existence is separated from it ; and also on the ground that the consummation of all perfections and realities can not be imagined without the inclusion |_of existence. Regarding existence, Mendelssohn makes a distinction between that which is-contingent and that which is neces- sary. The former is unimaginable without existence, but not so the latter. To the objection that people assume the existence of a Supreme Being because man can not imagine it otherwise, or because the existence of a Supreme Being is a mode of man's thought, Mendelssohn replies: Well for us that so much at least is admitted by our opponents, viz., that man can not help to think a Supreme Being is real. With this concession man will come to see that the Being which we can not help to think of is also existing. A subject that all men can not help thinking of must be true. They all agree upon it, and this is the criterion of its truth. This is the argumentwn a consensu gentium. Kant thought he had disproved definitely the ontological argument; but in that he was mistaken. Besides Moses Mendelssohn, there are four other great metaphysicians THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 81 Hegel, Serbati, Cousin and Caird who have resumed it again and have defended it as natural, sound and safe. Hegel maintains that the ontological argument, if taken in the right light, is the only real proof of the existence of God. True it starts from a conception, which, being of a sub- jective nature, forms the opposite of the objective reality; but the conception of God as the absolute Being implies the existence of that Being. The conception and the existence of an absolute Being, God, can not be separated from one another, and, in contradistinction to all other conceptions and existences, they exceptionally are absolute and are no opposites. God is the consummation of all realities, one of which is the existence. Hegel, as he himself stated, has only repeated what Moses Mendelssohn advanced in refuta- tion of Kant ; but he also referred to Spinoza, who defined God as something that can not be conceived of without the reality of existence. The Italian metaphysician, Antonio Rosmini Serbati (1797-1855), expressed the ontological argument in the following sense : I feel that the idea of an absolute Being is not a mere mode of human thought, but an incontro- vertible reality. This feeling of an infinite Being can not be produced in me by any finite cause. It is the infinite, absolute and immutable cause that has implanted it in my mind. While the absolute Being is manifested to the intellect as the truth, it is manifested in nature as beauty and goodness, and in society it is revealed as justice and right. In nearly all essential manifestations of the things are the manifestations of that absolute and perfect Being termed God. Serbati has combined the Greek idea of the absolute Being and Anselm's view of the Divine perfection together with the Cartesian theory of the intuitive or innate truths. 82 ARGUMENTS FOB THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. In the opinion of the French metaphysician, M. Cousin, " the idea of the infinite and perfect is as primitive and as given in the consciousness, and as necessary a product of reason, as the idea of the finite and imperfect. It is in our power to imagine the existence of a gorgon and centaur, and we can conceive their non-existence, but it is not in our power, when we have acquired a precise conception of the finite and the imperfect, not to conceive the infinite and perfect. This reasoning is no chimera ; it is a rational necessity, an intuitive truth. . * * * Th e id ea o f the infinite and the idea of the finite are logical correlatives j and in the order of their acquisition, that of the finite and imperfect precedes that Df the infinite. But it scarcely precedes it ; it is not possi- ble for the mind as soon as consciousness furnishes the mind with the idea of the finite and imperfect, not to conceive the idea of the infinite and perfect. Now, the infinite and perfect is God." * John Caird, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the Uni- versity of Glasgow, put an end to all the disputes about what the ontological proof can really mean. His opinion on the subject reads as follows : '' It is difficult, however, to conceive that an argument, of which the refutation seems so easy and obvious, could have imposed itself on thinkers, such as those above named, as on closer examination we shall find that imperfect as may be the form in which it has often been presented, the principle of this argument is that on which our whole religious con- sciousness may be said to rest. " It is quite true that there are many things of which, * Elements of Psychology, Henry's English Translation. THE ONCOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 83 from the mere idea or conception of them in our minds, we can not infer the objective existence. If existence means, as in the case of Kant's dollars, the accidental existence of particular objects for sensuous perception, such an existence we can not infer from thought. It is, indeed, of the very nature of such things that, regarded simply in themselves, they either may or may not be ; and to infer their necessary existence from the idea of them, would be in direct contradiction with that idea. But there are other ideas with respect to which this does not hold good ; and there is, especially, one idea, which, whether we are explicitly or only implicitly conscious of it, so proves its reality from thought, that thought itself becomes im- possible without it. Its objective, absolute reality is so fundamental to thought, that to doubt it implies the sub- version of all thought and all existence alike. "In a former chapter I attempted to point out the self- contradiction ultimately involved in materialistic theories of mind, viz. : that in making thought a function of matter, they virtually made thought a function of itself. In other words, they make that the product of matter which is involved in the very existence of matter, or which is prius of matter and of all other existences. Neither orgnization, nor anything else, can be conceived to have any existence which does not presuppose thought. To constitute the existence of the outward world, or of the lowest term of reality, we ascribe to it, say in 'atoms' or ' molecules,' or ' centers of forces,' you must think them or receive them as existing for thought you must needs presuppose a consciousness, for which and in which all objective existence is. To go beyond or to attempt to conceive of an existence which is prior to and outside of thought 'a thing of itself,' .of which thought is only the 84 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OP GOD. mirror, is self-contradictor)^, inasmuch as that very thing in itself is only conceivable by, exists only for, thought. We must think it before we can ascribe to it even an exist- ence outside of thought. " But while it is true that the priority of thought, or the ul- timate unity of thought and being, is a principle, to doubt which is impossible, seeing that in doubt we are tacitly as- serting the thing we doubt; yet it must be considered, fur- ther, that the unity thus asserted, when we examine what it means, is not the dependence of objective reality on my thoughts or yours, or on the thought of any individual mind. The individual mind which thinks the necessary priority of thought can also think non-necessity of its own thought- There was a time when we were not ; and the world and all that is therein we can conceive to be as real, though we, and myriads such as we, no longer existed to perceive and know it. All that I think, all objective existence, is relative to thought in this sense that no object can be conceived as ex- isting except in relation to a thinking subject. But it is not my thought in which I am shut up, or which makes or un- makes the world for me ; for in thought I have the power of transcending my own individuality and the world of objects opposed to it, and of entering into an idea which unites or embraces both. Nay, the unity of subject and object of self and the world which is opposed to it, is implied in every act of thought ; and though I can distinguish the two, I can no more divide them, or conceive of their separate and inde- pendent existence, than I can think of a center existing without or independently of a circumstance. In thinking myself, my own individual consciousness and an outward world of objects, I at the same lime tacitly think or pre- suppose a higher, wider, more comprehensive thought or consciousness which embraces and is the unity of both. THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 85 " The real presupposed position of all knowledge, or the thought which is the price of all things, is not the indi- vidual, but a thought of self-consciousnesss which is beyond all individual selves and their objects, of all thinkers and of all objects thought. Or, to put it differently, when we are compelled to think of all existences as relative to thought, and of thought as prior to all, among the existences to which it is prior is our own individual self. We can make our in- dividual self, just as much as other things, the object of thought. We can only think, but we can think the indi- vidual thinker. We might even say that, strictly speaking, it is not we that think but the universal reason that thinks in us. In other words, in thinking we rise to a universal point of view, from which our individuality is of no more account than the individuality of any other object. Hence, as think- ing beings, we dwell already in a region in which our indi- vidual feelings and opinions, as such, have no absolute worth, but that which alone has absolute worth is a thought which does not pertain to us individually, but is the universal life of all intelligence, or the life of universal, absolute intelli- gence. " What, then, we have thus reached as the true meaning of the ontological proof is this, that as spiritual beings our whole conscious life is based on a universal self-conscious- ness, an absolute spiritual life, which is not a mere subjective notion or conception, but which carries with it the proof of its necessary existence or reality. " And now finally, if we consider what is involved in the idea of God, and of his relation to the world which we have reached as the true meaning of ontological argument, we shall find that we have here the deepest basis of religion, and that in which lies its necessity for man as a spiritual, self-con- scious being. 86 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. " If we think of God merely as an infinite, which is the negation of the finite, or which is related to the infinite world only by the bonds of arbitrary will, there is no room under such a conception for any religion which is spiritual, or which involves a conscious relation of the human spirit to the Divine. " But if we conceive of God as infinite mind, or as that uni- versal infinite self-consciousness on which the conscious life of all infinite minds is based, and whose very nature it is to reveal himself in and to them, then we have before us a con- ception of the nature of God and the nature of man which makes religion necessary by making it, in one sense, the highest realization of both."* * Philosophy of Religion, 1880, 159. IV, THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 3toei Singe erftitten bag emutb, mit imttter neuer unb ^unefymenber 33en>unberuncj unb fyrfurdjt, je ofter unb anb,altenber fid? ba& -ftacfybenfen bamit befdjaftigt : SD e r beftirnteipimmeluber mirunbbaS m Of a I i f dj| e w* f e | in mir. SBeibe barf id) nidjt al in 3)unfelb,eit tierfyiiHt, ober tm Ueberfdjtoangndjm, aufjer meinem efdjaftSfreife, fudjen unb blofi bermttftctt ; ic^ fe|e fie ov mir unb toerfniipfe fie xmmittelbar mit bent Setru^tfein meiner iftenj * Morality is universal in the human race. The virtues of veracity, honesty, purity, justice and duty have been respected and practiced more or less in every generation. Even the rudest class of people look upon fairness in action, kindness and charity with more satisfaction than they do upon cruelty, injustice and wickedness. The sense of duty is so essential to human nature and is so deeply rooted in it, that even the most wicked and corrupt seek to have at least a show of respectability and honesty ; and if they can not help to avow their guilt or wrongs, they plead for excuse with ignorance, necessity or undesignedness. It is by no means a rare phenomenon to find embers of morality glowing in the ash-heaps of man's sensuality and worldli- ness. Even the savages are not destitute of every sentiment of morality. A great many of them have manifested such a keen sense of right and wrong and such virtues, that they deserve to be held up as models for the benefit of quite a number of people living in the centers of civilization and * Kant's Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft. 88 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. boasting of a high culture. The ancient heathenish relig- ions, though of mythical contents, were not void of great moral tenets. The varied literature, as well as the poetical and legal works of the Hindoos, Buddhists, Chinese, Greeks and Romans contain many a moral gem of unsurpassed splendor. The elimination of the moral element from the works of Homer, Sophocles, and others, would leave them failures. The Greek and the Roman theaters shook with applause when there flashed forth in the performance a great idea of morality and humanity. All this is a proof that the moral sense is universal and inborn in man. The sacred literature of the Hebrews, teaching that man is an image of God, endowed with the faculty of walking in the path of godliness and virtue, as a matter of course, maintains that morality ,is an original part of human nature and a distinctive faculty. This same view has been entertained also by Christianity and the Islam. Among the Greeks it was Plato, who, believing in the pre-existence of the human soul, assumed that the soul was possessed of moral qualities before it entered into the human body. And Aristotle * is of the opinion that man's great distinction from the animal kingdom consists in his being endowed with a sense of right and wrong, good and evil. The mediaeval scholastics were of the opinion that man's moral sense was one of the latent faculties (qualitates occulta3) of human nature. Moses Maimonides held that in primitive man there was inborn only the sense of truth, while the sense of good and evil in man arose through it from social conventionalism.! This theory that morality is universal was entertained to * Politics, I., I., 14. t Moreh Nebuchim, I., 2. THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 89 the fullest extent also by Hugo Grotius, who. in his great work, " De Jure Belli et Pacis," declare? that the rights and principles of humanity, morality and justice, as far as they concern the international laws, were just as objective as the laws of nature ; and in pleading for them he did not appeal merely to the authority of the Scriptures, nor to the papal decrees, but he appealed to the testimony of history and philosophy. Hugo Grotius pronounced his progressive ideas with a positiveness and frankness which could not fail to produce great opposition. His antipode was Hobbes. While Grotius held that peaceableness and harmlessness were the natural state of primitive, undegenerated mankind, according to Hobbes primitive mankind lived in a war- like state, or, as he expressed it, in a state of a bellum omnium in (contra) omncs. The warlike state of primitive mankind was abandoned (exeundum est e statu naturae) only because self-preservation required it, and because experience advised primitive mankind to subordinate them- selves, at the/cost of their individual liberties, to a ruler. Hobbes did not attribute to morality any objective char- acter whatever. He does not admit that there are in man perfectly disinterested passions and sentiments, enabling him to keep in view the public welfare, irrespective of interest and pleasure. He considered the rulers, their interests, their ambition and their determination to keep the nations subjected to their dynasties, the only source of morality. As a matter of course, such doctrines, aiming a blow at the root of morality, aroused great antagonism, and rightly s<>. \Varlmrton says the whole church militant took up arms against Hobbes. Sir James Mackintosh* compares * General Views of the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, 68, 1838. ',10 AK<;r.MKNTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. the " moral and political system of Hobbes to a palace of ice, transparent, exactly proportioned, majestic, admired by the unwary as a delightful dwelling but gradually under- mined I'v the eentral warmth of human feeling, before which it was thawed into muddy water by the sunshine of true philosophy.'' Among llobhes' controverters, whose number was legion, were the metaphysicians Cumberland, Cudworth, Baxter. Bishop. Parker, and others. llohbes' spirit of skepticism and materialism revived again in John Locke, who, in opposition to Descartes, denied entirely the existence of innate ideas. His motto was : Xihil i'xt in Intellect n (jiirxl /inn fiid'if in #cn*u. Locke's book. ' Human rnderstanding,'' created a great commotion. At the head of his assailants was the great deist, Lord Shaftes- bury. lie was of the opinion that the moral sense requires culture and can be developed by practice, by reflection and by the belief in a good and wise (rod, but as to the origin of the moral sense he maintained that it was organic and an original part of the human constitution. The reaction against Locke reached its climax in the Scottish School, the representative of which did not merely maintain, as Descartes did, that there were moral and religious ideas innate in man, but that there is in man inborn a sense for every tendency of the human mind. Adam Smith, the father of the '' National Economy," and Reid, the father of the "Common Sense Philosophy," assumed that there are in man inborn senses for speech, for commerce, for conversation, etc. These men fell back upon the scholastic theory of the friruJtritcx acmltfr. The skeptic, David Hume, classified the virtues into pri- mary (Hies, which are an original part of the human consti- tution, and into secondary ones, which are acquired under THE MORAL ARGUMENT. the influences of circumstances, education and example, but this only by means of the primary ones. The German materialist, Luclwig Buechner, has taken a special interest in collecting in his book, " Kraft und Stoff," the most important objections urged against the theory of innate ideas. He refers to the observation of several trav- elers who report that there are a great many tribes among the savages who have no idea of wrong or right, of duty and morality, of religion and immortality. The following excerpt from " The Human Species," by M. de Quatrefages, Professor of Anthropology in the Museum of Natural History at Paris, proves plainly and conclusively that the observations quoted by Buechner are mere mis- apprehensions. "A traveler, Avho, - as a general rule, speaks the language of the country very badly, interrogates a few individuals upon the delicate question of the Deity, future life, etc., and his interlocutors, not understanding him, make a few signs of doubt or denial, which have no reference to the question asked, the European, in his turn, mistakes their meaning. Having, in the first instance, merely regarded them as beings of the lowest type, incapable of any conception, however trifling, he concludes, without hesitation, that these people have no idea either of God or of another life ; and his asser- tion, soon repeated, is at once accepted as true by readers who share his opinions about populations unacquainted with our civilization. The history of travel would furnish us with many examples of this fact. Kaffirs, Hottentots, etc., have often been spoken of as atheists, while we now know that this is by no means the case. " Should the traveler, moreover, speak the language of the country with ease, he is still liable to ,fall into error. Religious belief forms part of the most hidden depths of 02 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. our nature. The savage does not willingly expose his heart to a stranger whom he fears, whose superiority he feels, and whom he has often seen ready to ignore or ridicule what he has always regarded as most worthy of veneration. * * * Fortunately among lay Europeans there are some who, permanently settled in the midst of these populations, become initiated into their customs and manners so as to understand them and to fathom mysteries which would by others have been passed over, on account of offensive or curious forms. * * * Little by little the light has appeared and the result has been that Australians, Melane- sianp, Bosjesmans, Hottentots, Kaffirs and Bechuanas have, iii their turn, been withdrawn from the list of atheistic nations, and recognized as religious." Summarizing the issue of his disquisition, Professor de Quatrefages remarks : ' ; The result of my investigation is exactly the opposite of that at which Sir John Lubbock and M. St. Hilair had arrived in maintaining that 'it is difficult to suppose that savages so rude as not to be able to count their own fingers should have acquired intellectual concep- tions sufficiently advanced to possess a system of belief worthy of the name of religion.' Obliged, in my course of instruction, to review all human races, I have sought atheism in the lowest as in the highest. / have nowhere met with it, except in individuals, or in more or less limited schools, such as those which existed in Europe in the last century, or which may still be seen at the present day." * Dr. Buechner is right in saying that the question whether certain ideas are innate or not is of the greatest importance to man, as it implies the decision whether man is the product of a higher spiritual World, or whether he is merelv * The Human Species, 473, 482. THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 93 the product of the elements of this sublunar world; but Buechner is wrong in believing that the superficial observa- tions of tribes by a few travelers are sufficient evidence to decide such an important question. But suppose there should be cases in which it was sub- stantiated that there were tribes without the least idea .or sentiment of religion and morality, is that sufficient reason to pronounce such tribes as being void of innate ideas? By no means. This could be done of right only if attempts had been made to teach them religion and morality; and if then all methods of instruction applied had failed to awaken in them religious and moral sentiments. There is no reli- able record 1 showing that savages have been so entirely in- capable of all apprehension. Modern scientists delight in sneering at the theory of innate ideas. It would be more proper for them to sneer at their own inconsequences. They decry on the one hand the existence of innate ideas, but on the other hand they admit that there are such things as " fundamental or neces- sary truths" in psychology ; as the Aristotelian and Kantian " logical categories ; " as the '' predicaments " of the Peri- patetics, and