THE 
 
 RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY 
 
 A CRITIQUE OF THE BASES OF CONDUCT 
 AND OF FAITH 
 
 BY 
 
 JOSIAH ROYCE, PH. D. 
 
 INSTRUCTOR IN PHILOSOPHY IN HARVARD COLLEGE 
 
 Der Anbliek giebt den Engeln Starke, 
 Da Keiner Dich ergriinden mag. 
 
 GOETHE'S Faust, Prolog. 
 
 BOSTON 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street 
 
 1885 
 
Copyright, 1885, 
 BY JOSIAH ROYCE. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge: 
 Printed by H. 0. Houghton and Company. 
 
To 
 
 $>owire& JFrtentr, 
 GEORGE BUCHANAN COALE, 
 
 OF BALTIMORE, 
 I DEDICATE THIS BOOK, 
 
 IN EARNEST AND GRATEFUL RECOGNITION 
 
 OF HIS KINDNESS, OF HIS COUNSEL, 
 
 AND OF HIS WISDOM. 
 
PEEFAOE. 
 
 THIS book sketches the basis of a system of phi- 
 losophy, while applying the principles of this system 
 to religious problems. The form and order of the 
 treatment depend on the nature of these latter prob- 
 lems themselves, and are not such as a system 
 of philosophy, expounded solely for its own sake, 
 would be free to take. The religious problems have 
 been chosen for the present study because they first 
 drove the author to philosophy, and because they, of 
 all human interests, deserve our best efforts and our 
 utmost loyalty. 
 
 A large portion of this discussion seeks to appeal 
 both to the special student of philosophy and to 
 the general reader. A considerable part, again, can 
 with the very best of fortune hope to interest the 
 special student of philosophy, but cannot hope for 
 more. The Preface must therefore tell what sort of 
 appeal is made to each of the two classes of readers. 
 
 To begin with the general reader, who may have 
 the curiosity to glance at this philosophic essay, the 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 author must forthwith confess that while on the one 
 hand he desires to trouble nobody with fruitless and 
 blank negations, and while his aim is therefore on 
 the whole a positive aim, yet on the other hand, as 
 he has no present connection with any visible relig- 
 ious body, and no sort of desire for any such connec- 
 tion, he cannot be expected to write an apology for 
 a popular creed. This confession is made frankly, 
 but not for the sake of provoking a quarrel, and 
 with all due reverence for the faith of other men. 
 If the fox who had lost his tail was foolish to be 
 proud of his loss, he would have been yet more fool- 
 ish to hide it by wearing a false tail, stolen mayhap 
 from a dead fox. The full application of the moral 
 of the fable to the present case is moreover willingly 
 accepted. Not as the fox invited his friends to 
 iniitate his loss, would the present writer aim to 
 make other men lose their faiths. Rather is it his 
 aim not to arouse fruitless quarrels, but to come to 
 some peaceful understanding with his fellows touch- 
 ing the ultimate meaning and value and foundation 
 of this noteworthy custom, so widely prevalent 
 among us, the custom of having a religion. If the 
 author ends by stating for his own part a religious 
 doctrine, it will yet be seen upon reading the same 
 that a man could hold that and much more too ; so 
 that what is here said is rather proposed as a basis 
 
PREFACE. vii 
 
 for a conceivable if very far off reconciliation, than 
 as an argument to dissuade those who may think 
 that they can go further than the author, from 
 proving in a philosophical fashion whatever they 
 can prove. Such people may manage to interpret 
 many of the negations that occur in these pages as 
 directed against an inadequate form, or imperfect 
 understanding, of their more elaborate creed. If 
 they can do so, no one will be more heartily de- 
 lighted than the author, although he may not agree 
 with them. 
 
 As to the relation of this book to what is called 
 modern doubt, it is a relation neither of blind obe- 
 dience nor of unsympathetic rejection. The doc- 
 trine of philosophic idealism here propounded is not 
 what in these days is popularly called Agnosticism. 
 Yet doubting everything is once for all a necessary 
 element in the organism of philosophic reflection. 
 What is here dwelt upon over and over again is, 
 however, the consideration that the doubts of our 
 time are not to be apologetically "refuted," in the 
 old fashioned sense, but that taken just as they are, 
 fully and cordially received, they are upon analysis 
 found to contain and imply a positive and important 
 religious creed, bearing both upon conduct and upon 
 reality. Not to have once thoroughly accepted as 
 necessary the great philosophic doubts and problems 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 of our day, is simply not to have philosophized as a 
 man of this age. But to have accepted these doubts 
 without in time coming to find the positive truth 
 that is concealed in them, is to treat them as the in- 
 nocent favorite of fortune in a fairy tale always at 
 first treats his magic gift. It is something common 
 and dingy, and he lays it carelessly away in his 
 empty house, feeling poorer than ever. But see : 
 handle it rightly, and the fairy gift fills your trans- 
 figured home with a wealth of gems and gold, and 
 spreads for you a wondrous banquet. To the author 
 has come the fancy that modern doubt may be some 
 such fairy gift as this. And he would like to sug- 
 gest to some reader what may possibly prove the 
 right fashion of using the talisman. 
 
 The general reader, if very " benevolent," may be 
 able to endure the " First Book " of the present 
 volume in its entirety ; but in the " Second Book " 
 he will find much that is meant only for the student 
 whose interests are decidedly technical. Some warn- 
 ings are given in the text, to help the general reader 
 in skipping. But perhaps it may be well for his 
 purpose to confine himself at once in this Book II., 
 at least upon the first reading, to the following pas- 
 sages, namely : in Chapter VIII., to the introductory 
 remarks and the first and the last sections of the 
 chapter ; in Chapter IX., to the introductory re- 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 marks, and Sections L, II., III., and V. ; in Chapter 
 X., to the introductory remarks, and Sections I., II., 
 and IV.; in Chapter XI., to the introductory re- 
 marks, and the concluding section only ; and then 
 he may try the whole of Chapter XII. Thus he 
 will not be troubled by the technical statement of 
 the proof of our doctrine, and he will see the trend 
 of our thought, which may at least amuse him. If 
 he is then still curious, he may take his own risks 
 and look farther. 
 
 The student of philosophy will find in this volume 
 a doctrine that undertakes to be in certain signif- 
 icant respects independent and original, but that, 
 without ceasing to be the author's own system, 
 frankly belongs to the wide realm of Post-Kantian 
 Idealism. Of course no truo lover of philosophy 
 ventures, when he calls a doctrine his own, to pre- 
 tend to more than the very moderate degree of rel- 
 ative originality that the subject in our day permits ; 
 and of course the author for his own part feels very 
 deeply how much what he has to offer is the prod- 
 uct of what he has happened to read and remember 
 about philosophy and its history. Most of all he 
 feels his debt to Kant ; then he knows how much he 
 has gained from Fichte, from the modern Neo-Kan- 
 tians in Germany, and from the revivers of idealism 
 in recent years in England and America. To Hegel 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 also he has of course a decided debt to acknowl- 
 edge. 
 
 There are in recent philosophical history two 
 Hegels : one the uncompromising idealist, with his 
 general and fruitful insistence upon the great fun- 
 damental truths of idealism ; the other the technical 
 Hegel of the " Logik," whose dialectic method seems 
 destined to remain, not a philosophy, but the idea 
 of a philosophy. With this latter Hegel the author 
 feels a great deal of discontent ; to the other Hegel, 
 whose insight, as we know, was by no means inde- 
 pendent of that of Fichte and other contemporaries, 
 but who was certainly the most many-sided and crit- 
 ical of the leaders of the one great common idealistic 
 movement of the early part of the century, to him 
 we all owe a great debt indeed. It is, however, a 
 mistake to neglect the other idealists just for the 
 sake of glorifying him. And it is an intolerable 
 blunder to go on repeating what we may have 
 learned from him in the awkward and whimsical 
 speech of the wondrous and crabbed master. If 
 Hegel taught anything, then what he taught can be 
 conveyed in an utterly non-Hegelian vocabulary, or 
 else Hegel is but a king of the rags and tatters of a 
 flimsy terminology, and no king of thought at all. 
 It is therefore absolutely the duty of a man who 
 nowadays supposes that he has any truth from He- 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 gel to propound, to state it in an entirely fresh and 
 individual form. Of Hegelian language repeated to 
 us in place of Hegelian thought, we have had by 
 this time a sickening surfeit. Let us therefore 
 thank men who, like the late lamented Professor 
 Green, have at last been free to speak their own 
 thoughts very much in their own way ; and let us be 
 glad too that the number of so-called Hegelians of 
 similar independence is daily growing greater. The 
 author, however, cannot call himself an Hegelian, 
 much as he owes to Hegel. 
 
 Further especial acknowledgments the author 
 wants to make to Professor William James, to Mr. 
 Shadworth Hodgson, to Professor Otto Pfleiderer, 
 to Professor Hans Vaihinger, to Professor Otto 
 Liebmann, to Professor Julius Bergmann, to Pro- 
 fessor Christoph Sigwart, and to Mr. Arthur Bal- 
 four, for the valuable helps in thought that, un- 
 known to them, he, as a reader of their works, has 
 felt, and that he now recognizes as distinctly affect- 
 ing this book. To Professor William James once 
 more in particular, and also to Professor George 
 Palmer, the author owes numerous oral suggestions 
 that have influenced him more than he now can ex- 
 actly estimate or fully confess. And then there 
 remain two thinkers to name, men very different 
 from each other, but both for the author very valu- 
 
Xll PREFACE. 
 
 able. Of these one was among the first of the Ger- 
 man thinkers in the chance order of the author's 
 early reading, the other was deeply influential both 
 by his spoken words and by his writings ; the former 
 is that brilliant and stimulating master of contra- 
 dictions, Schopenhauer, the other is the now de- 
 parted Lotze, whose lectures the author will never 
 forget nor disregard, although what is here taught 
 is remote enough from most of Lotze's system. 
 
 In outer form this work may be considered by the 
 philosophic student as a sort of roughly sketched 
 and very incomplete Phenomenology of the relig- 
 ious consciousness, first on its moral, and then on 
 its theoretical, side. The parts of the argument that 
 the author supposes to contain most relative origi- 
 nality will be found in Book I., Chapters VI. and 
 VII., and in Book II., Chapter XI. On these chap- 
 ters all else hinges. 
 
 The discussion of the Problem of Evil, as it ap- 
 pears in Chapter XII., is, as the author has seen only 
 since that chapter was in type, very closely parallel 
 to part of the discussion of the same question in the 
 new second edition of Pfleiderer's " Religionsphilos- 
 ophie." Yet, as the thoughts of this new edition of 
 Pfleiderer's argument were indicated in his first edi- 
 tion, although not so clearly expressed, the author 
 claims little originality here, save in the form of 
 
PREFACE. xiii 
 
 presentation, in the illustrations used, and in the 
 reference of the whole to the arguments of Chapter 
 XI. This last matter seems to him, of itself indeed, 
 quite important. 
 
 The work as it here appears is an outgrowth of 
 several separate lines of study. The questions of 
 the present Chapter XI. were first attempted by the 
 author in a thesis for the Doctor's degree of the 
 Johns Hopkins University in 1878. The argument 
 has since been essentially altered. Several frag- 
 ments that are here used as organic parts of the 
 whole book have appeared separately, in various de- 
 grees of incompleteness, in the " Journal of Specu- 
 lative Philosophy," in "Mind," and elsewhere. The 
 present form of the book has grown out of lectures 
 on religious questions to the students of Harvard 
 College ; but only a small portion of the manuscript 
 of these lectures has entered into the structure of 
 the book, which, for its own part, tries to be no 
 patchwork, but a single united, if incomplete, study 
 of its chosen problem. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, MASS., January 11, 1885. ~ 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION ; RELIGION AS A MORAL CODE AND AS 
 
 A THEORY. 1 
 
 I. The Three Elements of Religion 2 
 
 II. Relation of Religion and Philosophy 4 
 
 III. The Essentials of Religious Doctrine 6 
 
 IV. The Place of Skepticism in Religious Philosophy. . 9 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 THE SEARCH FOR A MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM 17 
 
 I. The Priority of Ideals in Religious Philosophy 18 
 
 II. The Fundamental Difficulty about all Ideals 19 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS 32 
 
 I. The Difficulty about the Ideal as it appears in 
 
 Greek Thought 34 
 
 II. The same Difficulty in Christian Morals 39 
 
 III. Summary of the Difficulty thus far 47 
 
 IV. The Difficulty as illustrated by the Doctrine of Con- 
 
 science 50 
 
 V. General Summary and Skeptical Result 58 
 
XVI TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ALTRUISM AND EGOISM IN CERTAIN RECENT DISCUS- 
 SIONS * 61 
 
 I. Illustration of Certain Doctrines about the Nature 
 
 of Altruism . 63 
 
 II. Is Altruism Disguised Selfishness ? 65 
 
 III. Inquiry as to the real Difference between Altru- 
 
 ism and Selfishness 66 
 
 IV. If Genuine Altruism cannot now be Disguised Self- 
 
 ishness, can Evolution explain the Relations of 
 
 the two ? 74 
 
 V. Schopenhauer's Effort to define Altruism in Terms 
 
 of the Emotion of Pity 85 
 
 VI. Further Explanation of Schopenhauer's View.. . 89 
 VII. The Selfishness and Cruelty that often are the .Re- 
 sult of Pity 94 
 
 VIII. The Cruelty of the Happy, and the Selfishness as- 
 sociated with active Sympathy 100 
 
 IX. Rejection of Pity as the Basis for a Distinction of 
 Altruism and Egoism. Negative Result of the 
 Chapter ,. . . 104 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM 107 
 
 I. The Skeptical Motive in Pessimism 108 
 
 II. The Skeptical Motive in the Romantic Pessimism 
 
 of Modern Poetry 110 
 
 III. Ethical Skepticism in Mr. Balfour's Statement of 
 
 its Positions 127 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE MORAL INSIGHT 131 
 
 I. The Meaning of Ethical Skepticism, and the Ideal 
 
 consequently involved in it 131 
 
 II. Answers to Objections 141 
 
 III. Application to the Problem of Altruism 146 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. xvii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 IV. Selfishness as Illusion 149 
 
 V. Altruism as Insight 156 
 
 VI. The Real Conflict of the Separate Ideals, and the 
 
 Nature of the Moral Insight 162 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE 171 
 
 I. The Duties of the First Class , 173 
 
 II. The Duties of the Second Class, in relation to He- 
 donism 183 
 
 III. The Worth of the Individual 195 
 
 IV. The Phases of Individualism 201 
 
 V. The Universal Will as aiming at Organization. 
 
 Definition of the Ideal 211 
 
 VI. Passage to the Study of Reality 218 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 THE SEARCH FOR A RELIGIOUS TRUTH. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE WORLD OF DOUBT 227 
 
 I. The Fundamental Difficulty concerning the Exter- 
 nal World. Temporary Postponement of the 
 Discussion of this Difficulty. The World of the 
 
 Powers 228 
 
 II. The Popular Scientific Concept of the World and 
 the Religious Insignificance of the Law of Evo- 
 lution 238 
 
 III. The Monistic Theories of the External World of 
 
 the Powers. Metaphysical and Religious Diffi- 
 culties of these Theories 252 
 
 IV. Monism and the Problem of Evil 264 
 
 V. Dualistic Theism in the World of the Powers, its 
 
 Metaphysical and Religious Difficulties 271 
 
 VI. Empirical Theism and the Design- Argument . . . . 279 
 6 
 
XV111 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 VII. Religious Insignificance of the Design- Argument 
 
 in the World of the Powers 283 
 
 VIII. The World of the Powers as in itself Necessarily 
 
 a World of Doubt 286 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES 291 
 
 I. Postulates in Science and Religion 292 
 
 II. The General Nature and Use of Postulates 297 
 
 III. Postulates in the Notion of the External World. . 299 
 
 IV. Psychological Analysis of the Postulates of Com- 
 
 mon Life. Beliefs in Relation to the Will 305 
 
 V. The Postulates of Science Defined. The Religious 
 Use of the Postulates. Transition to a Higher 
 Point of View 324 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 IDEALISM 333 
 
 I. The General Nature and Religious Uses of Philo- 
 
 sophical Idealism 333 
 
 II. Idealism as an Hypothesis founded on Postulates. 
 A Modification of the Berkeleyan Hypothesis 
 stated , 337 
 
 III. Explanation and Justification of this Hypothesis, 
 
 as Simple and Fair. Subordination of the Pos- 
 tulate of Causation to other Postulates. Criti- 
 cism of the Notion of " Possible Experience ". . 354 
 
 IV. Difficulty as to the Nature of Error, and Transi- 
 
 tion to Absolute Idealism. Religious Conse- 
 quences anticipated 370 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR 384 
 
 I. Sketch of the History of the Investigation 386 
 
 II. The Doctrine of the Total Relativity of Truth 
 
 and Error 390 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. XIX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 / III. The Problem of the Nature of Error stated 396 
 
 IV. Psychological Aspect of the Problem 402 
 
 V. The Problem in Case of Errors about one's Fel- 
 
 low-Beings 406 
 
 VI. The Problem in Case of Errors about Matters of 
 
 Experience 417 
 
 VII. Summary and Solution of the Problem 420 
 
 VIII. Answer to the Objection that views Error as 
 
 barely Possible 426 
 
 IX. Absolute Idealism as the Result of the Chapter. . 431 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT 436 
 
 I. General Survey and Religious Aspect of Philo- 
 sophical Idealism as stated in the previous Chap- 
 ter 437 
 
 II. The Doctrine of the Absolute Thought as Perfect 441 
 
 III. The Problem of Evil 449 
 
 IV. The World of the Postulates and the External 
 
 World once more 460 
 
 V. The Conception of Moral Progress 464 
 
 VI. Practical Bearings of the Doctrine 468 
 
 EPILOGUE 475 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION ; RELIGION AS A MORAL CODE AND 
 AS A THEORY. 
 
 Auch beweifl' ich, dass du glaubest, 
 
 Was so rechter Glaube heisst, 
 Glaubst wohl nicht an Gott den Vater, 
 
 An den Sohn und heil'gen Geist. 
 
 HEINE. 
 
 INTENDING in the following pages to sketch certain 
 philosophic opinions that seem to him to have a 
 religious bearing, the author must begin by stating 
 what he understands to be the nature of religion, 
 and how he conceives philosophy to be related to 
 religion. 
 
 We speak commonly of religious feelings and of 
 religious beliefs ; but we find difficulty in agreeing 
 about what makes either beliefs or feelings religious. 
 A feeling is not religious merely because it is strong, 
 nor yet because it is also morally valuable, n 
 because it is elevated. If the strength and the 
 moral value of a feeling made it religious, patriot- 
 ism would be religion. If elevation of feeling were 
 enough, all higher artistic emotion would be relig- 
 ious. But such views would seem to most persons 
 very inadequate. As for belief, it is not religious 
 merely because it is a belief in the supernatural. 
 Not merely is superstition as such very different from 
 
2 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 religion, but even a belief in God as the highest of 
 beings need not be a religious belief. If La Place 
 had needed what he called " that hypothesis," the 
 Deity, when introduced into his celestial mechanics, 
 would have been but a mathematical symbol, or a 
 formula like Taylor's theorem, no true object of 
 religious veneration. On the other hand, Spinoza's 
 impersonal Substance, or the Nirvana of the Bud- 
 dhists, or any one of many like notions, may have, 
 either as doctrines about the world or as ideals of 
 human conduct, immense religious value. Very 
 much that we associate with religion is therefore 
 non-essential to religion. Yet religion is something 
 unique in human belief and emotion, and must not 
 be dissolved into any lower or more commonplace 
 elements. What then is religion ? 
 
 I. 
 
 So much at all events seems sure about religion. 
 It has to do with action. It is impossible without 
 some appearance of moral purpose. A totally im- 
 moral religion may exist ; but it is like a totally un- 
 seaworthy ship at sea, or like a rotten bank, or like 
 a wild-cat mine. It deceives its followers. It pre- 
 tends to guide them into morality of some sort. If 
 it is blind or wicked, not its error makes it religious, 
 but the faith of its followers in its worth. A relig- 
 ion may teach the men of one tribe to torture and 
 kill men of another tribe. But even such a religion 
 would pretend to teach right conduct. Religion, 
 however, gives us more than a moral code. A moral 
 
INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 code alone, with its " Thou shalt," would be no more 
 religious than is the civil code. A religion adds some- 
 thing to the moral ^ode. And what it adds is, first, 
 enthusiasm. Somehow it makes the faithful regard 
 the moral law with devotion, reverence, love. By 
 history, by parable, by myth, by ceremony, by song, 
 by whatever means you will, the religion gives to the 
 mere code life and warmth. A religion not only 
 commands the faithful, but gives them something 
 that they are glad to live for, and if need be to die 
 for. 
 
 But not yet have we mentioned the element of re- 
 ligion that makes it especially interesting to a stu- 
 dent of theoretical philosophy. So far as we have 
 gone, ethical philosophy would criticise the codes of 
 various religions, while theoretical philosophy would 
 have no part in the work. But, in fact, religion al- 
 ways adds another element. Not only does religion 
 teach devotion to a moral code, but the means that 
 it uses to this end include a more or less complete 
 theory of things. Religion says not merely do and 
 feel, but also believe. A religion tells us about the 
 thifigs that it declares to exist, and most especially it 
 tells us about their relations to the moral code and 
 to the religious feeling. There may be a religion 
 without a supernatural, but there cannot be a relig- 
 ion without a theoretical element, without a state- 
 ment of some supposed matter of fact, as part of 
 the religious doctrine. 
 
 These three elements, then, go to constitute any 
 religion. A religion must teach some moral code, 
 must in some way inspire a strong feeling of devo- 
 
4 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tion to that code, and in so doing must show some- 
 thing in the nature of things that answers to the code 
 or that serves to reinforce the feeling. A religion 
 is therefore practical, emotional, and theoretical ; it 
 teaches us to do, to feel, and to believe, and it teaches 
 the belief as a means to its teaching of the action 
 and of the feeling. 
 
 II. 
 
 We may now see how philosophy is related to re- 
 ligion. Philosophy is not directly concerned with 
 feeling, but both action and belief are direct objects 
 of philosophical criticism. And on the other hand, 
 in so far as philosophy suggests general rules for 
 conduct, or discusses the theories about the world, 
 philosophy must have a religious aspect. 'Religion 
 invites the scrutiny of philosophy, and philosophy 
 may not neglect the problems of religion. Kant's 
 fundamental problems : What do I know ? and 
 What ought I to do ? are of religious interest no 
 less than of philosophic interest. They ask how 
 the highest thought of man stands related to his 
 highest needs, and what in things answers to T>ur 
 best ideals. Surely no one ought to fear such ques- 
 tions, nor ought any philosophic student to hesitate 
 to suggest in answer to them whatever after due 
 reflection he honestly can suggest, poor and tenta- 
 tive though it may be. In fact there is no defense 
 for one as sincere thinker if, undertaking to pay at- 
 tention to philosophy as such, he willfully or thought- 
 lessly neglects such problems on the ground that he 
 has no time for them. Surely he has time to be not 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 merely a student of philosophy, but also a man, and 
 these things are among the essentials of humanity, 
 which the non-philosophic treat in their way, and 
 which philosophic students must treat in theirs. 
 
 When, however, we say that the thinker must 
 study and revere these questions, we must not fancy 
 that because of their importance he may prejudge 
 them. Assumptions, postulates, a priori demands, 
 these indeed are in all thinking, and no thinker is 
 without such. But prejudice, i. e. foregone conclu- 
 sions in questionable matters, deliberate unwilling- 
 ness to let the -light shine upon our beliefs, all this 
 is foreign to true thought. Thinking is for us just 
 the clarifying of our minds, and because clearness is 
 necessary to the unity of thought, necessary to lessen 
 the strife of sects and the bitterness of doubt, neces- 
 sary to save our minds from hopeless, everlasting 
 wandering, therefore to resist the clarifying process, 
 even while we undertake it, is to sin against what is 
 best in us, and is also to sin against humanity. De- 
 liberately insincere, dishonest thinking is downright 
 blasphemy. And so, if we take any interest in these 
 things, our duty is plain. Here are questions of tre- 
 mendous importance to us and to the world. We 
 are sluggards or cowards if, pretending to be philo- 
 sophic students and genuine seekers of truth, we do 
 not attempt to do something with these questions. 
 We are worse than cowards if, attempting to con- 
 sider them, we do so otherwise than reverently, fear- 
 lessly, and honestly. 
 
THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 III. 
 
 The religious thought of our time has reached a 
 position that arouses the anxiety of all serious think- 
 ers, and the interest of many who are not serious. 
 We are not content with what we learned from our 
 fathers; we want to correct their dogmas, to prove 
 what they held fast without proof, to work out our 
 own salvation by our own efforts. But we know 
 not yet what form our coming faith will take. We 
 are not yet agreed even about the kind of question 
 that we shall put to ourselves when we begin any 
 specific religious inquiry. People suggest very va- 
 rious facts or aspects of facts in the world as having 
 a religious value. The variety of the suggestions 
 shows the vagueness of the questions that people have 
 in mind when they talk of religion. One man wants 
 to worship Natural Law, or even Nature in gen- 
 eral. Another finds Humanity to be his ideal object 
 of religious veneration. Yet another gravely insists 
 that the Unknowable satisfies his religious longings. 
 Now it is something to be plain in expressing a 
 question, even if you cannot give an answer. We 
 shall do something if we only find out what it is that 
 we ought to seek. And the foregoing considerations 
 may help us in this way, even if what follows should 
 be wholly ineffective. For we have tried to give a 
 definition that shall express, not merely what a 
 Buddhist or a Catholic or a Comtist or an Hegelian 
 means by his religion, but what all men everywhere 
 mean by religion. They all want religion to define 
 
INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 for them their duty, to give them the heart to do it, 
 and to point out to them such things in the real 
 world as shall help them to be steadfast in their de- 
 votion to duty. When people pray that they may 
 be made happy, they still desire to learn what tfcey 
 are to do in order to become happy. When saints 
 of any creed look up to their God as their only good, 
 they are seeking for guidance in the right way. 
 The savages of whom we hear so much nowadays 
 have indeed low forms of religion, but these relig- 
 ions of theirs still require them to do something, and 
 tell them why it is worth while to do this, and make 
 them more or less enthusiastic in doing it. Among 
 ourselves, the poor and the lonely, the desolate and 
 the afflicted, when they demand religious comfort, 
 want something that shall tell them what to do with 
 life, and how to take up once more the burdens of 
 their broken existence. And the religious philoso- 
 phers must submit to the same test that humanity 
 everywhere proposes to its religions. If one tries 
 to regulate our diet by his theories, he must have 
 the one object, whatever his theory, since he wants 
 to tell us what is healthful for us. If he tells us to 
 eat nothing but snow, that is his fault. The true 
 object of the theory of diet remains the same. And 
 so if men have expressed all sorts of one-sided, dis- 
 heartening, inadequate views of religion, that does 
 not make the object of religious theory less catholic, 
 less comprehensive, less definitely human. A man 
 who propounds a religious system must have a moral 
 code, an emotional life, and some theory of things to 
 offer us. With less we cannot be content. He need 
 
8 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 not, indeed, know or pretend to know very much 
 about our wonderful world, but he must know some- 
 thing, and that something must be of definite value. 
 To state the whole otherwise. Purely theoretic 
 philosophy tries to find out what it can about the 
 real world. When it makes this effort, it has to be 
 perfectly indifferent to consequences. It may not 
 shudder or murmur if it comes upon unspeakably 
 dreadful truths. If it finds nothing in the world but 
 evil, it must still accept the truth, and must calmly 
 state it without praise and without condemnation. 
 Theoretic philosophy knows no passion save the pas- 
 sion for truth, has no fear save the fear of error, 
 cherishes no hope save the hope of theoretic success. 
 But religious philosophy has other objects in addi- 
 tion to these. Religious philosophy is indeed neither 
 the foe nor the mistress of theoretic philosophy. Re- 
 ligious philosophy dare not be in opposition to the 
 truths that theory may have established. But over 
 and above these truths it seeks something else. It 
 seeks to know their value. It comes to the world 
 with other interests, in addition to the purely theo- 
 retic ones. It wants to know what in the world is 
 worthy of worship as the good. It seeks not merely 
 the truth, but the inspiring truth. It defines for it- 
 self goodness, moral worth, and then it asks, What 
 in this world is worth anything ? Its demands in 
 this regard are boundless. It will be content only 
 with the best it can find. Having formulated for 
 itself its ideal of worth, it asks at the outset : Is 
 there then, anywhere in the universe, any real thing 
 of Infinite Worth ? If this cannot be found, then 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 and then only will religious philosophy be content 
 with less. Then it will still ask : What in this world 
 is worth most ? It cannot make realities, but it is 
 determined to judge them. It cannot be content 
 with blind faith, and demands the actual truth as 
 much as theoretic philosophy demands it ; but relig- 
 ious philosophy treats this truth only as the material 
 for its ideal judgments. It seeks the ideal among 
 the realities. 
 
 Upon such a quest as this, we ask the reader to ac- 
 company us in the following pages. We have not 
 space to be exhaustive, nor in fact to offer much 
 more than suggestions ; but we want the suggestions 
 to be explicit, and we hope that they may stimulate 
 some reader, and may perhaps help him in complet- 
 ing his own trains of thought. 
 
 IV. 
 
 People come to such questions as these with cer- 
 tain prejudices about the method and spirit of in- 
 quiry ; and all their work may be hampered by these 
 prejudices. Let us say yet a little more of what we 
 think as to this matter. There are two extremes to 
 fear in religious philosophy : indifference that arises 
 from a dogmatic disposition to deny, and timidity 
 that arises from an excessive show of reverence for 
 the objects of religious faith. Both of these extreme 
 moods have their defective methods in dealing with 
 religious philosophy. The over-skeptical man looks 
 with impatience on all lengthy discussions of these 
 topics. There can be nothing in it all, he says; 
 
10 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 nothing but what Hume, in an eloquent passage, 
 called sophistry and delusion. Why spend time to 
 puzzle over these insoluble mysteries? Hence his 
 method is: swift work, xjlear statement of known 
 difficulties, keen ridicule of hasty assumptions, and 
 then a burning of the old deserted Moscow of the- 
 ology, and a bewildering flight into the inaccessible 
 wintry wastes, where no army of religious philoso- 
 phers shall follow him. Now for our part we want 
 to be as skeptical as anybody ; and we personally al- 
 ways admire the freedom of motion that pure skepti- 
 cism gives. Our trouble with it all, however, is that, 
 after we have enjoyed the freedom and the frosty air 
 of pure philosophic skepticism for a while, we find 
 ourselves unexpectedly in the midst of philosophic 
 truth that needs closer examination. The short and 
 easy agnostic method is not enough. You must sup- 
 plement skepticism by philosophy ; and when you 
 do so, you find yourself forced to accept, not indeed 
 the old theology of your childhood, but something 
 that satisfies, oddly enough, certain religious long- 
 ings, that, as skeptic, you had carefully tried to for- 
 get. Then you find yourself with what you may 
 have to call a religious doctrine ; and then you may 
 have to state it as we are here going to do, not in an 
 easy or fascinating way, such as the pure skeptic can 
 so well follow, but at all events with some approach to 
 a serious and sustained effort to consider hard ques- 
 tions from many sides. The skeptical method is not 
 only a good, but also a necessary beginning of relig- 
 ious philosophy. But we are bound to go deeper 
 than mere superficial agnosticism. If, however, any 
 
INTRODUCTION. 11 
 
 reader is already sure that we cannot go deeper, and 
 that modern popular agnosticism has exhausted all 
 that can be said on religious questions, then we bid 
 him an immediate and joyous farewell. If we had 
 not something to say in this book that seems to us 
 both foreign to the popular modern agnostic range 
 of discussion, and deeper than the insight of popular 
 modern skepticism, we should say nothing. The un- 
 dertaking of this book is not to wrangle in the old 
 way over the well-known ordinary debates of to-day, 
 but to turn the flank of the common popular thought 
 on these topics altogether, by going back to a type 
 of philosophic investigation, that is nowadays fa- 
 miliar indeed to a certain school of specialists, but 
 forgotten by the general public. In this type of in- 
 vestigation, we have furthermore something to offer 
 that seems to us no mere repetition of the views of 
 other thinkers, but an effort to make at least one lit- 
 tle step in advance of the thoughts that the great 
 masters of philosophy have given to us. Yet we 
 know indeed that the range of any useful indepen- 
 dent thought in philosophy must be, in case of any 
 one individual, very narrow. 
 
 The other mood and its method remain. It is the 
 mood of excessive reverence. It wastes capital let- 
 ters on all the pronouns and adjectives that have to 
 do with the objects of religious faith ; but it fears to 
 do these objects the honor to get clear ideas about 
 them. Now we respect this mood when it appears in 
 men who do well their life-work, who need their re- 
 ligious faith for their work, and who do not feel any 
 calling as truth-seekers. No man has any business 
 
12 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 to set up his vocation as the highest one ; and the 
 man for whom truth is useful in his actual life-work 
 as an inspiration, revealed to him only in feeling, is 
 welcome to his feelings, is worthy of all regard from 
 those whose vocation is philosophy, and shall not be 
 tormented by our speculations. He is careful and 
 troubled about many things ; the world needs him, 
 and philosophy does not. We only lay claim to our 
 own rights, and do not want to interfere with his. 
 Our right to clear thought, we must insist upon. 
 For looked at philosophically, and apart from the nec- 
 essary limitations of the hard worker, all this dumb 
 reverence, this vague use of vague names, has its se- 
 rious dangers. You are reverent, we may say to the 
 man who regards philosophic criticism as a dangerous 
 trifling with stupendous truths ; you are reverent, 
 but what do you reverence ? Have a care lest what 
 you reverence shall turn out to be your own vague 
 and confused notions, and not the real divine Truth 
 at all. Take heed lest your object of worship be only 
 your own little pet infinite, that is sublime to you 
 mainly because it is yours, and that is in truth about 
 as divine and infinite as your hat. For this is the 
 danger that besets these vague and lofty sentiments. 
 Unreflected upon, uncriticised, dumbly experienced, 
 dumbly dreaded, these, your religious objects, may 
 become mere feelings, mere visceral sensations of 
 yours, that you have on Sunday mornings, or when 
 you pray. Of course, if you are a worker, you 
 may actually realize these vague ideas, in so far as 
 they inspire you to work. If they do, they shall be 
 judged by their fruits. Otherwise, do not trust too 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 confidently their religious value. You, individually 
 regarded, are but a mass of thought and feeling. 
 What is only yours and in you, is not divine at all. 
 Unless you lift it up into the light of thought and 
 examine it often, how do you know into what your 
 cherished religious ideal may not have rotted in the 
 darkness of your emotions ? Once in a while, there 
 does come to a man some terrible revelation of him- 
 self in a great sorrow. Then in the tumult of an- 
 guish he looks for his religious faith to clothe his 
 nakedness against the tempest ; and he finds per- 
 haps some moth-eaten old garment that profits him 
 nothing, so that his soul miserably perishes in the 
 frost of doubt. Such a man has expected God to 
 come to his help in every time of need; but the 
 only god he has actually and consciously had, has 
 been his own little contemptible, private notion and 
 dim feeling of a god, which he has never dared fairly 
 to look at. Any respectable wooden idol would have 
 done him better service ; for then a man could know 
 where and what his idol is. Such is only too apt 
 to be the real state of the man who regards it as 
 profanity to think clearly and sensibly on religious 
 topics. 
 
 We claim, then, the right to criticise as fearlessly, 
 as thoroughly, and as skeptically as may be, the 
 foundations of conduct and faith. For what we crit- 
 icise are, at the outset, our _gwn_ notion s, which we 
 want to have conform to the truth, if so be that there 
 is any truth. As for doubt on religious questions, 
 that is for a truth-seeker not only a privilege but a 
 duty ; and, as we shall experience all through this 
 
14 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 study, doubt has a curious and very valuable place 
 in philosophy, Philosophic truth, as such, comes to 
 us first under the form of doubt ; and we never can 
 be very near it in our search unless, for a longer or 
 shorter time, we have come to despair of it alto- 
 gether. First, then, the despair of a thorough-going 
 doubt, and then the discovery that this doubt con- 
 tains in its bosom the truth that we are sworn to 
 discover, however we can, this is the typical philo- 
 sophic experience. May the memory of this sugges- 
 tion support the failing patience of the kindly dis- 
 posed reader through some of the longer and more 
 wearisome stretches of dry skeptical analysis over 
 which we must try to journey together. Whatever 
 may be the truth, it must lie beyond those deserts. 
 
BOOK I. 
 
 THE SEARCH FOR A MORAL IDEAL. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 " Certain spirits, by permission, ascended from hell, and said to me, 
 * You have written a great deal from the Lord, write something also 
 from us.' I replied, 'What shall I write?' They said, 'Write that 
 every spirit, whether he be good or evil, is in his own delight, the 
 good in the delight of his good, and the evil in the delight of his evil.' . 
 I asked them, * What may your delight be V ' They said that it was the 
 delight of committing adultery, stealing, defrauding, and lying. . . . 
 I said, ' Then you are like the unclean beasts.' . . . They answered, 
 'If we are, we are.' " SWEDENBORG, Divine Providence. 
 
 " There 's nothing, either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." 
 Hamlet. 
 
 WITH which of the two considerations mentioned 
 in our introduction shall a religious philosophy be- 
 gin ? Of its two chief considerations, the moral code, 
 and the relation of this code to reality, which is the 
 one that properly stands first in order ? We have 
 already indicated our opinion. The philosophy of 
 religion is distinguished from theoretic philosophy 
 precisely by its relation to an ideal. If possible, 
 therefore, it should early be clear as to what ideal 
 it has. The ideal ought, if possible, to be studied- 
 first, since it is this ideal that is to give character to 
 our whole quest among the realities. And so the 
 first part of religious philosophy is properly the dis- 
 cussion of ethical problems. 
 