such things as psychological necessities and modes of thought. What else than innate ideas are all these things, the existence of which is not and can not be denied entirely, even by the materialists? If there are no innate ideas, how can we account for genius? The great philosophers were not born with their systems, nor were the great poets b rn with that special branch of poetry in which they excelled ; but both the philosophers and the poets are born with that proclivity, tendency, turn and cast of mind that under circumstances causes them to become what thev are. 04 AKUI-.MKNTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF C4oD, Every educator will most readily admit that one can not make of a child anything else than what the innermost germs of its nature contain. As little as one can elicit from tin the sound peculiar only to gold, just as little is it possible to draw forth any quality from a child when the germ of that quality is lacking in its mind. But all this would not be possible if there were no such thing as innate qualities. If there are no innate ideas, and all ideas are merely acquired by observation, education, discipline, ex- perience, etc., then how is it that so many people, who have no education and not much of discipline, have a sound moral judgment and are virtuous, while a great many others who have passed through such a discipline, training and culture as to have a claim to a higher education, are void of moral character, void of principle, and void of all qualities constituting a nobler and higher manhood? The moral nature of man is described by the great French poet. Victor Hugo, in the following striking way: "Yes, men who govern us, at the bottom of every citizen's conscience, the most obscure as well as the greatest, at the very depth of the soul of the last beggar, the last vagabond, there is a sentiment sublime, sacred, insurmountable, inde- structible, eternal the sentiment of right. This sentiment, which is the very essence of the human conscience, which the Scriptures call the corner-stone of justice, is the rock on which iniquities, hypocrisy, bad laws, evil designs and bad governments fall and are shipwrecked. This is the hidden, irresistible obstacle, veiled in the recesses of every mind, but ever present, ever active, on which you will always exhaust yourselves and which, whatever you do, you will never destroy. I warn you, your labor is lost ; you will not extinguish it, you will not confuse it, for it is easier to THE MORAL ARGUMENT. drag the rock from the bottom of the sea than the sentiment of right from the hearts of the people.'' * When, among the Greeks, through the sophists, a great confusion, respecting the mor.il concepts, had prevailed, it was Socrates who stepped forth and brought order into the chaos, not by any new-fangled theory, but by returning to the plain, sound, common-sense ethics of the people and of the great national poets. Of a similar confusion of moral concepts in England, France and Germany was productive also the materialistic systems of Hobbes and Locke. The opinions arrived at by the English, French and German moralists were greatly varying, and often diametrically opposed to one another. Montaigne reduced morality to ''habit; 1 ' Mandville derived it from the " vanity '' of which the law-givers availed themselves; Hutcheon originated it from "benevolence;" Wollaston thought " veracity !? was its root : Shaftesbury accounted for the origin of morality with an innate "' moral taste"' or '' moral sense ; " Clark with the '' fitness of things ;" Lord Kames and Hartley Avith an " aesthetic taste" or " a?sthetic judgment ;" Cudworth, the fhiglish precursor of Kant, derived the morality from the '' intuition of reason;" Wolf and Leibnitz considered the perfectability of human nature the source of all morality in man ; according to Helvetius the " self-interest" and according to Bentham the " utility " are the source and the basis of all morality. This great confusion in the sphere of morality was waiting for a new Socrates. He appeared in the person of Immanuel Kant, who, with the rod of the ''categorical imperative," dug out the well of morality in man's moral nature. Kant agrees with the Bible as to the moral nature * Raymond, The Orator's Manual. % AlUU'MKNTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GoD. of nuin, but, while the Bible derives all morality from God, Kant derived his moral argument for the existence of God from the moral nature of man ; thus, he pronounced holdlv the (intinionii/ of tin- human nature. Morality he made independent of religion, hut religion the idea of God and immortality he made dependent on man's moral nature. Kant admitted that the moral sense of man was developed, refined and sharpened by experience; and that it is ex- perience that teaches man what is right and wrong, good or evil, useful or hurtful; but as to that question whether there is anything in man independent and uninfluenced by pleasure and pain, by interest or disadvantage, by mere desires and wishes, he answers in the affirmative that there is a " moral law " in man, a moral law which is uncondi- tional, unreserved, reckless and categorical in its commands and demands, and is called generally the " categorical imperative.'' This "categorical imperative" must be contra- distinguished from the " hypothetical imperative, "the latter giving laws according to circumstances and expediency, while the hypothetical imperative is the imperative of prudence, The categorical imperative, commanding man to follow merely the inner necessity, or the pure practical will, and not to allow external circumstances to influence him, is the real principle of liberty. The sensuous part of man's nature must be determined and ruled by the rational and pure will, which bears its moral worth in itself, and by means of which alone the moral worth of every action is determined. The categorical imperative addresses itself to man with " thou oughtest ; " and the affirmation " thou canst, because thou oughtest" must suffice to induce man to do his duties. THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 97 When mail has taken cognition of the ;> moral law " within him, there arises in him a moral sentiment or the respect for that " moral law." It is this respect for the " moral law " within us that makes our actions "moral." Without this respect for the "moral law" within us, no matter from what motives we are actuated, our actions can not he called "moral." The action from respect for the " moral law " within us is called duty, and, if it has its end in itself, it is called virtue. If man has advanced so far as to he dutiful from mere love of duty then he is Jtoli/. The pure, rational, autdnomic will is the original law- giver in man, and, constituting man's dignity, has to act upon the following three fundamental laws : Art (iccordiiKj to jtrittcijilc* of which thou canst always wish that others may also act according to them. Act >-o a* to ahi-fit/* use humanity Die Menschheit as well in thy person as in the person of others, as an end and never as a means. Aft in unch a wai/ that the maxim of thy conduct might be made a general la\v. These fundamental principles Kant thinks will secure the " autonomy of the will" to the exclusion of the "heter- onomy of arbitrary choice." * The result of Kant's disquisition of the cosmological and teleological proofs was that these arguments are of an anti- nomic nature, that is to say, there are just as many evidences against as in favor of them. In his inquiries Kant was not actuated by any atheistical motives or designs ; it was in the light of his philosophy that he judged so. Far from having or cherishing any atheistical or materialistic tenden^ * Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. AR<; I -MKXTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. cies or intentions, Kant, on the contrary, was as anxious ;is any philosopher ever was to destroy the roots of atheism, pantheism, materialism, fatalism, sensualism and pernicious skepticism. He thought the moral argument was the host way to effect this. His moral argument is essentially as follows : It is peculiar to human reason to proceed from the conditioned to the unconditioned, from the particular to the universal, and from the individual to the collective. Not satisfied with the mere knowledge of the rules in individual cases, human reason seeks for the knowledge of the chief good the KII in in a in IHHIHUI the sum of all that man has to strive after. Now, what is that chief good? Does it consist in happi- ness or in virtue? Virtue is only so far the chief good as it implies the conditions of happiness, and, again, happiness is only so far the chief good as it is in consonance with virtue. If, on the one hand, it is taken into consideration that man is in need of and craves for happiness, and, on the other hand, that virtue is his duty and the condition of his happi- ness, it will he obvious that the chief good can consist only in virtue and happiness combined. But experience teaches that there is often the greatest disproportion between virtue and happiness in the world. This disproportion between worthiness and happiness can be solved only by the assumption of another world, where all these dissonances between morality and happiness are turned into symphonies. From that rule of conduct, as implied in the chief good and to which reason subjects us, Kant infers two things : the existence of God and the immortality of the human soul. Without (tod, the wise Governor of the universe, and THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 99 without a future life for the compensation of virtue, there is no proportion and no correspondence imaginable between morality and happiness and between worthiness and destiny. Without God and a future life, the ideas of morality and virtue are mere matters of convenience, of expediency, of approval to serve man's purposes ; and .there is no reason why they should not be changed or given up entirely if expedient. Without God and a future life, all hopes, cravings and ideals of man's moral, mental and spiritual constitution would be nothing else but tormenting illusions, impractical ideas, tantalizing hopes and irreconcilable discrepancies. The demonstration of the existence of God being a demand of man's moral consciousness for a proportion and corre- spondence between worthiness and happiness, was called by Kant a postulate of pure, practical reason. There are two other postulates freedom of will and the immortality. The freedom of will is postulated to make man independent of the external world, and to enable him to be autonomic, or, in other words, to be a law to himself. The immortality is postulated to render possible the attainment of moral perfection by an infinite progression. And God, as already stated, is postulated to make virtue and happiness, worthiness and felicity proportionate. The influence Kant's moral argument for the existence of God had, was great. It offered just that which his contemporaries, tired of the English speculations and of the French frivolity, craved for. It has created a moral revival. These ideas of Kant remained not restricted merely to the studies of the philosophers, nor merely confined to the universities, but they found their way into the theological 1IK Auor.MKNTS KOH THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. seminaries, into the pulpits and into the hearts of the people. The number of theologians, especially in Germany, who were imbued with Kantian ideas, was great. The sermons of the greatest German preachers Reinhard, Zollikofer. Amon, Sintenis, Roehr, and others reflect the Kantian ra- tionalism in its fullest strength. They estimated the " moral argument" of Kant so highly, that it atoned in their eyes for all the sins he had committed against theology. There has never been an original philosopher who had to struggle so little with the antagonism of the theologians as Kant, despite his aggressive, progressive and revolution- ary views. The German poets, Schiller and Heine, were not so well satisfied with Kant as were the theologians. The former considered Kant's "categorical imperative" too rigorous, and the latter 'thought Kant's " moral argument " was nothing but a makeshift and an expediency. According to Heine, Kant's servant Lampe (the type of the people) is bent on believing something ; consequently Kant would appease his spiritual appetite by the " moral argument.*' Heine's criticism amounts merely to a suspicion of Kant's sincerity, but is no invalidation of Kant's moral argument, which will remain solid and valid as long as there will be in existence something like a %< moral obligation." A " moral obligation " presupposes a moral law ; and, again, a moral law presupposes a law-giver. The cogency of this argument can not fail to carry conviction with itself. " It is self-evident," says Sir William Hamilton, one of the greatest British metaphysicians, "in the first place, that, if there be no moral world, there can be no moral government of such a world ; and, in the second, that we have and can have no ground on which to believe in the THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 101 reality of a moral world except in so far as we ourselves are moral agents. This being undeniable, it is further evident that, should we ever be convinced that we are not moral agents, we should likewise be convinced that there exists no moral law or order in the universe, and no supreme Intelligence by which that moral order is established, sus- tained and regulated. Theology is thus again wholly dependent on psycho 1 ogy; for with the proof of the moral nature of man stands or falls the proof of the existence of a Deity."* Of no little interest and importance to the " moral argu- ment," as set forth by Kant, is the Darwinian theory of the " struggle for existence." The followers of Hobbes and Locke hailed it as one evidence more in favor of their negation of the innate ideas in general and of the moral sense in particular. If life were nothing but a struggle for existence, in which the weaker has to perish through the force and violence of the stronger, then in fact there could be no idea or trace of a moral sense inborn in man, no idea of a " conscience," and no idea of a moral order in the world. Then Spinoza would be right in according to each one as much right as he has force ; then there could be nothing wrong in warfare and in the use of brutal force ; then the mediaeval state of society, in which the knights and lieges robbed and plun- dered people and would not submit to any law But to violence and physical superiority, would be considered as the ideal of society. There is no doubt that there is a u struggle for existence " going on in society. It can be witnessed daily and every- where. But the " struggle for existence " is not the supreme Hamilton's Metaphys., Lectures II., p. 23. 102 AUUUMKXTS* FOK THE EXISTENCE OF Got). law as the materialistic followers of Darwin maintain. There are agencies which counteract the sway of that law and keep it within limits'; there are moral factors which bid the " struggle for existence " to go thus far and no further. Every household where maternal love and paternal care tend to raise and to make happy their weak children regard- less of the sacrifices of the money, time, comfort and health it requires, is an evidence against the theory of the Darwinian " struggle for existence." Every provision that society makes for the protection of the weak, for the orphans, for old and infirm people and for the sick that they may not perish in their misery, is a protest against the Darwinian " struggle for existence." Every champion of human rights and liberties, every pioneer of a lofty idea, and every martyr of a good and great principle is a witness against the Darwinian " struggle for existence," according to which the weaker has to suc- cumb. Every act of disinterestedness and of self-sacrifice, and every compunction, accusation and condemnation is a testi- mony against the theory of the " struggle for existence," which promises triumph only to physical and brutal forces, to " self-interest well understood " and to " prudence well applied." These remonstrations will suffice to prove that the Dar- winian term, the " struggle for existence," as defined by the materialist, is not warranted by all facts of experience and observation ; nor can the moral consequences of it be in the interest of a higher civilization and humanity. V. THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT, ,,s war eine geitlang 3Robe, otte 2Beisb,eit in b,iemt, einjelnen commissioned for that purpose ; or upon such historical emergencies as seem to come just in time to prevent or 1(H> AufifMKXTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF Goi>. retard, or to promote.the tendencies of certain. individuals or parties, or nations. In modern times it is the "philosophy of history ''- vievving history as a great organism ruled in the totality of its development, of its course and tendencies by certain fixed laws that has been referred to as being the domain for the rational study of the historical proof of the Divine existence. The " philosophy of history " propounds questions like the following : Are the events and emergencies of history merely like the commotions of the waves or like the falling snow- flakes aimless, meaningless or do they take place de- signedly and planfully, upon the principle, of causality? Is the reign of law supreme merely in nature, and not also in the origin, and growth and overthrow of political institu- tions, in the rise and fall of dynasties, or the progress and decline of the agencies, tendencies and causes of historical movements.? Are all the phenomena of history so con- nected that they had to occur the way they did, or might just the reverse, or something entiraly different, have happened just as well? The answers to these questions have been given by the following historians, metaphysicians and scholars. The science of the " philosophy of history " is compara- tively a new one. The Italian, Giovani Battista Vico (1668-1744), is considered its father. His great book, " Principii de Scienza Nuova," treating all institutions and laws of society from a natural and historical standpoint, may be called a "natural history of the human race." But it may also be styled a "natural theology derived from history ;" for, though it denies the miraculous interference of God in history, it attempts to prove that a Divine Provi- dence guides all historical events by a natural process. THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 107 Vico maintains that, in a very remote epoch, man was in a state not much above that of brutes ; but, in the lapse of time, under the influence of circumstances the most latent and most innate ideas of morality were awakened, and man gradually advanced from the condition of animality to that of human beings. His theory was that the development, progress, rise and fall of a nation take place according to fixed laws, analogous to the laws which determine the moral, physical, social and mental development and progress of individuals. The Roman history furnished- him with illustrations for his ideas, and he considered the history of the Roman nation typical. Like it, he thought the history of every nation had to pass through three states : that of theocracy, aristocracy, and democracy. He claimed also that history repeats itself in constantly widening circles. While Vico held that the reign of law* was manifested only in the life and growth of nations and individuals, it was Herder and Kant, the two illustrious Germans, who, in their works, published in one and the same year (1784), advanced the idea that the history of the whole human race was ruled no less by fixed laws than that of one and every individual. Herder, "the father of universal history," undertook to show in his magnificent fragments, ' ; Ideas toward a Phi- losophy of the History of Mankind," that the history of the. human race shows a progressive development of humanity, of reason and of liberty. This progressive principle, or evolution, Herder considers the paramount law, both in the physical and in the historical world. It wis to him the Dirii'ie pli.n in hiMory. Man. being organized so that the sense of liberty, humanity, morality, sociability, etc., is 10S Al;t'MKNTS FOK THE ExiSTEXCK cF GoD. an essential part of his nature, has gradually and progres- sively developed himself under social, geographical and pliysical influences. Herder, treating the history of the human race as a part of the history of the physical uni- verse, did not commence his work with a certain tradition or myth, or mythical epoch, but with a rational contempla- tion of the universe. Kant begins his essay, " Idea of a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan P"int of View," thus: "Whatever meta- physical theory one may entertain as to the free will of man, the manifestations of this free will the human actions are, as every other event in nature, determined by fixed laws. It is to be hoped that historiography will yet succeed in showing that there is a fixed law in the occur- rence of all ethical phenomena, so that, while now they are considered disconnected occurrences, they will then be looked upon as necessary effects of the constantly pro- gressive manifestations of the original endowment of the human race. The marriages, birth and death cases are, as to their number, subjected to fixed laws of nature, and so are the missions, tendencies and ends of the nations deter- mined by fixed laws, although people are not aware of it.' 1 Kant expressed the hope that the man will yet come who will do for the discovery of the laws in history what Newton and Kepler did for the discovery of the laws in the physical universe. The idea that history is ruled by fixed laws, found also at that time in France its representative. Condorcet, who, though a marquis and imprisoned for no other reason than because of his aristocratic descent, proclaimed, heroically, during the "reign of terror'' in the French revolution, the lelief that liberty was the mother of all true progress and happiness. His excellent work, " Esquisse d' un Tableau THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 109 Historique de Progress de 1'Esprit Humain" (1795), he wrote while in prison. He undertook to prove that man- kind has to pass through eight stages, from the primitive barbarism to the civilization of his day, and that it was the Divine design in history to improve mankind, so that crime and vice shall come out of practice and shall become almost impossible. Progress of civilization meant to him the decrease of crime and the abatement of misery. That era has to be brought about by the following four measures : (a ) The laws of society must not militate against the best interests of the people, but must rather promote them. (6.) The laws of society must be of such a nature as to arouse the good will and the charitable proclivities of the people in such a degree, that people are seized by an aversion to all that is wrong and mean. (c.) Man must learn to know his real interests, and must learn to consider them objects of his duties. (d.) Man must learn to make his conduct conformable to the dictates of reason, and must learn to understand the voice of his conscience. Just one decade later (1805) the German metaphysician, Fichte, published his " Grundzuege des Gegenwsertigen Zeitalters," in which he treats history as the manifestation of a Divine plan, man and every age being essential parts of it. Fichte is of the opinion that it is obligatory on the indi- vidual to sacrifice if social welfare requires it everything for the human species. In doing so, an individual over- comes meanness, selfishness and sensuality, and he then lives a true life ; and duty will seem to him, or to her, not rigorous, but a pleasure. 110 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. Civilization has for its end to subject nature to reason and to become, by way of liberty, the embodiment of reason itself. Preceding this end are five epochs : That of the paradisical innocence, when reason rules man only through instinct. Tlu.it of the inception of the reign of sin, when the instinct- reason is growing weaker in the mass of the people, and when it works only by the instrumentality of a few elect persons setting up a compulsory rule of authority, by means of order and systems. That of sinfulness, when people revolt against the author- ity of the instinct-reason. That of justification, when truth and scientific realization are considered the highest authority. Thai of perfect justification and holiness, when men will edify themselves by art. The epoch, in which Fichte was writing, he considered the transition from the third to the fourth, the epoch of scientific rationalism. . One would hardly believe that such a mysticism was taught by Fichte, formerly the advocate of all progressive rationalism, as advanced by Spinoza, Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant and others. Yet it is so. Fichte had in his former years identified God and the moral order of the world. This incurred the charge of atheism to him. The great Protestant preacher, Dr. Rein- hardt, of Dresden, persecuted him so, that, despite his defense, " Appelation an das Publicum gegen die Anklage des Atheismus" (1798), he was deposed from his chair in the Jena University. In his appeal to the public, Fichte asseverated that he was a monotheist, and flung the charge of atheism back upon his persecutor for teaching that God THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. Ill is a postulate of human happiness. This persecution had a weakening effect upon Fichte's great and bright intellect, and, afraid of further persecution and molestation, he was anxious 1 to appear a good Christian and a good German patriot. Hence his mysticism and his patriotism in his latter years. Previous to that he was a radical rationalist and a cosmopolite in the widest sense of the word. A new era in the study of the philosophy of history com- menced in 1825 with Hegel's " Philosophic der Geschichte." The works of Vico, Herder, Kant, Condorcet and Fichte were only fragmentary and disconnected, and it was first Hegel, who, treating history as a connected totality of phenomena and events, brought system into this branch of study. He put the reflection on history upon a scientific basis. The universal history is, according to Hegel, the history of the development of the consciousness of freedom. It is the domain of reason. Nature, moving in a circle, reproduces only the physical phenomena, while history, being the realm of progress, is incessantly productive of new phenomena : the fundamental law of nature being gravity, and the fun- damental law of history being liberty. ' Individuals and nations believe they serve their own interest and do what they please, while, in fact, they serve unintentionally and unconsciously the plan of the universal mind. They aim at one thing, but this one thing proves, when looked at in the totality of historical events, an instrument, or a co- ordinate, or a subordinate part of something it was not designed, or anticipated, by man to be. The great men are the instruments of the progress and development of history. Pursuing their mission, they destroy many a fine plant that happens to be in their way, but that can not be helped. Their passions, and interests 112 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. and aims, without their knowing how, are subservient to a higher guidance. When their mission is fulfilled, they drop like the leaves of a tree. They die prematurely, like Alexander; or are assassinated, like Caesar; or banished, like Napoleon. Their misfortune is a comfort to their envious and jealous contemporaries. When a nation has matured the fruits of her mission, they fall oft', but not in her lap ; on the contrary, they prove to be the potion annihilating her. Those spirits were matured for the benefit of mankind at large ; and they operate in mankind in the form of a new principle. History and nature are the glory and manifestation of the "Absolute Spirit," which is the real, eternal Truth per se. This absolute Spirit arrives at self- consciousness first in the history of the human race, and it has to pass four epochs. The history of the Orient is the history of the childhood of mankind. -In the Orient only one is politically free. There the rational qualities of a government are merely accidental, while the irrational ones are the rule. The Orient is characteristic of stability. There is no progress there, and, even if by valor or virtue anything new is effected, it is only short-lived. Greek history represents the youth of mankind. Greece was "the hothouse of individualism and individualities. First, as in the works of fine arts, the sensuous bears the impression, and is the expression, of the spiritual, so, in Greece, was the individual will and the social morality in union only under the form of beauty. The ethics of self- discrimination and subjection to the moral law, as advocated by Socrates, 'were not the ethics of the Greek genius, nor was that standard ever liked, or reached, by the Greeks. The esthetic individualism was their monarch. THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 113 The Roman world corresponds to the age of manhood in history. Among the Romans, some were politically free. Individualism had no free scope in, the Roman policy. The universal end of the state crushed all individualism. Rome was the pantheon of all gods and spirits, but they were not allowed to retain their vital peculiarities. The Teutonic world represents the high age of mankind- There, all are free. This high age, unlike the physical, represents not weakness, but maturity. The goal of the history, consisting in the reconciliation of State and Church, of temporal and spiritual principle, is realized in the Teutonic world. This is Hegel's theory, concerning the history. It must be admitted that Hegel's " Philosophic der Goschichte" is a very thoughtful book, full of original ideas and of good, sound observations, but, nevertheless, it is not free from great mistakes, one of the greatest of which is Hegel's idea that the Teutonic world of his age that meant the Prussian State was the last act in the great drama of the political history. Hegel was also severely criticised for his theory that his- tory, in all its particular events, was determined by fixed laws, the way cosmical phenomena are. Such a theory, it was remonstrated, leaves no room for man's free will and responsibility, and does away with every moral measure of individual deeds. Professor Karl Rosenkranz, one of the ablest disciples of Hegel, tries to show, in his monography, " Hegel," and in his collected works,* that Hegel did not, as his critics hold, consider the individuals and their actions a mere " foam of * Neue Studien, III., 259 260. 114 ARGUMKNTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. the son'' of history. Professor Rosenkranx is authority for that. 1 legel's system, being an exponent of the evolution theory, was of great fascination and attraction for his contem- poraries, not only in Germany, but in other countries. In France, M. Victor Cousin (1792-1867), a metaphysician, v\lio. through his great eloquence, exerted great influence upon all classes of people, became a zealous student of Hegel's philosophy. Being an eclectic, Cousin did not identify himself with any of the philosophical systems, but he selected from every system sub-elements which seemed to him good, correct and true. As to the philo- sophical reflection on history, Cousin was a Hegelian, averring that history is ruled by fixed laws. " History," Cousin thinks, " reflects not only the whole movement of humanity, but, as humanity is the summary of the universe, which is itself a manifestation of God, in the last analysis history is nothing less than the last counter- stroke of Divine action. The admirable order which reigns there is a reflection of eternal order, and its laws have for their last principle God himself. God, considered in his perpetual action upon the world and humanity, is Provi- dence. It is because God, or Providence, is in nature that nature has its necessary laws. This necessity, which the vulgar accuse, which they confound with external and physical fatality, and by which they designate and disfigure the Divine wisdom applied to the world, this necessity is the unanswerable demonstration of the intervention of Providence in human affairs, the demonstration of a moral government of the world. Great events are the decrees of this government, promulgated by the voice of time. History is the manifestation of God's supervision of humanity; the judgments of history are the judgments of God himself. THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 115 God has willed that humanity should have a regular development, that it might reflect something of himself something of the intellectual and intelligible God being intelligence in his essence, and in his eternal movements and in its fundamental motives, principles. " Now, if history is the government of God made visible, everything is there in its place, everything is there for good, for everything arrives at an end, marked by a beneficent power. Hence this historic optimism which I have the honor to profess is nothing less than the idea itself of civili- zation in relation with its first and last principle with Him who has made it in making humanity, and who has formed everything with weight and measure, for the greatest good of all things. "Either history is an insignificant phantasmagoria and then it is a bitter, cruel mockery or it has a meaning, it is reasonable ; and, if it is reasonable, it has laws, for every law must have these characters. To maintain the contrary is a blasphemy against existence and its author." * In the same lecture (the seventh of his course of the history of modern philosophy, translated into English by O. W. Wight, 1852), M. Cousin maintains that there are only three elements of thought the element of the infinite, of the finite and of their mutual relation. Starting from this view, he assumes that there are also only three epochs in the development of thought in history. In the first epoch of history, there ruled the idea of the infinite. In that epoch everything was more or less immo- bile. Industry was feeble and commerce limited to the inevitable relations of men among themselves in the same country. There was little of internal or maritime com- * Cours d'Hhtoire de la Philosophic au 18 Siecle. 11C) ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. ineire. The nations were strongly attached to their terri- tory. The mathematical and astronomical sciences were cultivated because they remind man of the ideal, the abstract and the infinite. Experimental philosophy, chemistry and the natural sciences were not cultivated with much atten- tion. The State, having hardly recognized the individuals, was the reign of the absolute, fixed, immutable law. Art y without any ivsthetical proportions, was gigantic. Religion had for its end less to govern life than to despise it. Philosophy was nothing else but a contemplation of the absolute unity. In the second epoch of the human race, there had been ruling the idea of the finite. This second epoch is to be distinguished by progress in industry; by commerce on a large scale; by discoveries and inventions to increase the products of nature by individual activity and enterprise ; by the study of nature and of man, of physics and psy- chology ; and by a religion which transfers the earth to heaven, and makes heaven an image of the earth. A mixture of the idea of the infinite and the finite rules in the third epoch of history. In that epoch, religion is referred to God and the religious dogma is applied to morality. This life is regarded as real and as having a price of immense value. The reciprocal influence of psychology and ontology will constitute the philosophy. All kinds of industry, all mathematical and natural sciences, territorial and maritime power, the prepondering force of the state and individual liberty will prevail. There is no epoch in history in which one idea has ruled to the exclusion of every other. In every epoch only one idea predominates, and the other ideas are subordinated to it. The first epoch is called that of the infinite, because the idea prevalent is an obscure synthesis, a unity, the absolute ; THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 11' while the next epoch is that of diversity, of division and separation. Cousin's three terms "the infinite," ''the finite" and "their mutual relations" are expressive of the same ideas as Hegel's " absolute," ' k subjective '' and " objective spirit." Cousin did not say anything new ; he was only the inter- preter and advocate of Hegel among the French. By far more original than Cousin was 'his contemporary, August Comte (1798-1857), the father of the modern agnosticism and of the moral maxim styled altruism. Con- sidering himself the prophet of the positive dispensation, according to which man can not know anything about the beginning and the end of things, and has no way of knowing anything certain about God and immortality, Comte would replace the worship of God by the " worship of humanity." Humanity he took in the sense of the whole human race. The symbols, the nomenclature and the ritual which he recommended to his followers were absurd and foolish, but the agnostical idea, as well as his division of the natural sciences, his altruism and the great stress he laid upon sociology, gained him many admirers and followers. The six fundamental sciences are mathematics, chemis- try, astronomy, physics, biology and sociology: The latter one, sociology, Comte made the main field of his study. He held that history is ruled by fixed laws, so that man- kind, in the course of its development, had to pass three stages the theological, the metaphysical and the positive or scientific. Himself he considered the herald of the positive, or scientific, stage of mankind. Comte's asser- tion that these three stages are only consecutive to one another is false. Men like Tyndal, Huxley, Spencer and others claim to be positivists, and still they occupy them- selves very much with theological and metaphysical ques- US AH'ifMKNTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. tions. This shows that the interest in religion has remained oven in the "age of positivism." The agnosticism was advocated by Comte, but it was advanced first by Protagoras among the ancient Greeks, and then by the Frenchman, Jean Baptiste Robinet, in the last century. In our generation, it is the English philosopher. Herbert Spencer, who is considered the main representative of agnosticism. According to this " new philosophy," as set forth by him in the " First Principles" time and space, matter and spirit, cause and force, change, motion and rest are subjects Avhich are absolutely "unknow- able." Spencer does not deny the existence of God, but he thinks God is " unknowable," that is to say, there are no. ways of knowing anything about God. No matter how positive the agnostics are in their asser- tions and how they ignore the remonstrances of their opponets, they can not help to admit that there is no action without an actor, no thought without a thinker, no effect without a cause, and no phenomenon without a substance. These are indisputable truths, and the rock on which the ship of agnosticism will and must strand. In ignoring all except the external phenomena and the manifestation of force, agnosticism repudiates the very same principles, ideas and methods as " unknowable " by which its very system was brought about. It is just as fallacious to deny the facts and the philosophy of man's mental, moral and spiritual nature, as it is to deny the facts and the philosophy of matter and of the physical phenomena. The categories of the human mind which make generali- zation, classification, specification, induction, deduction, etc., possible, can not be denied, though they are no THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 119 external phenomena, nor can the critera of the logical and psychological truth be denied. Agnosticism is at present the philosophy of fashion just as the English deism and the French atheism were the fashion in the last century, and as the philosophi- cal systems of Kant, Fichte, Hegel and others were, in succession the philosophical creeds of certain decades. As a matter of course, man can not know all about God, nor can he comprehend the Divine essence. A God whom finite man could comprehend, would be no infinite God at all ; it would be a mere idol or phantasm. The infinite God can never be comprehended by the finite man. God is incomprehensible, but he is not unknowable. There are ample evidences in history, nature and life by which we can know not merely that there exists a supreme Being, but also much about the Divine attributes. There are goodness and wisdom enough in life, nature and history to warrant inferences in behalf of the nature of a supreme Being. Those who are earnest in seeking God will find his traces. The idea that history is an organism developed and ruled by invariable laws became prevalent, not merely among the metaphysicians, but also among the theologians. Foremost among them was Baron Bunsen, who considered it his liVs object to translate the Semitic truths into the Japhetic languages. The proof of the great success he met with is his German Bible translation, with commentary, and his " Gott in der Weltgeschichte." In this latter work he undertook to trace the idea of Providence in the literature of the Aryanic and Mongolic nations as well as that of the Hebrews. Dilating on the laws which govern history, Bunsen remarks : " Xoble and enlightened minds have, from early times, sought to justify the moral order of the world, 120 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. according to which all evil is self-destructive and doomed finally to perish, but not until after apparent victory and lengthened domination, while the good prevails at last, but only after an arduous struggle and after a long period of misconception and oppression. This justification may either seek its ground in fact or in thought. "The conception of Divine Providence as consistent with human conscience and reason is presented among the Semitic people in the history telling how, from Abraham to Moses, God delivered his people with a strong hand, and, again, in the book of Job, as the lesson of submission to his mighty arm. Among the Hellenes, the triumph of divine justice was celebrated in epic and drama. The exhi- bition of the divine Nemesis in the destruction of Troy is the immortal type of the former kind the epi-theodicy ; the vivid representation of an avenging fate in the tragedies of "^Eschylus " and " Sophocles " is an equally immortal hymn to the moral order of the world. Finally, in the historical works of Herodotus, the same circle of ideas is exhibited in contact with the actual destinies of nations and their leaders. "The modern German school Kant, Lessing, Herder and others was also the first to apprehend in all their depths the questions which mankind in our late age must natura'ly propound to itself: Is there such a thing as progress in the history of the human race? If so, wherein is it visible? What is its formula? These questions are only capable of a solution if we start from the assumption of a moral order of the world and the essential unity of the human race. For progress presupposes something that can advance and that bears within itself the law of its own advance. But this is the case only with mind conscious of volition and cognition, and, therefore, any intelligent THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 121 idea of progress presupposes, equally with religion, a Divine government." * In chapter eight of the same book, Baron Bunsen says : il The individual for the nation, the nation for humanity, humanity for God ; but each individual in God and God in each individual. This is the supreme law of existence in this tidal wave of the collective race. The mystery of humanity, as of the universe, is personality ; that is to say, the exist- ence of a Being possessed of consciousness and volition, having his place in the great Whole of which he is a part, and yet forming an antithesis to that Whole in other words, the co-existence of the free, self-determining moral Will on ' the one hand, and of External. Necessity on the other. This moral personality is the mysterious element in human history." And in the third chapter of the same book Baron Bunsen argues : " But if there be a moral order of the world a cosmos of mind which corresponds to the cosmos of the visible world, it must necessarily have cognizable laws. For, if the laws of nature, uninformed by mind, have been discovered, the laws of development of mind must be much more discoverable. If the observation of a portion of a planet's course enables the astronomer to draw the whole curve of its orbit, ought not so many thousands of years of human development enable us to recognize the laws of the orbit of humanity to understand the present? dimly, at least, to forecast the future? If geology has ex- plained to us the succession of the earth's strata, ought not scientific history to give us still more intelligible answers as to the successive deposits of language and religion? The deposition of strata shows us the order in which the crust * Book I., Introduction, Wink worth's English translation. ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE or GOD. of our planet has been formed; the strata of man's con- sciousness of (tod, during the successive ages of humanity, reveal to us with equal certainty a process of development; hut, more than this, they present to us a reflection of our own inner nature in the mirror oi all time the unfolding of the conscious, finite mind on the scale of universal history." The discovery of the invariable laws of history, Baron Bunsen thought, was possible only by the application of the Baconean methods to history. The greatest imaginary contrast to Bunsen's " Gott in der Weltgeschichte " (1857) Avas Buckle's "History of Civiliza- tion" (1858). Both Baron Bunsen and Mr. Buckle hold that history is ruled by fixed laws ; and both maintain that the discovery of these laws must be brought about by means of the Baconean methods, and still the difference is as day and night. Bunsen considered the laws of history to be the design and Avisdom of a supreme Being, just as it is \vith the laws of nature, while Buckle Avas a necessitarian. All existences and all that is to take place, are so of necessity. Buckle's " History of Civilization" breathes from the beginning to the end the philosophy of materialism. Climate, food, soil and the general aspect* of nature he considered the most powerful agents in the rise of thought and habit. With the influence of the physical world upon the human mind and r!