18 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The theoretic philosopher might interpose just 
 here, and insist that as one can be moral only in a 
 real world, the philosopher has a theoretical right 
 and duty to point out, first of all, wherein consists 
 the reality of the world and whereon is based our 
 assurance of this reality. Yet this strictly logical 
 order we must decline, in the present discussion, to 
 follow. Our interest is, first of all, with the ideal 
 in its relation to human life. So much of the world 
 of commonplace reality as we have to assume in any 
 and every discussion of the ideal, we accept in this 
 first book wholly without theoretical question. For 
 such questions, in their relation to religious philoso- 
 phy, the proper place will come later. But at the 
 outset we will suppose a moral agent in the presence . 
 of this concrete world of human life in which we all 
 believe ourselves to exist. Beyond the bright circle 
 of these commonplace human relations, all shall for 
 the present remain dark to this moral agent. His 
 origin, his destiny, his whole relation to nature and \ 
 to God, if there be a God, he shall not at the outset 
 know. But he shall be conceived as knowing that 
 he is alive in the midst of a multitude of living f el- i 
 lows. With them he is to have and to define and 
 to develop certain moral relations. For his life, or 
 for human life in general, he is to form his ideal. 
 Then later, after forming and striving to realize this 
 ideal of his, he is to come to the real physical world, 1 
 and to ask of it how it stands related to these, his 
 moral needs. In the answer to this question he is 
 
THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM. 19 
 
 to find, if at all, the completion of his religious phi- 1 
 losophy. When he comes to this second stage, which 
 our second book is to treat, he may find himself 
 obliged to analyze afresh and skeptically the naive 
 theoretic notions that he has possessed concerning na- 
 ture, and so even concerning his own fellow-men. But 
 for his analysis itself he will have a fresher courage, 
 because he will have filled himself with the love of 
 an ideal, whose realization he will be hoping some- 
 how to find all through all the tedious wanderings 
 of his theoretic study. If the order of his whole 
 thought is thus not the order of the truth itself, still 
 his little inconsequence in beginning his religious 
 philosophy with assumptions that he proves only ' 
 after he has gone some distance in his investigation, 
 may be a useful concession both to his own human 
 weakness and to the needs of his practical nature. 
 
 With the search for the ideal, then, we begin, ex- 
 pressly assuming, in this part of the first book, with- * 
 out proof, as much of the world of daily life as may 
 be necessary to a study of the moral law in its ap- 
 plication to this daily life. Yet, with this explana- 
 tion, we are only at the beginning of the troubles 
 that arise in examining the relation between the ' 
 basis of ethics and the real world. These troubles 
 form a great part of the obscurity of moral doc- 
 trine. 
 
 . II. 
 
 In treating of ethical doctrine, it is common to 
 avoid by all sorts of devices the main and most diffi- 
 cult problem of all. Men like to fill half a volume 
 
20 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 with a description of the " moral sentiments," or 
 with a panegyric of the " moral principle in man," or 
 in these days especially, with a great deal of talk 
 about savages and about the " evolution of the moral 
 sense." Having occupied so many pages in enter- 
 taining digressions, when they come, if they ever do 
 come, to the central problem, namely, the nature of 
 moral distinctions considered purely as such, such 
 writers have no time to do more than to appeal to 
 the common sense of readers, and then to pass on to 
 consequences. It seldom occurs to them that a de- 
 scription of the " moral faculties " in this man or in 
 that, or a history of moral and immoral notions and 
 practices as they have come up among men in the 
 order of evolution, is no more a " moral philosophy," 
 in the proper sense, than is a description of the coin- 
 age or of the products of any country or of the world 
 a true explanation of the difference between com- 
 mercial solvency and insolvency. 
 
 We for our part shall be obliged, however, by our 
 limited space, to aim forthwith at the heart of the 
 problem of a philosophical ethic. What is the real 
 nature of this distinction between right and wrong ? 
 What truth is there in this distinction? Is this 
 truth relative to particular conditions, or independ- 
 ent thereof? What ideal of life results? These 
 things we want to know ; and we do not want to 
 spend our time more than we shall be obliged to do 
 in irrelevant descriptions of the mental states of this 
 or that man. All mental states now interest us only 
 in so far as we first see what logical bearing they 
 may have upon our problem. We shall have to de- 
 
THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM. 21 
 
 scribe a good deal, but that work will have only its 
 proper subordinate place. 
 
 As for the main problem itself, we can best bring 
 its nature home to ourselves by considering forth- 
 with some aspects of an old and often neglected 
 question, namely, the very question before referred 
 to about the proper relation of one's moral ideal to 
 the reality that he may have recognized. 
 
 We are to form a moral ideal apart, as we have 
 said, from any theory of the physical universe out- 
 side of man. But is this practicable ? Is not every 
 moral theory dependent in truth on a theory of ' 
 things ? Is it possible for us to make for ourselves 
 our ideal, and only afterwards to go to the real world 
 and to see if our ideal is realized ? Must not rather 
 our ideal be founded, in the very nature of the case, 
 on what we know, or think we know, about the 
 world ? Is not then this whole undertaking of ours 
 a blunder ? Is a rational moral distinction possible 
 save through a knowledge of the facts about the 
 world ? Can the ideal say to the world : " I demand 
 that thou shouldst be like me ? " Must not the ideal 
 rather humbly say : " Thus and thus it is in truth, 
 and therefore I am what I am ? " 
 
 The nature of moral ideals and distinctions is 
 plainly involved just here. We must look closely 
 at these questions ; for to answer them aright is to 
 answer the fundamental questions of all ethical phi- 
 losophy. 
 
 To understand then more justly the nature of this 
 difficulty, let us consider more closely the two possi- 
 ble answers to the foregoing questions. Let us call 
 
22 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 a man who insists in spite of all upon going to the 
 real world, to find there in some way the sole basis 
 for his ideal distinctions between good and evil, an 
 ethical realist. Let us on the other hand call him 
 who would somehow demonstrate if he could some 
 ideal as the true and only moral ideal, without in any 
 wise making it depend upon physical reality, a moral 
 idealist. Let us then let the two parties discuss, in 
 their opposing ways, the question at issue. Let us 
 hear their views briefly stated and argued. First the 
 view of the extreme ethical realists : " Go to real- 
 ity," they say, " and to whatever reality you need to 
 consider. Thence derive your notion of duty. Mo- 
 rality must not be built in the air, but on a solid 
 foundation of natural fact. Your moral doctrine 
 may have to depend upon all that you can find out 
 about the universe." On the other hand we have 
 the idealistic doctrine : " Morality," say the sup- 
 porters of this view, " is for the first an ideal. From 
 reality one learns the relations that are to be judged 
 by the ideal, but cannot by any searching find the 
 ideal itself. From reality one can learn the means ; 
 the End of action is an Ideal, independent of all real- 
 ity save the bare existence of our choice of this End. 
 As Prometheus defied Zeus, so the moral conscious- 
 ness could and must defy the forces of nature in case 
 they made the ideal forever hopeless. If the good 
 be unattainable, that makes it no less the good. If 
 the existent world were the worst world imaginable, 
 it would not be justified by the mere fact that it was 
 the real world. Ideals must be realized in so far as 
 we can realize them, but what can be realized need 
 
THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM. 23 
 
 not therefore turn out to be the ideal. The judg- 
 ments : This is, and, This is good, are once for all 
 different ; and they have to be reached by widely dif- 
 ferent methods of investigation." Such are the two 
 opposing views. We cannot yet repeat in detail the 
 arguments for each, but we can suggest a few of 
 them. 
 
 " See," says the supporter of the first view, " how 
 absurd it is to evolve moral theories out of one's 
 inner consciousness. What happens to such theories ? 
 Either nature favors them, and then they survive in 
 the struggle for life, or they are unequal to the tasks 
 of the real world, and then their supporters go mad, 
 or die. But in the first case they are merely such 
 theories as could have been much better reached by 
 a process, not of guessing at truth, but of study- 
 ing nature's laws. In the second case, the result is 
 enough for common sense people. The moral theory 
 that is destined to die out for want of supporters can 
 hardly triumph over more useful opinions. If we 
 want a moral theory, we must therefore consider what 
 kind of action, what rule of life, wins in the battle 
 of existence, and tends most to outlive its rivals. 
 That rule is the one destined to become universal." 
 
 The maintainers of the second view are ready with 
 their answer. " What sort of morality is this?" they 
 say. " Is this the morality of the martyrs ? Is this 
 an ideal that can satisfy us ? The preservation of 
 truly valuable life may indeed be an end in itself, 
 and therefore an action that tends, on the whole, to 
 destroy rather than to save such life may be bad from 
 any point of view ; but the moral thinker is not, on 
 
24 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 that account, bound to choose a code that will make 
 its believers survive. The believers are not all who 
 are affected by obedience to the code, and it may be 
 the believer's place to be sacrificed, either because 
 his life is worth less than his ideal, or because the 
 unbelievers may somehow be bettered through his 
 death. And, in general, what would be the conse- 
 quence of the consistent following out of the prin- 
 ciple that the true goal is conformity to reality ? 
 Assume that, for instance, a man in society is to reg- 
 ulate his actions solely according to the demands 
 that society as a real power makes upon him, in view 
 of his place in the social organism, and that morality 
 thus expresses simply the requirements that the in- 
 dividual must meet if he is to remain a successful 
 member of this social organism. Then, to get your 
 moral code, you are to examine the facts of social 
 life. You are to see, for example, what each man 
 must nowadays do if he is to be tolerable to his 
 fellows. You will find something of this sort : It 
 will not do for him to kill his fellows, or to steal 
 from them, or openly to insult them. It will be un- 
 profitable for him to be caught in cheating them, or 
 in lying to them. He will do well to help them as 
 far as his means allow, and so to get a reputation 
 for kind-heartedness and public spirit, as well as for 
 strict integrity. For such, at least in our society, 
 are some of the requisite or useful kinds of adjust- 
 ment to our environment. On these is founded our 
 moral code, if it is to be founded on realit}^ alone. 
 
 " But these requirements are not equally good in 
 all societies. Once a power to kill certain kinds of 
 
THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM. 25 
 
 people was a necessary condition to happy social life. 
 A reputation for fearlessness, for prowess, for mili- 
 tary skill, for a certain kind of cunning, for perfect 
 willingness to take your weaker enemy's property ; 
 all this was a part of the necessary adjustment to 
 one's environment. Was all this then for that soci- 
 ety true morality? If morality were the body of 
 rules governing successful adjustment to the social 
 environment, then morality would be relative to the 
 environment, and would vary with it. So even now 
 such rules vary with one's social position. Minis- 
 ters of religion are considered to be best adjusted to 
 the environment if they are outwardly meek, save 
 when defending their creeds against heretics. But 
 politicians are best adjusted when they are aggres- 
 sive and merciless. A poet or artist is best adjusted 
 if he has a reputation for very ideal and impersonal 
 aims, and he can then even afford to leave his debts 
 unpaid ; but a business man must be very concrete 
 in behavior, severely definite in his dealings with his 
 fellows. And so runs the world away. Find your 
 place, and farm it cleverly, for that is the whole 
 duty of man. 
 
 " Such would be," say our idealists, " the conse- 
 quences of looking simply to reality for a definition 
 of the moral code. There would no longer be a dif- 
 ference between morality and cleverness. Practical 
 skill in the art of living is what survives in this 
 world : and if it is survival, or tendency to survival, 
 that distinguishes a true from a false moral code, 
 then universal cleverness as a moral code would on 
 the whole tend to survive, with its adherents." 
 
26 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 But a realistic opponent is not thus silenced. 
 " Such caricatures," he insists, " do not fairly repre- 
 sent my doctrine." He, too, has an ideal but it is 
 wholly dependent on reality. What he means by 
 conformity to reality as the foundation of a moral 
 code is properly expressed by the more thoughtful 
 advocates of the doctrine of evolution. " Adjust- 
 ment to one's real surroundings is always," they say, 
 " one very important element in morality. But 
 there are higher and lower forms of adjustment. 
 Cannibals, or conquerors, or bad politicians, may be 
 sufficiently adjusted to their environment to be mo- 
 mentarily successful; but true philanthropists and 
 truly great statesmen are better than they, since the 
 statesmen and philanthropists have a higher form of 
 adjustment than have the others, and are thus higher 
 in the scale of progress. There is in the world a 
 constant evolution of higher out of lower form^.of 
 life. This applies also to society. And on this fact 
 of evolution depends the true morality. The ideal 
 morality is that form of adjustment of the social 
 man to his environment towards which society in its 
 progress forever tends." How then shall we define 
 our moral code ? " Why, once more," says the evo- 
 lutionist, " by the facts. Do not make your code 
 first and then judge the world. You will do well 
 to accept the universe even if you did not make it. 
 But examine the world to see in what way it is tend- 
 ing. Then conform yourself to that tendency ; try 
 to hasten the realization of the coming ideal perfec- 
 tion. Progress does not depend on you, but you will 
 do well to assist progress. So, by experience, we 
 
THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM. 27 
 
 are to find the direction in which society is moving, 
 we are to discover the goal toward which this move- 
 ment tends, and this object of life, once formulated, 
 is to give us our moral code." 
 
 Again, however, the idealist objects. This, he 
 admits, is a view higher, no doubt, than the preced- 
 ing ; but is it a clear and consistent view ? Will it 
 bear criticism ? In one respect, as appears to him, 
 it fails badly. However certain and valuable the 
 facts about evolution may be, the theory that founds 
 morality wholly upon these facts of evolution is de- 
 fective, because it confuses the notion of evolution 
 with the notion of progress, the conception of growth 
 in complexity and definiteness with the conception 
 of growth in moral worth. The two ideas are not . 
 necessarily identical. Yet their identity is assumed 
 in this theory. How does it follow that the state 
 toward which a physical progress, namely, evolution, 
 tends, must be the state that is to meet with moral 
 approval ? This is not to be proved unless you have 
 already done the very thing that the doctrine of evo- 
 lution wishes to teach you to do, that is, unless you 
 have already formed a moral code, and that hide- / 
 pendently of what you know of the facts of natural ^ 
 evolution. Why is the last state in an evolution 
 better than the former states ? Surely not because 
 it is the last stage, surely not because it is physically 
 more complex, more definite, or even more perma- 
 nent ; but solely because it corresponds to some ' 
 ideal that we independently form. Why should my 
 ideal necessarily correspond with reality ? Why 
 should what I approve turn out to be that which ex- 
 
28 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ists ? And why, if any correspondence is to exist, 
 should that particular bit of reality that comes at the 
 end of a physical process called evolution be just 
 the one bit that is to answer my ideal demands ? It 
 will be very satisfactory if such correspondence be- 
 tween the real and the ideal is found to result ; but 
 how can I know beforehand that it must result ? 
 
 Evolution and progress : what do the terms re- 
 spectively mean ? Evolution, we learn, is an increase 
 in the complexity, definiteness, individuality and 
 organic connection of phenomena. But progress is 
 any series of changes that meets with the constantly 
 increasing approval of somebody. The growth of a 
 tree or of a thistle is an evolution. The climbing of 
 a hill for some purpose may throughout be a prog- 
 ress. Evolution may or may not meet with the ap- 
 proval of anybody ; and a pessimist might fully 
 accept some proposed law of evolution. But unless 
 , there is some approval from some source, we have 
 * no progress. How thoughtless then it is, our idealist 
 , insists, to confound such different notions. But is 
 a case of evolution ever a process of degeneration ? 
 Certainly. You want to eat asparagus before it is 
 full grown. Hence every moment of its evolution 
 after a certain point is for you distinctly a degenera- 
 tion. You want the potatoes in your cellar to keep 
 fresh. If they sprout, a process of evolution has be- 
 gun, but every moment of it is for you the reverse 
 v>" of progress. The egg that begins to incubate is in 
 full course of evolution ; but what if it is wanted 
 for market? Might not the evolution of the whole 
 world conceivably be for the moral consciousness 
 
THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM. 29 
 
 what such cases of evolution are for the purposes of 
 ordinary life? 
 
 "But," the realist may say, "in fact the world 
 does grow better. The course of evolution is on the 
 whole a progress." " Be it so," the idealist answers,^ 
 " but how can we know it ? Only by first setting 
 up our moral ideal, and then comparing the facts' 
 with this ideal. If we know what we mean by bet- 
 ter, we can judge whether the world is growing 
 better. But we may not pretend to determine what 
 is better by simply observing how the world grows. 
 Growth and improvement are not identical ideas. 
 One may grow while growing ever worse." 
 
 And thus a moral code, according to our idealist, 
 does not, as a code, depend on physical facts ; tells 
 us nothing of what does exist, but tells us solely 
 what ought to exist. If the ideal either does exist, 
 or some day will exist, so much the better ; but 
 through all the changes of fate the terrible ought 
 remains, and judges fearlessly the world, whether it 
 be good or whether it* be evil. But here the realist, 
 to whom the moral code that is not built on natural 
 fact is just a dream, interposes what shall just here 
 be his final objection. " Be it so," he says, " judge 
 after your heart's desire ; but remember this, that , 
 some other idealist beside you will be judging the 
 world in his own way, after what will seem to you 
 the folly of his heart, and his judgment and yours 
 will differ, as the dreams of any two dreamers must ^ 
 differ. Did Plato's ideal agree with Paul's ? or did 
 Byron judge the world after the same fashion as 
 Wordsworth? Even so in the present day the 
 
30 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ideals war their wars, shadowy struggles, such as one 
 would expect the tedious ghosts of Ossian's heroes 
 to carry on in their cloudy cars ; but reality will 
 never be one whit the wiser for all such deeds. 
 For when you forsake the real world you have no 
 basis left for your ideals but individual caprice, 
 and every idealist will be his own measure of all 
 things, and an elastic measure at that." 
 
 To this, how can the idealist answer ? Only, if at 
 all, by the fact of his success in establishing such a 
 criterion as shall be independent of his own caprice, 
 without being realistic. 
 
 We have let the contending doctrines fight some 
 part of their old battles over again. How shall we 
 decide between them? Alas! the decision is the 
 whole labor of founding a moral doctrine. We have 
 not yet seen deeply enough into their opposition. 
 They may both be one-sided. The truth may lie in 
 the middle. But as yet we have no right to dog- 
 matize. This capriciousness in the choice of ideals 
 seems a grave defect in a moral system ; we cannot 
 submit to the objection that our boasted ideal is just 
 our whim. Yet how shall we escape this ? Equally 
 unsatisfactory it seems to say : " I believe in such 
 and such ideal solely because I see it realized." 
 That is too much like saying, " Might is right." 
 And thus we should come to an equal capriciousness 
 on this side ; for if might makes right, then another 
 and opposing might, if triumphant, would make an- 
 other and opposing right. And in this wise there 
 would be no true distinction at all between right and 
 wrong. There seems in fact so far only an acciden- 
 
THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM. 31 
 
 tal distinction. This ideal or that is the highest be- 
 cause somebody chances to choose it for his, or be- 
 cause the physical world chances to realize it. This 
 is a perfectly empty distinction. 
 
 But difficulties must not discourage us so early in 
 the day. The world has talked of these matters be- 
 fore. Let us turn to the history of some of the spec- 
 ulations about the ideal. They may suggest some- 
 thing to us. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 
 
 Sure, if I find the Holy Grail itself, 
 It too will fade, and crumble into dust. 
 
 TENNYSON, Holy Grail. 
 
 The spirits I have raised abandon me, 
 The spells which I have studied baffle me 
 The remedy I recked of tortured me. 
 I lean no more on superhuman aid. 
 
 BYRON, Manfred. 
 
 WE are yet without an ideal, and as we come 
 nearer to our task, its difficulties increase. We have 
 described above the remarkable position in which 
 every moral idealist finds himself. He says that 
 his moral doctrine is to be more than a mere bit of 
 natural history. He wants to find out what ought 
 to be, even if that which ought to be is not. Yet when 
 some man says to him : " Thy ideal is- thus but thy 
 personal caprice, thy private way of looking at 
 things," he does not want to assent. He wants to 
 reply : " My ideal is the true one. No other rational 
 ideal is possible." Yet to do this he seems to need 
 again some external support in reality. He seems to 
 require some authority based upon facts. He must 
 somewhere find his ideal in the world of truth, ex- 
 ternal to his own private consciousness. He must 
 be able to say : " Lo, here is the ideal ! " He must 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 33 
 
 be able to show it to us, so that we shall see it to be 
 more than his whim. But thus he is in danger of 
 forsaking his idealism. His position so far has there- 
 fore seemed to us an uncertain one. We have felt 
 the force of his needs ; but we have not been able to 
 see as yet just how they are to be satisfied. The 
 satisfaction of them would in fact be a complete 
 ethical doctrine. And the foundation of such a doc- 
 trine is just what we here are seeking. 
 
 It is incumbent upon us yet further to show how 
 the search for a moral ideal has in the past been 
 hindered by the weight of this doubt about the exact 
 relation of the real and the ideal. The controversy 
 that the last chapter considered is a controversy end- 
 lessly repeated in the history of moral doctrines. 
 Everywhere we find a moral ideal maintained by some 
 devoted idealist as the one perfectly obvious aim for 
 human life. Everywhere there stands over against 
 this ideal some critic who says : " The choice of this 
 aim for life is an accident. I reject this boastful 
 ideal. For where in reality is found the firm basis 
 of fact on which the ideal is founded ? " Then pos- 
 sibly the idealist, relaxing the rigor of his idealism, 
 points out in the external world some real or myth- 
 ical support for his ideal. And thereupon either his 
 critics reject the creed about the external world thus 
 offered to them, or they deny the moral force of the 
 supposed realities, or, again, themselves assuming an 
 idealistic attitude, they reproach the idealist with his 
 unworthy desertion of "his own high faith, in that he 
 has yielded to realistic demands, and has founded 
 the lofty Ought on the paltry Is. And thus the con- 
 
34 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 troversy continues. Often it seems to us that the 
 struggle must be endless. At all events we must 
 here look at some of its phases. 
 
 I. 
 
 In the days of the Sophists, Greek thought had 
 reached its first great era of ethical skepticism. This 
 skepticism was directed against the ideals of popular 
 morality. " They are not self-evident and necessary 
 ideals," said in substance the Sophists. " They are 
 conventions. They are private judgments." The 
 popular ideals were of course popularly defended 
 against such assaults by the use of the national re- 
 ligion. "The gods made these distinctions," it is 
 replied. " The gods are able to enforce them ; there- 
 fore, fear the gods." 
 
 Skepticism had two answers to this defense. The 
 one answer was simple : " Who knows whether there 
 are any gods, or what the gods, if they exist, may 
 choose to do ? " The other answer was more subtle, 
 because it really expressed in skeptical guise a new 
 form of moral idealism. It is best preserved to us 
 in a fine passage in the second book of Plato's Re- 
 public. Here the young men, Glaucon and Adei- 
 mantos, confess that certain sophistic objections to 
 the reality of moral distinctions are deeply puzzling to 
 themselves. They ask Socrates to discuss the matter 
 in some such fashion as to remove these doubts. 
 They sum up the doubts in substance as follows : 
 Grant that the gods are of irresistible might, and 
 that they are disposed to enforce some moral law ; 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 35 
 
 still does that fact give any true distinction between 
 good and evil as such ? For whoever urges us to do 
 right merely to get the favor of the gods, urges us 
 in reality just to do what is prudent. Such doctrines ' I 
 make justice not desirable in itself, but desirable )j 
 solely for what it brings in its train. And thus there 
 would be no difference between good and evil as such, 
 but only between what brings reward and what ^ 
 brings punishment. " Therefore, O Socrates," they 
 in effect say, " do thou defend for us justice in itself, 
 and show us what it is worth in itself, and how it is 
 different from injustice. But put us not off with 
 stories about reward and punishment." Such is a 
 brief summary of their two speeches. 
 
 No better could either the need or the difficulty 
 of the task of moral idealism be set forth than in 
 these eloquent statements. How does Plato lay the 
 ghosts that he has thus raised ? How does he give 
 an independent foundation to the ideal of justice ? 
 He surely felt how hard a problem he was under- 
 taking. He has, in fact, attempted several answers 
 to it. But the main answer, given in the Repub- 
 lic itself is insufficient, though noble. This answer* 
 is, in effect, that the properly balanced, fully and 
 harmoniously developed soul, absorbed in the con- 
 templation of eternal truth, cannot possibly desire 
 injustice ; that only the tyrannical soul, in which 
 the desires have the upper hand, where nothing is 
 secure, whose life is like the life of an ill-governed 
 or even anarchic community, tumultuous, wretched, 
 helpless before passion, only such a soul can desire 
 injustice. Injustice, then, means desire for discord, ) f 
 
36 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 it means the victory of the desires over the reason, 
 it is inconsistent with the life of the soul that is 
 given to blessed contemplation of the eternal ideas. 
 For such a blessed soul its blessedness is, in the fine 
 phrase that Spinoza long afterwards created, not the 
 reward of virtue, but virtue itself ; so that such a 
 soul will not do the right as a means by which it 
 may procure the blessed contemplation of the eter- 
 nal, but, being engaged in this blessed contempla- 
 tion, it is thereby enabled to do right. 
 
 But to the wicked soul of the unjust man Plato 
 seemingly has no inducement to offer in order to per- 
 suade it to become just, save the eloquent statement 
 of the pains that accompany injustice, the picture of 
 the warfare of desires, the proof of the wretched in- 
 stability and of the possibly eternal misery in which 
 the tyrannical soul must live. And thus Plato him- 
 self would be in so far open to the objection that his 
 Glaucon and Adeimantos had made to all previous 
 moralists, namely, that they never gave a reason 
 why justice in itself was to be chosen, but always 
 made justice desirable by reason of the rewards that 
 result from it. For Plato's view, as for that of less 
 ideal moralists, the unjust man should seek to be- 
 come just because, until he does become just, he will 
 be wretched. Can no other basis for the virtue of 
 justice be found save this one ? If none can be 
 found save this, then whenever a soul exists that 
 prefers the tumult of desire, with average success in 
 injustice, to the solemn peace of the contemplation 
 of ideal good apart from the satisfaction of sensuous 
 desires, for that soul Plato's argument will be worth- 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 37 
 
 less. Such a tyrannical nian will delight to remain 
 a tyrant, and that will be the end of life for him. 
 
 The suggestiveness, the deeper significance of this 
 Platonic doctrine, we do not deny. But, as it stands, 
 the doctrine' is not complete nor consistent. For 
 Plato himself has given us as the support for his 
 ideal, a fact, or a supposed fact, of human nature. 
 A moral skeptic will deal with it as Glaucon and 
 Adeimantos had dealt with the popular morality. 
 The supposed fact, they will say, may be doubted. 
 Perhaps some tyrant will actually feel happier than 
 some struggling and aspiring soul far higher up in 
 the heavens. But, leaving that doubt aside, there is 
 the other objection. The ideal justice has come to 
 be founded on a bare physical fact, namely, on the 
 constitution of the soul, which might, for all we can 
 see, have been different. 
 
 Important as he is in concrete ethical questions, 
 Aristotle does nothing of importance to remove this 
 fundamental difficulty, since his position as to this 
 matter is too near to Plato's. Still less do the Epi- 
 cureans, for whom in fact just this difficulty does not 
 exist. Plainly they declare that they merely state 
 physical facts. Generosity, fidelity to friends, and 
 other idealistic activities they indeed regard as the 
 part of the wise man, but the end of all is very 
 frankly declared to be his selfish advantage. As 
 Cicero expresses their view : l " Cum solitudo et 
 vita sine amicis insidiarum et metus plena sit, ratio 
 ipsa monet amicitias comparare, quibus partis con- 
 
 1 De Fin., I. 20, 66. Quoted in Zeller's Philos. d. Griechen, Th. 
 3, Abth. I. (3ded.) p. 460. 
 
38 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 firmatur animus et a spe pariendarum voluptatum 
 sejungi non potest." 
 
 The Stoics have a new thought to offer, one that 
 would have been as revolutionary as Christianity it- 
 self, if they could but have grasped arid taught its 
 full meaning. But that was for them impossible. 
 Their new thought, which gave foundation to their 
 moral ideals, was the thought of the perfect equality 
 of all men in the presence of the universal Reason, 
 to which all alike ought to conform. Everyone, they 
 said, ought to be rational ; everyone ought to try to 
 extend the empire of reason. If one's neighbor is 
 a rational being, one can and must try to realize the 
 rational in him almost as much as in one's own self. 
 Hence one's duty to do good to men. This duty, to 
 be sure, commonly did not for the Stoics extend to 
 the point of very great practical self -sacrifice. But 
 at any rate they gave a new foundation for justice. 
 One works not only to conform one's self to the 
 ideal, but also to realize the ideal here in this world 
 in others as well as in himself. The ideal Reason 
 can be realized in yonder man through my efforts, 
 much as, through my acts, it can be realized in me. 
 All men are in so far brothers, members of one fam- 
 ily, children of one Father, and so all alike objects 
 of moral effort for every one of their number. 1 
 
 1 For a collection of the passages illustrative of this doctrine, 
 see the quotations in Zeller's Philos. d. Griechen, Th. 3, Abth. L 
 p. 285, sqq. (3d ed.). Marcus Aurelius is prominent in the list. 
 Epictetus is responsible for the deduction of human brotherhood 
 from the common fatherhood of God. Seneca has frequent expres- 
 sions of similar thoughts. Yet for all that the wise man is to be 
 independent and separate. In his respect for humanity, he is not 
 to lose himself. 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 39 
 
 II. 
 
 This thought was indeed a deep one, and if the 
 Stoics gave but an imperfect practical realization of 
 it to the world, they prepared thereby the way for 
 the reception of the higher thought of Jesus, when 
 that thought appeared. We may therefore more 
 readily suggest the skeptical criticism of the Stoical 
 thought by first looking at the well known comple- 
 tion of the notion of God's fatherhood in the doc- 
 trine of Jesus. 
 
 Jesus founded his morality in his theology, yet he 
 did not make moral distinctions dependent on the 
 mere fact of divine reward or vengeance. An act 
 is for him wrong, not because outside the kingdom 
 of heaven there is weeping and gnashing of teeth ; 
 rather should we say that because the act is opposed V 
 to the very nature of the relation of sonship to God, ( 
 as Jesus conceives this relation, therefore the doers 
 of such acts cannot be in the kingdom of heaven, all 
 whose citizens are sons of the King. And outside 
 the kingdom there is darkness and weeping, simply 
 because outside is outside. Therefore, if Jesus gives 
 us a theological view of the nature of morality, he 
 does not make morality dependent on the bare des- 
 potic will of God, but on a peculiar and necessary*^ 
 relation between God and his creatures. So long / 
 as God is what he is, and they remain his crea- 
 tures, so long must this relation continue. Jesus in 
 fact, as we know, gives us a higher and universal 
 form of the morality of the prophets. They had 
 said, Jahveh has saved his people, has chosen them 
 
40 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 from all the earth, has fed them with his bounty, 
 has treated them as his well-beloved vineyard, has 
 taken the nation as it were to wife. And so, if the 
 people offend against the law of righteousness that 
 is written in their hearts and known through the 
 words of prophecy, they are guilty not alone of dan- 
 gerous revolt against irresistible might, but also of 
 something far worse, namely, of the basest ingrati- 
 tude. Their sin is unheard of in all the earth. The 
 heathen forsake not their wretched gods, that are 
 yet no gods, and shall Israel turn against the will 
 of its living, almighty lover ? The waste vine- 
 yard, the unfaithful wife, these are the types of the 
 iniquity of the people. Their sin is a miserable 
 state of utter corruption. What the very beasts do, 
 to know the masters that feed them, Israel forgets, 
 whose master is not only the maker of all things, 
 but also the loving spouse of his chosen nation. 
 
 This sanction for morality, not the might so much 
 as the tender love of God, is by Jesus extended in 
 range and deepened in meaning. Every man stands 
 before God as beloved son. If he wanders, the 
 Father would fain seek him as the shepherd would 
 a lost sheep ; would fain, like the prodigal's father, 
 fall upon his neck and kiss him, if he will but re- 
 turn ; would fain feed and clothe him with the best ; 
 would not forget him amid all his sins. And the 
 Father's rain and sunshine are for just and un- 
 just. Deeper and tenderer is this thought than the 
 prophetic idea, because the relation is no political 
 one, but a close personal one. To be conscious of it 
 means, according to Jesus, to wish to live in accord- 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 41 
 
 ance with it, so as to return to the Father love for 
 love. Hence, in knowing this relation, one has the 
 highest sanction for all good acts. The ultimate 
 motive that Jesus gives to men for doing right is 
 therefore the wish to be in harmony with God's 
 love. So the Father in his holiness wills for each of 
 us, and so each son, conscious of the love of the 
 Father, also desires, as soon as he is aware of the 
 Father's will. One cannot know of this infinite love ) 
 without wishing to be in union with it. Even with- / 
 out knowing of the love, the very consciousness of 
 the wretchedness of the lonely, separate life of selfish 
 wickedness must lead one to want to forsake the 
 husks and find the Father, even if he should be but 
 the angry Father. Much more then if one has 
 found the Father, has found him caring for the spar- 
 rows, and for the lilies, and for the least and the 
 worst of his children, must orie, thus knowing the 
 Father, desire to submit to him. One is lost in the 
 ocean of divine love. Separate existence there is no 
 more. One is anxious to lose his life, to hate all 
 selfish joys, to sell all that one has, to be despised 
 and rejected of all the world, if so be that thereby 
 one can come into accord with the universal life of 
 God's love, in which everything of lesser worth dis- 
 appears. 
 
 Duty to one's neighbor is but a corollary to all 
 this. In the first place one's neighbor is no longer 
 a mere fact of experience, a rival, a helper, an 
 enemy ; but he is, instead of all this, a child of God. 
 Every other aspect of his life is lost in this one. As 
 child then he represents the Father. The highest 
 
42 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 messenger of God will say in God's name at the last : 
 Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these my 
 brethren, ye did it unto me. And so each brother 
 is the ambassador of God. When Job had spoken 
 of his duty towards the lowly, he had given the sanc- 
 tion for it in the thought : Did not one fashion us ? 
 Jesus gives a higher sanction : Does not one Father 
 love you all ? In the presence of the Father the 
 children are to lose their separateness. They are to 
 feel the oneness of their life. There is no longer 
 any rival or enemy, any master or slave, any debtor 
 or creditor here, for all are in infinite debt to the 
 Infinite One, and all in his sight brethren. 
 
 The Stoics had conceived of a common Father. 
 
 But they regarded him as an impersonal, all-pervad- 
 
 f ing Reason. The thought of Jesus gave to his idea 
 
 of the fatherhood of God a warmth and life unknown 
 
 to any previous thought. And in this warmth and 
 
 life he intended the idea of Duty to grow. The high- 
 
 ] est principle of the doctrine is : Act as one receiv- 
 
 ing and trying to return an Infinite Love. To 
 
 thy neighbor act as it befits one so beloved to act 
 
 towards his brother in love. And thus is Duty 
 
 explained. 
 
 For our present skeptical inquiries this doctrine of 
 Jesus in its original form is no longer enough. For 
 one thing, Jesus himself did not intend it as a philos- 
 ophy, but always expresses it as an insight. And in 
 our time this insight is clouded by many doubts that 
 cannot be lightly brushed away. This idea of God 
 as a Father, it is exactly the idea that our philos- 
 ophy finds most difficulty, nowadays, in establishing. 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 43 
 
 For many in all the future history of our race this 
 idea will be harder to establish than will be the 
 moral doctrine that was deduced by Jesus from it. 
 For many*who with steadfast faith accept the doc- 
 trine of God's fatherhood, their ultimate reason will 
 rather be that, first accepting the morality of Jesus, 
 they find it most natural to accept therewith what 
 they understand to be his theology. His moral doc- 
 trine will be to them the insight, the theology will 
 be taken on trust. Many others will accept indeed 
 the morality, but be unable to accept the theology. 
 In ethical faith they will be Christians, in theology 
 Agnostics. And therefore, to the philosophic stu- 
 dent, who must prove all things, and hold fast only 
 what he finds sure, it is impossible to take the the- 
 ology of Jesus on simple faith, and not profitable to 
 postpone the discussion of the moral problems until 
 he first shall have established a theology. Morality 
 is for us the starting-point of our inquiry. Theol- 
 ogy comes later, if at all. And, as we shall presently 
 see, the theology, if accepted, would not satisfy all 
 the questions of the ethical inquirer. 
 
 Yet if the doctrine of Jesus does not belong 
 among the purely idealistic theories of duty, since it 
 gives duty the fact of God's fatherhood as its foun- 
 dation, it has one aspect that would make the recapit- 
 ulation of it necessary even in the course of a study 
 of purely ideal ethics. For, while this doctrine 
 founds duty ultimately on the consciousness that 
 God is a Father, and so on a belief in a physical or 
 metaphysical truth, still the immediate ground of 
 the idea of duty to one's neighbor is the conscious- 
 
44 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ness in each man that his neighbor is his brother. 
 In the teachings of Jesus this latter insight follows 
 from the sense of common sonship that Jesus wants 
 to give to men. But, apart from the theology, the be- 
 lief in the brotherhood of men, in case it can be made 
 clear and definite, may have just the relation to the 
 idea of duty that Jesus, in his theological ethics, 
 wished the idea of the common sonship to have. 
 