>r fcrna-, he accounts for everything. He denied the free Avill of man. Physical causes, physical antecedents and physical sequences Avere to him the alpha and the omega of his theory. The statistics were to him an infallible oracle; and they showed, manifestly, that there is a law, not merely in marriages, and suicides and crimes, but also even in such seemingly accidental things, as, for example, that a certain THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 123 number of letters are annually dropped into the letter- boxes upon which no direction has been put. There is no denying it, Buckle's " History of Civiliza- tion" is, despite the great errors it contains, a highly inter- esting work ; and its greatest merit consists in having induced a great many to think on the questions of which it treats. One great mistake Buckle made, was in considering the number of statistics as safe and reliable, as precise and unerring as the laws of nature. The doctrines of the statistics are only arithmetical means, probabilities and approxima- tions. Besides, these statistics can give only a report as to human actions ; but there are no statistics as to human thoughts and feelings, to human motives and to the change of human mind ; and it is just the knowledge of this that is indispensably necessary if the statistics of crime and misery are to be considered laws of nature. Another great mistake of Buckle's was to consider climate, food, soil and the general aspects of nature the sources from which man's actions spring. There are coun- tries of about the same climate, food, soil and general aspects of nature, and still the inhabitants have a different state and mode of civilization. This is an evidence against Buckle, and shows that human actions are dependent upon the moral and spiritual resources of man's mind and upon the genius of the nations. If everything depends merely on climate, food, soil and the general aspects of nature, why does Greece not produce at present such great men in art, politics and philosophy as it did in antiquity? Why- does Palestine not produce at present such religious and moral geniuses as it did of old? The climate, the food, the soil and the general aspects of nature have not materially changed in those countries. 124 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. In a lecture on woman, Buckle made the assertion that the greatest discoveries in science were made, not by experi- mental studies, but by intuition. Well, how does the theory of intuition agree with his materialism, expressed in his " History of Civilization?" Like all materialists, Buckle did not consider that if man had no free will, it would be impossible for him to break away from his former principles and habits ; that all courses of actions would be alike to him, and that it would be a mere absurdity to speak of a sense of right and wrong, or of moral principles. If man has no free will, by what right does Buckle inveigh against the tyrants, priests, Jesuits, Inquisition, etc.? Buckle thinks religion was the bane of human society. He mistakes the abuse of religion and the religious hy- pocrisy for real religion. Abuse is unavoidable ; but this will not induce any sensible man to abstain, on that account, from the proper use of the subject. One of the greatest mistakes of Buckle was the assertion that moral principles are stationary, and that the progress of civilization was solely due to the intellectual development and to the diffu- sion of knowledge. The history of the internal development of the ethical science itself, as well as the history of the civil, criminal and international codes indisputably shows that morality is not stationary. There is a moral progress in the life of the nations, as well as in the life of the individuals. Without morality, the most intelligent and learned classes of people would be only a learned and intelligent mob. Civilization owes to the progress of morality just as much, and perhaps more, than it does to the intellectual progress. Buckle's starting point was, to use his own words : " Our acquaintance with history being so imperfect, while our THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 125 materials are so numerous, it seems desirable that some- thing should be done on a scale far larger than has hitherto been attempted, and that a strenuous effort should be made to bring up this great department of inquiry to a level with other departments, in order that we may maintain the balance and harmony of our knowledge. In regard to nature, events, apparently the most irregular and capricious, have been explained and have been shown to be in accord- ance with certain fixed and universal laws. This has been done because men of ability and, above all, men of patient and untiring thought have studied natural events with the view of discovering their regularity, and if human events were subjected to a similar treatment, we have every right to expect similar results.'' This favorite idea of Buckle that history can be treated by methods, as can any natural science, was controverted by the great English historian, James Anthony Fronde. His opinion was that " a science of history, if it is more than a misleading name, implies that a relation between cause and effect holds good in human things as complete as in all oth- ers ; that the origin of human action is not to be looked for in mysterious properties of the mind, but in influences which are palpable and ponderable. When natural causes are liable to be set aside and neutralized by what is called volition, the word science is out of place. If it is free to man to choose what he will do, or not do, there is no ade- quate science of him." * Froude, in writing this, overlooked the fact that Buckle was a necessitarian denying the volition of man. Froude does not merely deny the existence of fixed laws reigning in history as it is held by Buckle from a statistical * Short Studies, Vol. I., page 15. r_>(> ARCiUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. point of view but he altogether denies the rule of laws in history. If, so he remonstrates, there were fixed laws ruling historv, why can the historian not predict the occurrence of historical phenomena and events with such an exactitude as the astronomer can predict the cycles, or the appear- ance of the comets and the course of planets? The subject of this analogy is well chosen, but it is not well applied. The astronomer can foretell merely the recurrence of certain phenomena which have been in exist- ence, but he can predict as little as the historian what new planets there will arise in time, or which of them will wreck, or what collisions or perturbations there will take place in the planetary world. Though Mr. Fronde negatives the rule of laws in history, he admits nay, he holds most emphatically that history is "a voice forever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity. For every false word or unrighteous deed, for cruelty and oppression, for lust and vanity, the price has to l>e paid at last, not always by the chief offenders, but paid by some one. Justice and truth alone endure and live. In- justice and falsehood may be long-lived, but doomsday comes at last to them in French revolutions and other terrible ways.'' * This assertion of Froude that there is a moral order and a retribution in history though more a part of the moral argument for the Divine existence does at the same time imply principles which are hunt, invariable laws in the organism of history, and does on that account constitute a part of the historical argument. * Short Studies on Great Subjects, I., page 28. THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 127 Considering all that has been written on the ''reign of law in history " by such prominent men as Vico, Kant, Herder, Fichte, Hegel, Bimsen and others, one can not help to think that there must be at least some truth in the belief that history is ruled by certain fixed and invariable laws. The prevalence of a law, or of laws, in history is an eridence of the existence, wisdom and nature of a supreme Being. All that has been advanced since Lucretius, down to the last Darwinist, against a design in nature, will, in the one or in the other form, be also advanced against the existence of a design in history, but either is refutable. To the present day there have been a great many things raised by atheists, materialists and Darwinists in objection to a design in nature, but there is not one of all these things and ideas that could not be refuted by facts, or by cogent reasoning. This applies also to all objections raised against the assertion that there is design in history. It has been demonstrated that if there is a law ruling history, then God can not be considered free in His guidance, and all that occurs does so from necessity. There is no more difficulty in reconciling the idea of a law, or laws, in history with the idea of the freedom of God's actions, than there is in reconciling the idea of the rule of" invariable laws in nature with the idea of God's freedom. In either domain God is the source of all laws ; they are his will, his wisdom, and their invariability and efficacy depend wholly and solely upon him. The Oxford Professor. Goldwin Smith, denouncing the theory that there is a rule of necessary laws in history, says : " I submitted that history is made up of the actions of men, and, that each of us is conscious in his own case that the actions of men are free. I am not aware FOR THE 'EXISTENCE OF GoD. that even an attempt has been made to reconcile the judgments of the retrospective conscience, the belief implied in those judgments that each action might have been done, or undone, and the exceptional allow- ance which conscience makes in the case of actions done wholly, or partly, on compulsion, with the hy- pothesis that our actions are subject to causation, like the events of the physical world. Wherein is an Alfred more the subject of moral approbation than a good harvest, or a Philip II. more the subject of moral disapprobation than a plague? This is a question to which I am not aware that an answer has yet been given. - Still, if it could be shown that history does, as a matter of fact, run in accordance with any invariable law, we might be obliged to admit that the necessarians had gained their cause, though a strange contradiction would then be established between our outward observation and our inward consciousness." * Goldwin Smith thinks the idea that history is ruled by invariable laws is irreconcilable with man's volition. That is not naturally so. The Jews believe in the volition of man, and consider it one of the cardinal teachings of their faith, and still they admit that all is foreseen by God. Rabbi Akiba, one of their greatest teachers and an out- spoken advocate of man's free will, said : " Everything is foreseen and still man is free." f Rabbi Akiba's idea was that there is a Divine plan in the guidance of mankind : that plan has been, and is going to be, realized without fail, but there is no predetermination as to the individuals that are instrumental in it. It is the law of Divine wisdom that good people shall be instru- * Lectures on the Study of History, II. t Pirkeh Aboth, IV. THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 129 mental in the good occurrences, while the wicked are instru- mental in the evil events. (Megalgelin Schuth al Yedey Saccie.) This rabbinical idea is illustrated by Rabbi Akiba in the following most interesting way : "The delivery from Egypt would have taken place even if Moses and Aaron had not arisen in its behalf; the temple at Jerusalem would have been built even if David and Solomon had not taken steps for its erection ; the idolatry would have been practiced among the ten tribes of Israel even if Jeroboam had not introduced and favored it; and the temple at Jerusalem would not have escaped destruction even if Nebuchadnezzar had not been born." * According to this idea, the Divine plan is to be realized unconditionally and without fail by some one, but no certain individual is predetermined for that purpose. Thus the rabbis thought to have solved the problem of God's foreordination and man's volition. John Draper is of the opinion that " the civilization of Europe has not taken place fortuitously, but in a definite manner and under the control of natural laws; that the procession of nations does not move forward like a dream, without reason or order, but that there is a predetermined, solemn march, in which all must join, ever moving, ever resistless, advancing, encountering and enduring an inevit- able succession of events ; that individual life, and its advancement through successive stages, is the model of social life and its secular variations. The control of natural law in the shaping of human affairs is not consistent with free will, any more than the unavoidable passage of an indi- vidual, as he advances to maturity and declines in old age, is inconsistent with his voluntary actions. That higher law * Masecheth Simchoth, VIII. 130 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. limits our movements to a certain direction and guides them in a certain way. "As a stoic of old used to say : 'An acorn may lie torpid in the ground, unable to exert its living force until it receives warmth and moisture, and other things needful for its germination ; when it grows, it may put forth one hud here and another bud there, the wind may bend one branch and the frost blight another, the innate vitality of the tree may struggle against adverse conditions or luxuriate in those that are congenial, but, whatever the circumstances may be, there is an overruling power forever constraining and modeling it : the acorn can only produce an oak.' " * In the same strain, Draper says, right in the first chap- ter : u * * * Yet it is none the less true that these contradictory conditions free will and fate, uncer- tainty and destiny coexist, and all are watched by the sleepless eye of Providence. * * * Well has a Hindoo philosopher remarked that he who stands by the bank of a Mowing stream sees, in their order, the various parts as they successively glide by, but he who is placed on an exalted station views at a glance the whole as a motionless silvery thread among the fields. To the one there is an accumu- lating experience and knowledge of man in time ; to the other there is the instantaneous and unsuccessive knowledge of God." As this illustration of an acorn shows, Draper took the volition of man not for the power in man to choose at any rnoment anything he pleases, but rather as the development of the better peculiarities of man's nature, combined with the ability to conform his actions to the dictates of that better developed nature. * History of Intellect. Develop, of Europe, XXIV. THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 131 Man ceases not to be free even if circumstances from without, or physical circumstances from within, interfere with the realization of his plan or ideas. On the contrary, just such obstructions and hindrances may elicit his voli- tion, if he learns to know them, and to act accordingly, t( Man is free, is free though he be born in chains." The volition of man is not conditioned by the power to do what one pleases ; it is only the rude man who considers that man's freedom of will, while the better educated a man is, the more regard in his actions will he have for justice, truth, virtue, humanity, welfare of others and to the duties of life. If man is considered a free being, despite all the lower instincts, proclivities and temper of his nature, then there is no reason indeed why he shall not be considered a free being, despite the limitations which the reign of laws in history impose upon him. It is a great mistake to believe that the teachings of statistics prove that man has no free will, but is subject to the laws of necessity as arising from the force of circum- stances. Just the reverse is the truth. The statistics of crime and misery, and of everything touching the volition of man, are only a regularity of occurrences, which happens only because people do not use their free will, or because they have not learned how to use it. .Not necessity, but the indifference, ignorance and apathy of the people are the cause of the regularity of the statistical numbers as far as they come in the sphere of volition. This is so true and so sure, that even the statisticians themselves admit that the statistics are variable. How could such a variability be possible if it did not depend upon man's free will, and if man had none? The statistics of crime and misery show to man a state of circumstances endangering his welfare AKOCMENTS FOR TJIK EXISTENCE OF GOD. ;ml> ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. name ethical monotheism describes better than any other the characteristics of their point "of view, for it not only expresses the character of the one God whom they wor- shiped, but also indicates the fountain from which their faith in him welled up.' " * These. two quotations make it evident that even the most radical wing of the Ley den School, as represented by Kuenen, Robertson Smith, Wellhausen, Oorth, Knappert and others, concur that the Bible is teaching a God of a righteous, universal, spiritual and moral character. The great question regarding the biblical conception of God, which, mainly through the Leyden School, has caused of late much agitation, is : When, and at what epoch in the liixtory of the ancient H> brews did the conception of only one universal and spiritual God arise? The old schools of biblical criticism, represented by Eich- horn, Vater, De Wette, Ewald, Hiipfeld, Noeldecke, Hitzig, Geiger. Gnetx, Dillman and others maintain that it was Moses who had the conception o r one only universal and spiritual (Jod. From this view the modern Leyden School took a departure, declaring that the prophetic monotheism mean- ing the one only spiritual and universal God originated as late as the eighth century, and found its first mouthpieces in the prophets Amos and Hosea,.800 years B. C. The theory of the Leyden School as to the conception of God is expressed by the pastor, I. Knappert, as follows: " Moses not only preached Jahveh as the God of Israel, but he wished the tribes to worship this God in contrast to, and to the exclusion of, all other gods. But we do not by any means intend to assert that Moses was amonotheist, or that he supposed Jahveh to be absolutely the only God, and the * Hibbart, Lectures, pp. 132-138. ARGUMENTATION OF THK JEWISH THEOSOPHY. 137 other gods are not to exist at all. Such pure monotheism as that belongs to much later days. It was not till many cen- turies after the time of Moses that the prophets attained to so lofty a conception. Moses himself believed in the exist- ence of other gods just as much as in that of Jahveh ; but he taught that Jahveh was the only one to whom the Israelites ought to pray. He was profound ly impressed with Jahveh's majesty and poAver. Jahveh only was Israel's God. We find this principle expressed in the phrase of the Law, * Ye shall have no other gods before me."* Pastor Knappert repeats only the following view of Pro- fessor Kuenen : ' ; From the written records that have been presented to us in the Old Testament, we are ac- quainted with three forms of Jahvism under which name we include both the ideas which were formed of Jahveh and the proper Jahveh worship. Those three forms are : the Jahvism of the jx'ojile. of the prophet* and of the LI.IH-. " The people acknowledged and worshiped other gods besides Jahveh. and thus fell naturally into what is usually called by a technical term syncretism, that is, into a com- bination and intermingling of ideas and customs, which had originally been connected with various gods. " The prophet* saw in Jahveh the only God, and so became naturally, as it were, to ascribe to him alone all the attri- butes and characteristics which in polytheism and by the people were distributed among the various gods. u The Lair finally must as will be evident farther on be regarded as a compromise between the popular religion and the Jahvism of the prophets ; and in this is implied that in * Religion of Israel, p. 15. l;',s AH<;UMKXTS FOR THE EXISTENCE, OF GOD, the Jnlwh worship of the Law also there must be elements which originally belonged to the service of other gods."* The system of Professor Kuenen and his followers has attracted g v eat attention, and its success and fascination are mostly due to the boldness with which the evolution theory is applied to the Bible and to its great ideas, and also to the great learning manifested in Kuenen's, Well- hausen's and others' works. The system of the Leyden School is a house divided against itself by a great many self-contradictions, and is based upon a great number of unwarranted conjectures, arbitrary dislocations of passages, fantastically interpreted words and texts, and upon an endless confusion of premises and sequences. The objection to the Mosaic antiquity of the conception of the one only spiritual and universal God, as advanced by the Leyden School, may be summarized in the following four points : a. The Hebrews before Amos and Hosea considered Jahveh to be a tribal, a national god a god among many gods. 1> The Hebrews before Hosea worshiped their tribal, or national God, Jahveh, under the image of bulls without the contemporaneous prophets reproaching them for it. c. The polytheism was not an innovation, or a departure, from the primitive monotheistic religion of the Hebrews, but was their very primitive faith. (/. The conception of Jahveh before Amos and Hosea was deficient in moral perfection. These views, as the following examination shows, drawn mostly from disconnected and arbitrarily interpreted pass- * The Religion of Israel, I.,. 230. ARGUMENTATION OF THE JEWISH THEOSOPHY. 139 ages, will be denied a general assent as long as there will be one Hebrew Bible left for consultation, and as long as there will be readers who are able to detect self-contradictions in a system or a book. The same Dr. Kuenen, who holds that the Hebrews before Amos and Hosea did not arrive further than at the concep- tion of a tribal and national God, and that they did not know anything about a one only spiritual and universal God, admits, as the following quotation shows, that the Sinaic Decalogue is of Mosaic antiquity : " There is no real obstacle to the supposition that the ten words are derived from Moses, or, on the contrary, that their contents and arrangements are entirely in accordance with the theory of their Mosaic origin. * * * The tradition which ascribes them to Moses, is worthy of respect on account of its indis- puted antiquity. Nevertheless, if it were contradicted by the contents and form of the ; words,' we should have to reject it. But this is not the case. Therefore we accept it, reserving our right to subject each separate commandment to special criticism, and, if necessary, to deny its Mosaic origin. We acknowledge it as a fact that Moses, in the name of Jahveh, prescribed to the Israelitish tribes such a law as is contained in the ten words." * Now, what a self-contradiction in Professor Dr. Kuenen. The prophetic monotheism, meaning the one only spiritual and universal God, is not of Mosaic antiquity; but the 1 >ecalogue, which gives the very same conception of God, is of Mosaic antiquity. If this is no contradiction, then there is no such a thing as contradiction ; and there is certainly no good reason to say that the Decalogue does not teach * The Religion of Israel, pp. 284-286. 140 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. and imply tin- conception of a one only universal and spiritual God. The German Professor, Dr. Ernest Meir, a distinguished ( )riental philologist, who has examined the antiquity of the Decalogue from a liberal point of view, concludes his highly interesting book, '' Die Urspruengliche Form des Deca- !ogs,'' with the following ideas : ' The conception of God as a holy Being free from all restraints and above all necessitation of nature, must have l)een gained in the Mosaic epoch by means of a great his- torical event. In the closest connection "with that idea is the other that this free holy Being must be worshiped cor- respondingly in the congregation : ' Ye shall be holy, for I, the Eternal, your God, am holy/ " The Decalogue, the Mosaic origin of which nobody doubts, contains these thoughts in wonderful purity. * * * " From this it follows that the teachings of Moses were purer, broader and more original than is generally believed ; and that the fundamental teachings of the Pentateuch like ' Love thy fellow-man as thyself.' or ' Ye shall be holy, for holy am I, the Eternal, your God,' and a great many others, are of Mosaic antiquity: They are essentially contained in the Decalogue." And on page 21, of the same book. Dr. Ernest Meir says : "The first commandment of the Decalogue contains the idea of the spirituality of God to the fullest extent." Another self-contradiction of Professor Dr. Kuenen is that, while he strains every nerve to show that the prophetic monotheism was propounded first by Amos and Hosea in the eight century B. C., he ascribes to some individuals living before that epoch a conception of God, which means nothing else but the pure "prophetical monotheism." On page 317 he says, concerning the Xazaritism and the Ancr.MENTATIOX OF THK JEWISH TlIKOSOPHY. 141 prophecy of the epoch of Samuel : " The two together serve as a guarantee that the watchword, ' Jahveh, the God of Israel,' had not fallen into oblivion, but, on the contrary, were alive in the hearts of many in such a way that it com- pletely filled them, and gave a definite tendency to all they did or left undone. Not with all, it is true, but still with a few, and such a conception of Jahvism left no room at all for the service of other gods." On page 318 it reads : " Did Samuel succeed in winning him Saul over to the worship of Jahveh? Is this, per- haps, the real meaning of the certainly historical proverb 'Is Saul among the prophets?' of which two different and not altogether satisfactory explanations are given us in Samuel? Did it thus originally express the astonishment of those who had discovered that a man who had hitherto shown himself indifferent to Jahveh was now seized with prophetic enthusiasm? But, whatever may be the history of Saul's religious development, as king he governed in the spirit of the national and Jahvistic (party. Thus it is related of him that he tried to root out the soothsayers and ventriloquists, whom strict Jahvism could not tolerate." In order to keep up his theory, Professor Dr. Kuenen ignores passages like the one in Samuel (viii. 3, 4), which reads : " He, Samuel, spake unto all the house of Israel : If ye do return unto Jahveh with all your hearts, then put away the strange gods and the Astartes from among you, and turn your hearts unto Jahveh and serve him only, that he may deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines ; ' and the children of Israel put away the Baalim and the Astartes, and served Jahveh only." What docs it mean when Samuel said to Saul: "Hath Jahveh as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying his voice? Behold, to obey is better than sacri- 142 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. lice, and to attend, more than the fat of the ram. For the sin of witchcraft is rebellion, and idolatry and image- worship." * Such passages, which plainly show that the prophetic monotheism was known long before Amos and Hosea, do not carry any weight in the eyes of Professor Kuenen and his followers, and are, to suit their hypothesis, as a rule, pronounced to be of a later date and to be interpolations. The great fault of the Leyden School is that they take every passage of the Bible where Jahveh is represented as a tribal and national God in a literal sense, and do not make any allowance whatsoever for the Hebrew idiom. It does not follow that because man says " our God," or " the God of my fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob," that he must mean a national or a tribal god. Amos, Hosea and all the later prophets used the term "Jehovah, the God of Israel." and still even Dr. Kuenen admits that they were propounders of the one only spiritual God. Professor Dr. Wellhausen, in his article u Israel," in the Encylopsedia Hritanica, took a step farther than Professor Kuenen. He denies the Mosaic antiquity of the Decalogue, and asserts that, according to Exodus xxxiv., the commandments which stood upon the two tablets were neither those of Exodus xx., nor those of Deuteronomy v., but the ten laws as contained in Exodus xxxiv., from verse 12 to 27. This hypothesis is as wild as one can be, and reminds of Dr. Bertheau's attempt to classify the laws of the Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers in seven groups, each of ten laws. The " Decalogue " of the Bible is no other one than the Sinaie one in Exodus xx. and Deuteronomy v. The differ- ence between these two is only a verbal one, and does not * Samuel, xv. 23-24. ARGUMENTATION OF THE JEWISH THEOSOPHY. 143- change the sense materially. But suppose it would be so, UK Wellhausen claims it to be, then his assumed Decalogue would be a proof against Dr. Kuenen's theory, because just these passages 12-27 in Exodus xxviv. breathe a pro- phetic monotheism. Kuenen and his followers maintain that the Hebrews prior to the eighth century B. C. had worshiped Jahveh under the form of a bull and other images without the prophets censuring them for it. This assertion is in contradiction with the second of the- Ten Commandments, but Dr. Kuenen is not embarrassed at all. He argues : " Moses' attitude toward the worship of images is a very disputed point. The second of the Ten Commandments forbids it without reserve, but it is strongly suspected of having been remoulded and enlarged. Its great length alone gives rise to this presumption. If it embraces nothing more than the words ' Thou shalt have none other God before my face,' we should not think of calling it incomplete ; the rest is superfluous and, therefore, sus- pected." * The Ley den School does not dispute that the prophets were opposed to polytheism, but they claim that the worship of Jahveh under the form of a bull, or images, was not found objectionable by the prophets. This idea had already been contested by Dr. Ernest Meir, who rejects the view that the prohibition of images is a mere appendage to the first verse of the second command- ment of the Decalogue : " Since the conception of a spiritual God, who is free from all necessitation of nature and who is the absolute power of all, is the fundamental idea of the * The Religion of Israel, 227. J44 AHOUMKNTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. Jewish religion, it was plain and implicit that that spiritual Ueing can not be represented by anything that is visible or tangible." * Of late, it was also Dr. Dillman, Professor in the Berlin I'niversity, who, in his "Pentateuch Commentary," took occasion to expose the mistakes of Kuenen, Wellhausen ;md others. Their theory that the prohibition of the images in the second of the Ten Commandments is not of Mosaic antiquity, but only a later interpolation, lie refutes as follows : 'That a commandment to which there underlies the idea of the invisibility and spirituality of God was above the cognition of Moses and, consequently, of much later origin, can not be held with any good reason. ' Not to mention Exodus xxxii., where it is said of Moses that the presentation of Jehovah by an image must not be tolerated, it is indisputable that the traditions of the Patri- archs contain a religion without pictures; and that also in the central sanctuary, after Moses, and in that at Jerusalem, a representation of God by pictures was not tolerated. "The idolatry of the golden calf (Exodus xxxii.), as well as that of the Kingdom of Israel, does not prove at all that it was not prohibited, but, rather, how difficult it was, especially among the Canaanitic portion of the population, to have this prohibition respected. u The prophets Amos and Hosea, who fought against the idolatry of Dan and Bethel, have nowhere pronounced the spirituality of (rod as a new doctrine, but have everywhere referred to it as something already well known by the people. 'A scrutiny into the post-Mosaic epoch will show that the rrspruengliche Form des Decalogs, p. 21. ARGUMENTATION OF THE JEWISH THKOSOPHY. 145 worship of the invisible, spiritual God was introduced in the central sanctuary. Now, who else but Moses can be its author? <; He had been led to enact prohibition laws against idolatry, partly through the knowledge he derived from the traditions of the Patriarchs, and partly from aversion to the Egyptian mythology. "There were ancient lawgivers besides Moses who have rejected the idolatry. This was done by Mageon ; * and also the Persians,! in remote antiquity, had no idols. " It is to be remembered that it does not read ' Thou slialt have no picture of me,' but 'Thou shall 'have no picture.' While this commandment is directed against personification, the other one is opposed to polytheism ; and both personification and polytheism are the most essen- tial criteria of heathenism." Professor Smith goes so far as to assert that the image- prohibition was not of Mosaic antiquity, and he maintains : u There is no feature in Hosea's prophecy which dis- tinguishes him from earlier prophets so sharply as his attitude to the golden calves, the local symbols of Jehovah, adored in the Northern sanctuaries. Elijah and Elisha had no quarrel with the traditional worship of their nation. Even Amos never speaks in condemnation of the calves. But in Hosea's teachings they suddenly appear as the very root of Israel's sin and misery. * * * Amos never speaks of the golden calves as the sin of the Northern sanc- tuaries, and he has only one or two allusions to the worship of false gods or idolatrous symbols." \ Almost every idea expressed in these two quotations is an * Diog. Laertius, VI. t Strabo, 15, 3, 13. % The Prophets of Israel, 170; 140. 146 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. error. It is an inexcusable mistake in Professor Smith to sav "that Elijah and Elisha had no quarrel with the tradi- tional worship of their nation." What did it mean when Elijah said to Ahab, "And I will make thy house like the house of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, and like the house of Barla for the provocation thou hast provoked me to anger, and induced Israel to sin? " (I. Kings xxi. 22.) What did it mean when almost the same words were used by Elisha's disciple in addressing Jehu? (II. Kings ix. 9.) And what is the meaning of the condemnation of idolatry as expressed in the first book of the Kings (xiv. 25, 26), and in the second book of the Kings (iii. 2-3)? Not only Elijah and Elisha denounced the image worship, but their predecessor, the prophet Abiyah, quarreled with Jeroboam, saying, in the first book of the Kings : "And thou hast done more evil than all that were before thee ; and thou art gone and hast made unto thyself other gods and molten images to provoke me to anger, and me hast thou cast behind thy back." (xiv. 9.) And just as false is also Professor Smith's assertion that Amos did not speak against the golden calves as the sin of the Northern sanctuaries. Besides several allusions, there are in the prophetical book of Amos direct attacks on the idolatry, (iii. 14; iv. 4; v. 24; viii. 14.) With regard to all this, and to a great deal more that could be advanced in proof of the Mosaic antiquity of image-prohibition among the Israelites, it is ridiculous for Wellhausen to say : " The prohibition of images was, during the older period, quite unknown. Moses himself is said to have made a brazen serpent, which, down to Hezekiah's time, continued to be worshiped at Jerusalem as an image of Jehovah." * The same error is expressed also by Dr. Kuenen.f * Encyclopedia Britanica, Israel, t Religion of Israel, I., p. 287. ARGUMENTATION OF THE JEWISH THEOSOPHV. 147 The brazen serpent was no image of Jehovah, 'or of any god. It was a relic from the pre-Sinaic age, and was a momentary concession to the popular superstition. Such momentary concessions had to be made by all lawgivers, but neither Moses nor any other Hebrew prophet con- sidered it the image of Jehovah. That some people brought incense to it, is only an evidence of their folly and super- stition, and shows how hard work it was for the prophets to make people understand the lofty conception of the one only spiritual and universal (rod, who was already pro- claimed as such by Moses, "the servant of Jehovah." According to Kucnen and his followers, polytheism was the original religion of the Hebrews, and, in time, it evolved among them into the belief in one tribal god, and later, in the days of the prophets Amos and Hosea, into the propheti- cal monotheism. The very same prophet, Hosea, whom Professor Kuenen considers as one of the heralds of the prophetic monotheism f does not pronounce his monotheistic views as something new, but, on the contrary, is the loudest in exhorting people to return to Jahveh "Return, Israel, even unto Jahveh, thy God." (Hosea xiv.2.) The term, "Return unto Jahveh," is a standing protest against Kuenen's evolution theory, according to which the prophet Hosea ought not to have said "Ri'tuni unto God," but, rather, " Ad c a nee unto God." If the primitive religion of the Hebrews had been poly- theism, then neither Hosea, nor any other prophet, would have exhorted people to return to the parental conception of (rod. If polytheism had, in fact, been the primitive, legiti- mate religion of the Hebrews, Elijah, the great implacable antagonist of all idolatry, would certainly not have invoked when on Mt. Carmel "Jahveh, the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Israel," as he really did. (I. Kings xviii. 3H.) MS Al;fMKNTS FOR THK EXISTENCE OF GOD. Ami Elijah most certainly had just as pure a conception of .lahveh as the prophet Amos, whom Dr. Kuenen considers the lather of the prophetic monotheism. The expression of Amos (iv. l:i), "Jahveh is the God of Hosts," is nothing new : it was used long before him l>y Elijah (I. Kings xix. 10), who, when in the cave of the Mount of God, said: 1 have been very zealous for Jahveh, the God of Hosts." Nay. the term "Jahveh. the God of Hosts," had already been used by Hannah. " Die Prophetenmutter," as Hitzig calls her. Professor Kuenen, Smith and others refer, on behalf of their hypothesis, to passages like this in Joshua (xxiv. 2) : -On the other side of the river did your fathers dwell in old time, even Therach, the father of Abraham and the father of Xachor : and they served other gods." It is plain that Abraham, the first Hebrew, is not included among the idolatrous forefathers ; and the very same chapter in Joshua is the best evidence against the assertion that polytheism was the primitive religion of the Hebrews. Not merely in the end of the book of Joshua, but right at the beginning (iv. D), when Joshua addressed the people, Jahveh is spoken of as the (rod, the liring (rod of Israel. Laying all these particulars aside, it must be borne in mind that the Bible teaches that not pidy theism, but mono- theism, was the primitive religion of mankind. Polytheism originated in the degeneracy and apostacy of the human race, but even then, according to the Bible, monotheism had its representatives in individuals like Noah, Hanoch, Mal- kizedek and others. In conformity with the Bible, Dr. Marx Mueller says : " It is too often forgotten by those who believe that a polytheistic worship was the most natural unfolding of a religious life, that polytheism must every- where have, been preceded by a more or less conscious ARGUMENTATION OF THE JEWISH THEOSOPHY. 149 theism. In no language does the plural exist before the singular. Xo human mind could have conceived the idea of gods without having previously conceived the idea of a god." * In the " Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion/' given in 1878 before the Hibbert Institution, Professor Marx Mueller took a firm stand in repudiating the theory that fetichism was the original religion of the human race. He showed, by references to the works of different mission- aries and travelers, that the real religion of the savages and negroes is something quite distinct from that which is generally called fetichism. and that they all believe in a Supreme Being. Since that time it has become more universal to assume that monotheism, and not fetichism, was the primitive religion of the human race, and that fetichism and poly- theism are a mere degeneracy of the original monotheistic- religion. Professor Ronotif thinks : '"'It is ineontestably true that the sublime portions of the Egyptian religion are not the comparatively late result of a process Of development, or elimination, from a grosser. The sublime portions are demonstrably ancient, and the last stage of the Egyptian religion, though known to the Givek and Latin writers, was by far the grossest and most corrupt." t The great Egyptologist, Professor Rawlinson, expressed the following opinion concerning the antiquity of the mono- theism : ''First, then, it appears to be certain that the Egyptian religion, liko most other religions in the ancient * Chips from a German Workshop, I., 348. t Hibbert, Lectures on the Growth of the Egyptian Religion, pp. 119-120, 1879. l.V) ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. world, had two phases or aspects : one that in which it was presented to the general public, or vast mass of population ; the other that which is borne in the minds of the intelligent, the learned and the initiated. To the former it was a poly- theism of a multitudinous and, in many respects, of a gross, character; to the latter it was a system combining strict monotheism with a metaphysical speculative philosophy on the two great subjects of the nature of God and the destiny of man, which sought to exhaust those deep and unfathom- able mysteries. Those who, as Dr. Birch, take the lowest views of tin; Egyptian religion, admit that the iflea of a single self-existent deity was involved in the conception which it sets forth, and is to be found not infrequently in the hymns and prayers of the Ritual. It is impossible that it should have been so, unless there was a class of persons who saw behind a popular mythology, understood its symbolical and metaphysical character, and were able in this way to recon- cile their conformity to the established worship, with the great truths of natural religion, which, it is clear, they knew and which they must have cherished in their heart of hearts. "The primary doctrine of the Esoteric religion undoubtedly was the real essential unity of the Divine nature. The saered texts taught that there was a single Being, the sole producer of all things both in heaven and earth: himself not produced of any the only true, living God, self- originated 'who exists from the beginning,' and who has made all things, but has not himself beeri made. This Being seems never to have been represented by any material sym- iNiliral form. It is thought that he had" no name, or, if he had, that it must have been unlawful either to pronounce or write it. He was a pure spirit, perfect in every respect, all- wise, almighty and supremely good. "The gods of the popular mythology were understood in ARGUMENTATION* OF THE JEWISH THEOSOPHY. 151 the Esoteric religion to be either personified attributes of the Deity, or parts of the nature which he had created, con- sidered as informed and inquired by him," * The excellent collection of " The Egyptian and Assyrian Records of the Past" teems with monotheistic conceptions like: "Hail to the One in His Works, Single Among the Gods," " Chief of all the Gods," " Father of the Gods," " Lord of the Gods," "The One Maker of Existence," "The One alone without Peer." "The true King of Gods." f The historian Prescott tried to show that the American aborigines were monotheists, and that they believed in the * Great Spirit" long before they had fetiches. A great many missionaries and travelers before Prescott were of the same opinion.* " While the mind," says Dr. Asa Mahan, " also intuitively distinguishes itself, as spirit, from all material existences around it, it can never, in its primary and intuitive proce- dures, apprehend this eternal verity, this unconditioned and universal cause of ail conditional forms of being, as an inhering law or property of matter, but as, like itself, a free, self-conscious spirit, and as such, unlike the finite itself, and infinite and perfect mind. Unless mind itself is a lie, mono- theism must have been the primitive religion of the race. It is a shallow, and unreflective and unobserving philosophy that represents the primitive race of mankind a realm of rational personalities, as void of religious ideas and senti- ments, and then as ascending from fetichism through poly- theism to monotheism. There is not a known fact in the history of the race to justify such a deduction. Polytheism * History of Ancient Egypt, Vol. I., pp. 313-314, 1881. t Volumes II., pp. 129-132; IV., pp. 90-100; VI., p. 100, etc. i J. G. Mueller's Amerikanische Urreligionen. 1T.2 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. and fetichisin, oiMhe otlu-r hand, are degenerate forms of original monotheism, the pure religion corrupted and spoiled by philosophy,' or by 'science falsely so called.' The cannibals of Xe\v Zealand and of the islands of the South Pacific are, many of them, to say the least, fetiehists, and thev are in the lowest state in which humanity has ever been found. The question is: Are they degenerates from a higher state of civilization, or are they at this point in the scale of ascent from a still lower stage? Many points of physical resemblance, as well as traditions and customs among them, absolutely evince the fact that they are degen- erate descendants of a comparatively civilized people who formerly emigrated thither from Ceylon and Southern-India. In India, for example, they have an annual festival in com- memoration of the escape of Noah and his family in the Ark. The same custom obtains among these cannibals. They have not only a specific tradition of the Flood, but build vessels in imagined conformity to the ark in which Noah and his family escaped. The animals and reptiles which the people of India regard as sacred, these degenerate savages, in conformity with Egyptian custom, worship, not as supreme divinities, but as containing the spirits of finite, but higher, genii." * The fact that the Bible starts, and is imbued, with the view that monotheism was precedent to polytheism, makes the evolution theory of Kuenen, as applied to the develop- ment of the biblical conception of God, untenable. The Leyden School left out of view that there are also such agencies as " genius " and " intuition ; " and where they are at work, the ideas come forth at once like a shining sun in all its splendor. This was the case with the prophetic *A Critical History of Philosophy, Vol. I., pp. 129-130. ARGUMENTATION OF THK JEWISH THEOSOPHY. 