 But it is our present purpose to see how doubt 
 follows the track of the moral idealists. And to 
 carry out even here this purpose, it is very important 
 to note that however much the morality of Jesus 
 seems to rest upon his theology, and did, for him, rest 
 upon that theology, for us that basis would be of it- 
 self insufficient, even if we could unhesitatingly ac- 
 cept the theology. For the skeptical question might 
 arise in the inquiries of the philosopher, to whom all 
 questions are allowed, Why is it evident that one 
 ought to return the Father's love ? Granting the 
 fact of this love, how does it establish the ideal ? 
 And this question, easy as seems the answer of it 
 to a believer, is just the question that the " almost 
 persuaded " of all times have been disposed to ask. 
 Any particular individual may believe in the theol- 
 ogy of Jesus, and yet fail to feel the force of the 
 moral doctrine. Why does this love constrain me ? 
 he may say. In fact the church has always found 
 it necessary to construct for itself a process, or even 
 a series of processes, through which the unbeliever 
 must go, in order to reach the point of development 
 where he could begin to feel the constraining force 
 of the divine love. It has been recognized as a fact 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 45 
 
 that the unregenerate could believe and even trem- 
 ble and yet remain unregenerate. The saving faith 
 was seen to be not identical with the mere belief in 
 God as Father. For the saving faith, divine grace 
 was necessary, adding to the unregenerate recogni- 
 tion of the bare truth the devotion of the loving 
 child of God. And therefore the church has never 
 been content with the doctrine of Jesus in its unde- 
 veloped simplicity. 
 
 But if all this is so, then for us the morality of 
 Jesus, considered as morality, is founded, not on the 
 theological theory alone, but also on a peculiar insight 
 that each man is to have into the duty of returning 
 the divine love. That the divine love is real, gives a 
 basis for all duty in case and only in case one first 
 sees that it is one's duty to return the divine love. 
 And wherein is this insight as such any clearer than 
 the direct insight into the duty of loving one's neigh- 
 bor ? If a man loves not his brother whom he has 
 seen, how shall he love God whom he has not seen ? 
 Is not the duty of gratitude first evident, if at all, in 
 man's relations to his fellows ? Is not love given first 
 as a duty to one's companions, and only secondarily 
 as a duty to God, and then only in case one believes 
 in God ? In other words, are we not here, as in the 
 discussion with the realist at the outset, led to the 
 view that not a physical doctrine, nor yet even the 
 sublimest metaphysical doctrine, as such, but only an 
 ethical doctrine, can be at the base of a system of 
 ethics ? The doctrine that God loves us is a foun- 
 dation for duty only by virtue of the recognition of 
 one yet more fundamental moral principle, the doc- 
 
46 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 trine that unearned love ought to be gratefully re- 
 '* turned. And for this principle theology as such 
 gives no foundation. But on the other hand, upon 
 what should the ideal principle itself be founded? 
 Why is unearned love to be gratefully returned ? Is 
 this principle founded once more on some doctrine 
 of the constitution of human nature ? The same ob- 
 jection would again appear. A physical fact is no 
 ideal. So, then, this insight is just an insight, the 
 acceptance of an ideal wholly for its own sake ? But 
 then returns the old objection. What is such an 
 unfounded ideal but the individual caprice of some- 
 body ? Let the faithful be never so devoted ; still 
 there are the unregenerate, who are somehow to be 
 convinced of a truth that they do not recognize. And 
 how are they convinced, if at all ? Not by showing 
 them the facts, which they have already known with- 
 out conviction ; but by arousing in them a new feel- 
 ing, namely, gratitude. Thus the Christian ideal 
 seems to have for its sole theoretical foundation the 
 physical fact that man often feels gratitude. It is true 
 that no one can accuse Jesus of expressly giving this 
 or any other theoretical foundation to his doctrine. 
 He was necessarily wholly free from the theoretical 
 aim in his dealings with the people. But for us now 
 the point is the theoretical point. If the foundation 
 c. of Christian ethics as popularly understood be not 
 i the physical fact of the Father's love, then is it not 
 i just the physical fact of the frequent existence of 
 u gratitude ? And is either of these a satisfactory foun- 
 dation for an ethical theory as such ? Nay, if Chris- 
 tian ethics be the highest from the practical point of 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 47 
 
 view, still must we not dig much deeper to find the 
 theoretical foundation on which this glorious struc- 
 ture rests ? 
 
 III. 
 
 We have been seeking to illustrate our funda- 
 mental difficulty in ethics, one that is too fre- 
 quently concealed by rhetorical devices. The un- 
 certainty here illustrated results from the difficulty 
 of giving any reason for the choice of a moral ideal. 
 Single acts are judged by the ideal ; but who shall 
 judge the judge himself? Some one, as Plato, or 
 some Stoic, or Jesus, gives us a moral ideal. If we 
 are of his followers, the personal influence of the 
 Master is enough. Then we say : " I take this to* be 
 my guide," and our moral doctrine is founded. But 
 if we are not of the faithful, then we ask for proof. 
 The doctrine says : " Behold the perfect Life, or the 
 eternal Ideas, or the course of Nature, or the will of 
 God, or the love of the Father. To look on those 
 realities is to understand our ideal. If you remem- 
 ber those truths, you will hesitate not to do as we 
 say." But still the doubter may be unwilling to 
 submit. He may say to Plato : " The tyrant is easy 
 to find who wiJl laugh at you when you talk of the 
 peace of philosophic contemplation, who will insist 
 that his life of conflict and of danger is fuller and 
 sweeter in its lurid contrasts and in its ecstasies of 
 sensuous bliss, than are all your pale, stupid joys of 
 blank contemplation. And if the tyrant says so, 
 who shall decide against him? Has not many a 
 man turned with eagerness from the dull life of the 
 
48 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 thinker, once for a while endured, to the richer joys 
 and sorrows of the man of the world? Have not 
 such men actually held the pleasures of life, however 
 dearly bought, to be better than the superhuman 
 calm of your philosophic ideal ? " Even so to the 
 Stoic, the objector may say : " Granted that your 
 eternal Reason does pervade all things and is our 
 common Father, why should that cause me, who am 
 one of his creatures, to do otherwise than I like? 
 Who can escape from his presence ? Even if I live 
 irrationally, am I not still part of the Universal 
 Reason ? The bare fact that there is an Eternal 
 Wisdom does not make clear to me that I must 
 needs be very wise. My destiny may be the destiny 
 of 'a being made solely to enjoy himself." And, to 
 the Christian doctrine, the skeptic may oppose the 
 objection that if the truth does not at once spiritu- 
 ally convert all who know it, the proof is still lacking 
 that the Christian Ideal actually appeals to all pos- 
 sible natures. " If I feel not the love of God," the 
 objector will say, " how prove to me that I ought to 
 feel it ? " Or, as human nature so often questions : 
 " Why must I be loving and unselfish ? " 
 
 Now, the simple, practical way of dealing with all 
 such objectors is to anathematize them at once. Of 
 course, from the point of view of any assumed ideal, 
 the anathema may be well founded. " If you do not 
 as I command," so says any moral ideal, "I con- 
 demn you as an evil-doer." " He that belie veth not 
 shall be damned." But anathemas are not argu- 
 ments. To resort to them is to give up theoretic 
 ethics. We who are considering, not whom we shall 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 49 
 
 practically condemn, but what we can say in favor 
 of any moral theory, must be unwilling to be put off 
 with mere oratorical persuasion, or to mistake prac- 
 tical adhesion for theoretical conviction. We want 
 a code that shall seem not only admirable, but, if so 
 it may be, demonstrable. 
 
 Such objections, then, blocking the path of our 
 idealist, what is he to do with them ? Is there any 
 direction in which he can successfully seek a foun- 
 dation for his ideals ? 
 
 We have, indeed, much seeking yet to do ere we 
 can find the right direction. For, in the next place, 
 we shall have to show how just such objections as 
 we have applied to other ethical doctrines will apply 
 to all those doctrines that put the basis of morals in 
 the often-used mass of instincts called Conscience. 
 Conscience undoubtedly expresses the results of civ- 
 ilized ancestry and training. It no doubt must al- 
 ways prove an indispensable aid in making practical 
 moral decisions ; but if it be used to give a theo- 
 retical basis to ethics, one can say of it what has 
 been already said of other realities. Its universal 
 and uniform presence among men can be doubted, 
 and its value where it is present can be called in 
 question whenever it is employed to give a basis for 
 ethics ; since as a mere physical fact of the constitu- '. 
 tion of human nature, conscience is not yet an ideal, 
 nor an obvious foundation for an ideal. Both of 
 these objections have been frequently urged. Let 
 us venture to repeat the old story. 
 4 
 
50 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Instincts in general are useful, not because they 
 are infallible, much less because they are rational 
 (for they are neither), but because they work quickly 
 and are less capricious than are our less habitual 
 impulses, and so, in common life, are our substitutes 
 for reason. But, in theory, no act is good merely 
 because the instinct called conscience approves of 
 it ; nor does conscience in any man always instinc- 
 tively approve of good acts. Therefore conscience 
 is, for the purpose of founding an ethical theory, as 
 useless as if it were a mere fiction. It gives no 
 foundation for moral distinctions. 
 
 To be sure, we must be understood as referring 
 here not to the moral consciousness of man in its 
 highest rational manifestations ; for that there is a 
 rational and well-founded moral consciousness we 
 ourselves desire to show. The conscience that we 
 criticise is conscience as an instinct. When people 
 say that so and so is the right because the immediate 
 declaration of conscience shows it to be the right, 
 they generally mean that so and so is right because 
 it feels right. And when moralists found their eth- 
 ical doctrine on conscience, they are in great danger 
 of making their whole appeal to mere feeling. But 
 such mere feeling can only give us problems ; it can- 
 not solve problems. To illustrate by a notable case : 
 When Butler, in analyzing the data of conscience, 
 in his " Dissertation of the Nature of Virtue," comes 
 upon the fact that benevolence, or the effort to in- 
 crease the general happiness, is, for our common pof 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 51 
 
 ular conscience, only a part of virtue, not in any sort 
 the whole of it, he really discovers nothing positive 
 about the nature of virtue, but only gives us a very 
 interesting problem about the nature of virtue. If 
 benevolence were the sole basis of virtue, then, says 
 Butler, for our conscience treachery and violence 
 would be "no otherwise vicious than as foreseen 
 likely to produce an overbalance of misery to society." 
 Therefore, he continues, "if in any case a man could 
 procure to himself as great advantage by an act of 
 injustice as the whole foreseen inconvenience likely to 
 be brought upon others by it would amount to, such 
 a piece of injustice would not be faulty or vicious at 
 all." Even so, it would not be wrong, he points 
 out, to take A's property away and give it to B, if 
 B's happiness in getting it overbalanced A's incon- 
 venience and vexation in losing it. But since con- 
 science disapproves of such actions, therefore, con- 
 tinues Butler, " the fact appears to be that we are 
 constituted so as to condemn falsehood, unprovoked 
 violence, injustice, and to approve of benevolence to 
 some preferably to others, abstracted from all con- 
 sideration, which conduct is likely to produce an 
 overbalance of happiness or misery." Were God's 
 "moral character merely that of benevolence, yet 
 ours is not so." All this now shows how full of 
 problems our uncriticised conscience is. It is the 
 starting-point, not the guide, of moral controversies. 
 Conscience approves benevolence, and it also ap- 
 proves the repression of benevolence in cases where 
 justice, distributive or retributive, seems to the pop- 
 ular mind to be opposed to benevolence. And when 
 
52 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 some moralist tries to reduce justice in all its forms 
 to benevolence, the natural conscience is dissatisfied. 
 Retribution it approves, not because retribution may 
 ultimately increase happiness, but because retribu- 
 tion seems good to it. And if the natural conscience 
 is again appealed to, and is at last brought to admit 
 that benevolence is, after all, really the highest end, 
 and punishment only a means, then this appeal is 
 simply a setting of conscience against itself. The 
 popular conscience is, as an instinct, once for all 
 confused and uncertain about the true relations of 
 justice and benevolence. It is useless to ask this 
 instinct to do what the natural conditions that made 
 it never prepared it to do, namely, to make a system 
 of morals. A thinker like Butler, with his serious- 
 ness and depth of insight, defends the claims of con- 
 science only by analyses which bring home to us 
 that our conscience is a mystery, and that its asser- 
 tions about all the deepest ethical questions become 
 uncertain or confused as soon as we cross-question it. 
 An instinct is, in short, like any other habit. You 
 run fast down a familiar flight of stairs so long as 
 you do not think what your feet are doing. Reflect 
 upon your running, and ten chances to one you shall 
 stumble. Even so conscience is a perfectly confident 
 guide as long as you ask it no philosophical questions. 
 The objections here in question have been so 
 frequently urged that it is hardly worth while for 
 those who can feel their force to dwell on them very 
 long. It is enough for the present purpose to add 
 what all the moral skeptics from the time of the 
 Sophists have insisted upon, namely, that the con- 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 53 
 
 sciences of various men, nations and races, are con- 
 flicting in their judgments of acts. This objection, 
 worthless when urged against a well-founded theory 
 of the moral consciousness, is fatal to any theory that 
 makes morality dependent upon a particular emo- 
 tional or intellectual " constitution " of human nature, 
 that declares morality to be known by men through 
 one faculty or " sense " of a peculiar character. If 
 there are many consciences, each claiming rank as 
 the true conscience, and all conflicting, then the 
 choice among these can only be made on the ground 
 of something else than a conscience. 
 
 The caprices of moral instinct are not exhausted 
 when one has enumerated, as nowadays men often 
 do, as many practices as one can find approved 
 or demanded by the consciences of filthy savages. 
 Among civilized men, yes, in our own hearts, each 
 of us can find numberless conflicting and capricious 
 estimates of actions, and it has only a psychological 
 interest to study them in detail, or to try to reduce 
 them to any semblance of principle. Such con- 
 science as we have about common matters is too eas- 
 ily quieted ; and, as a mere feeling, the conscience 
 that can be called moral is not readily distinguish- 
 able in this, or in any other respect, from a mere 
 sense of propriety, from a reverence for custom, or 
 from the fear of committing an offense against eti- 
 quette. That certain blunders hurt us more than 
 our lesser crimes, and that our remorse for them i 
 like our remorse for venial immorality, only more 
 intense, is nowadays a matter of frequent remark. 
 You ride using another man's season-ticket, or you 
 
54 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tell a white lie, or speak an unkind word, and con- 
 science, if a little used to such things, never winces. 
 But you bow to the wrong man in the street, or you 
 mispronounce a word, or you tip over a glass of wa- 
 ter, and then you agonize about your shortcoming 
 all day long, yes, from time to time for weeks. 
 Such an impartial and independent judge is the 
 feeling of what you ought to have done. Shall 
 ethics be founded on feeling, which to-day is and to- 
 morrow is cast into the oven ? 
 
 The traditional answer of the advocates of con- 
 science, when these facts are urged against them, is 
 well known. They say, various less dignified mental 
 tendencies may at times be mistaken for conscience ; 
 but the moral sense is real and trustworthy notwith- 
 standing all these mistakes. Shame, or love of 
 praise, or sense of propriety may pass themselves off 
 as conscience; but the genuine conscience, when 
 you find it, is infallible. But we may still rejoin 
 that, if the difficulty is of this nature, the consequence 
 must be very much the same as what we are insist- 
 ing upon. For if the question can arise whether a 
 given impulse in me, which I take to be conscience, 
 really is the voice of the infallible conscience or not, 
 then this question cannot be decided by appeal to 
 conscience itself ; since the very problem then is : 
 " Of two impulses, both pretending to represent con- 
 science, which is the genuine conscience?" And 
 questions of this sort must be appealed to some 
 higher tribunal than the conflicting impulses them- 
 selves. It will not be enough to apply even Antig- 
 one's sublime test to the warring impulses, and to 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 55 
 
 say : This impulse is not of to-day nor of yesterday, 
 and no man can tell whence it came, therefore it is 
 the voice of infallible conscience. For, fine as that 
 saying is, when applied to a genuine eternal truth, 
 the test is not a sufficient one for us in our weakness 
 to apply to the impulses that we find in our poor 
 selves. For we soon forget whence came our preju- 
 dices and even our bad habits, and we can fancy that 
 to be of immemorial antiquity which has begun to 
 be in our own parish, and within the memory of the 
 old men. A child born in one of our far western 
 settlements grows up amid a community that is a 
 few years older than himself, and not as old as his 
 eldest brother. Yet he shall look upon all these 
 rickety, wooden houses, and half -graded streets, full 
 of rubbish, as the outcome of an immense past; he 
 shall hear of the settlement of the town as he hears 
 of ancient history, and he shall reverence the oldest 
 deserted, weather-beaten, rotting log-cabin of the 
 place, with its mud chimney crumbling to dust, quite 
 as much as a modern Athenian child may reverence 
 the ruins of the Parthenon. A time when all these 
 things were not, shall be beyond his conception. 
 Even so, if moral truth be eternal, we yet dare not 
 undertake to judge what it is by merely examining 
 ourselves to see what customs or tastes or moral 
 judgments feel to our present selves as if they must 
 have been eternal. Such absolute validity one might 
 possibly feel as belonging to his mother's way of mak- 
 ing plum-pudding. Snow, to use a comparison of 
 Aristotle's, is as white after one day as if it had 
 been lying untouched and unmelted for a thousand 
 
56 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 years. And high judicial authority lately expressed 
 the opinion, a propos of a change in standard time, 
 that usage may alter itself in a day as well as in a 
 century, and be as authoritative in one case as in the 
 other. Nothing feels older than a well-established 
 custom, however recent it may be. 
 
 Conscience then cannot be recognized as infallible 
 merely through the test of antiquity as judged by 
 our feeling. Conscience furthermore, or emotions 
 that pretend to the authority of * conscience, may be 
 found counseling or approving contradictory ways 
 of action. Therefore conscience is no sufficient 
 moral guide. 
 
 But even if all this were waived, if conscience 
 were in actual agreement among all men, and if 
 there were no difficulty in distinguishing the voice 
 of conscience from the voice of passion, or from 
 other prejudices or sentiments, it would remain true 
 that no ultimate theory of the difference between 
 right and wrong could be founded on the assertions 
 of any instinct. Why an individual should obey his 
 conscience unless he wishes to do so, cannot be made 
 clear by conscience itself alone. Nor can the neces- 
 sity and real truth of a distinction be made clear by 
 the assertions of a faculty that, however dignified it 
 may be, appears in the individual as a personal emo- 
 tion, a prejudice or choice, determined by an im- 
 pulse in him. Even if other people actually have 
 this same impulse, that does not make their common 
 prejudice necessary or rational. Conscience, if uni- 
 versal, would still be only a physical fact. If there 
 are actually no differences among various consciences, 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 57 
 
 it is still impossible to see why there might not be. 
 And the possibility is as fatal to the authority of bare 
 conscience as the reality would be. In conscience 
 alone, without some higher rational test, there is no 
 ground evident wherefore its decisions might not 
 have been other than they are. But what the mor- 
 alist wants is such a distinction between right and 
 wrong as does not depend upon any mere accident of 
 reality, even upon the accidental existence of a moral 
 sense. He wants to find the eternal ethical truth. 
 We insist then that one of the first questions of the 
 moralist must be, why conscience in any given case ^ 
 is right. Or, to put the case otherwise, ethical doc- / 
 trine must tell us why, if the devil's conscience ap- ( 
 proves of the devil's acts, as it well may do, the ^ 
 devil's conscience is nevertheless in the wrong. 
 
 The discussion has, we imagine, after all, a practi- 
 cal importance in a way not always sufficiently re- 
 membered. In the name of conscience many crimes 
 have been done. In the name of conscience men 
 condemn whatever tends towards true moral prog- 
 ress, so long as this new element is opposed to popu- 
 lar prejudice. In the name of conscience they kill 
 the prophets, and stone every one that is sent unto 
 them. In the name of conscience wars are waged, 
 whole tribes are destroyed, whole peoples are op- 
 pressed. If conscience is the great practical guide 
 in common life, conscience is also, in many great 
 crises, the enemy of the new light. It is the sensi- 
 tive and penetrating eye of the heart, but it is often 
 blind before the coming day, even because it has 
 been so useful to us in finding our way in the night. 
 
58 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 It ought to be a commonplace of morals that there 
 are certain times when the moral reason must cast 
 aside the moral instinct, when the lover of the right 
 must silence the voice of conscience. The more dan- 
 gerous such moments are, the more dreadful the mis- 
 takes that people at such times are apt to make, the 
 more necessary it is that the moralist should dis- 
 cover some criterion whereby to decide when instinct 
 fails. And this criterion cannot be conscience it- 
 self. We must seek yet deeper. 
 
 V. 
 
 Our criticism of conscience is only another exam- 
 ple of the method before applied to the criticism of 
 the moral ideals. You make a distinction between 
 right and wrong, you give to this distinction the dig- 
 nity of a principle, you deduce special moral judg- 
 ments therefrom. But then some one asks you for 
 any foundation for the principle, beyond your own 
 caprice. You thereupon seek to produce an ultimate 
 reason for your faith. And your ultimate reason 
 what is it but some fact external to your choice 
 and to your ideal judgments ? But such dead exter- 
 nal facts were just what you wanted to avoid. You 
 had said that an ideal must have only an ideal foun- 
 dation. And now you say that the ideally right 
 thing depends on God's nature, on the existence of 
 the universal Reason, or on the assertions of Con- 
 science. Say thus what you will, have you done 
 what you intended? Have you made evident the 
 necessity of your ideal ? If, per impossibile, you 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 59 
 
 suppose your present physical beliefs falsified, if the 
 All-Father changed his mind, and came to hate his 
 children, or if, per impossibile, the Devil triumphed, 
 or the eternal Ideas melted away like snow, or the 
 universal Reason became insane, or the Consciences 
 of all men grew corrupt, would that alter the ideal 
 for you ? If the moral ideal assumes its desired 
 position as judge of all things, then what matters 
 it to the ideal if evil is triumphant in the world? 
 " Fiend, I defy thee with a calm, fixed mind," the 
 idealist will say, after the manner of Shelley's Pro- 
 metheus, and that however much the real world 
 may threaten him. Therefore how can the Is pre- 
 determine the Ought to be ? But if the Ought to 
 be be independent of the /$, how does discussion 
 about the power of God, or his goodness, about the 
 universality of conscience, or its inner strength as a 
 feeling, affect our judgment of the ideal distinction 
 between right and wrong ? 
 
 Thus we are thrown back and forth between the 
 conflicting demands of criticism. " Give us a moral 
 system that is no caprice of thine," say the critics 
 of one sort. That seems reasonable. Therefore we 
 affirm, " This system of ours is founded on a rock of 
 eternal truth," namely, on God's will, or on the intui- 
 tion of universal conscience, or on some like fact of 
 the world. But thereupon other critics say to us : 
 " Wherein do you differ from those who say that 
 might is right, or that success determines the right, 
 or that whatever exists ought to exist ? For after 
 all you say, something that is, ought to be, merely 
 because it is." And always still other critics are 
 
60 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 present, to doubt whether we are right about God 
 or conscience as physical facts. Such critics very 
 plausibly say, " Why found moral truth, which ought 
 to be so secure and clear, on physical or metaphys- 
 ical doctrines that are so often doubted and so hard 
 to establish ? " 
 
 Such is the general difficulty illustrated in the 
 warfare of the moral ideals. They want some high- 
 est judge to decide among them. If they seek this 
 judge in the real world, they seem to endanger their 
 idealism. If they seek their judge among them- 
 selves, the warfare begins afresh. For what one of 
 them can be the sole judge, when they are all judges 
 one of another? 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ALTRUISM AND EGOISM IN CERTAIN RECENT DIS- 
 CUSSIONS. 
 
 But if the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that dark- 
 ness! 
 
 NOT even yet have we exhausted the perplexities 
 involved in this fundamental difficulty of moral 
 theory. Some one may say : " Let the ideals in 
 general take care of themselves. We are concerned 
 in this world with individual and concrete duties. 
 These at least are plain." But these also involve 
 questions concerning the ideal. Let us see then how 
 the same difficulty that has beset the more general 
 moral doctrines, returns to plague us in case of the 
 theoretical treatment of one of these plain duties. 
 Our discussion will here gain in definiteness what it 
 loses in generality. Let us choose a concrete moral 
 question, namely, the problem of the true ground of 
 the moral distinctions and other moral relations be- 
 tween what people nowadays like to call altruism 
 and what they like to call egoism. 
 
 Upon what, then, if upon anything, is founded the 
 moral precept : Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy- 
 self? Or is there any foundation for it at all ? To 
 be quite familiar in discussing this problem, let us 
 take it as it appears in recent discussion. The 
 
62 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 answers of some recent moralists will illustrate for 
 us afresh the great problem of ethics. We shall find 
 two classes of efforts made to solve the difficulty. On 
 the one hand moralists appear whose tendency is 
 mainly, although not always quite wholly realistic. 
 They say that, assuming the selfish aim as from the 
 beginning self-evident, the unselfish aim soon appears 
 as a necessary concomitant and assistant of the self- 
 ish aim. Such writers, from Hobbes to the present 
 day, have insisted upon unselfishness as a more or 
 less refined selfishness, the product of enlightenment. 
 To this view one opposes very naturally the objec- 
 tion that real unselfishness is thus in fact rendered 
 impossible. The moral ideal resulting is therefore, 
 whether right or wrong in itself, at all events at war 
 with other well-known ideals. And hence the expla- 
 nation satisfies nobody. One still lacks a judge to 
 end the warfare. 
 
 On the other hand, however, more idealistic mor- 
 alists have tried to make unselfishness dependent on 
 some impulse, such as pity or sympathy, whose dic- 
 tates shall be perfectly definite and self-evident, and 
 yet not, like the supposed dictates of conscience, 
 either abstract or mysterious. But to such a foun- 
 dation one opposes very naturally again the objec- 
 tion that all such judgments of feeling are capri- 
 cious, that pity and sympathy are confused and 
 deceitful feelings, wholly unfit to give moral insight, 
 and that no ideal can be founded on the shifting sand 
 of such realities. 
 
 The results of such criticisms will once more be 
 skeptical, but the skepticism on which we are here 
 
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 63 
 
 insisting is so necessary a foundation for ethics, that 
 we make no apology for dwelling upon it yet farther, 
 devoting to the special problems suggested by these 
 recent discussions of selfishness and unselfishness a 
 separate chapter. 
 
 I. 
 
 In a collection of Servian popular tales may be 
 found one that runs somewhat as follows : Once there 
 lived two brothers, of whom the elder was very in- 
 cautious and wasteful, but always lucky, so that in 
 spite of himself he grew constantly richer, while the 
 younger, although very industrious and careful, was 
 invariably unfortunate, so that at last he lost every- 
 thing, and had to wander out into the wide world to 
 beg. The poor wretch, after much suffering, resolved 
 to go to no less a person than Fate himself, and to 
 inquire wherefore he had been thus tormented. Long 
 and dreadful wildernesses were passed, and finally 
 the wanderer reached the gloomy house. Now visit- 
 ors at Fate's dwelling dare not begin to speak when 
 they come, but must wait until Fate shall address 
 them, and meanwhile must humbly do after Fate 
 whatever he does. So the wanderer had to live in 
 the house for several days, silent, and busily imitat- 
 ing Fate's behavior. He found that Fate lives not 
 always in the same way, but on some days enjoys 
 a golden bed, with a rich banquet and untold heaps 
 of treasure scattered about ; on some days again is 
 surrounded with silver, and eats dainty but some- 
 what plainer food ; on some days has brazen and 
 copper wealth only, with coarse food ; and on some 
 
64 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 days, penniless and ragged, sleeps on the floor, digs 
 the ground, and gnaws a crust. Each night he is 
 asked by a supernatural voice: "How shall those 
 live who have this day been born ? " Fate always 
 replies : " As I have fared this day, so may they 
 fare." 
 
 Thus our beggar found the secret of his own mis- 
 fortunes ; for he had been born on a day of poverty. 
 But when at last Fate broke the silence, the visitor 
 begged him to tell whether there could be any way 
 whereby he might escape from the consequences of 
 his unlucky birth. "I will tell thee," said Fate. 
 " Get thee home again, and ask thy brother to let 
 thee adopt his little daughter. For she was born on 
 one of the golden days. Adopting her, thou shalt 
 thenceforth call whatever thou receivest her own. 
 But never call anything thine. And so shalt thou 
 be rich." The beggar joyfully left Fate's dreary 
 house, with its sad round of days, and went back to 
 the world of labor and hope. There, by following the 
 advice that he had received, he became in fact very 
 wealthy ; since all that he undertook prospered. But 
 the wealth was his adopted daughter's. For always 
 he called his gains hers. One day he grew however 
 very weary of this, and said to himself : " These fields 
 and flocks and houses and treasures are not really 
 hers. In truth I have earned them. They are mine." 
 No sooner had he spoken the fatal words than light- 
 ning fell from heaven and began to burn his grain- 
 fields, and the floods rose to drown his flocks. So 
 that terror-stricken the wretch fell on his face and 
 cried : " Nay, nay, O Fate, I spoke no truth ; they 
 
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 65 
 
 are not mine, but hers, hers alone." And thereupon 
 flame and flood vanished, and the man dwelt thence- 
 forth in peace and plenty. 
 
 II. 
 
 The really deep thought that imperfectly expresses 
 itself in this little Servian tale may suggest many 
 sorts of reflections. Just now we shall busy our- 
 selves with only one of the questions that are brought 
 to mind by the story. Many who nowadays have 
 much to say about what they call altruism, actually 
 explain all altruism as a kind of selfish evasion of 
 the consequences of cruder selfishness, so that at 
 bottom they really counsel men much as Fate coun- 
 seled the wanderer. They say in effect : " To make 
 thyself happy, do certain things called duties to thy 
 neighbor. That we call altruism. Thou shalt have 
 thy reward. For what is more useful to a man than 
 a man? If therefore thou dost well to him, thou 
 shalt make him in many ways of great service to 
 thee. And so, to get happiness for thyself, see that 
 thou be not openly merely a seeker of thy happi- 
 ness ; but ^call that which thou seekest his happiness. 
 Calling it his will help to make it thine. Be selfish 
 by casting aside grosser selfishness. Live for the 
 others as the means of living for thyself. In co- 
 operation is safety. Act therefore as a good mem- 
 ber of the community, and thou shalt prosper. But 
 such action requires altruism. As the man gave his 
 wealth to his adopted daughter, so that he might 
 own it himself and outwit his destiny, so must thou 
 5 
 
66 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 make thy interests into the interests of society, and 
 by so doing be true to thyself." But now such al- 
 truism, as one at once sees, has no right to parade 
 itself as genuine altruism at all, and if it be the end 
 of conduct, there is no moral conduct distinct from 
 cleverness. But if this be true, it is at least incum- 
 bent upon the moralist to explain why the popular 
 ideal of unselfishness is thus so very far wrong. 
 
 More or less disguised, the doctrine here generally 
 stated appears in modern discussion since Hobbes. 
 Let us follow it into some of its hiding-places, and 
 to that end let us distinguish selfishness and unself- 
 ishness as ideals or ends of conduct, from selfishness 
 and unselfishness as means, accidentally useful to 
 get an end. 
 
 III. 
 
 Altruism is the name of a tendency. Of what 
 tendency ? Is it the result or the intent that makes 
 a deed altruistic ? Was our hero an altruist when 
 he gave to his adopted daughter the name and the 
 enjoyment of a possessor of wealth ? Or would he 
 have needed in addition to all this a particular dis- 
 position of mind ere he could be called an altruist ? 
 
 We need not dispute about mere names as such. 
 Let everybody apply the name Altruism as he will ; 
 but possibly we shall do well to recall to the reader's 
 mind what ought nowadays to be the merest com- 
 monplace of ethics, namely, that we cannot regard 
 any quality as moral or the reverse, in so far as the 
 expression of it is an external accident, with which 
 the man himself and his deliberate aim have nothing 
 
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 67 
 
 to do. Ethical judgments deal with purposes. On 
 any theory of right and wrong the man himself, not 
 the accident of fortune, determines the moral char- 
 acter of his act ; and this view must be held equally 
 whether one believes the man's will to be free or to 
 be bound. Hence the unforeseen or unintended out- 
 come, or any other accidental accompaniment of my 
 act, does not make me egoistic or altruistic in case 
 egoism and altruism are to be qualities that have 
 any moral character at all. If my property is acci- 
 dentally destroyed by fire, and if the loss causes great 
 damage to my creditors or to people dependent on 
 me, the loss makes me no less or more an altruist, 
 although I can no longer do good as before. If my 
 purely selfish plan chances to do others good, I am 
 no less an egoist, although I have made my fellows 
 happy. In short, he who means anything, and does 
 what he can to realize his intention, must be judged 
 according to his intent. Circumstances control the 
 outcome, and they make of the chance discoverer of 
 the first bit of gold in a California mill - race a 
 greater altruist, to judge solely by consequences, 
 than a hero would be who sacrificed himself in a good 
 cause, and lost the battle. But no moral system 
 could make genuine saintliness out of the deed of 
 the man who by chance has found what the world 
 needed. And to take one more example, the power 
 die stets das Bose will, und stets das Grute schafft, 
 is not altruistic in the moral sense, however vast its 
 creations may become. 
 
 All this we maintain, because, if you are morally 
 criticising a disposition, you must study what it is, 
 
68 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 not what are its accidental surroundings. Moral 
 distinctions must apply to aims as such. Unless 
 you are judging men exactly as you judge the north 
 wind or the value of rain, not as consciously good or 
 bad, but as mere forces that happen to produce such 
 and such results under such and such conditions, 
 you must study, not first the accidental circum- 
 stances, but the men. And in fact all moralists, 
 however much they may condemn the weighing of 
 mere motives, however much they desire to take just 
 the consequences into account, as Bentharn did, are 
 nevertheless forced to separate in their moral judg- 
 ments accidental from expected consequences. We 
 maintain that this abstraction of a disposition from 
 its accidental expressions must be rigidly carried 
 out in order to get a n^pral doctrine of any sig- 
 nificance. Let others study natural forces. We 
 here are studying men, and are considering what 
 ideal of a man we can form. Whatever the acci- 
 dents of the outer world give him in the way of 
 means, we want to know his real intent, and to judge 
 that. But if the intent of the man does alone make 
 him altruistic or the reverse, then what, for example, 
 is the position, in ethical controversy, of any system 
 that declares altruism to be morally good because the 
 individual needs the social order to assist him, and 
 must therefore in all prudence try to further the so- 
 cial ends as a means to the furthering of his own ? 
 Does such a system say anything whatever about 
 altruism as such ? Does it not make enlightened 
 egoism the one rule of life ? And if this is what is 
 meant, why not say so plainly ? If the intent of the 
 
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 69 
 
 act makes it altruistic or the reverse, then a man 
 who helps his friend, or his neighbor, or society, and 
 who is honest, and kind, and public- spirited solely be- 
 cause he wants to get protection and help in return, 
 is no altruist, but is as egoistic as a Judas or as a 
 Thoniassen. He is only clearer-headed than they 
 were. On the other hand, if by any possibility any 
 one makes the good of others his sole end, and with 
 this as end takes care of his own health, or devel- 
 ops his mental powers, or amasses wealth, but all 
 merely for the sake of being able to benefit others, 
 then is such a man not egoistic, even while working 
 for himself, but altruistic throughout. For such a 
 man by hypothesis aims, not at his own personal 
 good, but solely at the good of others. 
 
 All this is consequent upon the general doctrine 
 that the distinction between altruism and egoism, as 
 moral qualities, must depend on no external acci- 
 dent, but on the personal deed of the man himself. 
 For, to make special mention of what many forget, 
 the means that you take to get any end are for you 
 merely physical accidents. If things were other- 
 wise, you would with the same intent do other things 
 to get what you seek. Not what you have to do in 
 getting your ends, but what you actually aimed at, is 
 morally significant. Hence the altruism of conse- 
 quences as such is morally insignificant, and the al- 
 truism of intent is alone morally significant. But 
 yet this obvious and seemingly very commonplace 
 distinction is, by the views that we are combating, 
 wholly lost sight of in its further application to hu- 
 man life. We may hear in modern controversy, 
 
70 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 for instance, of a "conflict between altruism and 
 egoism," such as the one that Mr. Spencer discusses 
 in his " Data of Ethics," and we may draw near to 
 learn how the conflict goes. We shall possibly find 
 the question put thus : If a man in trying to be 
 altruistic were so far to forget himself as to injure 
 his health, or to become so weak as to have no 
 healthy children ; if he were to be careless of his 
 property, to let his mind go untrained, or to narrow 
 his own life too much, why then his own objects 
 would be defeated, he would be unable to help any- 
 body, he might do harm, and he could be no genuine 
 altruist. Therefore altruism must not oppose ego- 
 {\ * ism too much, else altruism will defeat itself. On 
 the other hand, we hear, if egoism is extravagant, it 
 will in its turn fail to get its own great end, self-sat- 
 isfaction. For it is useful to one to have his fellow- 
 members in the social organism well-contented, effi- 
 cient, and moral. One must try to make them so, 
 that he himself may enjoy the fruits of their happi- 
 ness. He pays more taxes, and also higher prices 
 for what he buys, if the community as a whole is 
 not contented and happy, as well as healthy and 
 moral. Enlightened selfishness therefore means for 
 him public spirit. His neighbor's diseases are apt 
 to infect his own family ; hence, if enlightened, he 
 will do what he conveniently can to keep his neigh- 
 bor well. His neighbor's peace of mind tends to 
 make his own mind peaceful, hence he will help his 
 neighbor out of trouble. Otherwise he would have 
 to live in anxiety, loneliness, weakness, and danger. 
 His life would be hard, and probably his death would 
 
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 71 
 
 be early. So egoism must not be too extravagant. 7 
 Altruism is " equally imperative." Thus, perhaps, 
 we should hear the so-called " conflict " discussed. 
 If such views were urged, what should we say about 
 them ? We should have to say that they touch in 
 no wise at all the true moral distinction and warfare 
 between selfishness and altruism. They show only 
 that, whatever the opposition in aim, the two princi- 
 pies have after all, in this world of limitation, to 
 use very much the same means. Surely it is no 
 new thing to learn that in warfare both parties have 
 to burn the same quality of gunpowder, and that 
 even the cats when they fight all have to scratch 
 with claws that are very much alike. Do such re- 
 marks explain or tend to diminish or to end the con- 
 flicts in question ? 
 