15o monotheism. The prophets, the representatives of the religious genius of the Hebrews, had pronounced the monotheistic idea hundreds of years before the large mass of people raised itself to that glorious height, from its polytheistic lowland. But the Leyden School does not always' consider that. It frequently misrepresents the prophets as having shared the popular belief of the large mass of their contemporaries, while, in fact, they were the antagonists of the popular belief and were endeavoring to raise the people to their higher standard. Every age has its fashions and its follies, and, again, every fashion and folly has its age. The theories of the Leyden School are no exception to that. Dr. Wellhausen, inasmuch as he denied that the primitive- phase of the Jahveh conception had any moral character, went a step farther than Kuenen. In his article " Israel," in the Encyclopjedia Britanica, it reads as follows : " The essentially and necessarily rational character qf the older phases of the religion of Jehovah completely disappears in the quite universal code of morals, which is given in the Decalogue as the fundamental law of Israel; but the entire series of religious personalities throughout the period of the Judges and Kings from De- borah, who praised Jael's treacherous act of murder, to- David, who caused his prisoners of war to be sawn asunder and burnt make it very difficult to believe that the religion of Israel was, from the outset, one of specifically moral character. The true spirit of the old religion may be gath- ered much more truly from Judges v. than from Exodus xx." By what right, or logic or experience can a sensible man think it proper to judge the moral spirit of a religion by some of the misdeeds and by the low moral standard of its followers? No unbiased, fair-minded man will think of l. r >4 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. making the morality of the Christian religion responsible for the crimes and misdeeds of some Christians, but Dr. Wellhausen judges the moral character of the primitive conception of Jehovah by the wrongs of some individuals. It is not necessary to refute Wellhausen by evidences from the Bible ; it will suffice to adduce only two quotations from the works of two very prominent men of his party to show his position. Professor Dr. Kuenen, who has never thought of denying Jehovah epithets, like "holy" and "righteous," says: -"Jahveh is distinguished from the rest of the gods in that he will be served, not merely by sacrifices and feasts, but also na y 5 j n the first place, by the observance of the moral commandments, which form the chief contents of the ten words."* From among the many passages in Robertson Smith's books testifying to the moral nature of the Jehovah concep- tion in its earliest stages, the following one will suffice to -fhow the great contradiction existing between the men of the Leyden School themselves : " There are many things in the social order of the Hebrews, such as polygamy, blood revenge, slavery and the treatment of enemies, which do not correspond with the highest ideal of morality, but belong to an imperfect social state, or, as the Gospel puts it, were tolerated for the hardness of the people's hearts. ' But, with all this, the religion of Jehovah put morality on a far sounder basis than any other religion did, because in it the righteousness of Jehovah as a God enforcing the known laws of morality was conceived as absolute, and as showing itself absolute, not in a future state, but upon earth. I do not, of course, mean that this high view of Jehovah's character was practically present to all his * The Religion of Israel, I., 293. ARGUMENTATION OF THE JEWISH THEOSOPHY. 155 worshipers. On the contrary, a chief complaint of the prophets is that it was not so, or, in other words, that Israel did not know Jehovah. But the higher view is never put forth by the prophets as a novelty ; they regard it as the very foundation of the religion of Jehovah from the days of Moses downward, and the people never ven- ture to deny that they are right. In truth, they could not deny it, for the history of the first creation of Israel, which was the fundamental evidence as to the true character of Jehovah's relations to his people, gave ho room for such mythological conceptions as operate in the heathen relig- ions, to make a just conception of the Godhead impossible. Heathen religions can never conceive their god as per- fectly righteous, because they have a natural, as well as a moral, side, a physical connection with their worshipers, physical instincts, physical passions, etc. " The Old Testament brings out this point with great force of sarcasm when Elijah taunts the prophets of Baal and suggests that their god may be asleep, or on a journey, or otherwise busied with some human avocation. In fact, all this was consistent with the nature of Baal. But the Hebrews knew Jehovah solely as the King and Judge of Israel. He was this and this alone ; and, therefore, there was no ground to ascribe to him less than absolute righteous- ness. If the masses lost sight of those great qualities, and assimilated his nature to that of the Canaanite deities, the prophets were justified in reminding them that Jehovah was Israel's God before they knew Baalam, and that he then showed himself a God far different from these." * It can not be doubted that the men of the Leyden School Kuenen, Oort, Knappert, Wellhausen, Smith, Stade and * Prophets of Israel, 73-74. 1 ."><; ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. others are great scholars. Nor can it bo denied that their works contain a great many fine thoughts, original views, ingenious interpretations and a brilliant presentation of characters and topics. Nevertheless, the general and the characteristic ideas of their system are hypotheses and mistakes based upon detached passages and arbitrary con- structions. It has been conclusively and irrefutably proved by Dr. Delitsch, Dr. Bredenkampf, Professor Green, Dr. Roos, Dr. Dillman, Dr Kumig and others that the theories f the Ley den School are objectionable, not merely from a dog- matical, but mainly from a scientific, standpoint. THE GOD OF THE TALMUD. There is no precedent in Jewish theology that God was named after a book. Besides the terms Jahveh, El, Elohim, Shadday, etc., there are used in the Bible appellations like "God of Israel;' "God of the Hebrews," "God of Life," "God of all tlesh," "God of the forefathers," "God, the Crea- tor of the heavens and of the earth." The term, " God of the Bible," is of recent date. It is a fa- vorite with the Christian theologians. If there is no opposi- tion to the use of the term " God of the Bible," there can be no reasonable objection to the use of the term "God of the Talmud," either. The Talmud has contributed a great deal to the store of the moral and speculative ideas about God. The finest chapter, the fifteenth, in Moses Mendelssohn's Mor- gcnstunden, in which^the deficiencies and inadequacies of the philosophical theism are exposed, does not contain anything else but the Talmudical* theosophy, according to which the greatness of God consists in his condescension. A great many of the Talmudical sayings and hyperboles became, *Megilla31. ARGUMENTATION OF THE JEWISH THEOSOPHV. 157 during the .philosophical epoch, instrumental in the enlarge- ment of the speculative conception of God among the Jews. The rabbis of the Talmud did not philosophize the way the Greeks did in applying sharp, logical methods, for the estab- lishing of a solid speculative system. The rabbis wrapped their philosophy in figurative and hyperbolic language. Their view* as to Providence and God's nature are Dften very striking and significant. Some of the rabbis were also skeptical, but less from metaphysical motives than from na- tional misfortune and individual disappointments in their The history of the Talmudical conception of God com- menced with the age of the Scribes, the Sofrim, the last edi- tors and cannonizers of the Bible. According to the Talmud, these men have altered quite a number of biblical passages, for no other reason than because they and their generation were too far advanced in moral, aesthetical and speculative culture as to tolerate in their sacred literature offensive ex- pressions. Thus, for instance, the original Hebrew text in Genesis read : "And God stood before Abraham." The Scribes reversed it into "And Abraham stood before God." During the Alexandrian epoch speculation made rapid progress among the Jews. Not only at Alexandria did the Jewish philosopher, Aristobul, deem it advisable to add an introductory letter to the Septuaginta translation, explain- ing philosophically the meaning of the biblical anthropo- morphisms and anthropopatisms, but it was also at Jerusa- lem where the high-priest, John Hyrcan, had to alter the temple liturgy on account of its gross anthropomorphisms. He abolished the Psalm (44) : " awake, God, why dost tbou sleep?" People had outgrown anthropomorphisms of that kind. The anti-anthromorphistic tendency was strong at that time, and it received the fullest expression and lf>8 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. sanction in the Chaldean Pentateuch translation of Onkelos, where the anthropomorphisms and anthropopathies are rendered hy philosophical phrases. Though in the main the Talmud proceeds in the narrative- way of the Bible, it has ways and views of its own. Thus, the biblical teaching of the Divine Omnipresence it gives as the idea of the Divine Immanence : " God is the soul of the world ; (rod permeates the world like the soul which per- meates the body ; God sees all, and is himself invisible r likewise is the soul; God sustains the world, and the soul sustains the body ; God is pure, and so is the soul ; God is concealed and revealed in the world, and so is the soul in the body." * The rabbis considered God as being the soul of the world, but they did not consider the world as the body of God. ( rod was to them the independent, free Being, ruling all. By way of rational interpretation, the Talmud makes the biblical passages say what, originally, they certainly did not mean, for instance : " Rabbi Elieser said, ' Ever since the Decalogue was proclaimed, God does not interfere with the moral order, but leaves all to the principles of self- retribution." And this idea he derived from the Deuter- onomic passage, u Behold ! I lay before you life and death, the blessing and the curse ! " If it is not claimed that this view contains the only mode of Divine retribution, then Rabbi Elieser's view is not objectionable at all. N T otably free is the view of Rabbi Simon ben Elieser, which reads : " The preponderance of mankind's merits or demerits decides its destiny" (Kiduschin) ; and so is the view of the Midrash Rabba in Leviticus, according to which .* Talmud Berach. ARGUMENTATION OF THE JEWISH THEOSOPHV. 159 the passage, u If ye walk in my laws," refers to the u Laws of nature." The writers on gnosticism, the object of which is the reflection on the creation, on the government of th world, on the Divine nature, etc., can also find in the Talmud; ample material. It is especially the attribution to God that figures there considerably. In Chagiga (xii.) it reads : " Ten attributes co-operated in God's creation : wis- dom, reason, knowledge, strength, vocality, force, justice, righteousness, love and mercy ; " and in Aboth Derabi Nathan (xxxvii.) it reads : "God was assisted in the crea- tion of the world by seven attributes : knowledge, reason strength, vocality, justice, love and mercy." This kind of gnosticism, which arose under the influence of the Alexandrian philosophy, and presents the Divine attributes as separate instrumentalities, was immediately condemned as heterogeneous, and startled the followers of the pure Jewish monotheism. They raised their voices in protest. The Talmud Yerushalmi * states that an anathema was hurled against a man who proceeded to give God too many attributes. The "' men of the great Synod " started by Ezra con- cluded that the adherents of pure monotheism shall give God not more than three attributes : God is great , mighty and renerable. These attributes, given at first to God by Moses r were introduced into the main part of the daily liturgy r the " Schemona Esra prayer." The Talmud Yoma shed* some light on this subject : " Moses said God is great, mighty and venerable ; but Jeremiah, seeing the profanity the heathens committed in the temple, became a skeptic in God's venerability. Daniel, witnessing the destruction of * Berah, IX., 1. 1HO ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. the sanctuary, doubted God's might, But the "men of the great Synod'' argued that the real greatness, might and venerability of God consists in his nature of heing slow to punish and long to suffer." Rabbi Chanina argued against the attribution mania of his contemporaries by the following illustration : " It is an insult, and not an exaltation, to a king if he is praised for having silver money when it is expected of him to have immense sums of gold. So it is with God. All attribution of human language is not adequate to his real essence." * The attribution mania was checked among the Jews when the Jew-Christians engrossed the -Philonic Logos into the mediatorship of the "Son of God." Thus an extremity became a cure. Such extremity cures occur very frequently in the history of human aberration. Those rabbis who have never been addicted to agnos- ticism consciously believed that God manifests himself under two attributes : Middath H add-in (Justice) and Mid- ilath Rachiniin (mercy), and that he balances by means of these two attributes the iniquities of man, so that the human race be forgiven its sins and be preserved in existence. The controversies and the polemical discussions of the Talmud are directed, not against atheism, but rather against the errors of the Greeks and Persians and against heretic conceptions of God. Rabbi Abua, in refutation of the Persian dualism and the Christian Son-God, said : " God is one, the first and the last. He has no father, no brother and no son." f The Talmud Yerushalmi points to it as to a merit that Judaism does not teach a mediator, and that everybody can * Talmud, Megillah and Kethuboth. t Midrash Rab. Exodus xxix. ARGUMENTATION OF THE JEWISH THEOSOPHY. 161 address himself directly to God, without the intercession of a mediator. This was said to dispute the Persian and the Christian mediatorships. The Talmud speaks very frequently of the practical atheism (Keilu Kofer Beicca.r). People who fly into anger, or who are proud, or who are deceitful, or who do wrong, are considered practical atheists. As to the argumentation for the Divine existence, the Talmud refers, like the Bible, to the wonders of the creation and to the preservation and government of the world. Besides this, it contains some anecdotes like the following : i- Rabbi Joshua would prove to a heathen the existence 01 God by telling him to look into the sun. The heathen replies, ' That would blind me.' ' Well,' said the rabbi, ' Behold, if you are unable to look into the sun, which is only a work of God, how can you be able to expect to see God himself?'" The Midrasch Echa relates of a child, which, when asked where God was, replied : " First tell me where God is not." THE GOD OF THE JEWISH METAPHYSICS. The Jewish metaphysicians, though they believed in the unity, omnipotence, holiness and providence of God, in some respects differed in their conception of him from the Bible.. The biblical conception of God, being a poetical and a prophetical one, is that of the heart and of sound common sense, while the Jewish philosophers added also a specula- tive, metaphysical element to it. When the Bible uses expressions like " the knowledge of God " or " Thou shalt know God," it does not mean any metaphysical knowledge a la Aristotle, but it has in view the 102 AI: Being, whose attributes and essence are in perfect unity. But Saadva gave no attention to the proofs of the Divine ex- istence. This was done first by his contemporary, Rabbi Bachya Ibn Pekudah. the author of the " Chobath Halwo- \voth." 1'achya was also the first Jewish metaphysician who advo- cated the use of negative attributes, they being more proper than the positive ones. No Jewish theologian before him enunciated so emphatically that the word "Echod," "God is One." must be taken neither in the numerical nor in the indi- vidual sense, but that it means a metaphysical and substan- tial unit. The Jewish orthodoxy rejects this definition as heretical, and holds that the term "God is one" means "he is incomparable." Bachya was of the opinion that a pure con- ception of God can be expected only of prophetically-in- spired or philosophically-trained people, while the large bulk of people worship a Supreme Being, of whose true na- ture they have no idea. Bachya's argumentation for the Divine existence reads essentially as follows : n. Every existence has cither produced itself or was pro- duced by some outside cause. Now, to assume that the world can have produced itself is absurd, because it would have had to exist before it existed, consequently it must be produced by an outside cause. h. Following up the train of effects and causes, we are bound to assume a cause that is the parent of all causes and effects. /. It may be remonstrated that the world is its own cause. This is inadmissible, as the world is composed of compounds ; and these compounds presuppose something that is elementary and simple, prior to all compounds. This ARGUMENTATION OF THE JEWISH THEOSOPHY. 167 simple elementary something, that is prior to all com- pounds, is God. d. The elements that compose the world are of an an- tagonistical nature, like fire and water, and still they consti- tute a harmonious and beautiful world. This they can not do of themselves. There must be a Being that enabled them to do that. Bachya thinks that people who believe that this har- monious and beautiful world has been arranged and is reg- ulating itself by mere chance, are just as mindless as if they believed that the water-works, artificially made for the irrigation of a fine park, made themselves ; or as if they believed that the mere spilling of ink upon paper will produce characters like those which were made by a care- ful and skillful calligrapher.* Next to Bachya comes Abraham Ibn Daud, of Toledo (1110-1180), the author of the philosophical book, " The Sublime Faith" (Emunah Rama). His argumentation for the Divine existence is in essence as follows : The world must have a prime cause, which exists of necessity and implies all perfection. Such a being that exists of necessity is independent of all existences, while all depend upon it. In this argumentation, the idea of a necessary existence stands for the cosmological, and the idea of perfection for the ontological, proof. Abraham Ibn Daud did not yet draw a line of separation between these tAvo arguments The prince of the Jewish metaphysicians was Moses Maimonides (1135-1204). Before his tribunal anthro- pomorphism found no mercy. As an iconoclast, he sur- passed all his predecessors. Under the segis of the Chaldean Pentateuch translation, by Unkelos, which gives *ChobathHalwowoth I., VI. 1IJ8 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. the anthropomorphisms and anthropopaties of the Penta- teuch in philosophical paraphrases, and under the asgis of some speculative views of the Talmud and Midrash, he interpreted the anthropomorphism and anthropopathies of the Bible in a speculative sense. He thought that all that is considered a perfection in the eyes of the people, they ascribe to God and keep away only what, according to their notions, would be an imperfection in the Divine nature.* Believing that " silence is the most becoming praise of God," Maimonides was opposed to all attribution. He fully agreed with the Talmudist, Rabbi Chanina, that the more attributes there are given to God, the more is left in God to be attributed. But as attribution is necessary for practical religious purposes, he adopted the four attributes : God is liviny, miyhty, wise and willing, because they are the least anthropomorphistic and the most expressive of the Divine relation to the creation. These attributes, Maimonides thought, mean something quite different when given to God than when given to man and that there was absolutely no resemblance between that which they mean when applied to God and that when applied to man. Maimonides was right in so far as in God life, wisdom, power and will are not, as in man, accidental properties, but properties of necessity. However, from a Jewish standpoint, he was an erratic in maintaining that there is, even as to the essence, absolutely no resemblance between the wisdom, will, life and might of God and that of man. If wisdom, will, life and might mean anything real, and, if these terms are no misnomers, they must mean the same thing in God that they mean in man. The differ- * Moreh Nebuchim, I., 36, 46-47. ARGUMENTATION OF THE JEWISH THEOSOPHY. 169 ence must consist merely in the conditions, in the degree of perfection and in the magnitude of scale. God is eternal, means, as Maimonides defines it, nega- tively, that he is not dependent on time. God is one, negatively defined, means that he is incomparable. God is wise, means that the world is not ruled by chance ; and God is living, means that he is not lifeless, as the elements, and that he needs no subsistence. God knows all indi- viduals and bodies by knowing the monads and generalities of their existence. The world and its course being God's embodied plan, can not increase his knowledge. God knows all that is to come when it is yet potential. The climax of the conception of God consists, as Mai- monides thinks, in the comprehension of God as the knowing one, the knowledge and the known one in perfect unity. God's omnipotence is restricted by his wisdom, and, accordingly, there are impossibilities, even for God. God can not make another god equal to him ; God can not become a man; (rod can not make a triangle to be a quadrangle, etc. As to Providence, Maim onides believes that God, being the knowing one, the knowledge and the known one in perfect unity, must know all in general and in particular. The special providence extends only to the individuals of the human race, but not also to animals and plants, which, having no reason, no moral and no spiritual properties, are preserved only by God's general providence, as manifested in the preservation of the species.* Regarding the design in the universe, Maimonides holds that man can not know exactly what, taken in general, it may be ; but he does not doubt that there is a design in the * Moreh Nebuchim, III., 17. 170 Aiuii'MK.vrs FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. universe corresponding to the Divine wisdom, and that there are designs in the structures of the creatures, which, in any human production, would be called wisdom. The Muttakalims have not favored the term of a " first cause," as from that term implying the necessary exist- ence of a being, which is at the outset and the bottom of all second iry causes, they thought follows more the idea that God's relation to the world is not perfectly free. They would substitute for it the term " first activity." But Maimonides thought they overlooked that the term "first cause " implied, not merely the efficient, but also the formal and the final cause, and that only if God is the efficient, the formal and the final cause, it can be truly said of him that he is indispensable for the world's existence. Should God he merely the k ' first activity," then the products might outlast that activity.* As to the argumentation for the Divine existence, Mai- monides produced, in the second part of the "More Ne- buchim,'' the proofs which were current among the Arabic metaphysicians of his day. n. (The Cosmological Proof.) According to the twenty- fifth of the twenty-six premises of his cosmological inquiry, the world must have a prime, motor. The existence of this prime motor Maimonides tries to prove by the assumption of the following four cases : This prime motor must be either in or outside the world. If this prime motor is in the world, then it is either divisible or indivisible. But if the motive power is outside the world, then it is either a body or a mind separated from the world. Of these four cases, the first one can not be, because a divisible force means according to the twelfth premise * M.->reh Nebuchim, I., 69, III. 13. ARGUMENTATION OK THE JEWISH THEOSOPHV. 171 a final force, but such a force can not produce an infinite motion. The second case can not be, because an indi- visible force like man's soul, is set in motion accidentally by the matter ; but such an accidental motion according to the eighth premise must come sooner or later to a standstill. The third case can not be, because a corporeal motor is a compound presupposing another motor ad infinitum. Consequently the motion of the world can be 'accounted for only with the fourth case, by mind inde- pendent of the material world. 1>. (The Ontological Argument.) The things of the world being transient and vain, have the possibility of non- existence, and, consequently, at a certain time, they have not existed at all. Now, if at the time when these things of the transient world have not existed, there had not been something higher than that transient world, they certainly would not have come into existence. But as the things of the transient world exist, they do so only through a Being which has no accidental, but a necessary, existence, and that necessarily existing being is God. A necessarily existing being is that which is so perfect and absolute that it does not depend on any conditions. Its non-existence can not be imagined, as it combines all possible and imaginable perfection. There are people who ask : " If God has created the world, who has created God?" Only secondary causes are produced, but God, as a prime cause which unites all per- fections, exists necessarily. The ontological proof, in its real and correct meaning, answers the question : " Who created God?" The arguments of Maimon's were attacked by Chisdai Crescas (1340-1410), the great Jewish metaphysician, who was the first to undermine the authority of Aristotle by an 172 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. exposition of the fallacies in the system of that great Stagyrite. Crescas' attacks upon Maimon's proofs do not amount to much, as they concern merely the formalities, but not the ideas proper. Crescas believes that the existence of the first cause, which is independent of all, but upon which all that is caused depends, is above any doubt. He finds more diffi- culty in finding out and in knowing something about God's nature and essence, and also whether there is really only one God. A new argument for the existence of God was produced by Moses Mendelssohn. He sets it forth as follows : " He who has an idea of the concatination and connection of the truths and of the unfathomable depth of knowledge, will admit that none of them can be known perfectly and clearly except by a being that is perfect. 'The perfect Being that knows not only man with all his criteria and qualities, but that knows also the summary of all potentialities as potential and the essence of all actuali- ties and realities as actual and real in short, that knows perfectly the sum total, the essence and the concatination of all truths, in all their possible and actual developments, is the Infinite Mind."* This argument starts with the imperfection of man's self- knowledge and is based upon the relation, conversion, development and nature of all potentialities, realities, actualities and truths. They force upon man's mind the idea that there must be a being that knows them all in all, their connections and relations. A very interesting case occurred in the beginning of the * Morgenstunden, XVI. ARGUMENTATION OP THE jE\vr.<-n THEOSOI-HY. 173 eighteenth century in London. The very orthodox rabbi, David Nieto, startled his congregation by the remark that " God and nature were identical/' The Amsterdam rabbi, Hirsh Ashkenasi, whose opinion on the subject was solicited, could not see anything wrong in Nieto's expression. He argued that as the term " nature " admits of more than, one definition, the congregation must not take it just in the pan- theistic sense. He referred them to precedents in the book "Cusari ' (I., 71-80), by Juda Halevi (1080), and in the book " Schelah," by Jesaia Hurwitz, where the identification of the terms " nature and God " does not mean to exclude the conception of a holy, self-existing, free, supreme Being * Rabbi Ashkenasi's decision is in accord wih the views of John Scotus Erigena This great mediieval metaphysician (815) analyzed the manifestations of nature into that form which creates, but is not created ; then into that form which is both creating and created ; further, into that form which creates and is created, and, finally, into that form which neither creates nor is created. The first and the fourth of these cases relate to God as manifested in the creation, while the second and the third cases refer to the creation. In this sense, the term " nature'' applied to God does not mean a negation of God, but God as the natural cause of the existence and activity of nature. Some good ideas are contained in Rabbi Dr. Ludwig Philipson's theodicy, " Wider den Unglauben.' 1 The common characteristic of nature, human mind and history is that they all are subjected to the reign of law. Nature is infinite and immeasurable, and yet all its parts form a unity effected by means of light and gravity. Light * Chacham Zebi Rabbin. Respon., XVIII. 174 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OK GOD. reaches the widest distances and makes the science of astronomy possible. The gravitation keeps all cosmical bodies together in their place* and courses. Besides the laws of light and gravitation, the laws of change able ness, interdependence, rise, development and decay are general laws, to which all organic, as well as inorganic, objects arc subjected The laws of nature, what are they? Philipson answers : They are the thoughts according to which all that exists arises, develops, influences and perishes. There must be something that has devised these' thoughts and that has actualized them. That something is the highest universal reason God. As to the human soul, Dr. Philipson thinks that God has put it as something, unconscious into the cell, that it develops into consciousness, operates in the human body and departs according to a Divine plan. The whole nature of the human soul is such that it can not originate from mere matter, and, consequently, presupposes a Divine Being. Concerning history, Dr. Philipson's view is that the first glance at the universal history would make man inclined to believe that the only law of history is that expressed in Ecclesiastes : " One generation comes and passes, but the eartli lasts forever." However, a closer and deeper inquiry into the records of history shows that history is ruled by laws like the law of the westward migrations, or the laws of international alliance, by means of gain, thirst for power, religion, in- dustry, commerce and science. These laws show that history is an organism and sub. jected to the laws of development. That development has not always a progressive tendency- ARGUMENTATION OF THE JEWISH THEOSOPHY. 175 As soon as nations have fulfilled their missions, they have to make room for others, who also have missions. The in- tervals of such epochs are ages of darkness and confusion. Dr. Philipson concludes his argument with the remark that mankind is created for a purpose, for a certain plan, which it has to realize. Mankind is a collective body that arose, exists and develops according to laws and ideas, which presuppose a lawgiver and a deviser God. A scholarly theodicy and a masterly refutation of the materialistic, pessimistic and atheistic systems of the day is "The Cosmic God," by Rabbi Dr. I. M. Wise, President of the Hebrew Union College, in Cincinnati. Free from all sophistry, Dr. Wise made it his object " to find truth by the instrumentality of inductive philosophy, and to ascertain, after a fair and full consideration of the philosophy and the sciences of the nineteenth century, what remains to be held up as the religious doctrine of honest and intelligent people, without conflict with the intelligence of this enlightened and progressive age, and what remains to be constructed into the religion of the future generation." Having enumerated and refuted all the specious ar- guments of the advocates of the theory .of efficient causes, Dr. Wise comes to the conclusion (page 125) that ''This truth of teleology is, first, in the human intellect spontaneously. Since man exists he has sought cause behind each effect, although he did not always suc- ceed in finding the correct one, and has always expected the same effect from the same cause. He must have always considered this law universal ; it must be in the intellect. Experience teaches the law of isolated cases ; its universality is spontaneous in the intellect. None can think of a human intellect in unobstructed activity without this synthetical 17*1 ARGUMENTS KOU THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. truth, which is one of its attributes, manifested in the lowest, us in the highest, processes of reason. Therefore intellect juul law of causality are inseparable. "This truth is, secondly, in all nature outside of the human intellect, confirmed by all human knowledge, obser- vation, experience and experiments, as far as science has penetrated into the mysteries of existence. Here is already something universal in nature outside of the human intel- lect, which is also in it the law of causality, and it is the essentiality and motor power of both. This law in man is in his intellect and inseparable from it; hence, this same law in nature, outside of man, must be in an intellect. Well, then, here we have already an intellect in nature out- side of man. "The law of causality being admitted, we all agree that nothing in this universe stands above or beyond the law. But as the forces and elements are heterogeneous, and each follows its own law or laws, still the univ rse, as far as we know, is one in order and harmony; the forces of nature must either converge to the one single purpose of sustaining permanently this order and harmony, or one superior force must control all of them, or else there must be continual conflicts in nature among elements and forces ; which we know is not the case. Consequently there is co-opera- tion, co-ordination and subordination in nature, which is its law of laws, or force of forces. Illustrate so: All parts constituting a body, be it a man, a bird, a house a factory, an earth, or a sun, must be harmonious in their co-ordina- tion and subordination, and thus co-operate continually to make the existence of that respective body possible. If a wheel or a screw in a machine is not constructed according to the law governing the whole machine, the order and harmony thereof is destroyed. If the heart of a human ARGUMENTATION OF THE JEWISH THEOSOPHY. 177 being be too large, or his stomach too small, relatively, according to the law governing his whole organism, then the order and harmony thereof are destroyed. It is uni- versally so. although each part of every body is governed by its own laws, the whole, as a unit, must be governed by a superior force, or the various forces must converge in this one particular point of sustaining intact that particular unit or body. "Here, then, is teleology, here are final causes. In every unit you may single out in this universe, infusorium or man, fungus or palm-tree, crystal or sun, there is final cause before you, there is teleology, there is end, aim, pur- pose and design. And if you then rise from the individual objects to the universe as a unit, you have before you always the same teleology, the same end, aim, purpose and design of preserving the whole intact as a harmonious unit. There is the same final cause in the grand totality of nature as in every minute object thereof." Regarding the historical proof, Dr. Wise asks : " Is there teleology and final cause in history? Is end, aim, object, design, purpose and proper execution discernible in the history of man, or is the human family drifting upon the boundless ocean of existence without any ultimate purpose? If there is teleology in history, then the question arises by what force or forces, power or powers? It is evident, to my mind, that there is teleolgy in history, and by a super- human power." The general principles which, according to Dr. Wise, rule the history of the human race, are : " Every continuous cause and effect in nature is teleology resulting continually in teleological centers, which every individual being is. * * * What is true in nature must also be true in history. The same chain of cause and effect must also be teleological, ITS ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. and ouch state of society, every day, every hour and at every place, must be a teleological center." " Each state of society becomes the cause of the succeed- ing one, and so on to the supposed end of history ; hence the whole chain is logical and teleological." (134.) " There is a perpetual progression in history from lower to higher conditions, exactly as in the earth's creation. There are breaks, violent catastrophes and eruptions in the earth's crust, and there are also in history apparently illogically, bloody and disturbing eruptions, cessations and retrogres- sions, momentarily and locally ; but in the totality of his- tory, the progression from lower to higher conditions is per- petual, incessant and logical. " (137.) " The first general principle of the Logos of history must be, it preserves, utilizes and promulgates all that is good, true and useful, neutralizes all that is wicked, false and use- less or nugatory ; exactly as the extra-organic will and intel- lect works in the organic kingdoms. " (138.) " The Logos of history manifests its extra-human exist- ence also in the inevitable punishment of national sins. As nature, everywhere and inexorably, punishes every trans- gression against the physical laws, so the Logos of history dispenses just retribution for national misdeeds. " (141.) " The next phenomena in which the Logos of history man- ifests itself is most extraordinary : its name is Genius. The existence of genius and its appearance at the right place and time is as mysterious as the center of the universe. Genius is the superior spontaneity of the mind in productive and executive powers ; it conceives not by act of violation or tiresome reflection, but feeling, generally and unsolicited ; it conceives finished and complete thoughts, schemes, designs or images of universal truth, irresistible impulses to execute or realize, utter and promulgate." (144-145.) ARGUMENTATION OF THE JEWISH THEOSOPHY. 179 Dr. Wise's " Cosmic God " is a product of much reading and careful reflection, and its illustrations from history, natural sciences and life are well-chosen, striking and in- structive. An attempt to identify the Jewish Monotheism and the modern Monism was made by Rabbi Dr. Ruelf, in his pamphlet " Der Einheitsgedanke," 1880. He was apparently swayed by the error that Monism is more rational and more in accord with science than Monotheism. With regard to " the unity of nature, " meaning that na- ture is a Whole ruled by the same laws everywhere, and that its elements and forces are convertible into one an- other, there is nothing more obvious, more rational and more in accord with science than the Monotheism teaching that God is the cause of that " unity of nature." Dr. Ruelf in his zeal to show that God, the human soul and force, were everything, depicts the world, the human body and matter so very transient, non-substantial and accidental that, without being aware of it, he drifted into Acosmism. Judaism is neither Acosmism nor Monism ; and Spinozism is Monism, but no Acosmism. It was Moses Mendelssohn who defended Spinoza against the charge of Acosmism in stating the difference that exists between Leibnitz and Spinoza. Leib- nitz assumed that the world had a two-fold, a potential and a visible existence. The world existed potentially when it was a mere idea in God's mind ; but its visible existence commenced when it was the will of God that it should exist outside of his mind. Spinoza's theory is that the world has always been visible and has always been in God. A world that has always existed in a visible form in God can be no Acosmism. It is indeed noteworthy that while in the last century even Moses Mendelssohn, though he thought that the " re- ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. fined Spinozism" is compatible with all practices of religion and ethics, was very anxious to defend his great friend, Kphmim G. Leasing, against the charges of Spinozism,it be- comes in this century a favorite idea with a great many prominent Jewish theologians to identify the Jewish Mono- theism with Spinozism. The first one to pronounce the Jewish Monotheism fully in accord with Spinozism was Dr. Mair Letteris. (Biccure Haittim, 184(5.) In his steps followed Rabbi Abraham Krochmal (Eben Horosch), Dr. Salomon Rubin (Teshuba Nizachath), Rabbi Senior Sachs (Hatechiyah I., II.), Pro- fessor Dr. M. Joal (Zur Genesis der Lshre Spinoza's, 1871) and others. These scholars were induced to identify Spinozism and Monotheism by the great resemblance of certain expres- sions, metaphors and ideas in the works of Spinoza with those in the works of his Jewish predecessors, Salomon Ibn Gebirol (1020-1070), Abraham Ibn Esra( 1088-1167), Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), Levy Gerson (1288-1340), Chisdai Oescas (1340-1410), Abraham Herera (1640) and others. Ideas, metaphors and expressions, so they argue, which are not objectionable when in the works of Gebirol and others, must not be considered objectionable when ad- vanced and used by Spinoza. It is true, Spinoza has, in common with Ibn Gebirol and Ibn Esra the Monism ; with Moses Maimonides, the idea that there is absolutely no resemblance between what an attri- bute means when applied to God and when applied to man ;* with Levi Gerson the idea of the eternity of the world ; with Abraham Herera (whose book, "Porta Cceli," was Maimonides' Moreh Nebuchim, I., 52; Spinoza's Ethics I., prop. ARGUMENTATION OF THE JEWISH THEOSOPHY. 1S1 translated from Spanish into Hebrew by Spinoza's teacher, Rabbi Isaac Aboab), the idea that God was necessitated to act by his own nature, but from all this it does not follow that any of all these predecessors of Spinoza was a Spino- zist. None of them drew inferences from these ideas to such an extent, nor did any one of them apply these ideas as he did without any regard to the reconciliation with Ju- daism or the practices of any religion. Spinoza deviated from all Jewish philosophers by the ne- gation of final causes ; by the assertion that God was neces- sitated by his nature to produce the world as it is ; by the negation of man's free will and by the negation of the hu- man soul as self-existent. Spinoza's psychology is a mere description of man's passions, emotions and intellect. As great as the difference is between the theory of the effi- cient causes and that of the final causes ; between the bibli- cal idea, " that God saw all he made and it was very good," and the Brahmanic idea, " as the cob-web comes from the spider, the tree from the seed, the fire from coal, the stream from the well, so does the world emanate from Brahma without that he knows it ;" between that idea that man has a free will, and can choose and act accordingly, and the idea that man has in his actions no more choice than a " stone that is hurled ;" and between the idea that man's soul is self-existing, and the idea that man's soul is noth- ing but the intellectual and emotional function of the hu- man nature, just so great is the difference between Judaism and Spinozism. VII, THE ARGUMENTATION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. " Verius enim cogitatur deus, quam dicitur et verius est quam cogitatur." * The conception of the Old Testament, that God is the Creator, the Ruler, the Preserver of all, and the common Father of the whole human race, was made the cornerstone of Christianity. The primitive Christian Church was not in need of any philosophical argumentation for the Divine existence. The Jews, to whom the advocates of Christianity addressed themselves, believed in God, and the heathens could be converted to the belief in God only the way in which the idolatrous Hebrews were by the prophets, through appeals to the inborn religious sentiment, by plain references to the wonders and impressions of the world, and by an exposition of the follies of idolatry. The philosophical argumentation for the Divine existence was not favored much in the primitive church. Even such fathers of the church as Clement and his disciple, Origenes, both men of a high philosophical culture and the authors of gnosticism, were opposed to it, because they thought, that God must not be considered and treated as a scientific sub- ject. They held that the idea of God is inborn in man, and * Augustus de Trinit, VII , 7. THE ARGUMENTATION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 183 that man can not liberate himself from it, however much he would like to do so. The fathers of the church who first advanced proofs of the Divine existence were Athenagoras and Theophilos, and they did so merely to exonerate Christianity from the charge of atheism brought against it for not prescribing animal offerings. In the apology, " Legatio pro Christianis," ad- dressed to the Roman Emperor, Marc Aurel, and his son, Commodus, Athenagoras, Professor at Alexandria, refuted that accusation. The other one, Theophilos, Bishop of Antiochia, claimed that the beauty and the wise arrangement of the world would suffice to prove the Divine existence, were it not that man, being corrupt and sinful, needs, on that account, besides a natural, also a supernatural revelation. The first father of the Christian Church strongly in favor of philosophical arguments was Athanasius, in the fourth century Archbishop of Alexandria, called also, on account of his strong antagonism to Arianism, "the father of ortho- doxy." The creation he considered an evidence of the existence of God; and all that was said to the contrary. by the Epicureans, ascribing all to mere chance and atoms, he considered absurd and in contradiction to the facts of experience. The Avorld was, in his opinion, made imperfect for no other reason but that it should not be identified with God himself.