 How insignificant is this way of studying the con- 
 flict of egoism and altruism, we shall see if we take 
 yet other illustrations. In the sense of the fore- 
 going comparison of egoism and altruism, even a 
 pirate, in his treatment of merchant vessels, would 
 have to be moderately altruistic ; namely, he had 
 better not try to do harm to a merchant vessel that 
 is too well armed for his force to overcome it. On 
 the contrary, his egoism will in this case counsel him 
 unselfishly to let it prosper in its own way. Nay, 
 he may even try to speed it on its course, if it ap- 
 pears disposed to change roles and to attack him. 
 He may say that in just this case he thinks that this 
 merchantman ought to have peace, and to be pre- 
 served from injury. The other alternative would 
 just here increase his own bill for repairs, or might 
 
72 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 make his own existence less happy, or might even 
 bring him to the gallows. The happiness of the 
 crew of the merchantman is therefore just now an 
 object of concern for him, as perhaps furthering his 
 own. So he may be willing to compromise the dif- 
 ficulty, even if it should cost him a large sum to per- 
 suade the belligerent captain of the armed merchant- 
 man to let him alone. Thus he might even add 
 quite a fortune to what the merchantman's captain 
 and crew already have of good things, and this 
 would surely be very marked altruism. Thus ego- 
 ism and altruism may oppose each other, and thus, 
 by careful calculation, their opposing claims may be 
 balanced ! Or yet again, suppose that a robber 
 meets me in the highway, and egoistically demands 
 my purse. If now I should manage to disarm him, 
 to present a pistol to his head, and to ask him to 
 accompany me to the nearest town, evidently the 
 claims of altruism would for that man have a consid- 
 erably stronger emphasis than they had the moment 
 before. He would now be willing not merely to 
 live and let live in peace for the present ; he would 
 not merely be delighted to recognize my rights of 
 property and to leave me free to enjoy them ; but he 
 would undoubtedly be glad to increase my happiness 
 by giving me anything of value that he might have 
 about him, or any information of value to me that I 
 might desire, if by such means he could get me to 
 let him go free. A great altruist would my robber 
 now be, however great his egoism just before. 
 
 Now do such discussions of the claims of egoism 
 and altruism mean anything for the moralist ? But 
 
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 73 
 
 if somebody tells us of the altruism that leads a man 
 to advocate good drainage lest he himself may have 
 a fever, of the altruism that pays one's debts to the 
 sole end that one may get further credit, of the sub- 
 lime unselfishness that makes a man civil even to 
 his rivals, because civility in these days is a social 
 requirement, what have all these wondrous virtues 
 to do in constituting the moral value of altruism as 
 a disposition, more than have the virtues just illus- 
 trated ? We have two dispositions in us : one order- * 
 ing us to respect our neighbor as such, to labor in 
 his behalf because he exists and needs help ; the * 
 other demanding that we regard him as a mere in- 
 strument for our personal pleasure. Only the dis- 
 positions as such concern the moralist. Surely in 
 fundamental ethics we are discussing what we ought 
 to aim at, not how we can get our aims, so long at 
 least as we confine ourselves to the general princi- 
 ples. Applied morality may have much to say of 
 means. But of principles, this balancing of means 
 can tell us nothing. The means are the physical ac- 
 cidents, nothing more. What we want to know is 
 whether egoism as an aim is morally the worthiest 
 aim, or whether altruism is a morally better aim. 
 And we ask not yet how, if one's aim is egoistic, he 
 can most successfully be selfish, but only whether 
 one's aim ought to be selfish, and in how far. To tell 
 us that if we are sensible and selfish we shall avoid 
 having too much trouble with our fellows, is not to tell 
 us that our aims ought to be altruistic, but only that 
 sensible selfish men are not fools. To tell us that 
 if we are wise and altruistic we shall avoid wasting 
 
74 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 our own powers profitlessly, and shall try to preserve 
 our own health, and to cultivate our own wits in use- 
 ful ways, all this is to tell us that unselfish wise men 
 are not fanatics. It may be useful to say this, but 
 it is not useful to the discussion of fundamental 
 moral doctrines. We want to know, for the first, 
 not how successfully to be altruistic, or selfish, but 
 why the effort to be altruistic or to be selfish is mor- 
 ally right or wrong. 
 
 IV. 
 
 If now such comparisons of the claims of altru- 
 ism and egoism throw no light on the fundamental 
 moral questions, what shall we say of the chance that 
 the " conflict " may be explained or diminished by 
 any proof that the evolution of our race will tend in 
 time to diminish, or even to extinguish, the opposi- 
 tion ? If some one shows us that by and by the most 
 selfish being in the social order will find it his own 
 bliss to give as much bliss as he can to everybody 
 else, so that men shall all be even as the people at a 
 successful party, getting pleasure as freely as they 
 give it, and giving it because they get it : and if 
 such predictions seem to anybody to help us to know 
 what duty is, then what can we say in reply, save to 
 wonder at the insight that sees the connection be- 
 tween all these facts and our present duty? If a 
 society ever does grow up in which there are no 
 moral conflicts, nothing but a tedious cooing of bliss 
 from everybody, then in that society there will be 
 no moral questions asked. But none the less we 
 ask such. If the people of that day no longer dis- 
 
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 75 
 
 tinguish egoism from altruism, they may all be 
 blessed : but what is that to us ? We ask, What 
 ought we to do ? We learn in answer that the peo- 
 ple of the future will feel no need to ask that ques- 
 tion. We desire that duty be defined. We learn 
 in answer that if men ever get perfect, the sense of 
 obligation will vanish, so that nobody will question : 
 What is duty ? at all. This may be magnificent, but 
 it is not ethics. 
 
 For what do we really learn by hearing about the 
 society of the future ? Only that, in the time com- 
 ing, there will be such and such freedom from moral 
 problems ? Do we then also learn that we ought 
 to do our best to bring about that reign of peace ? 
 Not at all, for we are sure that we shall never live 
 to see that day ; and we cannot know why we should 
 work for it so long as we are still in doubt about the 
 value of selfishness. Do we learn that we ought to 
 conform as nearly as is possible to the rules that will 
 govern men in that ideal state ? But how then do 
 we learn that ? Is it because the coming form of 
 conduct will be the " highest form of adjustment of 
 acts to ends" as the modern apostles of evolution 
 teach that it will be? Nay, though we do accept 
 most confidently all that- these apostles teach about 
 the future, since surely they must know about it, we 
 still miss anything of moral significance in these 
 physical facts. For why is this coming state the 
 highest ? Does any one say : Because it will come 
 at the end of the physical process of evolution ? 
 Nay then, if every more advanced state is to be more 
 acceptable, by such reasoning the sprouting potato 
 
76 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 or the incubating egg would always be more accept- 
 able than the fresh potato or the fresh egg. Highest, 
 as last, or as most complex, or even as most perma- 
 nent, cannot be in meaning identical with the mor- 
 ally highest that we want defined for us. We ought 
 to work for the realization of that far-off state, if at 
 all, then, because we see it to be, not merely the last 
 in point of time, but also actually the best, and that 
 for some other reason than this physical one. But 
 once more then, why is it best ? And why ought we 
 to try to realize it ? Because in that state, every 
 individual will be happiest ? But then we want to 
 know what we now are to do, and we see that this 
 future happiness will be at present for us unattain- 
 able. If we were in that state we should be happy. 
 But it is not at all plain that, by trying to approach 
 it, we shall now be making ourselves any happier. 
 And why should we do anything unselfish ? 
 
 Evolution then, as a mere prospect, throws no 
 light on the real and fundamental meaning of duty. 
 If we know what we are to try to do, then we can 
 judge whether we ought to help or to hinder evolu- 
 tion as a means to that end. But unless we know 
 our duty otherwise, there is nothing in the mere 
 physical fact of evolution that indicates what is mor- 
 ally higher or lower, better or worse. Why should 
 I work for future ages, if it is not already quite 
 plain, apart from any knowledge of evolution, that I 
 ought to do what I can just now for my brother 
 here? 
 
 After all, however, it is another aspect of evolu- 
 tion upon which nowadays most stress is laid in 
 
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 77 
 
 ethics. It is said that, the future aside, evolution 
 has made us what we now are, and, in particular, has 
 formed our society, and us for society. Hence not 
 only is our welfare in fact best served by a wise al- 
 truism, but this fact is plain to us in our very organ- 
 ization and instincts. Therefore while throughout 
 our aim is our happiness, our nature has been so or- 
 ganized by generations of social evolution as to make 
 pretty certain that our happiness is already depen- 
 dent on our good character as social beings. There- 
 fore the doctrine of evolution shows that selfishness 
 must itself become even in our day altruistic if it 
 would be successful. 
 
 Is this aspect of evolution any more ethical than 
 the other? That is, does it show us, not the means, 
 but the moral End ? We must deny that it does. To 
 be sure, if we never actually felt any conflict between 
 egoism and altruism as dispositions, then indeed for 
 us just that ethical problem would not exist. But 
 we do feel a conflict. And since for us our selfish- 
 ness is not altruistic in aim, it is quite useless to try 
 to make the warring impulses one by declaring that 
 a perfectly enlightened selfishness, even in our own 
 society, would be altruistic, not indeed in aim, but in 
 consequences. For, in the first place, that would 
 actually be a false statement for our present social 
 condition ; since it is still quite possible for a clever 
 selfish man to live very comfortably, by somehow 
 legally wronging and oppressing others. And, in the 
 second place, if the statement were true, it would be 
 ethically worthless. For if good treatment of others 
 is uniformly the behavior that is, selfishly viewed, the 
 
78 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 most advantageous, the man who acts upon that prin- 
 ciple is still selfish, not altruistic at all, and he has 
 not solved for himself the conflict between the two 
 principles, save by utterly disregarding the principle 
 of altruism. If altruism were the only goodness, 
 then altruism of aim would be goodness still, what- 
 ever the selfish consequences. If altruism needs to 
 be limited in any way by selfishness, then the limit- 
 ation must still be a matter of aim, not of accidental 
 result. Altruism as a means to selfish ends would 
 however be no aim at all, but only an accidental 
 tool. If circumstances varied, it would be cast 
 aside, while the selfish aim itself remained constant. 
 J. S. Mill, following others, tried to distinguish 
 the motive from the intent of an act. According to 
 this distinction, a selfish act would be altruistic by 
 intent, if there was in it the deliberate purpose to make 
 somebody happy, however selfish the motive of the 
 act. So it would be altruism to be deliberately and 
 selfishly just. But this distinction, however useful 
 for some purposes, is for our purpose worthless. 
 The question is : What in the act belongs to the 
 man, and what is this part of the act worth ? Now 
 whatever belongs not to the actor, but to the condi- 
 tions under which he works, is morally insignifi- 
 cant. For it is what we have called the physical 
 accident of his surroundings. But intent, apart 
 from motive, seems to be just such a physical acci- 
 dent ; for intent, apart from motive, must relate, not 
 to the real aim as such, but only to the means. A 
 man aims to be selfish. If now he lives where his 
 selfishness requires him to feed and clothe his enemy, 
 
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 79 
 
 
 
 he will, if enlightened, do so, and deliberately too. 
 And he will show in the act just as much and just as 
 little charity as he would have shown had he lived 
 where selfishness was best served by killing his 
 enemy, and had he killed him. The intent, apart 
 from the motive of the man, can have reference only 
 to the means by which he seeks to get his ultimate 
 aim. And such intent relates to accidental matters. 
 If by a physical accident the selfish man grows up 
 where you must speak politely to your antagonist, 
 and treat him with great show of respect, then the 
 selfish man will deliberately, and with conscious in- 
 tent, do so ; and if he grows up where you challenge 
 your antagonist to a duel, he will possibly try that 
 way of getting rid of an enemy; and if he lives 
 among the cannibals, the selfish man, no more or 
 less selfish than in the other cases, only by training 
 more brutal in tastes, will torture and eat his antag- 
 onist. And if the doctrine of evolution shows that 
 one of these forms of " adaptation " is more complete 
 than another, or proves to us that we personally shall 
 be most prudent in adopting one only of the possible 
 courses, all this can in no wise tell us what aim in 
 conduct is morally best, but only what means most 
 exhaustively accomplish the selfish purposes of a 
 civilized man. So intent is morally valuable only 
 in connection with motive. 
 
 It is hardly worth while to dwell longer on the 
 curious devices by which certain defenders of the 
 application of the hypothesis of evolution to ques- 
 tions of fundamental ethics have tried to establish 
 that the truths of evolution teach us that we ought 
 
80 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 to do right. The whole undertaking resembles that 
 of a man who should try to show us that the truth 
 of the law of gravitation clearly indicates that we 
 all ought to sit down. What is evident or doubtful 
 apart from the law of evolution, cannot, in this field, 
 be proved or disproved by the law. Shall we say : 
 " Do good to thy neighbor to-day, because evolution 
 tends to bring into existence a race of future beings 
 who will do good ? " To say this is to say something 
 utterly irrelevant. What do we care about remote 
 posterity, unless we already care about our neigh- 
 bors as they are ? Or shall we say : " Do good to 
 thy neighbor because evolution has made thee a 
 social being, whose instincts lead thee to desire thy 
 neighbor's good?" To say this is to say what is 
 only very imperfectly true. One's instincts often 
 lead him to take much selfish delight in thwarting 
 his neighbor. If it were true universally and 
 strictly, it would not show us why to do right, nor 
 yet what is right. For it is not obviously a funda- 
 mental ethical doctrine that we ought to follow an 
 instinct as such. And if we follow an instinct be- 
 cause we find it pleasing, our aim is still not to do 
 any right save what pleases us personally. And the 
 whole wisdom of the doctrine of evolution would be 
 reduced to the assurance that we ought to do as we 
 like, with due regard to prudence. Shall we then 
 say: "Do good, because the social order that has 
 evolved is too strong for thee, and will hurt thee 
 unless thou submittest to it?" Still one has the 
 selfish motive insisted upon, and morality is still 
 only prudence. And the doctrine will still have to 
 
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 81 
 
 admit that whenever one can outwit society pru- 
 dently, and can gain for himself his selfish aims by 
 anti-social but for him in this case safe means, then 
 and there the selfish man may do this anti-social 
 thing if he likes, the doctrine, with all its good mo- 
 tives, being unable to show why not. For it will not 
 do to resort to some such subterfuge as this, and to 
 say : " A man's advantage depends upon the pros- 
 perity of the whole. But anti-social acts ultimately 
 tend to weaken society. Hence they ultimately tend 
 to diminish the prosperity of the whole, and there- 
 fore tend to harm the selfish individual." All this 
 is irrelevant, in case the social consequences cannot 
 return upon the selfish individual's head during his 
 lifetime. The wasteful owners of great forests in 
 our western mountains, the great and oppressive 
 capitalists that crush rivals and outwit the public, 
 the successful speculators, the national leaders whose 
 possession of the biggest battalions enables them to 
 demand of weaker neighbors unjust sacrifices, all 
 these may listen in scorn to talk about their prosper- 
 ity as dependent upon that of society, their enemies 
 and victims included. " We eat the fruit," they can 
 say. " To be sure we consume it by eating, and we 
 like to waste it so long as we ourselves profit by the 
 waste, and we could neither eat it nor waste it if 
 there were no fruit ; but there is enough to last us 
 and our children for our lifetimes. After us the 
 social famine, but for others, not for us." The now 
 famous reply ascribed to one of our great railroad 
 kings when, some time since, he was asked about the 
 " accommodation of the public " by a certain train, 
 
82 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 well illustrates our point. " Damn the public," said 
 the great servant and master of the traveling world. 
 If he really did not say that, very likely there are 
 those who would have meant it. And may the evo- 
 lutionist condemn them solely on his own grounds ? 
 
 Or finally, shall the doctrine retreat behind an 
 ancient maxim, and state itself thus : " Evolution 
 shows us what are the ultimate tendencies of acts ; 
 but no act ought to be committed which belongs to 
 a class of acts whose general tendency is bad " ? 
 Would not this be a lamentable surrender of the 
 whole position ? Yet such a surrender is found in 
 one or two passages of the book that is nowadays 
 supposed best to represent the doctrine that we have 
 been criticising in the foregoing, namely, in Mr. Spen- 
 cer's "Data of Ethics." The physical facts of evo- 
 lution are to give us our ideal. How? By telling 
 us what in the long run, for the world at large, pro- 
 duces happiness. But if my individual happiness in 
 the concrete case is hindered by what happens to be 
 known to help in the long run towards the produc- 
 tion of general happiness, how shall the general rule 
 be applicable to my case ? Mr. Spencer replies, in 
 effect, that the concrete consequences for individuals 
 must not be judged, but only the general tendency 
 of the act. Happiness is the ultimate end ; but in 
 practice the " general conditions of happiness " must 
 be the proximate end. But how is this clear ? If I 
 know in a given case what will make me happy, and 
 if the means to my happiness are not the general 
 ones at all, but, in this concrete case, something con- 
 flicting therewith, why should I not do as I please ? 
 
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 83 
 
 Because, Mr. Spencer says, the concrete case must 
 be tested by the general law of Evolution. But once 
 more, why ? The only answer is the principle, which 
 Mr. Spencer sometimes tacitly assumes, sometimes 
 very grudgingly acknowledges, sometimes seems to 
 claim as his peculiar property, namely, the well- 
 known Kantian principle, that nothing should be 
 done which we could not wish to see done universally^ 
 or that the rule of the single act ought to be a rule 
 adapted to serve as an universal rule for all ra- 
 tional beings. But if this maxim is essential to the 
 foundation of a moral system, then how poor the 
 pretense that the law of evolution gives us any 
 foundation for ethics at all. The facts of evolution 
 stand there, mere dead realities, wholly without 
 value as moral guides, until the individual assumes 
 his own moral principle, namely, his ideal determi- 
 nation to do nothing that a person considering the 
 order of the world as a whole and desiring universal 
 happiness would condemn, from the point of view of 
 the general tendencies of acts. Grant that princi- 
 ple, and you have an ideal aim for action. Then 
 a knowledge of the course of evolution will be use- 
 ful, just as a knowledge of astronomy is useful to a 
 navigator. But astronomy does not tell us why we 
 are to sail on the water, but only how to find our way. 
 With Kant's principle assumed, we already have at- 
 tained, apart from any physical doctrine of evolution, 
 the essentials of an ethical doctrine to start with ; 
 and we need no doctrine of evolution to found this 
 ethical doctrine, but need it only to tell us the means. 
 But if we have not already this Kantian principle, 
 
84 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 then it is hard indeed to see what the doctrine of 
 evolution can do to help us to get it. Mr. Spencer 
 seems to forget that a doctrine of Means is not a 
 doctrine of Ends. 
 
 In sum then, either the fundamental moral dis- 
 tinctions are clear apart from the physical fact of 
 evolution, or the physical fact cannot illustrate for 
 us the distinctions that we do not previously know. 
 If there is a real moral conflict between egoism and 
 altruism, then this conflict must concern the aims of 
 these two dispositions, not the accidental outcome 
 that we reach, nor the more or less variable means 
 that we employ in following the dispositions. And 
 any effort to reconcile the two tendencies by showing 
 that through evolution, or otherwise, it has become 
 necessary for an altruistic aim to be reached by 
 seemingly selfish means, or for a selfish purpose to 
 be gained by seemingly altruistic devices, any such 
 effort has no significance for ethics. If the question 
 were : " Shall we buy mutton or beef at the market 
 to-day ? " it would surely be a strange answer to the 
 question, or " reconciliation " of the alternatives, if 
 one replied, " But whichever you do you must go 
 over the same road to get to the market." How 
 then are we helped by knowing that, in our society, 
 altruism and egoism, these two so bitterly opposed 
 moral aims, have very often to hide their conflicts 
 under a use of very much the same outward show of 
 social conformity. 
 
 There is indeed no doubt that all the knowledge 
 we may get about the facts of evolution will help us 
 to judge of the means by which we can realize the 
 
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 85 
 
 moral ideals that we independently form. But the 
 ideals themselves we apply to the course of evolution 
 as tests of its worth, or hold as aims to be realized 
 through knowledge of nature. We do not get them 
 from studying the course of nature as a mere pro- 
 cess. There is no doubt of the reality and of the 
 vast importance of the physical fact of evolution. 
 Its ethical importance, however, has been, we hold, 
 misunderstood. Evolution is for ethics a doctrine 
 not of ends, but of the means that we can use. In 
 fact, there is an applied ethic of evolution, but no 
 fundamental ethical doctrine based upon evolution. 
 Those who investigate evolution are doing much to 
 further the realization of ethical ideals, but they 
 cannot make or find for us our ethical ideals. They 
 show us where lies the path to an already desired 
 goal. For them to try to define the goal merely by 
 means of their physical discoveries, is a great mis- 
 take. It can lead only to such labored efforts as we 
 have here been criticising, efforts to prove some 
 such opinion as that altruism is a form of selfish- 
 ness, or that selfishness is the only possible altruism. 
 Whether we are just in fancying that these latter 
 efforts are really identical with the actual efforts of 
 any recent evolutionists, the reader must judge for 
 himself. Altruism we must, at all events, justify in 
 another way. 
 
 V. 
 
 But now let us turn from those who define unself- 
 ishness as a useful means to a selfish end, and let us 
 consider the effort to make pure unselfishness a self- 
 
86 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 . v evident goal of conduct, by founding unselfishness 
 ". on the direct revelation of the emotion of Pity. 
 Here, as before, we shall meet with the skeptical 
 criticism that the mere physical fact of the existence 
 of certain conditions is no proof of the validity of an 
 ideal moral demand. Just as the physical fact that 
 a clever self-seeker must pretend to be unselfish, and 
 must outwardly produce effects that benefit others, 
 is no foundation for a genuinely unselfish ideal, 
 I just so the presence of a pitiful impulse, a mere fact 
 * ; of human nature, is no foundation for an ideal rule 
 i of conduct. The feeling is capricious, just as the 
 social conditions that render public spirit and gen- 
 erosity the best selfish policy are capricious. As 
 the selfish man would behave with open selfishness 
 in case he were where unselfishness in outward con- 
 duct no longer was worth to him the trouble, even so 
 the pitiful man would, merely as pitiful, be cruelly 
 selfish if cruel selfishness, instead of generous deeds, 
 could satisfy his impulse. In fact, he often is cru- 
 elly selfish ; and if sympathy were always unselfish, 
 still, as a feeling, it is a mere accidental fact of hu- 
 man nature. So again, the effort to found a moral 
 ideal on a natural fact will fail. But let us look 
 closer. 
 
 Schopenhauer is the best modern representative of 
 ' the view that Pity or sympathetic emotion is the 
 
 foundation of right conduct. In pity he finds the 
 only unselfish principle in man, and he insists that 
 pity is a tendency not reducible to any other more 
 selfish emotion of our nature. He finds it necessary 
 to refute as an error the oft repeated opinion that l 
 
 1 Grundlage der Moral, p. 211 (2d ed ). 
 
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 87 
 
 " pity springs from a momentary illusion of imagi- 
 nation, so that we first put ourselves in the sufferer's 
 place, and now, in imagination, fancy that we suffer 
 his pangs in our person." This, replies Schopen- 
 hauer, is a blunder. " It remains to us all the time 
 clear and immediately certain, that he is the suf- 
 ferer, not we ; and it is in his person, not in ours, 
 that we feel the pain, and are troubled. We suffer 
 with him, so in him ; we feel his pain as his, and do 
 not fancy that it is ours ; yes, the happier our own 
 state is, and the more the consciousness of it con- 
 trasts in consequence with the situation of our neigh- 
 bor, so much the more sensitive are we to pity." 
 And of this wondrous feeling no complete psycholog- 
 ical explanation can be given ; the true explanation, 
 thinks Schopenhauer, must be metaphysical. In 
 pity a man comes to a sense of the real oneness in 
 essence of himself and his neighbor. 
 
 This pity is, therefore, for Schopenhauer, the only 
 moral motive, first, because it is the only non-egois- 
 tic motive, and secondly, because it is the expression 
 of a higher insight. The first character of pity is 
 illustrated by Schopenhauer in an ingenious passage, 
 by means of a comparison of pity and other motives 
 as exhibited in a supposed concrete instance. We 
 shall find it well to quote the most of the passage in 
 full: 
 
 " I will take at pleasure a case as an example to furnish 
 for this investigation an experimentum crucis. To make 
 the matter the harder for me, I will take no case of char- 
 ity, but an injustice, and one, too, of the most flagrant 
 sort. Suppose two young people, Caius and Titus, both 
 
88 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 passionately in love, and each with a different maiden. 
 Let each one find in his way a rival, to whom external cir- 
 cumstances have given a very decided advantage. Both 
 shall have made up their minds to put each his own rival 
 out of the world ; and both shall be secure against any 
 discovery, or even suspicion. But when each for himself 
 sets about the preparations for the murder, both of them, 
 after some inner conflict, shall give up the attempt. They 
 shall render account to us, plainly and truthfully, of why 
 they have thus decided. Now what account Caius shall 
 render, the reader shall decide as he pleases. Let Caius be 
 prevented by religious scruples, by the will of God, by the 
 future punishment, by the coming judgment, or by any- 
 thing of that sort. Or let him [with Kant] say : ' I re- 
 flected that the maxim of my procedure in this case would 
 not have been fit to serve as an universal rule for all pos- 
 sible rational beings, since I should have used my rival as 
 means and not at the same time as End in himself.' Or 
 let him say with Fichte : * Every human life is Means or 
 instrument for the realization of the Moral Law; there- 
 fore I cannot, without being indifferent to the moral law, 
 destroy one who is destined to contribute to that end/ 
 Or let him say, after Wollaston : ' I have considered that 
 the deed would be the expression of an untrue proposi- 
 tion.' Or let him say, after Hutcheson : ( The moral 
 sense, whose sensations, like those of every other sense, 
 are not further to be explained, has determined me to 
 refrain.' Or let him say, after Adam Smith : 6 1 foresaw 
 that my deed, if I did it, would arouse no sympathy with 
 me in the spectators of the act.' Or, after Christian 
 Wolff : ' I recognized that I should thereby hinder my 
 own growth towards perfection without helping the growth 
 of anybody else.' Or let him say, after Spinoza : i Hom- 
 ini nihil utilius homine ; ergo, hominem interimere nolui. 9 
 
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 89 
 
 In short, let him say what he will. But Titus, whose ac- 
 count of himself I reserve for my choice, let him say : 
 4 When I began to prepare, and so for the moment was 
 busy no longer with my passion, but with my rival, then 
 it became for the first time quite clear to me what now 
 was really to be his fate. But just here pity and compas- 
 sion overcame me. I grieved for him ; my heart would 
 not be put down ; I could not do it.' I ask now every 
 honest and unprejudiced reader, which of the two is the 
 better man ? To which of the two would he rather in- 
 trust his fate ? Which of them was restrained by the 
 purer motive ? Where, therefore, lies the principle of 
 moral action ? " l 
 
 What shall we say of this foundation for altru- 
 ism ? Are pity and unselfishness thus shown to be, 
 for the purposes of ethics, identical ? Schopenhau- 
 er's suggestion seems attractive, but from the outset 
 doubtful. Let us examine it more carefully. 
 
 VI. 
 
 This Pity is, at all events, for the first just an im- 
 pulse, no more ; so at least, as we learn, it appears 
 in the unreflective man. 2 " Nature," Schopenhauer 
 tells us, has " planted in the human heart that won- 
 drous disposition through which the sorrows of one 
 are felt by the other, and from which conies the voice 
 that, according to the emergency, calls to one 4 Spare,' 
 to another, ' Help,' and calls urgently and with au- 
 thority. Surely there was to be expected from the 
 aid thus originating more for the prosperity of all 
 
 1 Grundlage der Moral, p. 231. 
 
 2 Grundlage der Moral, p. 245. 
 
90 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 than could have been expected from a strict maxim 
 of duty, general, abstract, and deduced from certain 
 rational considerations and logical combinations of 
 ideas. For from the latter source one might the less 
 expect success, because the mass of men must re- 
 main what they always have been, rude men, unable, 
 by reason of their inevitable bodily tasks, to get 
 time to cultivate their minds, and therefore, being 
 rude men, must find general principles and abstract 
 truths unintelligible, so that only the concrete has 
 meaning for them. But for the arousing of this 
 pity, which we have shown to be the only source of 
 unselfish actions, and so the true basis of morality, 
 one needs no abstract, but only perceptive knowl- 
 edge (bedarf es keiner abstrakten, sondern nur der 
 anschauenden Enkenntniss), only the mere under- 
 standing of the concrete case, to which pity at once 
 lays claim, without further reflective mediation." 
 And, to make his view clearer, Schopenhauer fur- 
 ther appeals to passages quoted by him with ap- 
 proval from Rousseau : l "II est done bien certain, 
 que la pitie est un sentiment naturel, qui, moderant 
 dans chaque individu 1'amour de soi-mSme, concourt 
 a la conservation mutuelle de toute 1'espece. . . . 
 C'est, en un mot, dans ce sentiment naturel plutdt, 
 que dans les argumens subtils, qu'ilfaut chercher la 
 cause de la repugnance qu* eprouverait tout homme 
 a mal faire." Pity, then, is no abstract principle, 
 but a tendency to do so and so in a concrete case. 
 For the natural and unlearned man it is a mere 
 sentiment, a feeling with his fellow, no more. 
 
 1 " Discours sur 1'origine de 1'inegalite." Quoted in the Grund- 
 lage der Moral, p. 247. 
 
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 91 
 
 But then does this sentiment exhaust for Schopen- 
 hauer the whole meaning of pity ? In no wise. Not 
 for this sole reason is pity the whole basis of morality, 
 namely, because it is the only non-egoistic impulse in 
 us ; but besides this reason, there is the second rea- 
 son used by Schopenhauer to give special dignity to 
 pity. This other reason is in fact the deeper basis 
 for him of pity as the principle of conduct. Pity is 
 namely a revelation in concrete form of a great fun- 
 damental truth, the one above referred to, the great 
 fact of the ultimate and metaphysical Oneness of all 
 sentient beings. Because pity reveals this, therefore 
 has this sentiment an authority, a $epth and a sig- 
 nificance that a sentiment, merely as such, could 
 never have. 
 
 About this aspect of the matter, Schopenhauer in- 
 structs us more than once in his writings. A few 
 quotations from one discussion will serve for present 
 illustration. 
 
 " The difference between my own and another's person 
 seems for experience an absolute difference. The differ- 
 ence of space that separates me from my neighbor,, sep- 
 arates me also from his joy and pain. But on the other 
 hand, it must still be remarked, that the knowledge that we 
 have of ourselves is no complete and clear knowledge." 1 
 ..." Whereon is founded all variety and all multiplicity 
 of beings ? On space and time ; through these alone is va- 
 riety or multiplicity possible, since what is many can only 
 be conceived as coexistent or as successive. Because the 
 many like things are called individuals, I therefore call 
 space and time, as making possible the existence of a mid- 
 
 1 Grundlage der Moral, p. 267. 
 
92 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 titude of individuals, the principium individuationis." l 
 . . . "If anything is undoubtedly true in the explanations 
 that Kant's wonderful insight has given to the world, then 
 surely it is the Transcendental ^Esthetics." ..." Ac- 
 cording to this doctrine, space and time . . . belong only 
 to the phenomena. . . . But if the world in itself knows 
 not space or time, then of necessity the world in itself 
 knows nothing of multitude." ..." Hence only one iden- 
 tical Being manifests itself in all the numberless phenom- 
 ena of this world of sense. And conversely, what appears 
 as a multitude, in space or in time, is not a real thing in it- 
 self, but only a phenomenon." ..." Consequently that 
 view is not false that abolishes the distinction between 
 Self and Not-self ; rather is the opposed view the false 
 one." ..." But the former is the view that we have found 
 as the real basis of the phenomenon of pity, so that in fact 
 pity is the expression of it. This view then is the meta- 
 physical basis of ethics, and consists in this : that one in- 
 dividual directly recognizes in another his own very self, 
 his own true essence. 19 2 
 
 These passages from Schopenhauer are, as one sees, 
 interesting not only because they defend the emotion 
 of pity as the foundation of morals, but also because 
 they offer an interesting suggestion of an aspect of 
 the matter not before noticed in our study. Like 
 so many of Schopenhauer's suggestions, this one is 
 neither wholly original, nor very complete in itself. 
 But it is so expressed as to attract attention ; it is 
 helpful to us by its very incompleteness. It is stim- 
 ulating, although it proves nothing. This modern 
 Buddhism brings to our minds the query (which goes 
 
 1 Grundlage, p. 267. 2 Grundlage, p. 270. 
 
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 93 
 
 beyond the present scope of this chapter), whether 
 the altruistic motives, whatever they are, might not 
 somehow be made of evident and general validity as 
 ethical principles, if we could show that in the mo- 
 ment of pity or in some other altruistic moment 
 there is expressed the nascent discovery of an Illu- 
 sion^ namely, the Illusion of Selfishness. That is 
 what Schopenhauer supposed himself to have found 
 out. In pity he found an unselfish impulse. But this 
 unselfish impulse was, for the first, just an impulse, 
 a sentiment, beloved of Rousseau, remote from the 
 abstract principles that the philosophers had been 
 seeking. Here was unselfishness, but still seeming 
 to need reflective development and deeper founda- 
 tion. Schopenhauer thought that he had found such 
 a deeper basis for pity when he suggested that it was 
 an imperfect metaphysical insight. In effect one 
 might sum up his views thus : In deeper truth, he 
 says, you and I are one Being, namely, the One great 
 Being, the Absolute Will, which works in us both. 
 But because we both perceive in time and space, 
 therefore you and I seem to ourselves to be different 
 and perhaps warring individuals, like the two halves 
 of a divided worm. Only the sentiment of pity sees 
 through the temporal veil of illusion, and so seeing, 
 in its own intuitive, unreflective way, it whispers to 
 us that the pain of each is in truth the other's pain. 
 And when we really feel thus, we forget the illusion 
 of sense, and act as if we were one. So acting we fol- 
 low the higher insight, and when metaphysic comes, 
 it will justify us in our view. Such, in our own 
 words, are Schopenhauer's ideas. 
 
94 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 We are still not concerned for Schopenhauer's 
 metaphysic, which, God knows, was a rotten enough 
 tub for a wise man to go down to the sea in. But 
 in his character as keeper of beautiful curiosities, 
 Schopenhauer shows us in his literary museum, that 
 is built on the dry land, many very useful thoughts ; 
 and we need not follow him out onto the great deep 
 at present. But we note with interest this sugges- 
 tion that he adds to his theory of pity. Is that sug- 
 gestion worth anything ? Is pity in fact a detection 
 of an illusion ? And does this illusion constitute the 
 basis of selfishness? Perhaps that suggestion will 
 be needed in a future chapter. Meanwhile, how- 
 ever, we have at present to do only with pity as a 
 mere emotion. Surely if pity does discover for us 
 any illusion in selfishness, then it must be a particu- 
 lar form of pity to which this function belongs. For 
 much of pity simply illustrates this illusion. We 
 cannot then do better than first to distinguish the 
 selfish from the altruistic forms of what we popu- 
 larly include under the one name Pity, or, to use the 
 more general word, Sympathy. We shall have to go 
 over old and commonplace ground, but we need to ; 
 for the illusion of selfishness, to be detected, needs 
 also to be illustrated. 
 
 VII. 
 
 When one sees his neighbor in pain, does one of 
 necessity come to know that pain as such, to realize 
 its true nature as it is in his neighbor ? Or does 
 one often fall into an illusion about that pain, regard- 
 
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 95 
 
 ing it as somehow not quite real ? Schopenhauer 
 would reply : The heartless man, who has no compas- 
 sion, falls into a sort of illusion about his neighbor. 
 He thinks more or less clearly that that pain of his 
 neighbor's is a sort of unreal pain, not as living as 
 would be his own pain. But the pitiful man, the 
 only quite unselfish man, he perceives the reality 
 of his neighbor's suffering. He knows that that is 
 no phantom suffering, but even such pain as his own 
 would be. 
 