* Much thought was given to the conception of God by Augustinus (born 354 in Africa), one of the greatest, most learned, most philosophical and most productive men of the Christian Church. Though his general views on God were those of Plato, still he was an independent thinker and * Dr. Alxog's Grundriss de,r Patrologie, 1869. 184 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. had a great many ideas of his own. He thought that man can know only what God is not, and what he can not know of him.* By this negative way of inquiry into the idea of God, there is admitted that the human soul can know r at least, something of him and of his nature, and, consequently,, his invocation is warranted. In definition of what we know of God, he states that God is the supreme Willr Reason, Might, Being, and all that is and contains any truth. These attributes are in God inseparable, and are- one with his essence. God's greatness is his wisdom, and his goodness is also his wisdom, so that all these attributes are mere modifications and manifestations of his Divine Being, f God is the principle which made all, and keeps all the way it is and works. The term " essence " he considers more applicable to God than the term " substance." \ Augustinus does not like the idea of calling God the soul of the universe, nor did he approve of the idea that the essen- tial parts of the human soul constitute the Supreme Being. Regarding the argumentation for the Divine existence,. Augustinus deserves special attention, as he has not merely reproduced the proofs of the ancient metaphysicians, but he has advanced an entirely new proof. He is the father of the ontological argument, which was later developed by r and accredited to, Anselm of Canterbury. This proof Augustinus styled "the argument of the supreme truth." The supreme truth is above all that is corporeal. Reason compels us to think that there is something that is the highest, the best and the last ; now, that can only be either that supreme truth, or there must be something higher yet than, that supreme truth. In either case that highest is God. * De Ord., II., 47. t Solilo., I., 3; De Trinitate, VI. t De Trini- tate, III. De Divi., IV. ; 1% 13. THE ARGUMENTATION OK THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 185- Besides this, he argues the existence of God from the de- ficiency of the world, which presupposes a more perfect being, and also from the craving of man after a chief good. Were there not such a chief good God man would not be constituted with a longing for it.* The rest of the fathers of the church did only reproduce- \vhat Augustinus was teaching. The last one of these, John of Damascus (died 755), whose authority even some Protestants respect, was of the opinion that the miracles of the Bible were the best evidences of the existence of God. It is only a pity that he forgot to prove conclusively that the miracles of the Bible really took place, and that they occurred in a really miraculous way. Albertus Magnus, the greatest Aristotelian of the medi- eval church and one of the greatest Christian theologians, reproduced the arguments of Augustinus and added to them a new one, derived from the distinction he made between " being " and " essence." The " real being " implies both the being and the essence. Being exists of necessity. Its existence is inconceivable. Such a being must be attributed to God. Only a non-being would imply the non-existence of God. It is impossible to think of a non-being as prior to the being, for the very idea, of non-existence presupposes an existence. Man can not comprehendj God, for man is finite, and a finite man, as a matter of course, can not comprehend the infinite Supreme Being, f This proof of Albertus Magnus, that non-being was incon- ceivable, was rejected by his disciple, Thomas Aquino, and for no other reason but because, in the second verse of * Dr. H. Ritter's Geschichte der Christlichen Philosophic, II, t Dr. Ritter, Geschichte der Christlichen Philosophic, IV. 18( ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. tin- fifty-second Psalm, " The fool saiih in his heart there is no God," the non-existence of God is said to be conceivable. More acumen and philosophy than in this, Aquino showed in the following five arguments he treats of: His first argument was that of Aristotle that there must be a first motor. His second argument was that there must be a first cause. His third argument is derived from the nature of a neces- sary being. All things can not be accidental, for if all tilings were accidental, then there must have been a time when they did not exist ; and if there was a time when nothing existed, that time would have lasted until now ; for nothing can come into existence except through something already in existence. But it being untrue that nothing exists at present, consequently not all things can be acci- dental : there must be something that is necessary. That something necessary, being the cause of all existence, is God. His fourth argument is that of via eminentise, meaning that there are all degrees of goodness, truthfulness and nobleness. Now, that degree of these perfections which is the highest, is the source and the compass of them all, and that is God. His fifth argument was that the irrational creatures, though without reason, show a conduct that is guided, not by chance, but according to a principle implanted in their nature ; and the being that made it so, is God. In the course of his reflections on God, the idea of the " unknowable " occurred to his mind, and he opposed this theory for two reasons : Man is destined to be happy, but no real happiness is possible without the knowledge of God. THE ARGUMENTATION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 187 Man is a religious being ; an irresistible craving after God is implanted in him, and this would not be the case were it not possible to know God. Aquino maintained that God was only incomprehensible, but not unknowable.* Among the latter Christian theologians, it was especially the grandiloquent French preacher, Bossuet (born 1629), and his contemporary, the French bishop, Fenelon, who gave much attention to the proofs of the Divine existence. Bossuet has not produced anything new in this line. He has merely amalgamated the metaphysical ideas of Plato, Augustinus and Aquino with the philosophy of Descartes and Malebranche. His views are solid and manifest mod- eration and much sound, common sense. Bossuet was not merely one of the greatest pulpit orators that ever lived, but he Avas also one of the most solid minds and a great scholar. Some of his best remarks in one of his master works, Traite de la Oonnaisance de Dieu et de Soi-meme, reads as follows : " There is nothing that is more fit to elevate the soul to God than the knowledge of herself and of her intel- lectual operations. We have already remarked that the understanding has eternal verities for its object. The standards by which we measure all things are" eternal and invariable. * * * We know clearly that everything in the universe is made according to proportion, from the greatest to the least, from the strongest to the weakest, and we well know that these proportions are related to the principles of eternal truth. All that is demonstrated in mathematics and in any other science whatever, is eternal and immutable, since the effect of the demonstration is to show that the thing can not be otherwise than it is demon- * Ch. Jourdain, La Philosophie de Saint Tom. cTAquine, 1858. 1SS ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. strated to be. So, in order to understand the nature and the properties of things, which I know, for example, a triangle, a square, u circle, or the relation of these figures, and all other figures, to each other, it is not necessary that I should find such in nature, and I may be sure that I have never traced, never seen any that are perfect. Neither is it necessary that I should think that there is motion in the world, in order to understand the nature of motion itself, or that the lines which every motion describes, and the hidden proportions according to which it is developed. When the idea of these things is once awakened in my mind, I know that, whether they have an actual existence or not, they must be ; that it is impossible for them to be of another na- ture, or to be made in a different way. " To come to something that concerns us more nearly, I mean by these principles of eternal truth, that they do not depend on human existence ; that so far as he is capable of reasoning, it is the essential duty of man to live according: to reason and to search for his Maker, through fear of lack- ing the recognition of his Maker, if in fault of searching for him he should be ignorant of him. All these truths, and all those which I deduce from them by reasoning, exist inde- pendent of all time. " In whatever time I place human understanding, I will know them, but in knowing them I will find them truths ; I will not make them such, for our cognitions do not make their objects, but suppose them. So these truths subsisted before all time, before the existence of a human under- standing, and were everything that is made according to the laws of proportion that is to say, everything that I see in nature destroyed except myself, these laws would be preserved in my thought, and I would clearly see that they THE ARGUMENTATION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 189 would always be good and always true, were I also de- stroyed with the rest. " I seek how, where, and in what they subsist, eternal and immutable. As they are, I am obliged to avow the exist- ence of a being in whom truth is eternally subsisting, in whom it is always understood, and this being must be truth itself, and must be all truth ; and it is from Him that truth is in everything that exists. " It is He, in a certain measure, who is incomprehensible to me. It is in Him, I say, that I see the eternal truths ; and) to see them is to turn to Him, who is immutably all truth and to receive his light. " This eternal object is God, eternally subsisting, eternally true, eternal truth itself. * * * It is in this eternal Being that these eternal truths subsist. It is also by this that I see them. * * * These eternal verities, which every under- standing always perceives the same and by which every understanding is governed, are something of God, or rather, are God himself. Chapter xxxvii. : " Since there is nothing eternal, im- mutable and independent but God alone, we must conclude that these truths do not subsist in themselves, but in God alone and inhis eternal ideas, which are nothing else than himself. " There are those who, in order to verify these eternal truths which we have proposed, and others of the same nature, have figured to themselves eternal essences aside from deity a pure delusion, which comes from not under- standing that in God, as in a source of being, and in his understanding, where resides the art of making and ordering all things, are found primitive ideas, or, as St. Augustine says, the eternally subsisting reason of things. Thus in the thought of the architect is the primitive idea of a house 1 ( .)<) ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. which In- perceives in himself; this intellectual house would not be destroyed by any ruin of houses built according to this interior model; and if the architect were eternal, the idea and the reason of the house would also be eternal. " But, without recurring to the mortal architect, there is an immortal architect, or rather, a primitive, eternally sub- sisting art in the immutable thought of God, where alt order, all measure, all rule, all proportion, all reason, in a word, all truth, are found in their origin. * * * For if, without having ever seen anything eternal, we have so clear an idea of eternity, that is to say, of being always the same ; if, without having perceived a perfect triangle, we under- stand it distinctly, and demonstrate so many incontest- able truths concerning it, it is a mark that these ideas do not come from our senses." (Chapter iv.) The basis, the scope and the spirit of Bossuet's argument- ation is in his ideas of the nature of truth. Truth is that which exists, which is eternal, and which has an eternal mode of existence. This can be found only in God. In God all principles of truth resided before the human under- standing was created. Truth may be moulded in divers shapes to suit our duties and necessities, but its eternal principle is in God. Truth, being eternal, can only be found or discovered, but not created. Though the proofs of Bossuet are nothing new, still they are presented in such a clear, graphic manner and with such a force of logic, that one believes them to be original. A younger contemporary of Bossuet was the Archbishop Fenelon, the "French Plato." Besides that he presented his argumentation in a graceful, fascinating style, he also produced a new proof of his own, the " nouvelle preuve de 1'existence de dieu, tiree de la nature des idees." Fenelon's book, "Traite de FExistence deDieu," is divided THE ARGUMENTATION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 191 into two parts, the first of which contains the arguments derived from the general impression of the universe upon man's mind, and from the disclosure of the wonders of the creation in consequence of the discovery of the microscope, telescope and other instruments in the service of natural sciences. The second part treats of four arguments. Regarding the proof derived from the imperfection of the human nature, he argues : If it is clear that man is not infinite and perfect, then it is also clear that he does not exist through himself. If man does not exist through him- self, he must exist through something else, and that very same " something else," which brought man from non-exist- ence into existence, must be existing through itself, and, being infinite and perfect, is God. Regarding the proof derived from man's idea of the infinite, Fenelon argues : Where does man derive the idea of the infinite? All that surrounds him is finite and can certainly not impress him with the idea of real infinity. It must be inborn in man, and is a manifestation of the infinite Being itself. ' ; I find two reasons in myself one is myself and one is above me. That which is in me is very imperfect, faulty, * * * and possesses nothing except what it borrows. The other is common to all men, superior ; it is perfect, * * * incapable of ever being exhausted. What is this perfect reason? It is God whom I am seeking." Concerning the proof derived from the idea of a necessary Being, Fenelon says : It is an indisputable fact that man has, more or less " common sense " or " necessary ideas" by means of which man is enabled to detect a great many ab- surdities and contradictions, and to pass judgment on a great many things without any preparatory studies. This faculty can be found on a small scale even in children of three 11)2 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. or four years old. This kind of " common sense " does not originate in the flesh fibres nor in the blood substance, Init presupposes a necessary being. Whatever effort of mind man may make he can never succeed in doubting that two and two are four ; that the whole is greater than any of its parts ; that the center of a perfect circle is equidistant from all points of the circumference. These and similar presentations of the " common sense " or of the " necessary ideas" are the rule of man's judgments. Far from being able to correct or change this rule he is corrected by it and considers it his guide in all his decisions. Fenelon's new argument advanced in the fourth chapter of the second book of his " Traite " is in essence as follows : " My ideas are myself; for they are my reason. My ideas and the basis of myself or of my mind, appear but the same thing. On the other hand, my mind is changing, uncertain ; ignorant, subject to error, precipitate in its judgments, ac- oustomed to believe what it does not clearly understand, and to judge without having sufficiently consulted its ideas, which are by themselves certain and immutable. My ideas, therefore, are not myself, and I am not my ideas. What shall I believe that they can be? Are my ideas God? They are superior to my mind, since they verify and correct it ; they have the character of the Divinity, for they are univer- sal and immutable like God ; they really subsist, according to a principle that we have already established. Nothing exists so really as that which is universal and immutable. If that which is changing, transitory and derived, truly exists, how much more so that which can not change and which is necessary. It is necessary to find in nature something ex- isting and real, something that is within me and is not myself; something that is superior to me ; something that is ever in me when I am not thinking of it ; something with THE ARGUMENTATION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 193 which I believe myself alone as though I were only with myself. I know not what this something so admirable, so familiar, so unknown can be else, except God." The writings of Bossuet and Fenelon had a great influ- ence upon religious people. Their intelligent, persuasive, inquiring, suggestive, amiable and gentle way of writing had a great effect upon those who liked to be confirmed in their belief in God, and also upon those who themselves were unable to express what they believed in a mode that would do justice to the subject ; but they had no effect upon the following generation of French materialists. Materialism became the spirit of the age. The " System de la Xatur " and the " Encyclopedic Francaise " were the products of that materialistic tendency. In the " System de la Natur " the existence of a God is entirely denied, while in the " Encyclopedic " God is presented as " the animation," " the universal life," " the laws of material essence " and " nature ; " but in fact the spirit, the views and the tendency of both works were about the same. Both subserved the er Sdjopfung inn berjeicfynet fyat."* The belief that the ancient Arabs were worshipers of planets, plants and stones, and that it was Mohammed who first transplanted the monotheistic idea among them, is at present not quite general. Dr. Ludolf Krehl thinks : " If it is admitted that the Arabs had any connection with the descent of Abraham, then this implies the avowal that mono- theism, not the relative monotheism in contradistinction to polytheism, but the absolute monotheism, or, as Schelling styles it, the primitive religion, had a homestead at least among a small portion of the Arabic population. How long that monotheistic belief remained pure, and when it degen- erated into polytheism and fetichism, can not be proved, from a lack of all historical documents. It remains also doubtful whether the Semitic tribes, which emigrated from the Northeast to Arabia, have embraced the religious forms of the Arabs, or whether first under the influence of these foreigners the Arabic belief entered into a new phase of development. If this is the case, then the primitive mono- * Hammer-Purgstall, Persische Duftkoerner. THE ARGUMENTATION OF THE MOHAMMFDANS. 197 theism of the Arabs must have degenerated under the for- eign influence into a kind of abstruse deism. God was con- sidered extramundane and separated entirely from the cosmos. The idea of an immanent God, which is indispen- sable with any sound religious want, was lost. When this re- ligious want awakened, a substitute for the immanence of God was sought for. People thought they had found what they were craving for in nature and her phenomena. Thus polytheism had arisen. " * There is a tradition that Mohammed once said, '" My followers will be split into seventy-three sects," and, indeed, strife and the splitting into sects commenced immediately after his death. These many sects were all orthodox, and remained so during the whole reign of the Omeyades, though the metaphysical works of Aristotle, Plato and others were studied, from Syrian translations, diligently and to a large extent. It was first the political strife, attending the expul- sion of the Omeyades by the Abaesides that became favor- able to rationalism and to liberal doctrines. Among the Arabs the speculative philosophy was not introduced, as among the Christians, to be a handmaid of theology, but it made its appearance in the train of medical studies. It was self-understood that a prominent physician must be also a metaphysician. The Arabs, having had much commercial intercourse with the Hindoos, it was very natural that they became ac- quainted also with their philosophical systems. The Arabic metaphysicians arc divided into two groups : the leaders of the Oriental class were Alkindi, Alfarabi, Avicenna and Algazali, while Ibn Badya (Avemplace), Ibn Tofail (Abu- Ueber die Religion der Yori*lauiitis In r Aialnr, von Dr. K re hl. IDS ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. h.-kr), Ibn Roshd (Averroes), and others, constituted the Moorish School of Spain. The cornerstone of the Islamitic faith is that ''there is one only living and true God, and Mohammed is his ' prophet." The Koran, the tradition and the law are alike theistic. The history of the argumentation for the existence of God can derive from the Arabic sources only a confirmation of its idea, but no new proofs. Their speculative theology concerns itself more with the unity and attributes of God. The nature of the Divine will, its relation to the laws of nature, to man's volition and to the historical events, en- gaged the attention of the Arabic philosophers more than the evidences for the Divine existence. The belief that "Allah is God," that he is the creator of the world and the source of all goodness, was to the Moham- medans a truth so self-evident that its negation seemed almost impossible to them. The Mutazilite, Abul Hudsail, was of the opinion that only those who do not know any- thing about a " supernatural, immediate revelation" must learn to know God by means of philosophical argumenta- tion, but not so the Moslems. To them it was made con- clusively evident by Mohammed's mission.* The greatest among the Arabic scholars was Alkindi (died 870). He is called the " philosopher of the Arabs." In Professor Dr. Fluegel's biography of Alkindi there are mentioned the titles of two hundred and sixty-five treatises and books which he partly composed and partly translated. They cover the field of philosophy, mathematics, medicine, etc., but in the whole biography there is no trace that he has * ^charasht ni, Religions-Parteien, Haarbrucker's translation, II., p. 51. THE ARGUMENTATION OF THE MOHAMMEDANS. 199