 We want to test this idea in a practical way. So 
 we say : Let us judge of this sympathy by its fruits ? 
 Are we in fact certain to be led to unselfish acts 
 if in all cases we obey the dictates of sympathy ? 
 Schopenhauer thinks that he has secured altruism 
 for his sympathetic or pitiful man by remarking that, 
 in true pity, one feels the pain, not as his own, but 
 as the other's pain. To follow the dictates of this 
 sympathy would of necessity lead, one might say, 
 to the effort unselfishly to relieve the other. But 
 then does not this depend very much upon the way 
 in which pity comes to be an object of reflection for 
 the man that feels it ? Pity is often of itself an in- 
 determinate impulse, that may be capable of very 
 various interpretation by the subsequent reflection 
 of the pitiful mind. One may through pity come to 
 reflect that this feeling stands for a real pain in the 
 other man, and may act accordingly ; or one may 
 have very different reflections. One may fail to 
 realize the other's pain as such, and may be driven 
 back upon himself. For most people the first re- 
 flection that follows upon strong pity is no unselfish 
 
96 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 one at all. It is very simply the precept : " Get rid 
 of the pain that your neighbor causes you to feel." 
 Sympathy with pain may make you tremble, grow 
 faint, feel choked, weep ; and all these sudden emo- 
 tions are followed perhaps by long-enduring melan- 
 choly. All this causes you to forget the reality of 
 the other's pain. This personal trouble of yours, 
 felt in stronger cases in your body as a physical dis- 
 turbance, as something unnerving, prostrating, over- 
 whelming, turns your reflection upon yourself, and 
 you are very apt to ask : What am I to do to be free 
 from it ? So to ask is already to begin to forget 
 your neighbor. The pain that his pain caused has 
 simply become your pain. You are, even through 
 your pity, bound fast in an illusion. For there are 
 three ways of removing this pain, and of satisfying 
 for you the sympathy that caused it. One way, and 
 often a very hard one, puzzling to follow, full of re- 
 sponsibility and of blunders, would be taken if you 
 did your best, perseveringly and calmly, to get your 
 neighbor out of his trouble. That would doubtless 
 take a long time, you would never be adequately 
 thanked for your trouble, and you might very easily 
 blunder and do harm instead of good to him, thus 
 causing in the end yet more sympathetic pain for 
 you, coupled this time with remorse. The second 
 way is to get used to the sight of pain, so that you 
 no longer feel any sympathetic suffering. The third 
 way is generally the easiest of all. That is to go 
 away from the place, and forget all about the sad 
 business as soon as possible. That is the way that 
 most sensitive people take in dealing with most of 
 
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 97 
 
 the suffering that they meet. The first way gives 
 you the most of hard work to do. The second way, 
 by dulling your sensibilities, makes you less alive to 
 the pleasures that are to be gained in the company 
 of happy men. The stern man, who has seen so 
 much suffering as to be indifferent to it, may be less 
 alive to the bliss of sympathy that gentler natures 
 come to know, in refined and peaceful society. By 
 far the most inviting way is the third. It prevents 
 you from growing callous, cold, and harsh. It leaves 
 you sensitive, appreciative, tender-hearted, freshly 
 sympathetic, an admirable and humane being. But 
 it also saves you from the pangs that to refined na- 
 tures must be the most atrocious, the pangs of con- 
 templating a world of sorrow which your best efforts 
 can but very imperfectly help. People with a deli- 
 cate sense of the beautiful surely cannot endure to 
 go about seeing all sorts of filthy and ugly miseries, 
 and if they can endure it, will they not be much 
 happier, as well as more refined, more delicate in 
 taste, much higher in the scale of beautiful cultiva- 
 tion, if they do not try to endure it, but keep them- 
 selves well surrounded by happy and ennobling com- 
 panions ? For the sight of pain is apt to make 
 you coarse ; it might degrade you even to the level 
 of the peevish sufferer himself. Does a refined soul 
 desire that ? No one is a duller, a less stimulating, 
 a less ennobling companion, than the average man 
 when he is suffering atrociously. Pain brings out 
 his native brutishness. He is abject, he curses, he 
 behaves perhaps like a wild beast. Or he lies mute 
 and helpless, showing no interest in what you do for 
 
 7 
 
98 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 him, hating you possibly, just because you are the 
 nearest creature to him. His gratitude is apt to be 
 a myth. So long as he yet suffers, he does not ap- 
 preciate what you are doing for him, for why should 
 he thank you while you make him no better ? And 
 if you can cure him, what then ? Nobody can re- 
 member very clearly a very sharp pain once over. 
 Hence he will underrate your services. You can 
 much better appreciate your moderate trouble in 
 helping him than he can afterwards appreciate the 
 very great and agonizing trouble from which you 
 saved him. One forgets in part one's greatest an- 
 guish, one's most dangerous diseases. The worst 
 troubles are not favorable to clear memory. Above 
 all, however, his memory will be weak for what you 
 did in his case. He will shock you afterwards by 
 having failed to notice that you took any serious 
 trouble in his behalf at all. But, if he was sick and 
 you nursed him, he will remember very well how 
 you harassed him as you nursed him. He will re- 
 member a creaking door or an ill-cooked steak, when 
 he forgets your cups of cold water, your sleepless 
 nights, your toil to secure silence when he needed it, 
 your patience when he complained, your sacrifice of 
 all other present aims in life on his account. All 
 that he will forget, not because he is a bad man, but 
 because he is an ordinary creature whom pain de- 
 based and corrupted, so that he became hardly a fit 
 companion for an elevated and refined soul like 
 yours. He is only human. If you were an average 
 man yourself, you would treat your friends that 
 aided you in your worst suffering after much the 
 
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 99 
 
 same fashion. It is well if the sufferer and his 
 helper do not begin a quarrel that will last a life- 
 time, all because of the meddlesome self-sacrifice of 
 the officious helper. For to the wretched any help 
 is apt to seem officious, because no help is imme- 
 diately and unconditionally successful. 
 
 So then, if you are- tender-hearted, does tender- 
 heartedness dictate all this waste of sympathy ? 
 Plainly not. Tender-heartedness need not say : My 
 neighbor must be relieved. Tender-heartedness, as 
 a personal affection of yours, says only : Satisfy me. 
 And you can satisfy this affection if you forget about 
 all those degraded wretches that are doomed to suf- 
 fer, and associate with those blessed ones whose in- 
 nocent joy shall make your tender heart glad of its 
 own tenderness. Let us rejoice with those that do 
 rejoice, and those that weep, let them take care of 
 themselves in everlasting oblivion. Such is the dic- 
 tate of tender-hearted selfishness ; and our present 
 point is the not at all novel thought, so often elab- 
 orated in George Eliot's novels, the thought that, 
 the tenderer the heart, the more exclusively selfish 
 becomes this dictate of tender-heartedness. Very 
 sensitive people, who cannot overcome their sensi- 
 tiveness, are perforce selfish in this world of pain. 
 They must forget that there is suffering. Their 
 pity makes them cruel. They cannot bear the sight 
 of suffering ; they must shut the door upon it. If 
 he is a Dives, such a man must first of all insist that 
 the police shall prevent people like Lazarus, covered 
 with sores, from lying in plain sight at the gate. 
 Such men must treat pain as, in these days of 
 
100 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 plumbing, we treat filth. We get the plumber and 
 the carpenter to hide it so well that even our civ- 
 ilized nostrils shall not be offended. That we call 
 modern improvement in house-building. Even so 
 we get the police to hide suffering from us ; and, 
 when that help fails, or is inapplicable, we appeal 
 to the natural sense of decency in the sufferers, and 
 demand, on the ground of common courtesy, that 
 they shall not intrude their miseries upon us. Thus 
 we cultivate a tender sympathy for the most delicate 
 emotions of the human heart, as we never could do 
 if we let suffering, as our forefathers used to let filth, 
 lie about in plain sight. Ignore another's suffering, 
 and then it practically becomes non-existent. So 
 says selfishness. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 If we ourselves are very happy, our lack of will- 
 ingness to consider suffering may become greater and 
 greater as we get happier. Nobody is colder in 
 shutting out the thought of misery than a joyous 
 man in a joyous company. " If there be anywhere 
 any wretched people (which we doubt) let them keep 
 well away from this place." That is the voice of 
 the spirit of overflowing sympathetic joy, as Schiller 
 so finely expresses it in the hymn an die Freude: 
 
 " He who, proving, hath discovered, 
 
 What it is a friend to own, 
 O'er whom woman's love hath hovered, 
 
 Let him here his bliss make known : 
 Yea, if but one living being, 
 
 On the earth is his to-day, 
 
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 101 
 
 I And who ne'er has known suth,; fipeJn, r ' ' 
 
 Let him weep his grief away* * * 
 "Joy," says the enthusiastic young "Schiller* in 
 this rhapsody, " Joy was bestowed on the worm." 
 " All beings drink joy at Mother Nature's breast." 
 Delightful generosity of the happy man ! But what 
 do the crushed worms think about it? " Whoso hath 
 a friend," but what of the poor wretches in the 
 slums of great cities, beaten, starved, imprisoned, 
 cheated, and cheating, starved and imprisoned again, 
 all through their lifetimes? How many souls do 
 these poor Ishmaelites call their own ? But of whom 
 shall the joyful man think, of whom does he or can he 
 think ? Of these ? No, it is the tendency of selfish 
 joy to build up its own pretty world of fancy. Every- 
 thing in that world, from cherub to worm, has joy's 
 sympathy, but only in so far as it is also joyous. 
 Seid umsMungen Millionen! dieser Kuss der 
 ganzen Welt ! But in fact dieser Kuss is intended 
 only for the happy world, which in the illusion, beau- 
 tiful, but yet cruel, of the innocently joyous man, 
 seems to be the whole world. Much good will such 
 kisses do to the Millionen that groan and writhe ! 
 Joy ignores them, cannot believe them real. 
 
 Such then are some of the dictates of sympathy, 
 
 1 Wem der grosse Wurf gelungen 
 
 Eines Freundes Freund zu sein, 
 Wer ein holdes Weib errungen 
 
 Mische seinen Jubel ein ! 
 Ja, wer auch nur eine Seele 
 
 Sein nennt auf dem Erdenrund ! 
 Und wer 's nie gekonnt, der stehle, 
 
 Weinend sich aus diesem Bund. 
 
102 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Which cf ten bear 'to our conduct such relation as, in 
 a saying ^of Emerson's, the desire to go to Boston 
 tears to the possible 'ways of getting there. " When 
 I want to get to Boston," says in substance Emerson, 
 " I do not swim the Charles River, but prefer cross- 
 ing the bridge." Emerson's saying was intended to 
 illustrate his own preference for reading translations 
 of foreign authors rather than the originals. It 
 does illustrate very well the preference that we all 
 have for the shortest way out of our sympathetic 
 troubles. To help your suffering neighbor is hard 
 swimming, perhaps amid ice-blocks ; to go on and 
 find elsewhere merry company is to take the bridge 
 direct to Boston. Sympathy leads therefore often 
 to the ignoring of another man's state as real. And 
 this is the very Illusion of Selfishness itself. 
 
 Pity may then turn to selfish hatred of the sight 
 of suffering. It is hardly necessary to dwell at length 
 upon the disheartening reverse aspect of the picture, 
 namely, on the fact that, when pity does not lead us 
 to dread the suffering of others, it may lead us to 
 take such credit for our very power to sympathize 
 with pain, that we come to feel an actual delight in 
 the existence of the events that mean suffering to 
 others. Our hearts may so swell with pride at our 
 own importance as pitiful persons, that we may even 
 long to have somebody of our acquaintance in trou- 
 ble, so that we can go and pose, in the presence of 
 the sufferers, as humane commentators on the occur- 
 rence, as heroic endurers of sorrows that we do not 
 really share. This is the second stage of selfish pity. 
 It is even more enduring and incurable than the 
 
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 103 
 
 first. The dread of the sight of pain may be made 
 to pass away by enough of inevitable experience. 
 But the selfish love of the office of comforter grows 
 with the sense of our personal importance, and with 
 the number of times when we are called upon to ex- 
 ercise our powers. There are people who are always 
 fretful and disconsolate unless they know of some- 
 body who very badly needs consoling. Then they 
 are calm and happy, for they are sure that they are 
 admirable as comforters, they feel themselves the 
 centre of an admiring neighborhood, they are plying 
 their noble avocation in a graceful fashion. This 
 type is surely no very uncommon one. Such people 
 are apt to be intolerable companions for you unless 
 you have a broken leg, or a fever, or a great bereave- 
 ment. Then they find you interesting, because you 
 are wretched. They nurse you like saints ; they 
 speak comfortably to you like angels. They hate to 
 give the little comfort that can be given from day 
 to day to those who are enduring the ordinary vex- 
 ations of healthy and prosaic life. They rejoice to 
 find some one overwhelmed with woe. The happy 
 man is to them a worthless fellow. High tempera- 
 ture is needed to soften their hearts. They would 
 be miserable in Paradise, at the sight of so much 
 tedious contentment ; but they would leap for joy if 
 they could but hear of a lost soul to whom a drop of 
 water could be carried. To them the most blessed 
 truth of Scripture is found in the passage : " For 
 the poor ye have always with you." Yea, blessed 
 are the merciful, for they shall never lack work. 
 They shall be like the sculptor, delighting in the 
 
104 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 rough blocks of marble that contain his beloved 
 statues. For them the world will doubtless have al- 
 ways a plenty of blocks. 
 
 These are not the vulgarly malevolent. Yet they 
 would be disconsolate altogether if evil were to 
 cease. They regard misery as their special prop- 
 erty ; hence they would be very much disappointed 
 to hear that Paradise had come again, and that mis- 
 ery had been abolished. And we are speaking now, 
 not of the professional enthusiasm that must make 
 the physician interested in the diseases that he stud- 
 ies, but of the pure delight in pity that distinguishes 
 certain unprofessional people whose lives would be 
 almost utterly empty of all joy were their neighbors 
 not subject to serious calamities. Surely it is not 
 this sort of pity that overcomes the illusion of self- 
 ishness. Rather does such pity well illustrate that 
 illusion. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Sympathy then, as an emotion, is not always altru- 
 istic, but frequently very selfish. It does not always 
 overthrow, but often strengthens, selfishness. And 
 so deceitful an emotion cannot be trusted with the 
 office of giving moral insight. In so far as pity ever 
 does involve the detection of an illusion of selfishness, 
 we may have occasion to speak of it hereafter. For 
 on that side, Schopenhauer's thought still looks at- 
 tractive. But if we view pity with reference not to 
 insight but to emotion, if we ask whether a given act 
 was unselfish because it was pitiful, then we can 
 already answer that, in so far as unselfishness consti- 
 
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 105 
 
 tutes morality, the pitiful character of an act does 
 not insure its unselfishness, and hence not its morality. 
 Schopenhauer's own typical example, quoted above, 
 is indeed interesting, but not conclusive as to this 
 question. "I pitied him," says the lover, who has 
 refrained from slaying his rival. " Had he not re- 
 sembled my father as he slept, I had done it," says 
 Lady Macbeth. Possibly Lady Macbeth' s pity was 
 good in itself, but not quite sufficient in quantity. 
 But her words remind us of what the lover might do, 
 if only pity stood in the way of the murder that he 
 desired to commit. He might get somebody else to 
 take care of the whole business, preparations and all, 
 and so save his own tender emotions. In fact, how- 
 ever, Schopenhauer's young lover has something 
 more than a mere emotion of pity in him. 
 
 But so far as we have considered sympathy, we 
 have had but another illustration of the difficulty 
 with which we are dealing. Even if sympathy were 
 always unselfish, never capricious, perfectly clear in 
 its dictates, there would remain the other objection. 
 Sympathy is a mere fact of a man's emotional nature. 
 To an unsympathetic man, how shall you demonstrate 
 the ideals that you found upon the feeling of sympa- 
 thy ? And so one returns to the old difficulty. You 
 have an ideal whereby you desire to judge the world. 
 But this ideal you found in its turn on the fact that 
 somebody has a certain sort of Emotion. Any one 
 who has not this emotion you declare to be an in- 
 competent judge. And so your last foundation for 
 the ideal is something whose worth is to be demon- 
 strated solely by the fact that it exists. 
 
106 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Thus in this and in the last chapter, in general 
 and in particular discussions, we have found the one 
 problem recurring. The ideal is to have an ideal 
 foundation, yet we seem always to give it a founda- 
 tion in some reality. And if we then look about us, 
 we always find some skeptic saying, either that he 
 does not feel sure of the existence of any such 
 reality, or that he doubts whether it means what we 
 say that it means, or, again, that in any case there are 
 other people, who have found other realities, and 
 whose moral principles, founded on these other real- 
 ities, are in deadly opposition to ours. The idealist 
 of our preliminary discussion on the methods of eth- 
 ical inquiry has so far met with numerous misfor- 
 tunes. He has continually been enticed over to a 
 sort of realistic position, and then just the same 
 arguments that he used against the realist are used 
 against him. If, however, true to himself, he as- 
 saults the realism of the modern descendants of 
 Hobbes with the argument that all their physical 
 hypotheses are worthless without ideals, then he 
 hears the challenge to show an ideal that is not 
 his whim, and that is not founded on a physical doc- 
 trine. There seems no refuge for him as yet but to 
 turn skeptic himself. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM. 
 
 Long is the night to him who is awake ; long is a mile to him who 
 is tired ; long is life to the foolish who do not know the true law. 
 DHAMMAPADA. 
 
 To turn skeptic himself, we said, seemed the only 
 way open before our idealist. If only he had placed 
 his standard a little lower ! If only he had not 
 insisted on getting his ideal by ideal methods! 
 Then he might have remained safe in some one of 
 the positions that he temporarily assumed. But al- 
 ways he drove himself out of them. Some stupen- 
 dous external reality, some beautiful mental state, 
 would suggest itself to him, and he would say : " Lo, 
 here is the ideal that I seek." But forthwith his 
 own doubt would arise, accusing him of faithlessness. 
 " What hast thou found save that this or that hap- 
 pens to exist ? " the doubt would say, and our ideal- 
 ist would be constrained to answer, " Not because it 
 exists, but because I have freely chosen it for my 
 guide, is it the Ideal." And then would come the 
 repeated accusation that caprice is the sole ground 
 for the choice of this ideal. Skepticism, then, total 
 skepticism as to the foundation of ethics, seems to 
 be the result that threatens us. We must face this 
 skepticism and consider its outcome. 
 
108 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 I. 
 
 It is in fact in such skepticism as this that one 
 finds the real power and meaning of most genuine 
 modern Pessimism. Not so much in the hopeless- 
 ness of our efforts to reach our ideals once chosen as 
 in our perpetual hesitation or unsteadiness in the 
 choice of ideals, we most frequently find the deepest 
 ground for pessimistic despair. Choose an ideal, 
 and you have at least your part to play in the world. 
 The game may seem worth the trouble ; for far off 
 as may be what you seek, there is the delight and 
 the earnestness of free self-surrender to a great aim. 
 But pessimism is almost inevitable if you have been 
 long trying to find an ideal to which you can devote 
 yourself, and if you have failed in your quest. 
 Therefore those advocates of pessimism are most 
 formidable who dwell less upon the ills of life, as 
 bare facts, and more upon the aimlessness of life. 
 Von Hartmann, therefore, to whom pessimism is 
 more the supposed result of a process of summation, 
 and thus is a belief that the sum of pains in life 
 overbalances the sum of pleasures, produces little 
 effect upon us by his balance-sheet. But Schopen- 
 v hauer, who dwelt not only upon the balance-sheet, 
 ( but still more upon the fundamental fact that life is 
 f restless and aimless, he is nearer to success in his 
 pessimistic efforts. It is here that one finds also 
 the true strength of Schopenhauer's model, the 
 Buddhistic despair of life. Choose your aim in life, 
 says in effect Buddhism, let it be wife or child, 
 wealth or fame or power, and still your aim is only 
 
ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM. 109 
 
 one among many, lost in the eternal strife, at war 
 with all the rest, and never able to prove its right to 
 supremacy in the world. From life to life you pass, 
 now a Brahman, now a king, now a worm, now a 
 tiger, now a beggar, now in hell, now among the 
 demons of the air ; your aims alter everlastingly 
 with each new birth, and nowhere do you find life 
 anything but a succession of aims, no one of which 
 is intrinsically more significant than the others. 
 The world of aims is a world of strife, and no life 
 has any real significance. No desire is of any es- 
 sential worth. Therefore, seeing all this, give up 
 desire. Have it as your one aim to have no aim.)) 
 Such is the outcome of the insight into the eternal 
 warfare of aims. The Buddhist parables try to 
 make plain this insignificance of life both by dwell- 
 ing on the fact that men must finally fail to get their 
 aims, and by insisting that, if men temporarily suc- 
 ceed, their condition is no less insignificant than it is 
 when they fail. The failure is used to show a man 
 not so much the difficulty of getting his aim in this 
 bad world, as the worthlessness of his aim. The 
 success when it comes is embittered for the success- 
 ful man by reminding him that all desire is tran- 
 sient, and that what he now loves will come to seem 
 hateful to him. In both cases the lesson, whether of 
 the success or of the failure, is, not that the order of 
 things is diabolical, and therefore an enemy of man- 
 kind, but that the desires themselves are hopelessly 1 
 confused and worthless. If Buddhism dwelt only* 
 on the hopelessness of our efforts to get the good 
 things that we want, the doctrine would result in a 
 
110 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 sort of Promethean defiance of the physical world, 
 our powerful and cruel enemy. But Buddhism in- 
 sists upon it that we know not what are the good 
 things that we pretend to want. Our desires being- 
 ignorant, and endlessly changeable, we have no right 
 to hope for success. The moral of their stories is 
 not a protest against the physical evils about us, but 
 a general condemnation of the vain aims that are 
 in us. 
 
 The same aimlessness of life is the subject of 
 lament in much of our modern romantic poetry. 
 Here is, for the melancholy romantic poet, the great 
 evil of existence, that we know not what is good. 
 Here is the great disappointment of life, that we 
 have no object in life. Here is the great failure, 
 that we cannot make up our minds to undertake 
 anything. Here is the great emptiness, that we 
 have nothing to fill. And thus the ethical skepti- 
 cism that has so far beset our path in the present 
 investigation becomes, when we dwell upon it and 
 fully realize its meaning, an ethical pessimism. We 
 shall then illustrate afresh our problem if we con- 
 sider how this difficulty of the choice of an ideal 
 has affected the search of certain among our modern 
 romantic poets for what they would call the ideal 
 emotion. 
 
 II. 
 
 Of all the subjects of reflection in romantic poetry, 
 none is more familiar than the question of the mean- 
 ing and worth of human life as a whole. The first 
 and natural answer of the modern poet to this ques- 
 
ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM. Ill 
 
 tion is well known. Human life means for him the 
 emotional side of life. The highest good, when 
 found, must be an emotional good. The romantic 
 poet, criticising life, must aim to make clear what 
 kind of emotional condition is the most satisfactory 
 one. In this view we have no mere truism. Many 
 forms of Hedonism would oppose the doctrine that 
 in the intenser emotions can be found the ideal 
 states of consciousness. The common sense of men 
 of the world sees in the more moderate pleasures of 
 polite leisure, in the attainment of practical knowl- 
 edge, in a successful professional or business career, 
 the sources of permanent satisfaction. Several 
 schools of ancient philosophy regarded tranquillity 
 as constituting the essence of a blessed life. But to 
 all this the spirit of modern poetry was from the 
 outset violently opposed. Tranquillity, once ex- 
 changed for storm and stress, is not again regarded 
 as the goal. Active emotion, intense in quality, un- 
 limited in quantity, is what the poets of the revolu- 
 tion desire. One need only mention " Werther," 
 "The Robbers," "The Revolt of Islam," "Man- 
 fred," "Faust," to suggest what is meant by this 
 spirit of the revolutionary poetry. 
 
 Life, then, can be of worth only in so far as it is 
 full of the desirable forms of poetic emotion. But 
 is such fullness of life possible ? Is the view that 
 makes it the ideal a tenable view? Must not the 
 consistent following of this view lead ultimately to 
 pessimism ? The answer to this problem is the his- 
 tory of the whole romantic movement. Here must 
 suffice a sketch of some of the principal results of 
 the movement. 
 
112 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The stir of modern life, then, has awakened sensi- 
 bility, quickened desire, aroused the passion for free- 
 dom, disturbed old traditions. Above all, the theo- 
 logical ideals of life have been, for the romantic poet, 
 disturbed, perhaps shattered. His highest good must 
 be sought in his own soul. What is the consequence ? 
 First, of course, a sense of splendid independence, a 
 lofty spiritual pride. The joy of freed emotion is 
 equaled by few delights on earth. The self- worship of 
 poetic genius is surpassed by few forms of conceit. 
 Shelley, rejoicing in his strength, writing u The Ne- 
 cessity of Atheism," and defending, in all innocence 
 of evil, adultery and incest, is a good example of the 
 expression of this spirit. Lavatar's account of the 
 nature of genius is another instance : " As the appa- 
 ritions of angels do not come, but are present, do not 
 go away, but are gone, as they strike the innermost 
 marrow, influence by their immortality the immortal 
 in men, vanish and yet still influence, leave behind 
 them sweet shuddering and tears of terror, and on 
 the countenance pale joy, so the operation of genius. 
 Describe genius as you will, name it f ruitf ulness of 
 soul, faith, hope, love, the unlearned, the unlearn- 
 able, the inimitable, the divine, that is genius. 
 ? T is inspiration, revelation, that may be felt, but not 
 willed or desired ; 't is art above art, its way is the 
 way of the lightning." 1 We cannot quote a tenth 
 part of this rhapsody, wherein the self-admiration 
 and the mutual admiration of the young men about 
 Goethe, in the years just before and after 1780, re- 
 ceive a characteristic expression. 
 
 1 See the passage at much greater length in Koberstein's Gesch. 
 der deutschen. Nationalliteratur, bd. iv., p. 26, of the 5th edit. 
 
ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM. 113 
 
 This pride leads directly to the effort to build up 
 a wholly new set of ideals. The patience of the 
 statesman, of the student of science, of the business 
 man, is unknown to these forceful young men. 
 They must make a world of their own, and in a day 
 too. At the same time they are without any definite 
 faith. In fact, definite faith would endanger for 
 them the freshness of their emotions. They fear any 
 creed but one self-made. And they can more easily 
 tear down than build up. One of the most- interest- 
 ing of the young geniuses of the age of the German 
 romantic development l is the early lost Novalis 
 (Friedrich von Hardenberg), a representative, like 
 Shelley after him, of the emotional or romantic po- 
 etry in its pristine innocence. A truly noble soul, 
 joined to a weak body, oppressed by many troubles, 
 unable to grow to full manly spiritual stature, he 
 shows us the beauty and imperfection of the emotional 
 movement in close union. He writes pages of vague 
 philosophy, which afterwards impressed the young 
 Carlyle as an embodiment of a sense of the deep 
 mystery of life. You find delight in wandering 
 through the flowery labyrinths of such speculation ; 
 you learn much by the way, but you come nowhere. 
 Only this is clear : the young poet persists that the 
 world must in some way conform to the emotional 
 needs of man. And he persists, too, that a harmo- 
 nious scheme of life can be formed on a purely ro- 
 mantic plan, and only on such a plan. He actually 
 
 1 The age in question extends from 1770 to 1830. No special 
 effort is here made to follow chronological order. Our purpose is 
 to cite illustrations, not to give a history. 
 8 
 
114 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 explains no reality and completes no scheme of life. 
 He hints, at length, that the Catholic church is the 
 best expression of the needs of man. With this un- 
 satisfactory suggestion, the little career of wander- 
 ing ends in death. But in what could it have ended 
 had life continued ? 
 
 Perhaps in what was called by the close friend of 
 Novalis, Friedrich Schlegel, the romantic irony. 
 This is the next stage in the growth, or, if you like, 
 in the decay of the romantic spirit. Emotion is our 
 guide and our goal. But what is emotion ? Some- 
 thing changeable and by nature inconsistent. Each 
 I emotion sets up a claim to fill the whole of life. For 
 < each new one, the earnest poetic soul feels willing to 
 . die. Yet each is driven away by its follower. The 
 feet of them that shall bear it out are before the 
 door even while the triumphant emotion is reigning 
 over the heart within. Fullness of such life means 
 fickleness. Novalis, upon the death of his betrothed, 
 made a sort of divinity of the departed, and dated a 
 new era from the day of her death. His diary was 
 for a while full of spiritual exercises, suggested by 
 his affliction. He resolved to follow her to the grave 
 in one year. Within this year he was betrothed 
 anew. If such is Novalis, what will be a lesser 
 spirit? Conscious of this inevitable decay of each 
 emotion, Friedrich Schlegel suggests that one should 
 make a virtue of necessity, and declare that the 
 higher life consists in a sort of enthusiastic fickle- 
 ness. The genius must wander like a humming-bird 
 in the garden of divine emotions. And he must be 
 conscious and proud of his wanderings. Activity, 
 
ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM. 115 
 
 or rather agility, is his highest perfection. The 
 more numerous his emotions, the nobler the man. 
 The fickler the man, the more numerous his emo- 
 tions. This conscious union of nobility and fickle- 
 ness is the romantic irony, which consists in receiv- 
 ing each new enthusiasm with a merry pride. 'T was 
 not the first, and will not be the last. We see 
 through it, even while we submit to it. We are 
 more than it is, and will survive it. Long live King 
 Experience, who showers upon us new feelings ! 
 
 So much for an ingenious and thoroughly detesta- 
 ble view of life, in which there is for an earnest man 
 no rest. This irony, what is it but the laughter of 
 demons over the miserable weakness of human char- 
 acter ? The emotion was to be our god. It turns 
 out to be a wretched fetich, and we know it as such. 
 'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thou- 
 sands. It is gone, though we trusted in it. It was 
 our stay, and it has flowed away like water. This 
 is not fullness, but hollowness, of life. And how 
 shall the romantic irony supply the vacancy ? This 
 irony is but the word of Mephistopheles about the 
 ruin of Gretchen : Sie ist die erste nicht. Not the 
 first change of emotion is this present one ; not the 
 first breaking up of the fountains of the great deep 
 within us ; but what misery in that thought ! Then 
 there is nothing sure, nothing significant. In our 
 own hearts were we to find life, and there is no true 
 life there ; only masks with nothing beneath them ; 
 only endless and meaningless change. 
 
 The consciousness of this result is present in an- 
 other form of the romantic spirit. The consequence 
 
116 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 is what Hegel, in the Phanomenologie des Geistes, 
 described under the name of Das Ungliickliche 
 Bewusstsein, and what is more familiarly known to 
 us as the Byronic frame of mind. The very strength 
 of the previous emotion renders this consciousness 
 of the hollowness of emotion the more insupport- 
 able : 
 
 " When the lamp is shattered 
 The light in the dust lies dead." 
 
 The brighter the lamp, the deeper the darkness that 
 follows its breaking. 
 
 The romantic despair thus described took many 
 forms in the poetry of the early part of the century. 
 To describe them all were to go far beyond our lim- 
 its. A few forms suggest themselves. If we are 
 condemned to fleeting emotions, we are still not de- 
 prived of the hope that some day we may by chance 
 find an abiding emotion. Thus, then, we find many 
 poets living in a wholly problematic state of mind, 
 expecting the god stronger than they, who, coming, 
 shall rule over them. Such a man is the dramatist 
 and writer of tales, Heinrich von Kleist. " It can 
 be," writes this poet to a friend, December, 1806, 
 " it can be no evil spirit that rules the world, only a 
 spirit not understood." In such a tone of restless 
 search .for the ideal of action, Kleist remains through- 
 out his life. No poet of the romantic school had a 
 keener love of life-problems purely as problems. 
 Each of his works is the statement of a question. 
 In so far Kleist resembles that more recent repre- 
 sentative of the problematic school of poetry, Ar- 
 thur Hugh Clough. Kleist answered his own ques- 
 
ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM. 117 
 
 tions at last by suicide. Others have other ways of 
 fleeing misery. Ludwig Tieck, after running through 
 the whole round of romantic questions, rids himself 
 of his demons by turning his attention to other lit- 
 erary work, and lets most of the old romantic ideals 
 alone, or playfully writes amusing stories about 
 them. Friedrich Schlegel finally escapes from him- 
 self by means of a scholarly toil and Catholic faith. 
 Holderlin takes refuge in a mad-house. Shelley 
 manages to endure his brief life, by dint of childlike 
 submissiveness to his emotions, joined with earnest 
 hope for yet better things. Schiller had joined with 
 Goethe in a search for perfection in the ancient 
 Greek world. There are many fashions of quieting 
 the restlessness that belonged to the time, yet what 
 one of them really answers the problems of the ro- 
 mantic spirit? There is still the great question: 
 How may mankind live the harmonious emotional 
 life, when men are driven for their ideals back upon 
 themselves, when traditional faith is removed, when 
 the age is full of wretchedness and of blind striving, 
 when the very strength of poetic emotion implies 
 that it is transient and changeable ? The conscious 
 failure to answer this question is more or less de- 
 cided pessimism. 
 
 Could modern poetry free itself from that reflective 
 tendency in which we have found its most prominent 
 characteristic, the pessimism could disappear with 
 the criticism of life. But this is impossible. Omit 
 part of our lyric poetry, some of our comedy and of 
 our satire, and the rest of our best nineteenth cen- 
 tury poetic work is a more or less conscious struggle 
 
118 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 with pessimism. The grounds and the nature of this 
 struggle have been set forth in the foregoing. The 
 poet once for all accepts the emotional criterion of 
 the worth of life. Determining to see in the harmo- 
 nious emotional life the best life, feeling as the most 
 certain of principles that " there is a lower and a 
 higher," the poet seeks to picture the perfect exist- 
 ence thus defined. Failure means for him pessi- 
 mism ; not von Hartmann's really quite harmless 
 " eudamonologischer Pessimismus" but the true 
 pessimism of the broken will, that has tried all and 
 failed. The life that ought to be, cannot be; the 
 life that is, is hollow and futile : such will be the 
 result of disappointed idealism. In our time, the 
 idealistic poets that are not pessimists have all 
 fought more or less consciously the same battle with 
 pessimism. Think only of the " Excursion," or of 
 the " In Memoriam," or again of " Faust," that 
 epitome of the thought of our century. 
 
 But before we allow ourselves a word on the rela- 
 tion of " Faust " to our problem, let us look a little 
 more closely at Byron. " Faust " is the crown of 
 modern poetic effort. If that fails as a solution, all 
 in this field has thus far been lost. But in Byron 
 there is a confessed, one may add a professed, moral 
 imperfection, whose nature throws light, not so much 
 on the solution of the problem of pessimism, as on 
 the problem itself. 
 
 The development of Byron's poetry has two very 
 marked periods, the sentimental and the critical. 
 The sentimental Byron of the years before 1816 is 
 not of very great present interest. The Byron of 
 
ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM. 119 
 
 " Manfred," "Cain," and " Don Juan," represents an 
 independent phase of the romantic movement, whose 
 faults are as instructive as its beauties. This pe- 
 riod of Byron's poetry is of course but very roughly 
 described by the word critical, yet that word is at 
 any rate suggestive. A sensitive man, and yet he- 
 roic, strong in spirit, but without fixed ideals of life, 
 a rebel by nature who yet finds 110 greater soul to 
 lead him, no faithful band to follow him in any defi- 
 nite effort for mankind, Byron is a modern likeness 
 of him that in the legend afterwards became St. 
 Christopher. Only Byron seeks the strongest with- 
 out finding him, learns to despise the devil, and never 
 meets the devil's master. Worn out with the search, 
 the poet flings himself down in the woods of doubt 
 and dreams "Don Juan." We look in vain for 
 the right adjective with which to qualify this poem : 
 it is so full of strength, so lavish of splendid re- 
 sources, and yet in sum so disappointing. It has no 
 true eniiing, and never could have had one. It is a 
 mountain stream, plunging down dreadful chasms, 
 singing through grand forests, and losing itself in a 
 lifeless gray alkali desert. Here is romantic self- 
 criticism pushed to its farthest consequences. Here 
 is the self-confession of an heroic soul that has made 
 too high demands on life, and that has found in its 
 own experience and in the world nothing worthy of 
 true heroism. We feel the magnitude of the blun- 
 der, we despise (with the author, as must be noticed, 
 not in opposition to him) the miserable petty round 
 of detestable experiences intrigues, amours, din- 
 ners in brief, the vulgarity to which human life 
 
120 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 is reduced ; but the tragedy is everywhere to be 
 read between the lines, not in what is said. The 
 romantic spirit has sought in vain for the satisfac- 
 tory emotional state, and for the worthy deed to per- 
 form, and now rests, scornful and yet terrified, in 
 dizzy contemplation of the confused and meaning- 
 less maze of sensations into which the world has re- 
 solved itself. " There is nothing there to fear or 
 hope," this spirit seems to say. 
 
 " When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter, 
 And proved it, 't was no matter what he said." 
 
 Or again : 
 
 " ' To be or not to be ? ' Ere I decide 
 I should be glad to know that which is being ; 
 
 'T is true we speculate both far and wide, 
 And deem, because we see, we are all-seeing. 
 
 For my part, I '11 enlist on neither side, 
 Until I see both sides for once agreeing. 
 
 For me, I sometimes think that life is death, 
 Rather than life, a mere affair of breath." 
 
 In " Manfred " the same spirit seeks another, and 
 not quite so successful, a form of expression. The 
 only peace that can come to this world-weary spirit, 
 Manfred expresses at the sight of a quiet sunset. 
 The only freedom from eternal self-examination is 
 found in an occasional glance at peaceful nature. 
 
 " It will not last, 
 
 But it is well to have known it though but once ; 
 It hath enlarged my thoughts with a new sense, 
 And I within my tablets would note down 
 That there is such a feeling." 
 
 The famous last words of Manfred, 
 
 " Old man, 't is not so difficult to die/'-r 
 
ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM. 121 
 
 coming as they do after all Manfred's vacillation 
 upon just this point, indicate the final resolution of 
 despair to brave all possible wretchedness from with- 
 out for the sake of feeling within, in all its strength, 
 though but for a moment, the fierce defiance of the 
 rebellious Titan. Hungry for deeds, finding noth- 
 ing to do, fearing the possible future life, and hating 
 the present, the hero at last resorts to an untrue but 
 stirring assertion of absolute personal independence 
 of all the hateful universe here and hereafter : 
 
 " Thou didst not tempt me, and thou couldst not tempt me. 
 I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy prey 
 But was my own destroyer, and will be 
 My own hereafter." 
 
 This is pessimism that overleaps itself. The out- 
 come of self -analyzing romanticism is the determina- 
 tion to build afresh a world that shall be nobler than 
 this poor world of decaying passive emotions. Feel- 
 ing will not do. Manfred attains something by ac- 
 tion, even though he first acts in the moment of 
 death. Doing work of some kind is, then, that to 
 which we are necessarily driven. But if the action 
 of defiance can make death tolerable, why might not 
 some kind of activity make life tolerable ? Is not 
 the worthy life then to be found, not in emotion, 
 but in work ? Is not the ideal state the ideal activ- 
 ity, not the ideal feeling? This suggestion had 
 been at the foundation of the prototype of Manfred, 
 the Faust of Goethe. 
 
 Praise of the first part of Goethe's " Faust " is 
 nowadays superfluous. Doubtless the work is a 
 
122 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 torso, 1 but so is the life of man. Extravagant en- 
 comium of " Faust," such as that wherewith Her- 
 mann Grimm has marred, as with a showman's ha- 
 rangue, the conclusion of his otherwise most instruc- 
 tive " Lectures on Goethe," seems as out of place as 
 applause in a cathedral. The poem is grand and 
 profound, because the life problems it so truthfully 
 portrays are grand and profound ; in form, if you 
 except digressions, it is sublimely simple and unas- 
 suming. Its imperfections are as open to view as is 
 its grandeur. The doctrine of the poem may be thus 
 briefly suggested. Here is a world wherein nature, 
 the expression of divine intelligence, is perfect ; 
 wherein man, by the same divine wisdom, is left in 
 darkness and confusion. The angels, who simply 
 contemplate nature's perfection, are the " true sons 
 of God." But they do nothing. They only see and 
 think. Man is to act. By his action he is freely to 
 create such perfection as already passively exists in 
 nature. That is, his life is to become an harmonious 
 whole. The postulate of the Lord is that this is 
 possible. Mephistopheles holds the opposite opinion. 
 The question is to be solved by the case of Faust. 
 
 Faust is a man in whom are combined all the 
 strength and weakness of the romantic spirit. No 
 excellence he deems of worth so long as any ex- 
 cellence is beyond his grasp. Therefore his de- 
 spair at the sight of the great world of life. So 
 small a part of it is his. He knows that he can 
 
 1 Cf. the opinion of M. Edm. Scherer as quoted in Mr. Matthew 
 Arnold's essay, A French Critic on Goethe, in the Mixed Essays, p. 
 291. 
 
ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM. 123 
 
 never grow great enough to grasp the whole, or any 
 finite part of the whole. Yet there remains the 
 hopeless desire for this wholeness. Nothing but the 
 infinite can be satisfying. Hence the despair of the 
 early scenes of the first part. Like Byron's Man- 
 fred, Faust seeks death ; but Faust is kept from it 
 by no fear of worse things beyond, only by an acci- 
 dental reawakening of old childish emotions. He 
 thereafter feels that he has no business with life, and 
 is a creature of accident. He is clearly conscious 
 only of a longing for a full experience. But this ex- 
 perience he conceives as mainly a passive one. He 
 does not wish as yet to do anything, only to get 
 everything. 1 But at the same time with this desire 
 for a tempest of new feelings, Faust has the con- 
 sciousness that there never can be a satisfactory feel- 
 ing. Mephistopheles, stating the case of the con- 
 tented man of the world, assures him that the time 
 will come for enjoying good things in peace. Faust 
 indignantly replies that pleasure can never deceive 
 him, the tolerable moment never come. In making 
 this very assertion, however, and in concluding his 
 pact with Mephistopheles upon the basis of this asser- 
 tion, Faust rises above his first position, and assumes 
 a new one. The satisfactory pleasure can never be 
 given to him, and why ? Because he will always 
 remain active. Satisfaction would mean repose, re- 
 pose would mean death. Life is activity. The 
 meaning of the pact is of course that, for good or 
 
 1 Cf. the lengthy discussion of this point in Friedrich Vischer, 
 Goethe's Faust, Neue Beitraye zur Kritik des Gedichts, especially p. 
 291 and p. 304. " Er (FaustJ weiss also fur jetzt nur von der Lust" 
 
124 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 for evil, all the existence of a man is work, and that 
 no one is ever wholly lost so long as the power of 
 accomplishment remains his. But if work is the es- 
 sence of life, then satisfaction must be found not in 
 feelings but in deeds. The world is good if we can 
 make it so, not otherwise. The problem of Faust is 
 therefore the discovery of the perfect kind of activity. 
 
 With this insight the romantic spirit has risen be- 
 yond itself. The essence of romanticism is the de- 
 sire for fullness of personal experience. The essence 
 of this new spirit is the eagerness to accomplish 
 something. The difference is vast. Faust, following 
 
 is new tendency, might be led to an obscure toiling 
 life of endless self-sacrifice. His pessimism (for in 
 the early scenes he is a pessimist) might give way 
 before unquestioning heroic devotion to some great 
 end. Does this take place ? We know too well the 
 answer. The whole poem is indeed a conflict be- 
 tween the two tendencies in Faust, but the first, the 
 desire for manifold passive experiences, is until the 
 last scenes of the second part predominant. Faust 
 is active, but his activity is mainly a continual pur- 
 suit of new experiences. Even at the end he is not 
 active as other men are active ; his work is done by 
 magic ; and the accomplishment for whose sake he 
 is at last willing to say, This is the highest moment, 
 is an anticipation, not a reality. In the real world 
 the satisfactory work is never found. And thus the 
 solution of the problem is not fully given, though 
 the poet, while suggesting it, has done more than 
 any other modern poet. The revolution had fur- 
 nished as life-ideals grand emotion and heroic ac- 
 
ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM. 125 
 
 tion. The two cannot wholly be harmonized. The 
 highest forms of activity imply self-sacrifice, drudg- 
 ery, routine, cool-headed calculation. The highest 
 forms of emotion, pursued by themselves, intoxicate 
 and enervate. It is the purpose of Goethe to lead 
 his hero through the various stages of emotional life, 
 for the sake of making him prefer in the end a mode 
 of action to all forms of simple emotion. The result 
 is to be a man above the deadness of ordinary work- 
 a-day realism, yet as devoted to toil as the stupidest 
 realist. There is to be a free surrender of a full 
 self to the service of some high end. Nothing is 
 lacking to the conquest over pessimism, except the 
 clear statement of that for which the converted 
 Faust is to work. The goal of activity once found, 
 the problem will be solved, and the devil's wager 
 lost. But the dim allegorical suggestions of the sec- 
 ond part will not suffice to give us the account of 
 what is wanted. Faust is to work for human pro- ; 
 gress, and progress means the existence of a whole \ 
 nation of hard-laboring, fearless men who fight for- 
 ever for their freedom. To have been the father of 
 such a people is the highest blessedness. Good, in- 
 deed, we say ; but to have wrought by the devil's 
 aid, through magic and oppression, is this the high- 
 est ? Is this the type of the best activity ? And is the 
 great problem after all really solved ? For what is 
 the ultimate good of the eternal warfare with nature 
 in which mankind are thus left ? Faust leaves be- 
 hind him a nation of toilers, whose business it will 
 be to build dikes to keep the sea out. A worthy 
 end of romantic hopes, truly ! That Goethe him- 
 
126 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 self is not wholly content therewith is proven by the 
 epilogue in heaven, which means, if it means any- 
 thing, that the highest end of human activity is 
 something very fine, but altogether inexpressible, in- 
 visible, inconceivable, indefinite, a thing of ether 
 and dreams. One longs in this last scene for the 
 presence of Mephistopheles, who surely has as much 
 right there as in the prologue, and who would be 
 sure to say, in his terse and sinewy fashion, just the 
 right and the last word about the whole business. 
 
 The incompleteness of " Faust " is the incomplete- 
 ness of modern thought. The poet is silent about 
 the final problem, because modern thought is still 
 toiling away on the definition of the highest human 
 activity. 
 
 Thus we have found that our moral problem is 
 shared by others than the moral philosophers. Al- 
 most at random we have taken a few suggestive 
 illustrations of this same moral problem as it ap- 
 pears to the poets. Had we made use of the poets 
 of the present day, we could have illustrated still 
 other aspects of the question. The restless dramatic 
 genius of Browning, for instance, always giving us 
 glimpses of new ideals that men of strange fashions 
 have or may have, unweariedly warns us not to pre- 
 tend to narrow the possible objects of life down to 
 one, however sacred we may think that one to be. 
 Life, thus viewed, seems a grand everlasting war- 
 fare of ideals, among which peace is impossible. 
 And with this insight into the actual and seemingly 
 irreconcilable warfare of human aims, ethical doc- 
 trine must begin. The outlook is gloomy, but the 
 problem must be faced. 
 
ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM. 127 
 III. 
 
 Such are some of the motives that give genuine 
 meaning to modern pessimism. This instability of - 
 all ideals is the greatest danger to which idealism 
 can be subject. And the problem is not one of mere 
 theory, nor yet even of poetic emotion alone. The 
 problem is one of daily life. We choose some fash- 
 ion of life in the morning, and we reject it before 
 night. Our devotional moments demand that all 
 life shall be devotional ; our merry moments that all 
 life shall be merry ; our heroic moments that all life 
 shall be lived in defiance of some chosen enemy. 
 But we are false to all these our ideals, even while 
 we pretend to have them. And the most dishear- 
 tening aspect of the whole matter lies in the fact 
 that we cannot prove even our faithlessness to be un- 
 worthy, unless we can bring ourselves steadfastly to 
 accept some ideal by which our faithlessness itself 
 can be judged. And this would imply that we were 
 no longer faithless. 
 
 We have thus reached the root of moral skepti- 
 cism. The worst that moral skeptics can say is that 
 all choice of ideals is an accidental caprice, that 
 ideals have no basis but this caprice, and that a 
 moral code depends for its successful propagation 
 wholly on the persuasive personal force of the man 
 that happens to have it and to teach it. 
 
 For the first, then, we provisionally accept this 
 skeptical view. We shall regard the moral ideals in 
 this light. We shall seek no impossible proof for 
 any of them. But we shall try to see whither the 
 skeptical view itself leads us. 
 
128 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 If we look now for a final and perfectly cold- 
 blooded statement of this moral skepticism, a state- 
 ment that shall let us see once for all its meaning, its 
 foundation, and its scope, the present author knows 
 of no better expression of it than the one that is con- 
 tained in the appendix to Mr. Arthur Balfour's 
 44 Defense of Philosophic Doubt," l under the title 
 44 The Idea of a Philosophy of Ethics." Mr. Bal- 
 four has shown us by the book in question that he 
 has a very useful office in philosophic discussion, 
 and we can only thank him for having made posi- 
 tive advance in ethics easier, by his clear statement 
 of the difficulties that in the past have barred the 
 way. 
 
 44 Scientific judgments and ethical judgments deal," 
 says Mr. Balfour, " with essentially different sub- 
 ject-matters." Scientific propositions state "facts 
 or events, real or hypothetical." Ethical proposi- 
 tions do not " announce an event," nor yet do they 
 tell any " fact of the external or internal world." 
 Ethical writers too often consider the " psychology 
 of the individual holding the moral law." But this 
 is no matter for ethics, but only for psychological 
 science. In fact, " if a proposition announcing ob- 
 ligation require proof at all, one term of that proof 
 must always be a proposition announcing obligation, 
 which itself requires no proof." 44 There is no arti- 
 fice by which an ethical proposition can be evolved 
 from a scientific or metaphysical proposition, or any 
 combination of such." 44 The origin of an ultimate 
 ethical belief can never supply a reason for believing 
 
 1 London, MacMillan & Company, 1879. 
 
ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM. 129 
 
 it, since the origin of this belief, as of any other 
 mental phenomenon, is a matter to be dealt with by 
 science ; and my thesis is that (negatively speaking) 
 scientific truth alone cannot serve as a foundation 
 for a moral system ; or (to put it positively), if we 
 have a moral system at all, there must be contained 
 in it, explicitly or implicitly, at least one ethical 
 proposition, of which no proof can be given or re- 
 quired." 
 
 The reader may ask : Is all this the loftiest ideal- 
 ism, or is it simply philosophic skepticism about the 
 basis of ethics ? We may leave the reader to ex- 
 amine for himself Mr. Balfour's very ingenious dis- 
 cussion, but one or two very obvious and simple 
 consequences may be quoted from the rest of the es- 
 say, and these will serve well enough to show here 
 the drift of the discussion. 
 
 " An ethical proposition is one that prescribes an 
 action with reference to an end." Every such prop- 
 osition " belongs to a system." " The fundamental 
 proposition of every such system states an end, which 
 the person who receives that system regards as final 
 as chosen for itself alone." " When two such 
 systems conflict, their rival claims can only be de- 
 cided by a judgment or proposition not contained in 
 either of them, which shall assert which of these re- 
 spective fundamental ' ends ' shall have precedence." 
 " If revenge against a particular individual is for 
 me an end-in-itself, a proposition which prescribes 
 shooting him from behind a hedge may be one of the 
 dependent propositions belonging to that particular 
 system." " Though under the name ethical are in- 
 
130 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 eluded not only moral, but also non-moral and im- 
 moral systems, the distinctions regarded from the 
 outside between these subdivisions are not essential, 
 and have no philosophic import." Such then is the 
 skeptical outcome of this very idealistic position from 
 which we ourselves started. Thus viewed, the moral 
 world seems essentially chaotic. Each end, if chosen, 
 has its own way of marshaling acts as good and bad. 
 But one end cannot establish itself theoretically 
 over against another. The warfare among them is 
 practical, but is not rationally to be judged or ended. 
 Each says, " In me is the truth about right and 
 wrong. I am the Way." But for one another they 
 have, not arguments, but anathemas. They give no 
 proof, only assertion and condemnation. It is the 
 contemplation of this chaos that has suggested to us 
 that plausible and yet dreadful pessimism of which 
 modern thought has had so much to say, and of 
 which this chapter has tried to give some notion. 
 
CHAPTER VL . 
 
 THE MORAL INSIGHT. 
 
 Love is like understanding, that grows bright, 
 Gazing on many truths. 
 
 SHELLEY, Epipsyckidion. 
 
 WE have needed to dwell on our ethical skepti- 
 cism, to experience the real strength of its doubts, 
 in order that we should be able to get new and bet- 
 ter methods of construction for our own doctrine. 
 Deep as is the truth that lies at the basis of many 
 ethical doctrines now either doubted or abandoned, 
 one thing always seems defective about their fashion 
 of building. This one defect has made us question 
 their worth as theories. And our theoretical doubt, 
 as we dwelt upon it, has become practical. We 
 have seen how this ethical skepticism leads to the 
 gloomiest pessimism. Both the skepticism and the 
 pessimism we must meet fairly and fearlessly. And 
 we must ask them how even they themselves are 
 possible. 
 
 I. 
 
 Our skeptical criticism of ethical theories has 
 been so far either internal or external. We have 
 criticised each doctrine in itself, questioning either 
 its consistency or its inner completeness ; or else we 
 
132 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 have criticised it with reference to other doctrines. 
 In the first case our criticism led to no general 
 skepticism, and had importance only in the special 
 case. But the other kind of criticism was of more 
 importance, and took another turn. We said to 
 the doctrine : " Perfect as your system may be in 
 itself, your assumption of your highest end always 
 finds over against itself an equally stubborn assump- 
 tion of an exactly opposing end. And you have 110 
 proof to offer for your rejection of that end. You 
 simply insist upon calling it a diabolical end ; you 
 hurl at it your anathema. Now we, who have 
 wanted proof, not mere enthusiasm, we, who stand 
 critically before your doctrine, and view it from 
 without, and desire to know why we are to accept 
 it, we feel a skeptical indifference about your end, 
 as soon as we compare it with the opposing end, 
 and as soon as comparing, we find the difference be- 
 tween them to be one that rests, not on demonstra- 
 ble truth, but on a mere kind of caprice. Practi- 
 cally we may agree with you in choosing, as men 
 of action, your aim. Our personal caprice may 
 agree with yours. But theoretically we cannot jus- 
 tify this aim. We find, in all that you say, no ob- 
 jective moral truth, but only somebody's capricious 
 resolution. And even if we chance to accept your 
 resolution, who knows when we shall change our 
 minds, and begin acting in some new way, so that 
 what we now call good shall be called evil? In 
 brief, if there is to be possible anything more than 
 moral preaching, if there is to be anything worthy 
 of the name of demonstrated moral doctrine, then 
 
THE MORAL INSIGHT. 133 
 
 all your discussion must lead to something not de- 
 pendent on the bare choice of individual moral 
 agents. But in truth what you give us is just the 
 fact of your choice. And hence it is that we are 
 skeptics." 
 
 What does this our skepticism mean? Unreflec- 
 tive, self-satisfied skepticism always means mental 
 death ; but in self -critical skepticism, observant of 
 itself as of everything else, moves the very life-blood 
 of philosophy. And of this the whole of the present 
 book will try to be an illustration. Just here, there- 
 fore, we want to be as watchful of our skepticism as 
 we were of the systems whose theoretical Weakness 
 led us hither. What is the sense of this theoretical 
 skepticism of our present attitude ? On our reply 
 all else turns. And our reply is : This skepticism 
 expresses an indifference that we feel when we con- 
 template two opposing aims in such a way as mo- 
 mentarily to share them both. For the moment we 
 realize equally these warring aims. They are ours. 
 The conflict is in us. The two wills here represented 
 are our will. And for this reason, and for this only, 
 can we feel the skeptical indecision. Had we the 
 will to choose the one end alone, we should unhesi- 
 tatingly choose it, and should not see enough of the 
 opposing will to be skeptics. Had we only the will 
 that chooses the opposing end, we should feel equally 
 indifferent to the first. Had we neither will at all 
 in mind, did we realize neither one of the opposing 
 ends, we should be feeling no hesitation between 
 them. Our doubt arises from the fact that momen- 
 tarily and provisionally we are in the attitude of as- 
 
134 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 suming both. Our indifference is not the indiffer- 
 ence of ignorance, but of knowledge ; not of failure 
 to understand either end, but of readiness to realize 
 both ends. Hence it follows that moral skepticism 
 is itself the result of an act, namely, of the act by 
 which we seek to realize in ourselves opposing aims 
 at the same time. This observation is of the great- 
 est importance to tis, and we must dwell upon it. It 
 shows us that above all our skepticism is the su- 
 preme End that makes the skepticism itself possible. 
 
 The ethical aims themselves are all of them the 
 expression of somebody's will. Their conflict is the 
 conflict 6"f wills. Doubt about them depends upon 
 the realization of their existence and of their oppo- 
 sition. Therefore this doubt depends for its very 
 existence on the conditions of this realization. We 
 have tried to state what the conditions are. To 
 realize opposing ends so completely that one feels a 
 genuine doubt which of them to accept, implies, we 
 say, the simultaneous provisional acceptance of both. 
 And this may be shown in a more popular psycholog- 
 ical way, as well as in a more general philosophical 
 way. We take the psychological way first. 
 
 How can I know that there is anywhere a will, W, 
 that chooses for itself some end, E ? Really to know 
 this implies something more than mere outer obser- 
 vation of the facts. One must repeat in one's own 
 mind more or less rapidly or imperfectly this will, 
 W, that one conceives to exist in somebody else. 
 And this need of repetition is a well-known psycho- 
 logical truth, very easily illustrated by all sorts of 
 commonplace facts. Let us refer to some of these. 
 
THE MORAL INSIGHT. 135 
 
 To think of a bodily act is to perform the act, or 
 at least mentally to initiate the performance of the 
 act. According to Professor Bain's now generally 
 accepted principle, the memory or the conception of 
 an act is physiologically connected with the fainter 
 excitation of just the same nerve-tracts as would be 
 more intensely excited in the real performance of 
 the act. Therefore it is true that to think of yawn- 
 ing is to initiate a yawn, to think of walking is to 
 initiate steps ; and, in case of any excitable person, 
 or in case of any momentary predisposition to per- 
 form the act, the conception may immediately be- 
 come the act, because the nascent excitation involved 
 in the conception of the act may at once pass over 
 into the completer excitation, and the ideal deed 
 may become a visible fact. Thus the excited man, 
 if not checked by company, may at once talk aloud 
 to himself, his thoughts becoming words. If very 
 much excited, he may mutter to himself even in the 
 presence of company. He is much more apt to do 
 this if he thinks not only of the words themselves, 
 but of the act of speaking them, namely, if he im- 
 agines himself talking to somebody, and emphatic- 
 ally bringing his thoughts home to that other. In 
 a weak state of body, this tendency to repeat an act 
 whenever one conceives it may become quite dis- 
 tressing. To think of vomiting may mean to vomit. 
 Or again, to think of laughter or of tears may in 
 such a case make one laugh or cry. Hence the weak 
 man may dislike to begin laughing, because he 
 knows that, other exciting causes apart, the mere 
 memory that he has laughed may keep him laugh- 
 
136 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ing afresh long after the sense of the ridiculous has 
 passed away, so that to begin laughing may mean 
 total exhaustion before he can stop. 
 
 Imitation rests at least in part upon this tendency. 
 An act is performed, we witness it, we see or know 
 how it is done, we conceive the effort that would 
 lead to the performance of it, and forthwith this con- 
 ception becomes the performance. We imitate the 
 gesture of the actor or of the story-teller before us, 
 and we feel an inner imitation of many acts, even 
 though we suppress the outward signs. In general, 
 for us to realize an act means that we shall do it, 
 either in outward fact, or through a nascent perform- 
 ance that is not outwardly visible. Much of the 
 recently so-called "mind-reading," more accurately 
 named by some psychologists " muscle - reading," 
 rests upon this foundation. For the conception of 
 acts that are not outwardly performed is often indi- 
 cated by slight motions or tensions of arm or of fin- 
 gers, or of the whole body, and the muscle-reader, 
 getting some close contact with his subject, amuses a 
 company by interpreting these unseen, but readily felt 
 signs of the thoughts of his subject. Very deeply do 
 such facts enter into the structure of our mental life. 
 Mr. Galton, investigating word-associations, found in 
 many cases that the idea immediately aroused by a 
 word was a sort of dramatic reproduction of the act 
 expressed by the word. This dramatic reproduction 
 consisted, at least in part, in the feeling of effort in 
 those muscles that would be concerned in performing 
 the act itself. If the momentary association first 
 aroused by the sudden and unexpected sight of the 
 
THE MORAL INSIGHT. 137 
 
 word involves this dramatic imitation of the act 
 named, how much more would the thought involve 
 the dramatic repetition of the act, if one were to dwell 
 upon the nature of this act, and were fully to realize 
 its nature in his own mind. So much then for psy- 
 chological illustration of the view that we are here 
 advancing. If two opposing fashions of action are 
 present to our minds, and if mentally we are trying 
 to realize them both, then mentally we are seeking 
 to reproduce them both. Our skeptical hesitation 
 between them expresses our effort to attain mentally 
 both these ends at once. For what we have said 
 about bodily acts will apply equally well to what we 
 usually call mental acts, and even to general resolu- 
 tions, all of which have a physical side, and are apt 
 to be symbolized by some bodily gesture that we 
 mentally or outwardly repeat when we think of the 
 act or of the resolution in question. 
 
 But all this is not a bare accident of the psycholog- 
 ical structure of our minds ; it is a philosophical ne- 
 cessity. What represents a Will but a Will? Who 
 would know what it is to have an end unless he act- 
 ually had ends himself ? Who can realize a given 
 aim save by somehow repeating it in himself ? And 
 so it is rationally and universally necessary that one 
 shall realize the end of a moral system by reproduc- 
 ing in himself the will that accepts this end. But, 
 on the other hand, in so far forth as he reproduces 
 this will alone, he cannot refrain from accepting the 
 end. In so far forth as he reproduces this will, it is 
 his will. And the end is his end. Therefore our 
 skepticism itself was a hesitation, resulting from the 
 
138 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 realization of several opposing ends, and from a si- 
 multaneous reproduction of the wills that aimed at 
 them. Therefore, as we see, absolute ethical skepti- 
 cism would not really be total absence of moral aim, 
 but would rather be the neutrality that would result 
 from a provisional acceptance of all the conflicting 
 aims in the world of action. Absolute ethical skepti- 
 cism, if it were actually possible without self-destruc- 
 tion, would still presuppose an end, namely, the effort 
 to harmonize in one moment all the conflicting aims 
 in the world of life. It would not be what it had 
 supposed itself to be. Absolute skepticism would thus 
 be founded on absolute benevolence. Its own aim 
 would be harmony and unity of conduct. But just 
 for that reason is absolute skepticism self -destructive. 
 Possibly this result may be somewhat unexpected. 
 But did not the very pessimism of our last chapter 
 illustrate it ? Why this pessimism ? This despair 
 of life, what was it but the sense of the hopelessness 
 of our task ? What made the task seem hopeless ? 
 And what was the task ? The task was the forma- 
 tion of an harmonious ideal of life. This task 
 ^seemed hopelessTHbecause weT Telt that the actual 
 ideals of life among men are in deadly conflict. Our 
 pessimism was after all not what it seemed to us to 
 be. It was not the bare renunciation of all aims ; 
 it was the effort to satisfy them all, embittered by 
 the sense that they were in seemingly hopeless con- 
 flict. Even our pessimism had its ideal. Without 
 its ideal it would have experienced no despair. The 
 conflict of aims would have meant no evil. The pes- 
 simistic despair was the natural outcome of our skep- 
 
THE MORAL INSIGHT. 139 
 
 ticism, solely because our skepticism was itself a real- 
 ization of the aims with which men live, and of the 
 warfare of these aims. 
 
 From the world of dead facts, we had said, you 
 can get no ethical doctrine. Physical truth never 
 gives moral doctrine. Therefore the world of facts 
 seemed to stand on one side, and the world of moral 
 aims seemed to stand on the other, no logical connec- 
 tion being discoverable between them. This was our 
 theoretical objection to the ethical doctrines that we 
 examined. Separate as they were from the world 
 of facts, they seemed to dwell alone, ungrounded and 
 conflicting acts of caprice. Yet for them to pass 
 over to the world of facts was to lose their ethical 
 character. But now we seek to overcome our diffi- 
 culty by considering, not the world of physical facts 
 themselves, but the world of ends. And this world 
 we consider, not now in detail, but as a whole. 
 What highest end is suggested, we ask, to him who 
 realizes for himself this whole world of ends ? The 
 very end, we answer, that, as first dimly seen, forced 
 upon us our skeptical pessimism. Whoso realizes an 
 end, his, for the time being, is that end. And since 
 it is his end, he mentally wills to realize it in ideal 
 perfection. But whoso realizes the various conflicting 
 aims in the world, his are all these aims at the mo- 
 ment of insight, when, so far as in him lies, he real- 
 izes them, and mentally desires their success. In pro- 
 portion as his realization is or can be catholic and 
 genuine, his will becomes, for the time, these con- 
 flicting wills. In him is how the warfare. He feels 
 in his own person the bitterness of the universal 
 
140 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 strife. And therefore it is that, in the first moment 
 of his new insight, the pessimism comes to him. 
 " This warfare cannot be ended," he despairingly 
 says. But has he thus uttered the final word ? For 
 he has not yet added the reflection that we are here 
 insisting upon. Let him say : " Then I too have an 
 end, far-off and unattainable though it seems, and 
 so my will is not aimless. I desire to realize these 
 aims all at once. Therefore I desire their harmony. 
 This is the one good that comes up before my fancy 
 as above all the various conflicting individual goods 
 of the various separate aims. This Higher Good 
 would be attained in a world where the conflict 
 ceased. That would be the Ideal World, where all 
 possible aims were pursued in absolute harmony." 
 
 Barren at first sight this reflection may appear. 
 It may have been unexpected, but we shall certainly 
 be disposed at first to call it fruitless. For here are 
 the aims, and they do conflict. In the actual world 
 there is ceaseless warfare. Only the wager of bat- 
 tle can decide among the opposing ethical faiths. 
 But now, if some idealist comes who says that his 
 insight gives him the higher ideal of Harmony, then 
 one may reply that his ideal is, in its confessed na- 
 ture, a mere fantasy of his benevolent imagination. 
 Such harmony never can be realized, unless indeed 
 some day, by the aid of bigger battalions, some one 
 of the ideals overcomes all the rest. Yet is our 
 idealist so lightly to be answered ? Can he not at 
 once reply: "My Ideal is thus defined, and fantastic 
 though it be, far-off though it seems, it is still an 
 ideal towards which I can direct my efforts. For 
 
THE MORAL INSIGHT. 141 
 
 behold, made practical, brought down from its lone- 
 some height, my Ideal very simply means the Will 
 to direct my acts towards the attainment of univer- 
 sal Harmony. It requires me to act with this my in- 
 sight always before me. It requires me to consider 
 all the conflicting aims that will be affected by each 
 one of my acts, and to dispose my act with reference 
 to them all. It sets up this new moral principle be- 
 fore me, a principle perfectly catholic, and above all 
 that skepticism which we have felt with regard to 
 the special moral aims. This Principle is: So act 
 as thou wouldst will to act if all the consequences of 
 thy act for all the aims that are anywhere to be af- 
 fected by this act, could be realized by thee now and 
 in this one indivisible moment. Or more briefly put : 
 Act always in the light of the completest insight 
 into all the aims that thy act is to affect- This 
 rule is no capricious one, chosen for some individual 
 reason, but an universal maxim, since its choice de- 
 pends on the general realization of all the conflicting 
 aims of the world of life. And thus we have after 
 all found, in the very heart of our skepticism itself, 
 a moral doctrine. In the midst of the warfare of in- 
 dividual wills, we have caught sight of an Universal 
 Will. 
 
 II. 
 
 " But no," some one will say : " All this is still 
 mere caprice. Has it not in fact fallen already a 
 prey to the same skepticism that pursued other moral 
 aims ? For first, you have tried to found it on a phys- 
 ical fact, namely, on the fact that only by a given 
 
142 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 effort of will one thinking being can realize the will 
 of another. But does this tell me that I ought thus 
 to realize the conflicting wills that are in the world ? 
 And if I do not, what significance has this physical 
 fact for me ? But, on the other hand, physical facts 
 aside, is not your doctrine just your capricious deter- 
 mination to respect the conflicting aims that exist in 
 the world ? " 
 
 This objection, if made, would be founded on a 
 misunderstanding of what we have discovered. We 
 have discovered something that has a value for us 
 quite independently of its importance as a mere phys- 
 ical fact. We set out to find a distinction between 
 right ^nd wrong. Our difficulty always was that, 
 since this distinction involves the acceptance of a 
 highest aim as the standard of judgment, and since 
 there are numerous aims possible, we always were 
 confused by the fact that among these manifold aims 
 there was found no ground of choice. For to show 
 any reason why we have chosen in a given way be- 
 tween two of these aims, is to have a third aim that 
 includes one and excludes the other. And the choice 
 of this third aim seemed again just as accidental as 
 the first choice would have been without this third 
 aim to justify it. Thus our original thought of an 
 aim, as the foundation of ^an ethical doctrine, had 
 been shattered before our eyes into a spray of sepa- 
 rate possible or actual aims, and we saw no way of 
 collecting this spray again into unity. If that was 
 the reason for our skepticism, then of course any- 
 thing more that we may say about ethics must pre- 
 suppose a hearer who can feel such skepticism, at 
 
THE MORAL INSIGHT. 143 
 
 least provisionally. The physical fact that he can 
 understand the nature of our doubt is indeed presup- 
 posed ere we can go further, but that is no objection 
 to our progress. The physical fact that we have an 
 intelligent hearer must always be presupposed by 
 us. If one cannot feel the doubt, then he cannot 
 undertake any ethical inquiry. We only say to 
 him : " If you doubt about the acceptance of a moral 
 aim, this that we have pointed out to you is the real 
 reason for your doubt. If now you understand your 
 doubt, then you are actually in the state that we have 
 described above. Your doubt has in fact a general 
 character. It means a provisional moral skepticism, 
 founded on an insight into the conflict of aims. 
 This insight means skepticism because, and only be- 
 cause, you are at the moment of insight yourself pos- 
 sessed of the conflicting aims, yourself at war with 
 yourself, and therefore undecided. This spray of 
 aims into which your first pure idea of a moral aim 
 as such has been scattered, this confused and blind- 
 ing cloud of purposes, represents for you your own 
 moral position. Divided in yourself, disunited, con- 
 fused, you float cloud-like and inactive, seeking unity 
 of aim and finding none. But if you reflect on all 
 this, you see that in truth you occupy the position 
 that we have above described. You really have 
 still a highest aim. You seek unity. You desire the 
 warfare to cease. You have an ideal. All this is, 
 to be sure, a physical fact, dependent on your na- 
 ture as voluntary being ; but it is not valuable just 
 for that reason alone, but for the reason that, in dis- 
 covering this fact, you have discovered what you 
 
.445 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ^^*^ 
 
 were seeking for. You have found that you are in 
 possession of an ideal. You cannot get away from 
 that ideal save by repeating the very process that 
 has brought you to it. Your moral insight is at- 
 tained, and the foundation of your doctrine is no 
 longer a particular aim that is accepted by a mere 
 caprice of one individual, but it is the necessary aim 
 that arises in the mind of any one who actually real- 
 izes the warfare of the particular aims. It is the 
 ideal of ideals. It is the absolute ideal that arises 
 for you out of the consideration of the separate 
 ideals. Each of them was relative to the mood of 
 the man who happened to choose it ; this Ideal is 
 relative only to the insight that comprehends the 
 whole moral world. Unable as we men are 'fully to 
 realize just the actual nature of every single aim in 
 the world of life, still we are able fully to realize cer- 
 tain conflicting aims ; and, realizing this conflict, we 
 can form for ourselves the notion of that absolute 
 realization that means, as we have seen, first the 
 skeptical despair of our last chapter, and then, by a 
 deeper reflection, the ideal that we have just set 
 forth above. Thus we no longer are capriciously de- 
 ciding upon the worth of physical facts as such. 
 We are passing a necessary judgment upon ideals as 
 ideals. 
 
 And we have tried to show that this our resulting 
 ideal is not a barren one. At first sight it seems so. 
 At first sight one says : " This harmony is a self- 
 contradictory dream." But no, not self-contradictory 
 is the dream ; for, if we cannot perfectly realize this 
 new ideal, if absolute harmony is unattainable, one 
 
THE MORAL INSIGHT. 145 
 
 can still walk in the light of the ideal. One can say : 
 " I will act as if all these conflicting aims were mine. 
 I will respect them all. I will act in the light that 
 has brought me my moral insight. And to that end 
 I will act at each moment as one would act who 
 saw himself about to suffer in his own person and 
 at one time all the consequences of his act for all 
 the aims that are to be affected by what he does." 
 But now the ideal becomes practical, now it ceases^ 
 to be barren. It is no longer the mere wish that 
 was at the heart of our skepticism, a wish gloomy, in- 
 active, terrified at the warfare that is in the world. 
 It is a cool determination. It says : " This disease 
 of conflicting aims cannot now be cured, but it shall 
 be dealt with. These aims are as my own. I will 
 deal with them as such. I will work for their har- 
 mony." If one doubts this ideal, then he doubts 
 the very foundation of ethical doubt itself. But this 
 is not all that our absolute ideal accomplishes. Not 
 merely for the moment of insight does this ideal give 
 an aim ; but it extends itself to the other moments 
 of life. It says : " The highest good would be realiz- 
 able only in case not merely the aim of this moment 
 of insight itself, but the aims of all the conflicting 
 wills in the world, were brought into conformity to 
 this insight. The highest good would be attainable 
 if all the conflicting wills realized fully one another. 
 For then, not abandoning each its own aim, each 
 would have added thereto, through insight, the aims 
 of the others. And all the world of individuals 
 would act as one Being, having a single Universal 
 Will. Harmony would in fact be attained." There- 
 10 
 
146 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 fore our ideal has another precept to give us. It 
 says : u Act in such wise as to extend this moral in- 
 sight to others." Here is a definite practical aim, 
 and it justifies us in saying to all the conflicting 
 wills: "You should respect one another." For so in 
 fact they all would do if they had the moral insight. 
 And to have it, as we now see, is the prerequisite 
 to the attainment of the highest good, namely, this 
 ideal Harmony that we seek at the moment of moral 
 insight. 
 
 III. 
 
 
 
 We fear that such general discussion of what we 
 have called the moral insight may seem, at first sight, 
 too abstract to be real. We hasten to a more con- 
 crete study of this insight. Leaving those more ab- 
 stract aims that have been used as the foundation of 
 moral systems, let us study our moral insight as it 
 applies to the special aims that come into conflict 
 when a man is dealing with his neighbor. Let us 
 see how just the considerations that we have applied 
 to the conflict of ethical aims in general apply di- 
 rectly to the conflict between selfishness and unself- 
 ishness, which we so long and so vainly considered 
 in the last chapter. This warfare of selfishness and 
 unselfishness is indeed not the deepest of moral 
 problems, and to solve the problem here involved is 
 not, as some have supposed, to define forthwith the 
 Highest Good. Yet we shall do well to fix our minds 
 for the time on this special problem. 
 
 Why is selfishness easier to me than unselfishness ? 
 Because it is easier for me to realize my own future, 
 
THE MORAL INSIGHT. 147 
 
 and my own desire about it, than to realize the desires 
 of my neighbor. My will is the datum; his the dimly- 
 conceived, remote fact. Hence it seems to me obvious 
 that his will must be to me less significant than my 
 own. Therefore he and I are often in deadly war- 
 fare, just because I realize his will not in its inner 
 nature, but as a foreign power, and because he deals 
 even so with me. We stand over against each 
 other like two moral systems, condemning and fight- 
 ing each the other. Now, however, there often ap- 
 pear disinterested moralists, who try to patch up our 
 differences. We have seen how and why they have 
 so often failed. They tell me that my neighbor and 
 I shall give each other much more selfish delight if 
 we stop fighting and begin cooperating. But that 
 wise advice in no way touches the root of the diffi- 
 culty between us. If we did cooperate for this rea- 
 son, we should still be two foreign powers, virtually 
 discordant. And whenever it happened that either 
 of us could do better by oppressing or by crushing 
 the other than by continuing to cooperate with him, 
 he not only would do so, but, so far as we have seen, 
 must do so. Another moralist hopes that if we 
 keep on cooperating long enough, we may evolve 
 into purely unselfish beings some day. The hope is 
 a pious one, but gives us no sufficient reason why we 
 ought to cooperate unselfishly now, when in fact we 
 are selfish. Yet another moralist asks us to reflect 
 on the nature of our emotions of pity and sympathy 
 for each other. We reply that these feelings are in- 
 determinate in character, and may lead us to do any- 
 thing or nothing for each other. So all these mor- 
 
V 
 
 148 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 alists leave my neighbor and me just where we were. 
 If it is to our personal advantage to fight, we shall 
 do so ; otherwise we may by chance remain for a 
 while in practical harmony ; but, throughout, our 
 moral aims will remain what they were, selfish and 
 conflicting. 
 
 Forsaking these unsatisfactory attempts to found 
 a moral doctrine concerning one's duty to one's 
 neighbor, let us try to do what Schopenhauer so 
 haltingly suggested, namely, to see what moral in- 
 sight as moral insight, and not as pity or as far- 
 sighted egoism, tells us about the moral relations of 
 selfishness and unselfishness. If a man not merely 
 pities but knows his neighbor's will, what moral 
 ideal does he get ? We affirm that insight into the 
 reality of the neighbor's will, insight that considers 
 his will as it is in itself, and that accordingly repeats 
 it in us, gives us a position above the struggle of 
 self and neighbor, and lets us see the higher ideal of 
 Harmony, whose precept is : Act as a being would act 
 who included thy will and thy neighbor's will in the 
 unity of one life, and who had therefore to suffer 
 the consequences for the aims of both that will fol- 
 io 10 from the act of either. This insight is not the 
 mere emotion of pity nor yet sympathy, but some- 
 thing different from these, namely, something that 
 involves the realization, and therefore the reproduc- 
 tion in us, of the opposing will of the neighbor. This 
 insight therefore deprives each will in its separate- 
 ness of its absolute significance, and commands that 
 we should act with an equal reference to both. It; 
 says not merely, "Love thy neighbor as thyself, "! 
 
THE MORAL INSIGHT. 149 
 
 \Jbut, " In so far as in thee lies, act as if thou wert 
 t once thy neighbor and thyself" " Treat these two 
 Ityes as one life." 
 
 We must try to show how this insight leads to this 
 result. We must try so to bring home the insight 
 to the reader that he shall in his person accomplish 
 the act of which we speak, and so come to accept 
 the ideal upon which we are insisting. It is in him- 
 self that he is to experience this ideal, or else he 
 will not be able or willing to accept it. We can 
 only suggest the way. And so we shall try forthwith 
 to suggest what is the nature of that common imper- 
 fect realization of our neighbor's life which does not 
 lead to the moral insight, and then to dwell upon 
 this insight itself. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The common sense, imperfect recognition of our 
 neighbor implies rather realization of the external 
 aspect of his being, as that part of him which affects 
 us, than realization of his inner and peculiar world 
 of personal experience. Let us show this by example. 
 First, take my realization of the people whom I com- 
 monly meet but do not personally very well know, 
 e. g. the conductor on the railway train when I 
 travel. He is for me just the being who takes my 
 ticket, the official to whom I can appeal for certain 
 advice or help if I need it. That this conductor has 
 an inner life, like mine, this I am apt never to realize 
 at all. He has to excite my pity or some other spe- 
 cial human interest in me ere I shall even begin to 
 try to think of him as really like me. On the whole, 
 
150 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 he is for me realized as an automaton. But still fre- 
 quently I do realize him in another way, but how ? 
 I note very likely that he is courteous or surly, and 
 I like or dislike him accordingly. Now courtesy and 
 discourtesy are qualities that belong not to automata 
 at all. Hence I must somehow recognize him in this 
 case as conscious. But what aspect of his conscious- 
 ness do I consider ? Not the inner aspect of it as 
 such, but still the outer aspect of his conscious life, 
 as a power affecting me ; that is what I consider. He 
 treats me so and so, and he does this deliberately ; 
 therefore I judge him. But what I realize is his de- 
 liberate act, as something important to me. It sel- 
 dom occurs to me to realize fully how he feels ; but 
 I can much more easily come to note how he is dis- 
 posed. The disposition is his state viewed as a power 
 affecting me. 
 
 Now let one look over the range of his bare ac- 
 quaintanceship, let him leave out his friends, and the 
 people in whom he takes a special personal interest ; 
 let him regard for the first the rest of his world of 
 fellow-men : his butcher, his grocer, the policeman 
 that patrols his street, the newsboy, the servant in 
 his kitchen, his business rivals whom he occasionally 
 talks to, the men whose political speeches he has 
 heard or read, and for whom he has voted, with some 
 notion of their personal characters, and then all 
 the rest of the outside world, the Turks or the In- 
 dians, the men of historic fame, Napoleon, Cicero, 
 CaBsar, the imaginary people in fictions that have 
 excited little of his stronger emotional interest : how 
 does he conceive of all these people ? Are they not 
 
THE MORAL INSIGHT. 151 
 
 one and all to him ideal or real ways of behavior 
 towards himself or other people, outwardly effective 
 beings, rather than realized masses of genuine inner 
 life, of sentiment, of love, or of felt desire ? Does he 
 not naturally think of each of them rather as a way 
 of outward action than as a way of inner volition ? 
 His butcher, his newsboy, his servant, are they not 
 for him industrious or lazy, honest or deceitful, polite 
 or uncivil, useful or useless people, rather than self- 
 conscious people ? Is any one of these alive for him 
 in the full sense, sentient, emotional, and other- 
 wise like himself ; as perhaps his own son, or his 
 own mother or wife seems to him to be ? Is it not 
 rather the kind of behavior of these beings towards 
 him which he realizes ? Is it not rather in general 
 their being for him, not for themselves, that he con- 
 siders in all his ordinary life, even when he calls 
 them conscious ? And this being for him is what he 
 calls their dispositions. They are all good fellows 
 or bad fellows, good-humored or surly, hateful or ad- 
 mirable. They may appear even sublime or ideal 
 beings, as a CaBsar might to a student of history. 
 Yet their inner life need not therefore be realized. 
 They remain powers, ways of acting, dispositions, 
 wonderful examples of energy. They are still seen 
 from without. Not their inner, volitional nature is 
 realized, but their manner of outward activity ; not 
 what they are for themselves, but what they are for 
 others. 
 
 Such then is our natural realization of our fellows 
 even when we call them conscious. The imperfect 
 realization in question extends even to the case of 
 
152 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 closer affection. Lear realizes in his daughters, or 
 thinks that he realizes, only the dispositions that they 
 express. Real effort to enter into the inner life of 
 their emotions is foreign to his simple and imperious 
 mind. Even when I delight in another's love, I am 
 still apt to realize rather the disposition than the 
 inner and more personal emotional life that is the 
 cause of this way of behavior. The act is what I 
 want, 1 the voice, the look, the gift, or the other as- 
 surance of an energy in harmony with my will. The 
 ordinary emotion of gratitude is another very good 
 illustration of the imperfect realization of our neigh- 
 bors that accompanies even the plainest verbal rec- 
 ognition of their conscious existence. As I write 
 these words, my heart is just now going out in ad- 
 miration and respect, not to say affection, to a man 
 whom I but imperfectly know. I feel a desire to 
 do him a favor, if it were possible. Why? Do I 
 reflect on his true nature and needs as a being like 
 myself ? Do I feel our common weakness, our com- 
 mon longings ? Have I dispelled the illusion of self- 
 ishness that separates us ? No, I grieve and am 
 ashamed to confess it, this being is to me almost 
 as wholly external as my plumber, not much better 
 realized than my walking-stick. I am dwelling not 
 on his own inner life at all. In my mind's eye I 
 see just his outer form. Yet he has written me a 
 graceful and pleasing letter, expressing his interest 
 in some of my plans, and his desire to help me. I 
 am selfishly delighted to find such help. I have an 
 
 1 " I M give all my income from dreamland 
 For a touch of her hand on my cheek." 
 
THE MORAL INSIGHT. 153 
 
 instinctive feeling that it demands compensation. I 
 feel an animal delight in being in friendly company. 
 My gratitude is here no moral emotion at all. 
 
 The emotion of sympathy does indeed often tend 
 to make me realize the other and more completely 
 internal aspeqt of my neighbor's reality ; but sym- 
 pathy does this in the halting and uncertain way de- 
 scribed in a previous chapter. And at all events, 
 whatever sympathy leads to, it is not by itself the 
 insight. And so, to sum up our present way of 
 studying the illusions of selfishness, we find by these 
 examples that by nature our neighbor's conscious 
 life is realized for us rather as an active agency that 
 affects our fortunes, than as an inner experience, or 
 as it is in itself, namely, as a Will ; and hence it is 
 that we are disposed to treat it with coldness, rather 
 than to respect its true nature. Resistance, con- 
 quest, employment of this agency, seem to us axi- 
 omatic aims of prudence ; unselfish respect for its 
 inner accompanying experiences seems to us a hard 
 if not a meaningless task. Such is the nature and 
 ground of the illusion of selfishness. 
 
 If now our activity of realization were confined to 
 the range of common-sense emotions, there would be 
 no escape from all this. It is our critical reflection 
 that appears on the scene, saying : " O common 
 sense, what thou hast realized cannot be all. We 
 must resolve to recognize more, else will our reso- 
 lutions never lose their inconsistency and darkness. 
 Be honest, O common sense. Is not thy neighbor 
 after all just a dead fact of nature, an automaton 
 with certain peculiar energies ? " A.nd common 
 
154 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 sense answers : " No, for is he not most assuredly a 
 conscious agent, whose action I realize ? " " Dost 
 thou then know that he wills, and not realize what 
 this will means for him, namely, that he experiences 
 it ? " " No," answers common sense, " if he wills as 
 I do, he must experience as I do." " Eealize it 
 then, and see what thou then wilt do with him." 
 And common sense must, we affirm, so realizing, 
 simply reply, " As he is real, he is as much an ob- 
 ject for my effort as I myself am, in case I can af- 
 fect him. Ours is one life." This common sense 
 must see, if it fully realizes the neighbor. And if 
 it realizes his activity, as it always in some fashion 
 does, then it must come to realize his experience, 
 and so to realize him fully, so soon as it undertakes 
 to complete the incomplete act by which it has be- 
 gun to realize his will. This completion may be 
 hastened by pity, or may be hindered by the weak- 
 ness that pity often involves ; but when it comes, it 
 must be an act of clear insight, made possible by 
 the rational nature of our mental life. Whatever 
 in our thought is done in part, we are ready either 
 to abandon wholly, or to finish altogether, so soon as 
 we realize that we have been doing it in part. Our 
 resolution to recognize an existence cannot remain 
 confused or self-contradictory when we come to re- 
 alize where the confusion and self-contradiction lie. 
 And as we simply cannot give up recognizing our 
 neighbor, we must of necessity resolve, when we see 
 this inconsistency of our natural realization, to real- 
 ize him wholly. 
 
 Such is our reflective account of the process that, in 
 
THE MORAL INSIGHT. 155 
 
 some form, must come to every one under the proper 
 conditions. In this process we see the beginning of 
 the real knowledge of duty to others. The process 
 is one that any child can and does, under proper 
 guidance, occasionally accomplish. It is the process 
 by which we all are accustomed to try to teach humane 
 behavior in concrete cases. We try to get people to 
 realize what they are doing when they injure others. 
 But to distinguish this process from the mere tender 
 emotion of sympathy, with all its illusions, is what 
 moralists have not carefully enough done. Our ex- 
 position has tried to take this universally recog- 
 nized process, to distinguish it from sympathy as 
 such, and to set it up before the gates of ethical doc- 
 trine as the great producer of insight. 
 
 But when we say that to this insight common 
 sense must come, under the given conditions, we do 
 not mean to say : "So the man, once having attained 
 insight, must act thenceforth." The realization of 
 one's neighbor, in the full sense of the word reali- 
 zation, is indeed the resolution to treat him as if he 
 were real, that is, to treat him unselfishly. But this 
 resolution expresses and belongs to the moment of 
 insight. Passion may cloud the insight in the very 
 next moment. It always does cloud the insight after 
 no very long time. It is as impossible for us to 
 avoid the illusion of selfishness in our daily lives, as 
 to escape seeing through the illusion at the moment 
 of insight. We see the reality of our neighbor, that 
 is, we determine to treat him as we do ourselves. 
 But then we go back to daily action, and we feel the 
 heat of hereditary passions, and we straightway for- 
 
156 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 get what we liave seen. Our neighbor becomes ob- 
 scured. He is once more a foreign power. He is 
 unreal. We are again deluded and selfish. This 
 conflict goes on and will go on as long as we live 
 after the manner of men. Moments of insight, with 
 their accompanying resolutions ; long stretches of 
 delusion and selfishness : That is our life. 
 
 V. 
 
 To bring home this view in yet another way to the 
 reader, we ask him to consider very carefully just 
 what experience he has when he tries to realize his 
 neighbor in the full sense that we have insisted upon. 
 Not pity as such is what we desire him to feel. For 
 whether or no pity happens to work in him as self- 
 ishly and blindly as we have found that ii> often 
 does work, still not the emotion, but its consequences, 
 must in the most favorable case give us what we 
 seek. All the forms of sympathy are mere impulses. 
 It is the insight to which they bring us that has 
 moral value. And again, the realization of our 
 neighbor's existence is not at all the discovery that 
 he is more or less useful to us personally. All that 
 would contribute to selfishness. In an entirely dif- 
 ferent way we must realize his existence, if we are to 
 be really altruistic. What then is our neighbor? 
 
 We find that out by treating him in thought just 
 as we do ourselves. What art thou ? Thou art now 
 just a present state, with its experiences, thoughts, 
 and desires. But what is thy future Self ? Simply 
 future states, future experiences, future thoughts 
 
THE MORAL INSIGHT. 157 
 
 and desires, that, although not now existing for thee, 
 are postulated by thee as certain to come, and as in 
 some real relation to thy present Self. What then 
 is thy neighbor ? He too is a mass of states, of ex- 
 periences, thoughts, and desires, just as real as thou 
 art, no more but yet no less present to thy experi- 
 ence now than is thy future Self. He is not that 
 face that frowns or smiles at thee, although often 
 thou thinkest of him as only that. He is not the 
 arm that strikes or defends thee, not the voice that 
 speaks to thee, not that machine that gives thee 
 what thou desirest when thou movest it with the 
 offer of money. To be sure, thou dost often think 
 of him as if he were that automaton yonder, that an- 
 swers thee when thou speakest to it. But no, thy 
 neighbor is as actual, as concrete, as thou art. Just 
 as thy future is real, though not now thine, so thy 
 neighbor is real, though his thoughts never are thy 
 thoughts. Dost thou believe this ? Art thou sure 
 what it means ? This is for thee the turning-point 
 of thy whole conduct towards him. What we now 
 ask of thee is no sentiment, no gush of pity, no 
 tremulous weakness of sympathy, but a calm, clear 
 insight. 
 
 But one says : " All this have I done from my 
 youth up. Surely I hold and always have held my 
 neighbor to be real and no automaton. Surely I 
 have feared his reproof, have been angry at his ill- 
 will, have rejoiced in his sympathy, have been influ- 
 enced by his opinions, all my life. And yet I have 
 remained selfish." Nay, but just at the moment 
 when thou hadst to act towards him so or so, thou 
 
158 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 wert no longer quick to realize him. Then it was 
 that thy passion made him for thee a shadow. Thou 
 couldst not love him, because thou didst forget who 
 he was. Thou didst believe in him enough to fear 
 him, to hate him, to fight with him, to revenge thy- 
 self upon him, to use his wit as thy tool, but not 
 enough to treat him as real, even as thou thyself art 
 real. He seems to thee a little less living than thou. 
 His life is dim, it is cold, it is a pale fire beside thy 
 own burning desires. He is a symbol of passion to 
 thee, and imperfectly, coldly, with dull assent, with- 
 out full meaning to thy words, thou dost indeed say, 
 when asked, that the symbol stands for something 
 real, as real as thyself. But what those words mean, 
 hast thou realized it, as, through selfish feeling, 
 thou dost realize thy equally external future Self ? 
 
 If he is real like thee, then is his life as bright a 
 light, as warm a fire, to him, as thine to thee ; his 
 will is as full of struggling desires, of hard problems, 
 of fateful decisions ; his pains are as hateful, his 
 joys as dear. Take whatever thou knowest of desire 
 and of striving, of burning love and of fierce hatred, 
 realize as fully as thou canst what that means, and 
 then with clear certainty add : Such as that is for 
 me, so is it for him, nothing less. If thou dost that, 
 can he remain to thee what he has been, a picture, a 
 plaything, a comedy, or a tragedy, in brief a mere 
 Show? Behind all that show thou hast indeed 
 dimly felt that there is something. Know that 
 truth thoroughly. Thou hast regarded his thought, 
 his feeling, as somehow different in sort from thine. 
 Thou hast said : "A pain in him is not like a pain 
 
THE MORAL INSIGHT. 159 
 
 in me, but something far easier to bear." Thou hast 
 made of him a ghost, as the imprudent man makes 
 of his future self a ghost. Even when thou hast 
 feared his scorn, his hate, his contempt, thou hast 
 not fully made him for thee as real as thyself. His 
 laughter at thee has made thy face feel hot, his 
 frowns and clenched fists have cowed thee, his sneers 
 have made thy throat feel choked. But that was 
 only the social instinct in thee. It was not a full 
 sense of his reality. Even so the little baby smiles 
 back at one that smiles at it, but not because it 
 realizes the approving joy of the other, only because 
 it by instinct enjoys a smiling face ; and even so the 
 baby is frightened at harsh speech, but not because 
 it realizes the other's anger. So, dimly and by in- 
 stinct, thou has lived with thy neighbor, and hast 
 known him not, being blind. Thou hast even de- 
 sired his pain, but thou hast not fully realized the 
 pain that thou gavest. It has been to thee, not 
 pain in itself, but the sight of his submission, of his 
 tears, or of his pale terror. Of thy neighbor thou 
 hast made a thing, no Self at all. 
 
 When thou hast loved, hast pitied, or hast rever- 
 enced thy neighbor, then thy feeling has possibly 
 raised for a moment the veil of illusion. Then thou 
 hast known what he truly is, a Self like thy present 
 Self. But thy selfish feeling is too strong for thee. 
 Thou hast forgotten soon again what thou hadst seen, 
 and hast made even of thy beloved one only the instru- 
 ment of thy own pleasure. Even out of thy power 
 to pity thou hast made an object of thy vainglory. 
 Thy reverence has turned again to pride. Thou hast 
 
160 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 accepted the illusion once more. No wonder that in 
 this darkness thou findest selfishness the only rule of 
 any meaning for thy conduct. Thou forgottest that 
 without realization of thy future and as yet unreal 
 self, even selfishness means nothing. Thou forgot- 
 test that if thou gavest thy present thought even so 
 to the task of realizing thy neighbor's life, selfishness 
 would seem no more plain to thee than the love of 
 thy neighbor. 
 
 Have done then with this illusion that thy Self 
 is all in all. Intuition tells thee no more about thy 
 future Self than it tells thee about thy neighbors. 
 Desire, bred in thee by generations of struggle for 
 existence, emphasizes the expectation of thy own 
 bodily future, the love for thy own bodily welfare, 
 and makes thy body's life seem alone real. But sim- 
 ply try to know the truth. The truth is that all this 
 world of life about thee is as real as thou art. All 
 conscious life is conscious in its own measure. Pain 
 is pain, joy is joy, everywhere even as in thee. The 
 result of thy insight will be inevitable. The illusion 
 vanishing, the glorious prospect opens before thy 
 vision. Seeing the oneness of this life everywhere, 
 the equal reality of all its moments, thou wilt be 
 ready to treat it all with the reverence that prudence 
 would have thee show to thy own little bit of future 
 life. What prudence in its narrow respectability 
 counseled, thou wilt be ready to do universally. As 
 the prudent man, seeing the reality of his future 
 self, inevitably works for it ; so the enlightened man, 
 seeing the reality of all conscious life, realizing that 
 "it is no shadow, but fact, at once and inevitably de- 
 
THE MORAL INSIGHT. 161 
 
 sires, if only for that one moment of insight, to 
 enter into the service of the whole of it. 
 
 So the illusion of selfishness vanishes for thy 
 present thought (alas ! not for thy future conduct, 
 O child of passion ! ), when thou lookest at what 
 selfishness has so long hidden from thee. Thou seest 
 now the universal life as a whole, just as real as thou 
 art, identical in joy and sorrow. The conflict of 
 selfishness and unselfishness vanishes. Selfishness is 
 but a half realization of the truth expressed in un- 
 selfishness. Selfishness says : I shall exist. Un- 
 selfishness says : The Other Life is as My Life. 
 To realize another's pain as pain is to cease to desire 
 it in itself. Hatred is illusion. Cowardly sympa- 
 thy, that hides its head for fear of realizing the neigh- 
 bor's pain, is illusion. But unselfishness is the real- 
 ization of life. Unselfishness leads thee out of the 
 mists of blind self -adoration, and shows thee, in all 
 the life of nature about thee, the one omnipresent, 
 conscious struggle for the getting of the desired. In 
 all the songs of the forest birds ; in all the cries of 
 the wounded and dying, struggling in the captor's 
 power ; in the boundless sea, where the myriads of 
 water-creatures strive and die ; amid all the countless 
 hordes of savage men ; in the hearts of all the good 
 and loving ; in the dull, throbbing hearts of all pris- 
 oners and captives ; in all sickness and sorrow ; in 
 all exultation and hope ; in all our devotion ; in all 
 our knowledge, everywhere from the lowest to the 
 noblest creatures and experiences on our earth, the 
 same conscious, burning, willful life is found, end- 
 lessly manifold as the forms of the living creatures, 
 ll 
 
162 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 unquenchable as the fires of the sun, real as these im- 
 pulses that even now throb in thy own little selfish 
 heart. Lift up thy eyes, behold that life, and then 
 turn away and forget it as thou canst ; but if thou 
 hast known that, thou hast begun to know thy duty. 
 
 VI. 
 
 But this unity that the moral insight has found 
 for us in life must not be falsely interpreted. 
 Rightly interpreted, the moral insight will solve for 
 us many very difficult problems ; but we must not 
 imagine that it shows us all this individual life as 
 in any mystical sense already actually in the har- 
 mony that we seek. Not because these aims are al- 
 ready in themselves one, but because we, as moral 
 seers, unite in one moment of insight the realization 
 of all these aims, for that reason alone is this life 
 one for us. It is in this sense alone that the moral 
 insight gives us a solution of the problem of egoism 
 and altruism, as well as a foundation for a general 
 doctrine of the Highest Good. The moral insight 
 does not enable us to say : These beings have always 
 actually but blindly sought what was in itself the 
 Highest Good. We can only say : Each one has 
 sought in his blindness only what was to him desir- 
 able. And not, save by the realization of the con- 
 flict of desire, can the truly highest good be con- 
 ceived. The moral insight discovers harmony not 
 as already implied in the nature of these blind, con- 
 flicting wills, but as an ideal to be attained by hard 
 work. 
 
THE MORAL INSIGHT. 163 
 
 We point this out in order to show that we do not 
 fall into the hackneyed error of those moralists who 
 insist that they merely tell men what one thing it is 
 that men have all been blindly seeking. Such mor- 
 alists often say : u Our system is but an expression 
 of the tendency that was always there, latent in 
 men. It tells them in plain words what they al- 
 ways wanted, and then it tells them how to get this 
 end." This specious pretense of so many moral sys- 
 tems we have implicitly condemned in the previous 
 part of our discourse. It constitutes in many cases 
 that appeal to the physical facts which we have set 
 aside as always useless and often ungrounded. If 
 one looks the pretense fairly in the face, how flat 
 and stale it seems ! Yonder vast wealth of conflict- 
 ing aims among men, base and noble, devilish and 
 divine, what moralist has been able to sum all of 
 them up in any formula, save in the wholly abstract 
 formula that we have above referred to, namely, 
 that all these beings seek what seems to them desir- 
 able. How presumptuous to say to them : " In fact 
 you all desire this that I formulate in my text-book 
 of morals." In fact they do not. And it is absurd 
 to watch the turnings and twistings of language by 
 which a moralist tries to make out that they do. 
 For instance, let the moralist be J. S. Mill, and let 
 him declare, as he does, that happiness is the one 
 goal of all men. If happiness includes the attain- 
 ment of any possible object of anybody's desire, then 
 indeed the theory is a truism. But with this truism, 
 of course, no sort of progress would have been made 
 in ethics. Mill must tell us something about what 
 
164 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 sorts of happiness there are, and about what sorts 
 ought to be sought most of all. He says, as we 
 know, that there are " higher " and " lower " pleas- 
 ures, and that higher pleasures ought to be sought 
 in preference to the others, the pleasure of the intel- 
 lect, of generosity, etc., instead of the sensual pleas- 
 ures. What can be the proof ? That happiness 
 was the goal we were to learn, because all men ac- 
 tually seek it. But that the " higher " happiness is 
 the goal, rather than a lower form, how do we learn 
 that ? Because men always choose it ? In fact they 
 do not. So Mill has to shift the ground a little. 
 They do not all of them actually seek it, but they 
 would seek it if they knew it. Most of them are ig- 
 norant of what they would prize most, namely, of 
 these " higher " pleasures. But here again Mill 
 meets a disheartening fact. Most men, if they ever 
 love " higher " pleasures at all, are found loving 
 them more for a while in the ideal enthusiasm of 
 youth than later in the prosaic dullness of middle 
 life. Men who have known the " higher " happi- 
 ness do then deliberately turn away from it. This 
 is a regular fact of life, well known, and often la- 
 mented. How does this agree with Mill's doctrine ? 
 Alas ! it does not agree, and only by worthless de- 
 vices can he conceal from himself the fact. The 
 people who enjoy the higher know the lower and re- 
 ject it. The people who enjoy the lower do not 
 know of the higher, or, if they ever knew it, they 
 have forgotten it, or if they have not quite forgotten 
 the higher, they have " lost capacity for it." As if 
 all this could not just as plausibly be said from the 
 
THE MORAL INSIGHT. 165 
 
 side of the " lower " pleasures. Just as if it were 
 not constantly said from that side in every good 
 drinking-song, with a result precisely opposed to 
 Mill's. In fact Mill is driven in this controversy 
 with imaginary opponents to the worst subterfuge 
 possible for so skilled a thinker, when he at last 
 says that the pleasure which seems the higher of two 
 pleasures to the " most of those who have experi- 
 enced both " is actually the higher. For thus, to 
 keep up the show of merely interpreting to men their 
 actual will, Mill has to appeal to the opinion of the 
 majority, has to use a purely practical habit of de- 
 liberative assemblies for the purpose of deciding a 
 question of theory, and then has most absurdly to 
 declare that a man's experience about his own 
 pleasure is worth nothing as a test of its value un- 
 less the majority of his fellows agree with him in 
 his judgment. 
 
 In fact all this is benevolent trifling. Men declare 
 at one time one pleasure to be " highest," that is, 
 most desirable, and at another time they declare an- 
 other pleasure to be the only desirable one. Differ- 
 ent men persist in having different aims. To de- 
 fine their duty by telling them that they all have 
 one aim is wrong. From the point of view of the 
 moral insight all this struggling life becomes one ; 
 but that is not because it as yet ceases to struggle, 
 but because the being possessed of the moral insight 
 comes to realize it all at once. For him it is one, 
 because he identifies himself with the struggling 
 aims. He seeks their harmony, and must do so if 
 he have the insight. But they are not in harmony 
 
166 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 as yet at all ; else would he have no work to do. 
 Let him then not deceive himself. The conflict itself 
 is real and not illusory. The illusion lies in the fact 
 that no one of the fighters realizes the inner life of 
 the others. But to overcome that illusion in any 
 soul is not to show that all the fighters have been 
 desiring the same thing. 
 
 J. S. Mill is by no means our only case of the ef- 
 fort to convince people that they always have had 
 one object of search, which the moralist has but to 
 name in order to bring peace on the earth. Ben- 
 tham undertook the same task, and showed in his 
 v blunt way as much skill in subterfuge as he ever ac- 
 cused his opponents of showing, while he tried to 
 make out that all men always have been Bentham- 
 ites, to whom pleasure was the only good. Mr. 
 Spencer in his turn tries to define the Good so that 
 it shall agree not only with the popular usage of the 
 word good, but also with the Spencerian notion of 
 what constitutes the Good. If anywhere a usage of 
 the word appears that does not agree with the Spen- 
 ceriaii usage, Mr. Spencer insists, sometimes, that, 
 if cross-questioned, the man who so uses it would 
 have to come over to the Spencerian usage, and 
 sometimes that the usage in question is a survival 
 in culture of a savage notion, or that it is in some 
 other way insignificant. Thus the proof of Mr. 
 Spencer's view about the nature of the ideal be- 
 comes so simple and easy that when, a little further 
 on, it is necessary to recognize the existence of pes- 
 simists, Mr. Spencer finds no difficulty in regarding 
 it as perfectly plain that a man can become a pes- 
 
THE MORAL INSIGHT. 167 
 
 simist only in case he believes that the Spencerian 
 ideal of the Good is unattainable. Thus axioms are 
 manufactured whenever we need them. 
 
 All this is mere neglect of whatever ideals do not 
 at once fit into one's own ideal. Such neglect is un- 
 worthy of an ethical inquirer. Yet it has been fre- 
 quently committed in recent times, and it is com- 
 mitted whenever a man endeavors or pretends, as 
 Professor Clifford also very skillfully endeavored 
 and pretended, to found ethical science wholly upon 
 the basis and by the methods of natural science. 
 Such attempts are like the efforts of a man trying to 
 build a steamboat, who should first drop the steam- 
 engine into the water, and then seek to build the 
 boat up about the engine so as to float it and be 
 driven by it. For natural science will indeed give 
 us the engine of our applied ethics, as indispensa- 
 ble as the steam-engine to the boat. But first we 
 must lay the keel, and we must get the boat ready 
 for the engine, the ideal ready for the science that 
 is to apply it. All such attempts as those that put 
 the " scientific basis " first, lamely strive to conceal 
 their helplessness behind a show of appealing to the 
 " facts of human nature and of the social structure, 
 as science discovers them." But these facts reveal 
 a confused warfare of aims among men, no one aim 
 being actually chosen by the whole of men. And 
 then the " scientific moralist " tries to show by all 
 sorts of devices that all men really have the same 
 aim. But he cannot show that, because it is not 
 true. What aim is common to the whole life of any 
 one of us ? Much less then is any aim common to 
 all men. 
 
THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 But this mistake is not specially modern. Not 
 only the modern scientific moralists have been guilty 
 of it, but moral preachers of all schools since Soc- 
 rates have been prone to insist on occasion, for pur- 
 poses of persuasion, that somehow or other all evil 
 conduct arises from mere ignorance of what one 
 wants. This view is a mistake. One may want 
 anything, and may know it very well. There is no 
 known limit to the caprice and to the instability of 
 the human will. If you find anybody desiring any- 
 thing, the only tolerably sure and fairly universal 
 comment is, that he will stop desiring it by and by. 
 You can seldom get any ultimate analysis of the 
 motive of such a desire. 
 
 But we do not found our moral system on any 
 such analysis. We do not say even that it is phys- 
 ically possible for any of us to get and to keep the 
 moral insight long together. What we affirm can 
 once more briefly be summed up as follows : 
 
 1. Moral insight, whenever, however, to whomso- 
 ever it comes, consists in the realization of the true 
 inner nature of certain conflicting wills that are ac- 
 tual in the world. 
 
 2. An absolute moral insight, which we can con- 
 ceive, but which we never fully attain ourselves, 
 would realize the true inner nature of all the con- 
 flicting wills in the world. 
 
 3. The moral insight involves from its very na- 
 ture, for those who have it, the will to harmonize, 
 so far as may be possible, the conflicting wills that 
 there are in the world, and that are realized at the 
 moment of insight. 
 
THE MORAL INSIGHT. 169 
 
 4. If the moral insight be concerned directly with 
 two conflicting wills, my neighbor's and my own, 
 then this insight involves the will to act as if my 
 neighbor and myself were one being that possessed 
 at once the aims of both of us. 
 
 5. If the moral insight be concerned with con- 
 flicting general aims, such as could express them- 
 selves in systems of conduct, then the moral insight 
 involves the will to act, so far as may be, as if one 
 included in one's own being the life of all those 
 whose conflicting aims one realizes. 
 
 6. Absolute moral insight would involve the will 
 to act henceforth with strict regard to the total of 
 the consequences of one's act for all the moments 
 and aims that are to be affected by this act. 
 
 7. The moral insight stands in all its forms op- 
 posed to ethical dogmatism, which accepts one sepa- 
 rate end only. The insight arises from the con- 
 sciousness that this one aim is not the only one that 
 is actual. Imperfectly and blindly ethical dogma- 
 tism also realizes this truth, and so hates or even 
 anathematizes the opposing aims. But the hatred 
 is imperfect realization. The moral insight there- 
 fore says to those who possess the dogmatic spirit : 
 "In so far as you seek a reason for the faith that is 
 in you, you can find none short of the assumption of 
 my position." The moral insight says to itself, " I 
 ought not to return to the dogmatic point of view." 
 So the moral insight insists upon giving itself the 
 rule-, " Dogmatism is wrong." 
 
 8. The only alternatives to the moral insight are : 
 (a) ethical dogmatism, which once for all gives up 
 
170 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the effort to get any basis for ethics save its own ir- 
 rational caprice ; and (6) ethical skepticism, which, 
 , as we have seen, is only a preliminary form of the 
 moral insight, and passes over into the latter upon 
 reflection. 
 
 9. There is no other distinction between right and 
 wrong save what the dogmatic systems on the one 
 hand give as their capricious determinations, and 
 what the moral insight on the other hand shows as 
 the expression of what it involves. 
 
 Our conclusion so far is therefore this : Remain 
 blind if you will ; we have no means of preventing 
 you. But if you want to know the whole ethical 
 truth, you can find it only in the moral insight. All 
 else is caprice. To get the moral insight, you must 
 indeed have the will to get the truth as between the 
 conflicting claims of two or more doctrines. This 
 will being given, the moral insight is the necessary 
 outcome even of skepticism itself. 
 
 Yet now, after all our argument and enthusiasm, 
 the reader must know that what we have so far por- 
 trayed is only the most elementary aspect of the 
 moral insight. The unity that we have insisted upon 
 is so far an empty unity, a negative freedom from 
 conflict. To show the real worth of this whole view, 
 we must pass from the beggarly elements of duty to 
 more advanced conceptions. The moral insight must 
 be so developed as to tell us about the Organization 
 of Life. The empty unity must be filled with con- 
 tent. We must discuss more in concreto what men 
 possessed of the moral insight will do. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 
 
 Die wahre Freiheit ist als Sittlichkeit dies, dass der Wille nicht sub- 
 jektive, d. i. eigensiichtige, sondern allgemeinen Inhalt zu seinen 
 Zwecken hat. HEGEL, Encyclopddie. 
 
 UNEXPECTEDLY we have been saved from our eth- 
 ical skepticism even in and through the very act of 
 thinking it out. Here, as elsewhere in philosophy, 
 the truth is to be reached, neither by dreading nor by 
 discountenancing the doubt, but by accepting, expe- 
 riencing, and absorbing the doubt, until, as an ele- 
 ment in our thought, it becomes also an element in 
 an higher truth. We do not say, therefore, to com- 
 mend our moral principle, as it has just been pro- 
 pounded, that it is immediately acceptable to all 
 healthy consciences, or that it is a pious, or a respect- 
 able, or a popularly recognized principle. We say 
 only this : Doubt rationally about moral doctrines, 
 and your doubt itself, if real, thorough-going, all-em- 
 bracing, merciless, will involve this very principle of 
 ours. We find the principle by means of the univer- 
 sal doubt, and it is this method of procedure that 
 distinguishes the foregoing discussion of the basis of 
 morals from many of those that have previously been 
 concerned with this problem. To point out that the 
 average man, or the reputed saint, or the inspired 
 
172 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 prophet, or the great poet, or the reader himself, 
 whenever he is enthusiastic has or has had a given 
 ideal, is not to justify this ideal. Yet of such a na- 
 ture are the justifications that most moralists have 
 given for their ideals. If we have gained our re- 
 sult by any better method, that was because we were 
 free to doubt all those pretended defenses of the 
 good. We have found the nature of the absolute 
 and universal will, by rigidly questioning the signifi- 
 cance of all the individual wills. 
 
 But our ideal must be made to do work in the 
 world. It must accomplish something, by solving 
 for us a few concrete moral problems, such as actu- 
 ally trouble men. Even the present discussion must 
 consider some of these consequences of our general 
 principle ; for religious philosophy, in seeking an 
 ideal for life, does not want a barren abstraction, 
 but such an ideal as can also be our guide. What 
 does our principle tell a man to do ? 
 
 The principle, as is plain, may be viewed in two 
 ways. If by moral insight we mean what the last 
 chapter defined, namely, insight into the fact of the 
 existence of other conscious wills besides our own, 
 coupled with full rational appreciation of this truth, 
 then our principle may be viewed as saying to each 
 of us : Get and keep the moral insight as an expe- 
 rience^ and do all that tliou canst to extend among 
 men this experience. On the other hand, the prin- 
 ciple may be equally well viewed as saying : Act 
 out in each case what the moral insight bids thee 
 do ; that is, as before explained, Having made thy- 
 self, in so far as thou art able, one with all the con- 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 173 
 
 flicting wills before thee, act out the resulting uni- 
 versal will as it then arises in thee. Two classes of 
 human duties are thus defined, one formal and pro- 
 visional, the other permanent. We must explain in 
 some measure each of them, in order that we may 
 show the practical applications of our moral prin- 
 ciple. 
 
 The first class of duties comprises those that have 
 most especially to do with the moral education of our 
 race. We are, and must long remain, exceedingly 
 imperfect and blind creatures. If there is possible 
 any state of humanity in which all shall be ready to 
 act in accordance with the moral insight, that state 
 must be, morally speaking, better than any other. 
 Therefore the first demand that the moral insight 
 makes of us so soon as we get it is : So act as to 
 increase the number of those who possess the insight. 
 Here, of course, is a precept of a very formal char- 
 acter, and plainly provisional in its nature. It is as 
 if one were to be among blind men, himself blind, 
 and were by some magical act, say by accidentally 
 washing in a miraculous fountain, to get at one stroke 
 and for the first time the power of sight, in all its 
 maturity and perfection. Such an one would per- 
 haps say : " How noble is this new sense ! But to 
 what end shall I use it ? For the first I must use 
 it to bring these other men to the fountain, to wash 
 their eyes, that they may miraculously learn in one 
 instant to see this glorious world." But some one 
 might object : " In this way, if the only use to be 
 
174 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 made of a man's sight is to extend the power of sight 
 to others, of what use is the power itself ? The sole 
 aim of seeing cannot be to cause others to see. Else 
 what good would result to any one, if all followed 
 your precept?" The answer would be plain: 
 " When all or the most of us get the power, then 
 indeed we can use it for other ends. But because it 
 is the best of powers for all these other ends, there- 
 fore the best provisional use to make of it is, not to 
 spend much time upon these ends, but to spend time 
 upon extending the possession of the power. When 
 this is done, then first will begin the real use of the 
 power for its own sake." As in this case of the sup- 
 posed miraculous acquirement of a new sense in all 
 its maturity of power at one stroke, so it is in case 
 of the much more gradual acquirement of the moral 
 insight. To be sure, the ultimate aim of life cannot 
 be merely the extension of the power to realize the 
 wills that are active about us, but must at last be 
 found by defining the course of action that best har- 
 monizes these wills. But, provisionally, we have a 
 task before us that is easily defined, because elemen- 
 tary. Harmony cannot be even partially attained, 
 the best human activity cannot be even imperfectly 
 developed, until a very great number of men have 
 this, the very first, most elementary requisite of con- 
 scious morality, namely, the power to see the facts of 
 human life as they are. So long as a man is bound 
 up in his individual will, he may be instinctively up- 
 right, he cannot be consciously and with clear intent 
 righteous. So long therefore as this is true of him, 
 he will be dependent on traditions that are often per- 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 175 
 
 nicious, on conscience that is often brutal prejudice, 
 on faith that is often bigotry, on emotion that is the 
 blindest of all guides ; and if he does good or if he 
 does evil, the power responsible for his deeds will 
 not be a truly moral impulse. To gain the moral 
 ends of humanity, the indispensable prerequisite is 
 therefore the moral insight in its merely formal as- 
 pect, as an human power and as an experience of life. 
 When a good many more men have reached the pos- 
 session of this power, then more of life will be taken 
 up with concrete duties. Until that time conies, the 
 great aim must be this formal and provisional one : 
 to produce in men the moral mood, and so to pre- 
 pare the way for the further knowledge of the high- 
 est good. If we put the matter otherwise we may 
 say : The mtfral insight, insisting upon the need of 
 the harmony of all human wills, shows us that, what- 
 ever the highest human good may be, we can only 
 attain it together, for it involves harmony. The 
 highest good then is not to be got by any one of us 
 or by any clique of us separately. Either the high- 
 est good is for humanity unattainable, or the human- 
 ity of the future must get it in common. Therefore 
 the sense of community, the power to work together, 
 with clear insight into our reasons for so working, 
 is the first need of humanity. Not what good thing 
 men may hereafter come to see, but how they shall 
 attain the only sense whereby they can ever get to 
 see the good, is the great present human concern. 
 
 Starting with this duty, we can now examine 
 what rule of life this duty will give us. Extend the 
 moral insight among men, and in thy own life: 
 
176 THE RELIGIOUS "ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 this is the first commandment. The direct conse- 
 quence is that, so regarded, the first duty of man in 
 the present day cannot be either to get happiness 
 himself, or, in view of this present state of human 
 life, to make other people happy. All that he may 
 indeed be in some measure required to do, but not, 
 in the present state of the world, as an end, but solely 
 as a means to an end. This at all events is not the 
 day for contentment, but for work ; and joy is now 
 a proper part of human life chiefly in so far as it 
 tends to preserve, to increase, or to foster the moral 
 insight. Here we have the present practical solu- 
 tion suggested for all the questions about the right 
 and wrong of so-called hedonism. Hedonism is the 
 product of an imperfect understanding of the moral 
 insight. Benevolent hedonism springs from the in- 
 sight that men like to be happy. Eealizing this, the 
 believer in universal hedonism says : Make men 
 happy so far as thou canst. But this principle of 
 hedonism is surely not the immediate truth for this 
 present time, whatever may or may not turn out to 
 be the case in future. For to labor to increase happi- 
 ness may for the present mean to increase the moral 
 blindness of men. Some sorts of happiness tend to 
 make us blind, as has in fact been shown in a for- 
 mer chapter. Unless a man experiences very bit- 
 terly the reality of the conflict of wills in this world, 
 the moral insight is apt to forsake him. But until 
 the moral insight becomes practically universal, the 
 highest good for humanity cannot be got. There- 
 fore all forms of happiness that hinder rather than 
 help the moral insight are evil, and we ought to do 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 177 
 
 what we can to get rid of them out of the world. 
 And all experiences, however painful, that certainly 
 tend to the increase of the power of moral insight, 
 are good for men ; and if we see no other experi- 
 ences more suitable for this purpose, we ought to do 
 what we can to increase among men the number 
 and the definiteness of these pains. 
 
 Yet of course it will at once appear, when we ex- 
 amine human emotional experiences in the light of 
 what we know of men, that there is a decided limit 
 to the morally educative power of painful experi- 
 ences, and that, on the other hand, very many pleas- 
 ant experiences are useful to the moral insight, either 
 by directly aiding it, or by preparing a man to at- 
 tain it. In considering this branch of the subject, 
 we at last reach the point where a scientific psy- 
 chology can give us a great deal of help. We re- 
 jected the so-called " scientific basis " for morals be- 
 cause it founds the ought to be upon brutal physical 
 facts. Now, however, we can turn to science to help 
 us in our present task, because, having defined our 
 ought to be, we are dealing with applied ethics, and 
 are asking how this moral insight is to be attained. 
 Psychology must tell us what it can as to this mat- 
 ter. And here such suggestions as those in Mr. 
 Spencer's " Data of Ethics " are indeed a useful aid 
 to applied moral doctrine. We reject wholly the no- 
 tion that M r ' Spencer or any like teacher has even 
 caught a glimpse of the fundamental ethical problem. 
 Mr. Spencer seems to be in the most childlike igno- 
 rance that there is any such problem at all. But we 
 are glad to find that Mr. Spencer once having very 
 
 12 
 
178 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 illogically accepted a partially correct fundamental 
 notion about the ideal of life, does suggest a good 
 deal about this problem of applied ethics with which 
 we are now dealing. He does tell us some very sen- 
 sible things about the attainment of this ideal. 
 
 Among these sensible suggestions is the insistence 
 upon the value- of pleasure as an indication of the 
 increase of healthy life in the man who has the pleas- 
 ure ; and the further insistence upon the thought 
 that, since pleasure thus indicates in some wise 
 health and efficiency, and since efficiency is an indis- 
 pensable prerequisite to sound practical morality, 
 there must always be a certain moral presumption 
 in favor of happiness, and in favor of whatever tends 
 to increase happiness. Properly understood and 
 limited, this doctrine of Mr. Spencer's is an obvious 
 and useful consequence from what we know of psy- 
 chology. Mr. Spencer dwells on it at tedious and 
 wholly unnecessary length, but he is surely justified 
 when he protests, against the ascetics, that their 
 ideal man must be in general a puny, inefficient, and 
 perhaps wholly burdensome man, whose ill -health 
 may make him, at last, hopelessly selfish. This we 
 know on good scientific grounds, and it is well to 
 have said the thing plainly in an ethical treatise. 
 
 But what is the result ? Is happiness the only 
 aim of life because the permanently unhappy man is 
 apt to be a poor diseased creature, useless, or even 
 dangerous ? No ; the consequence of all this is that 
 the first moral aim must be to make a man efficient 
 in possessing and extending the moral insight. Ef- 
 ficiency for moral ends is still our proximate goal. 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 179 
 
 Happiness is, at least for the present, only a subordi- 
 nate means. Therefore we say : By all means make 
 men happy, so far as their happiness tends to give 
 them and to preserve in them moral insight. True 
 it is, as scientific psychology shows us, that a man, 
 in order to be as good as possible, must generally be 
 possessed of respectable health, of what he thinks a 
 good place in the world, of friends, and of numerous 
 pleasures. He must digest well, he must enjoy the 
 esteem of his fellows, he must be strong, and he must 
 be frequently amused. All this is true, and is in 
 fact a commonplace. When an ascetic denies this, 
 he maintains a pernicious heresy, that tends to de- 
 stroy moral insight by depriving men of the phys- 
 ical power to get it. But these facts must not be 
 misinterpreted. Whatever might be true of a society 
 in which moral insight had been attained, nothing is 
 plainer than that happiness at the present time can- 
 not be regarded from our point of view as more 
 than a means to the present great end. If we try 
 to amuse our neighbors, to relieve their woes, to im- 
 prove their worldly estate, we must do so not as if 
 this were the end of the present life, but as workers 
 in a very vast drama of human life, whose far-off 
 purpose must govern every detail. The good Sa- 
 maritan must say to himself, as he helps the poor 
 wretch by the wayside : " In so far as I realize only 
 this man's need, my purpose is indeed simply to re- 
 lieve him. But my purpose must be higher than that. 
 This man is not alone, but one of a multitude. My 
 highest aim in helping him is not to make him indi- 
 vidually happy, but to increase by this, as by all my 
 
180 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 acts, the harmony of mankind. Not alone that he 
 may by and by go away and enjoy himself do I help 
 him now, but because by so doing I hope through 
 him to increase among men moral insight." There- 
 fore, notwithstanding Schopenhauer's ridicule, Fichte 
 was right in saying that we ought to treat the indi- 
 vidual man not chiefly as an individual, but as an 
 instrument for extending and serving the moral law. 
 Because a certain kind of happiness means efficiency, 
 and efficiency morality, therefore and therefore alone 
 have we the right and duty, in this present genera- 
 tion, to labor for this kind of happiness. 
 
 Equally, therefore, it becomes our duty to labor 
 to increase pain, whenever pain is the best means of 
 fostering the moral insight. Therefore, in this pres- 
 ent day, it cannot be our duty to labor to diminish 
 pain in the world, simply as pain. Again we must 
 appeal to psychology to guide us aright. The pains 
 that foster moral insight, although limited in num- 
 ber and intensity, are numerous, and still imper- 
 fectly defined. It would be a useful task to study 
 more in detail than psychologists have yet done, the 
 moralizing power of pain. This is a task for the 
 psychology of the future. In general, of course, we 
 can say that the range of such pains has been much 
 exaggerated by ascetics. Bodily pain, if severe, is 
 generally brutalizing, at least for most people, and 
 the moral insight is in it' only in so far as the past 
 experience of bodily pain helps us to know the sig- 
 nificance of the suffering of others, not by giving 
 us that blind emotion of sympathy before criticised, 
 but by giving us the means to form a cool abstract 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 181 
 
 estimate of the value of this evil of physical pain. 
 For thus we can realize the strength of the will that 
 seeks to escape it, and can act with due respect to 
 this will. But nature generally gives us enough ex- 
 perience of pain to furnish excellent material for the 
 calculations needed. Therefore, bodily pains, save 
 as punishments, are seldom useful instruments for 
 our great purpose. Not thus can self be duly mor- 
 tified. 
 
 It is different with certain mental pains. All 
 those that tend to make the individual feel his own 
 necessary limitations, and thereby to approach the 
 realization of the great world of life about him, are 
 necessary evils. His will must be overwhelmed, that 
 the Universal Will may have place to establish it- 
 self in him. Therefore, without considering whether 
 we are thereby increasing or diminishing the sum 
 of human misery, we all of us unhesitatingly set 
 about the work of contending with blind self-con- 
 fidence and self-absorption wherever it may appear. 
 Therefore it is right that we ridicule all pretentious 
 mediocrity that is unconscious of its stupidities. 
 Therefore, in fact, it is right that we should criticise 
 unsparingly all pretenders, however much they may 
 be pained by our criticism. Therefore it is well that 
 we should feel not a selfish but a righteous joy when- 
 ever pride has a fall, whenever the man who thinks 
 that he is something discovers of a truth that he is 
 nothing. Therefore, also, do we put down excessive 
 forwardness and vanity in growing children, although 
 so to do hurts their sensitive young selfishness very 
 keenly. In all such ways we must ask and we must 
 
182 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 show no mercy, save when these keen pains of 
 wounded vanity are so given as to inflame and in- 
 crease this vanity itself. All healthy, truthful criti- 
 cism of individual limitations is a duty, even if it is a 
 present torture to the individual criticised. For this 
 individual is blind to other life because he is wrapped 
 up in himself. If by showing him his insignificance 
 you can open his eyes, you are bound to do so, even 
 though you make him writhe to see his worthless- 
 ness. For what we here defend is not that ill-natured 
 criticism whose only aim is to gratify the miserable 
 self of the critic, but the criticism whose edge is 
 turned in earnest against every form of self-satisfac- 
 tion that hinders insight. Let a man be self-satis- 
 fied when he is at rest, after dinner, or in merry 
 company. It is a harmless and even a useful amuse- 
 ment. But when he is at work doing good he ought 
 to hate self-satisfaction, which hinders the moral in- 
 sight, which exalts his will above the universal will, 
 which takes the half-done task for the whole task, 
 and altogether glorifies the vanity of vanities. If 
 now my critic rids me of such self-satisfaction, he 
 may hurt me keenly, but he is my best friend. My 
 life may often be miserable in consequence, but then 
 I am an instrument, whose purpose it is to attain, to 
 foster, to extend, and to employ the moral insight. 
 My misery is a drop, evil no doubt in itself (since 
 my poor little will must writhe and struggle when it 
 sees its own vanity and the hopelessness of its sepa- 
 rate satisfactions), but a relative good, since through 
 it I may attain to the moral insight. All such pains 
 must be dealt with in the same way. Hence the 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 183 
 
 utilitarian principle of benevolent hedonism, even if 
 right in its application to the far-off future, has but 
 little direct practical application to a life that must 
 to-day be judged by such standards as these. 
 
 II. 
 
 But has the principle of hedonism any truth even 
 in its application to a world where all had attained 
 the moral insight as an experience ? If we con- 
 sider the higher human activities, whose worth is not 
 merely provisional, but permanent, the activities that 
 men will carry on when they have freed themselves 
 from selfish strife, is the aggregate happiness as such 
 the goal of the action of this unselfish society ? 
 
 There are existent already among men activities 
 that belong to spheres where selfish strife is, rela- 
 tively speaking, suppressed. These activities are 
 foreshadowings of the life of the possible future hu- 
 manity that may come to possess the moral insight. 
 Art, science, philosophy, are the types of such life. 
 These activities form still but a small part of the 
 aggregate work of men, a ad so it must long be ; yet, 
 though subordinated in extent to the pressing moral 
 needs of an imperfect state, these activities are al- 
 ready among the highest in our lives. But now, are 
 they valuable because of the aggregate happiness 
 that they cause, or for some other reason ? To judge 
 of this we must study the definition of the second, 
 more permanent class of human duties. 
 
 Suppose then that the first and provisional aim of 
 human conduct had been attained, and that all men 
 
184 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 possessed the moral insight, what would this insight 
 then lead them to do ? Here the hedonist will expect 
 to have his revenge for our previous neglect of his 
 advice. " My precepts have been set aside so far," 
 he may say, " as having no immediate application to 
 the moral needs of the moment. To get this merely 
 formal condition of harmony among men, the moral 
 man has been advised to subordinate all direct efforts 
 towards making people happy, to the end of making 
 them first possess what you have called the moral 
 mood. But now at last, in the supposed case, the 
 great end has been attained, and men are formally 
 moral. Now surely they have nothing to do but to 
 be as happy as possible. So at last my plan will be 
 vindicated, and the ideal man will come to be a 
 seeker of ideal pleasures." 
 
 The hedonist is too sanguine. His ideas of the 
 highest state may have their value, but they are in- 
 definite in at least one respect. When he says that 
 he wants all his ideal men, in the ideal state, to be 
 happy together, he never tells us what he means by 
 the individual man at all, nor what inner relation 
 that individual's happiness is to have to the happi- 
 ness of other men. All men, in the ideal state, are 
 to be harmonious and happy together : this the he- 
 donist tells us ; but he does not see how many dif- 
 ficulties are involved in the definition of this ideal 
 state. He plainly means and says that in this ideal 
 state the good of the whole society is to be an aggre- 
 gate of a great number of individual happy states, 
 which the various men of the blessed society are to 
 feel. He assumes then that in the ideal state each 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 185 
 
 man would be able to say : " I, separately regarded, 
 am happy, and so are all my fellows." Now pos- 
 sibly the very notion of an ideal state, in which the 
 separate selves are as such happy, and in which 
 the blessedness of the whole is an aggregate of the 
 blessedness of the separate individuals, is a contra- 
 dictory notion. At all events it is a notion whose 
 meaning and validity every hedonist coolly and un- 
 questioningly assumes. Yet it is an assumption that 
 we must examine with care. 
 
 If a man sets before himself and his fellows the 
 goal of individual happiness, as the hedonist wants 
 him to do in the supposed ideal state, can he con- 
 ceivably attain that goal? The hedonist supposes 
 that the only moral limitation to the pursuit of per- 
 sonal happiness is the moral requirement of altru- 
 ism, according to which no one ought to seek his 
 own pleasure at the cost of a greater misery to an- 
 other. In the ideal state, as all would be in the 
 moral mood, and all disposed to help one another, 
 and to get happiness only together, this one limita- 
 tion would be removed. Then, thinks the hedonist, 
 the highest law would be : Get the most happiness, 
 all of you. This happiness the hedonist conceives as 
 an aggregate of states that would exist in the various 
 separate individuals. So each individual will strive 
 after his own joy, but in such wise as to hinder the 
 joy of nobody else. But we oppose to this the ques- 
 tion : Is there not some other limitation than this to 
 individual search for happiness ? Is not the ideal 
 of individual happiness as such an impossible ideal, 
 not because the individuals in the imperfect state 
 
186 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 lack harmony, but because, even in the supposed har- 
 monious state, there would be an inner hindrance to 
 the pursuit of this ideal by any individual ? Would 
 not the moral insight detect the hindrance, and so re- 
 ject this ideal ? There are at least some very famil- 
 iar reasons for thinking this to be the case. These 
 reasons do not of themselves prove, but they certainly 
 suggest, that the notion of a progressive individual 
 happiness has in it some strange contradiction. 
 
 First, then, we have the old empirical truth that 
 individual happiness is never very nearly approached 
 by any one, so long as he is thinking about it. The 
 happy man ought to be able to say, " I am happy." 
 He can much more easily say, " I was happy ; " for 
 present reflection upon happiness interferes in most 
 cases with happiness. So here is an inner difficulty, 
 very well known, in the way of making individual 
 happiness the goal of life. We have no desire to 
 dwell here upon this difficulty, which has so often 
 been discussed. We do not exaggerate its impor- 
 tance. We consider it only the first suggestion that 
 the hedonistic ideal of life has some inner contradic- 
 tion in its very nature, so that there is some deeper 
 conflict here going on than that between selfishness 
 and altruism. 
 
 In the second place, we notice that, if anybody 
 tries to sketch for us the ideal state of human life 
 as the hedonist conceives it, we aje struck with a 
 sense of the tameness and insignificance of the whole 
 picture. The result is strange. Here we have been 
 making peace and harmony among men the proxi- 
 mate goal of life, yet when this harmony has to be 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 187 
 
 conceived in hedonistic fashion, when the hedonist 
 gives us his picture of a peaceful society, where, in 
 the midst of universal good humor, his ideal, the hap- 
 piness of everybody concerned, is steadfastly pursued, 
 we find ourselves disappointed and contemptuous. 
 That harmless company of jolly good fellows is un- 
 speakably dull. One listens to the account of their 
 happiness as one might listen to the laughter and 
 merry voices of some evening club of jovial strangers, 
 who had been dining at the hotel in which one hap- 
 pened himself to be eating a late and frugal supper, 
 in sobriety and weariness. Those unknown crea- 
 tures whose chatter in the next room the traveler 
 dimly hears at such a time, a confused babble of 
 stupid noises ; how insignificant their joys seem to 
 him ! Who cares whether that really wretched set 
 of animals yonder, with their full stomachs and their 
 misty brains, think themselves happy or not ? To be 
 sure, among them the harmony seems in some sort 
 to have been momentarily realized. One would no 
 doubt seem to enjoy it all just as well as they, if he 
 were one of them. But one is viewing it at a dis- 
 tance, from outside ; and so looking at it he possibly 
 sees that a mass of individual happiness is not just 
 the ideal of ideals after all. 
 
 Just such, however, is the feeling that comes to one 
 in considering Mr. Spencer's description of his ideal 
 society. And similar feelings have been awakened 
 in many reflective people when they have considered 
 traditional notions of heaven, and have tried to esti- 
 mate the value of the life of individual bliss therein 
 pictured. Professor William James has recently so 
 
188 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 well stated these objections in a few brilliant sen- 
 tences, that we cannot do better than to quote from 
 his recent article on " The Dilemma of Determin- 
 ism " : ! 
 
 " Every one must at some time have wondered at that 
 strange paradox of our moral nature, that, though the 
 pursuit of outward good is the breath of its nostrils, the 
 attainment of outward good would seem to be its suffoca- 
 tion and death. Why does the painting of any paradise 
 or Utopia, in heaven or on earth, awaken such yawnings 
 for Nirvana and escape ? The white-robed, harp-playing 
 heaven of our Sabbath-schools, and the ladylike tea-table 
 elysium represented in Mr. Spencer's 6 Data of Ethics,' as 
 the final consummation of progress, are exactly on a par 
 in this respect, lubberlands, pure and simple, one and 
 all. We look upon them from this delicious mess of in- 
 sanities and realities, strivings and deadnesses, hopes and 
 fears, and agonies and exultations, which form our pres- 
 ent state ; and tedium vitce is the only sentiment they 
 awaken in our breasts. To our crepuscular natures, born 
 for the conflict, the Rembrandtesque moral chiaroscuro, 
 the shifting struggle of the sunbeam in the gloom, such 
 pictures of light upon light are vacuous and expression- 
 less, and neither to be enjoyed nor understood. If this 
 be the whole fruit of the victory, we say; if the genera- 
 tions of mankind suffered and laid down their lives ; if 
 prophets confessed and martyrs sang in the fire, and all 
 the sacred tears were shed for no other end than that a 
 race of creatures of such unexampled insipidity should suc- 
 ceed, and protract in scecula sceculorum their contented 
 and inoffensive lives, why, at such a rate, better lose 
 than win the battle, or at all events better ring down the 
 curtain before the last act of the play, so that a business 
 1 Unitarian Review for September, 1884. 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 189 
 
 that began so importantly may be saved from so singu- 
 larly flat a winding-up." 
 
 Now not only does all this seem true in such cases, 
 but we have similar feelings about even so ideal a 
 picture of happy future life as is Shelley's, in the last 
 act of the " Prometheus." There are indeed many 
 deeper elements in that noble ideal of Shelley's, for 
 he distinctly says that his true ideal is " Man Oh ! 
 not men " ; or, as he again expresses it : 
 
 " One undivided soul of many a soul 
 Whose nature is its own divine control, 
 Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea." 
 
 And when he says this, he gets far beyond mere he- 
 donism. But yet there are other elements in his 
 account that are not so satisfactory, and that are 
 decidedly hedonistic. Their expression is indeed 
 perfect. Surely if the noblest hedonism could ever 
 succeed with us through the noblest of statements^ 
 such an advocate as Shelley would convince us. But 
 when the poet glorifies mere individual pleasure, as 
 he does in part of his picture, our clearest reflection 
 is that, after all, the end of the tragedy is petty when 
 compared with the beginning. 
 
 For consider what a world it is in which we begin 
 the poem. At first glance it is a gloomy and terri- 
 ble world of brutal wrong. But soon the picture 
 grows brighter, even while the wrong is depicted. 
 There is the glorious figure of the suffering Titan, 
 there is the sweetness of the tender love that watches 
 him ; and above the tyrant himself one feels that 
 there is somehow a heavenly might, that does not 
 suffer him to do his worst. The world in which 
 
190 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 these things live is not intolerable. But then come 
 the spirits that sing to Prometheus, in his anguish, 
 of immortal deeds done on the earth, of great 
 thoughts and lofty passions. All these are born of 
 the conflict, and have their being in the midst of the 
 terrors of the tyrant's dominion. It is indeed no 
 perfect world, this ; and one needs some higher 
 light, such as Prometheus has, to prophesy that the 
 good will ever triumph ; but one sees forthwith that 
 from the perfect world, if it ever comes, these great 
 strivings for good, this sublime devotion and love 
 and heroism, must not wholly vanish.' These things 
 must not be laid aside like old garments whenever 
 Prometheus wins and is free ; their spirit must be 
 preserved as an element in the higher life of the 
 future. If they are worth anything, their true na- 
 ture must be eternal. 
 
 And as for the real worth of this world in which 
 the evil is so far triumphant we learn something 
 of that from Demogorgon. This mysterious being 
 has indeed no very definite religious philosophy to 
 offer. He meets plain questions with vague an- 
 swers, when Asia and Panthea catechise him ; and 
 one feels it to be well for his reputation as a pro- 
 found teacher that his questioners are neither men 
 nor Socratic inquirers. But still what he tells of the 
 deep truth that is " imageless," is enough to make 
 us feel that even this world of horrors is not without 
 a divine significance. Jove reigns, but, whatever the 
 visible world may be, the truth of things is a world of 
 hope and love, where the real God is somehow above 
 all and through all, a Spirit of Eternal Goodness. 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 191 
 
 To have found this out in the midst of all the evil 
 is surely not to have found life wholly vain. 
 
 But then what happens ? By the accident that, 
 according to Shelley, rules the world, the revolution 
 is accomplished, and Zeus is hurled headlong into the 
 abyss. What glorious life shall now begin ? When 
 the deep and magnificent truth that was felt to be be- 
 neath all the horror of the tyrant's reign, comes out 
 into full light, what tongue shall be able to sing the 
 glories of that beatific vision ? We listen eagerly 
 and we are disappointed. Prometheus arises grandly 
 from his bed of torture, and then he forthwith 
 bethinks himself of a very pretty cave, where one 
 might be content to rest a long time in the refined 
 company of agreeable women. There one will lie, 
 and wreathe flowers, and tell tales, and sing songs, 
 and laugh and weep ; and the hours will fly swiftly 
 by. And then what will become of the rest of the 
 world ? Oh, this world simply becomes a theatre of 
 like individual enjoyments. Everybody to his cave 
 and his flowers and his agreeable companions. And 
 that will then be all. No organization ; just good 
 fellowship and fragmentary amusements. 
 
 No, that cannot be all. Shelley felt as much, 
 and added the last act of the play. There we are 
 to have depicted grandly and vaguely the life of or- 
 ganized love. The world shall be all alive, and the 
 universal life shall join in the hymn of praise. All 
 the powers of reality shall feel the new impulse of 
 perfect harmony, and what shall spring from their 
 union shall be some higher kind of existence, in 
 which there is no longer to be any talk of thine and 
 
192 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 mine ; but the " one undivided soul of many a soul," 
 " where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea," 
 shall enter upon a life of transcendent significance, 
 upon a task of eternal duration, and of a meaning 
 too high for us poor mortals of this present world 
 well to comprehend. But this is no longer pure 
 hedonism, although the verses hereabouts are so full 
 of the joyous outbursts and of the anticipations of 
 rapture. In fine, the outcome is no perfect and har- 
 monious conception at all. We find the joy of the 
 freed and loving, yet still separate selves, and the 
 higher life of the all-pervading universal spirit, both 
 alike glorified ; and we never get from the poet any 
 clearness about their actual relation. Is the world 
 blessed just because the tyrant no longer interferes 
 with each man's flower-wreathing and other amuse- 
 ments ? Or is the sole source of bliss the disposi- 
 tion of everybody to give everybody else everything ? 
 Or is the real source of the perfection this : that 
 these souls, no longer oppressed by hatred, have at 
 last come to feel not only their freedom, but also 
 some higher aim of universal life ? Shelley hints, 
 but does not consistently make us feel, what his real 
 result is. There was in fact always about Shelley 
 that childish innocence of benevolent hope, to which 
 the only evil seemed to be the hatred of men for one 
 another, and the highest good the outburst of uni- 
 versal kindliness. Now that is the beginning of 
 moral insight, but cannot be all of it. As if the be- 
 nevolence would not turn out to be utter emptiness, 
 unless there is something beyond it ! As if there 
 could be any value in this unity of life, unless there 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 193 
 
 is something to be done by the one life after it is 
 united ! As if the moral insight must not reveal 
 some deeper truth than can be seen in its first mo- 
 ments ! 
 
 One expects what we are coming to. In discuss- 
 ing this problem of Shelley's we are reaching the 
 sense that the moral insight must be yet further 
 completed, or else it will be all in vain. The moral 
 insight says to us all : Act as one being. We must 
 come to that point ; but we must also go beyond. 
 We must ask : What is this one being to do, after 
 the insight has made all the individuals of one will ? 
 And we already begin to see, in opposition to hedon- 
 ism, that it cannot be the end of this universal will 
 simply to make of us so and so many new separate 
 individuals once more. The mass of tediously happy 
 selves seems insipid to our common sense, just be- 
 cause we all dimly feel the truth that we must now 
 come to understand better, namely, that the univer- 
 sal will of the moral insight must aim at the de- 
 struction of all which separates us into a heap of 
 different selves, and at the attainment of some higher 
 positive organic aim. The "one undivided soul" 
 we are bound to make our ideal. And the ideal of 
 that soul cannot be the separate happiness of you 
 and of me, nor the negative fact of our freedom 
 from hatred, but must be something above us all, 
 and yet very positive. 
 
 Had we deduced our principle in any other way 
 than the one we chose, we should be unable to take 
 this, our present necessary step forwards. The feel- 
 ing of sympathy, for instance, is concerned with the 
 13 
 
194 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 individual object of our sympathy. To sympathize 
 with all men is to wish everybody happy, each after 
 his own fashion. But we rejected that emotional 
 sympathy as such. We said : The facts of life show 
 us a conflict of wills. To realize this conflict is to 
 see that no will is more justified in its separateness 
 than is any other. This realization is ethical skep- 
 ticism, a necessary stage on the way to the true 
 moral insight. The ethical doubt means and is the 
 realization of the conflict. But this realization 
 means, as we see on reflection, a real will in us that 
 unites these realized wills in one, and demands the 
 end of their conflict. This is our realization of an 
 Universal Will. The rest of our doctrine must be 
 the development of the nature of the universal will. 
 This will first says to each of the individual wills : 
 " Submit thyself to me." Or otherwise put, let 
 each will be so acted out as if by One Being who 
 combined in himself all the other wills. Hence the 
 universal will must demand, not the indefinitely con- 
 ceived or dimly and sentimentally desired separate 
 satisfaction of everybody, but an organic union of 
 life ; such an union as this our world would try to 
 make of itself if it were already in empirical fact 
 what the universal will demands it to be, namely, 
 one Self. This one Self, however, could no longer 
 will to cut itself up again into the separate empir- 
 ical selves, any more than it could in any narrow, 
 priggish fashion set itself up for a new specimen of 
 a lofty individual, to be obeyed as an arbitrary law- 
 giver. It would demand all the wealth of life that 
 the separate selves now have ; and all the unity that 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 195 
 
 any one individual now seeks for himself. It would 
 aim at the fullest and most organized life conceiv- 
 able. And this its aim would become no longer 
 merely a negative seeking for harmony, but a posi- 
 tive aim, demanding the perfect Organization of 
 Life. 
 
 III. 
 
 But the postulate of all hedonism, utilitarian or 
 other, this postulate of the absolute worth of indi- 
 vidual satisfaction, finds its practical refutation for 
 every growing character in yet another form. Every- 
 body has tried to realize the ideal of individualism, 
 this ideal of a happy or satisfied self, either for him- 
 self or for some loved one ; and everybody finds, if 
 he tries the thing long enough, what a hollow and 
 worthless business it all is. If there is, or is possible 
 anywhere, a really satisfied self, it certainly has no 
 place in any fleshly body ; and the reason is not 
 alone what disappointed people call the " disagree- 
 able order of things in this wicked world," but the 
 inner contradictions of this notion of a perfected hu- 
 man self. Let us remind ourselves of some of these 
 contradictions. 
 
 Hedonism has no meaning, unless the satisfied hu- 
 man self is logically possible. The ideal of hedon- 
 ism, with all its vagueness, has at least one essential 
 element, in that it demands the satisfaction of hu- 
 man selves by the free supply of all that they desire 
 for themselves. Hedonism therefore must and does 
 assert that what a man desires is his own content- 
 ment ; so that, if you could, physically speaking, 
 
196 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 give him all that he asks for himself, you would have 
 reached the goal for him. But now, if all this is a 
 delusion, if in fact a man does not really want his 
 own satisfaction alone, but does actually want some- 
 thing more, that is not his individual satisfaction, and 
 that is not to be attained through his satisfaction, 
 then the hedonistic ideal does not express the truth 
 of life. And this paradoxical experience we all get, 
 sooner or later. We find that our little self does 
 desire something that, if gained, would be not its 
 own satisfaction at all, but its own destruction in its 
 separate life as this self. So the aim of life cannot 
 be ultimately hedonistic. For, if possessed of the 
 moral insight, we cannot will that each self should 
 get the greatest possible aggregate of separate satis- 
 factions, when in truth no one of the selves seeks 
 merely an aggregate of self -satisfactions as such, but 
 when each does seek something else that is unattain- 
 able in the form of separate self -satisfaction. 
 
 But possibly a reader may incredulously demand 
 where the proof is of this self-contradictory desire 
 that all the selves are declared to have. The proof 
 lies in the general fact that to be fully conscious of 
 one's own individual life as such is to be conscious 
 of a distressing limitation. This limitation every one 
 very shrewdly notices for the first in other people. 
 The knowledge of it expresses itself in personal crit- 
 icism. One first puts the matter very naively thus, 
 that, whereas the rule of life for one's own person is 
 simply to get all the satisfaction that one can, the 
 appearance of anybody else who pretends to be con- 
 tent with Airaself must be the signal not for admira- 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 197 
 
 tion at the sight of his success, but for a good deal 
 of contempt. One sees at once that he is a person 
 of serious limitations. One sees and feels perfections 
 that the other has not. One despises then the other 
 man's complacency, because it is so plainly founded 
 in illusion. '* If he could only see himself as others 
 see him," one says, " he could not be self-satisfied." 
 Criticism thus seems to indicate why he ought to be 
 discontented, and why he would, if he knew more, 
 feel a contempt for himself. All such criticism is 
 really an abandonment of the hedonistic principle. 
 If an individual ought to be dissatisfied, although he 
 is actually satisfied, and if he ought to be dissatisfied^^ 
 merely because he has not some perfection that ex- 
 ists in somebody else, then the doctrine that a self 
 reaches its goal in so far as it reaches inner content- 
 ment is given up. No benevolent hedonist has any 
 business to criticise a happy man who is harming 
 nobody by his happiness. He is at the goal, or ap- 
 proximately so. Let him alone. To do otherwise, 
 by criticising him, is a crime. 
 
 But no ; every one feels that the true goal is not 
 attained for this man. And this feeling, though in 
 itself as feeling it proves nothing, is the first sug- 
 gestion to many of some deeper truth. This truth, 
 however, enters like iron into his soul, when some- 
 body else ably and justly and severely criticises him 
 in his turn. Here, for example, I have been for a 
 time content with myself, and have been saying to 
 my soul : " Soul, take thy ease," and here comes one 
 who says to me, very justly, " Thou fool," and points 
 out some great lack in my conduct, or in my charao 
 
198 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ter, or in my knowledge. And now I have a strange 
 experience of conflicting passions. This critic has 
 caused me a sharp pang. Perhaps I hate him for it ; 
 but then, when I go away and think the matter over, 
 I see that as to the fact, he is right. This great lim- 
 itation does actually exist for me, and perhaps I can- 
 not remove it ; so I can but suffer from the sense of 
 it. I was innocent and ignorant before, and there- 
 fore happy. If the critic had not showed me to 
 myself, I should have kept this bliss. But it is in 
 vain now to think of returning to that innocence. I 
 am indeed a wretch and a fool ; and how shall I 
 escape myself ? Alas for my lost pleasure in con- 
 templating my fancied perfection ! 
 
 But no : cannot I in fact return to that ignorance, 
 and to the blissful illusion of my own worth once 
 more ? Surely I can if I but try awhile. To flatter 
 myself, to curse the critic, to talk of his jealousy and 
 of his blindness : surely this will bring me back to 
 my ignorance again in time. He will be forgotten, 
 and I contented. But once more, my enlightened 
 self revolts from this lie. The defect is real, and I 
 know it. Would my ignorance make it less real ? 
 To have this defect and to suffer from it is bad 
 enough ; but with horror do I now contemplate the 
 state of going on forever with this defect, but still 
 ignorant of it and so not suffering from it. My old 
 innocence seems really pitiful. It actually adds much 
 to my present pang of chagrin, that I previously 
 ought to have felt the chagrin, and yet had it not. 
 I tremble when I reflect how, amid all that selfish 
 complacency, I really was a fool the whole time, and 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 199 
 
 appeared so to discerning people, and yet knew it 
 not. And therefore now, through all the pang of 
 the discovery, runs the feeling that I would not if I 
 could, no, not for any delight of complacency, return 
 to that state of hollow, delicious, detestable igno- 
 rance. It was a fool's paradise ; but I have escaped 
 from it. I know my nakedness, and I prefer the fruit 
 of the tree of knowledge, with bitter exile, to the 
 whole of the delights of that wretched place. It is 
 a contradictory state, this. My knowledge is torture 
 to my foolish, sensitive self ; yet while I writhe with 
 the vainest of pangs, I despise utterly the thought 
 of escaping it by illusion, or by forgetfulness, or by 
 any means save the actual removal or conquest of 
 the defect. And this I feel even when the defect is 
 seen to be utterly irremovable without the destruc- 
 tion of myself. Better go on despising myself, and 
 feeling the contempt of others, than return to the 
 delights of foolishness ; or, if the pain of knowing 
 what I am is insupportable, then it were better 
 to die, than to live in despicable ignorance. Oh, 
 wretched man that I am ! Who shall deliver me ? 
 
 Is all this mere emotion? or is it insight? In 
 fact it is a growing, though still imperfect insight, 
 a form of the moral insight. The pangs of this 
 wounded self-love are themselves in truth also van- 
 ity, like the complacent self-love that they mourn ; 
 but only through the gateway of this pain can most 
 people get beyond these vanities of individualism. 
 For this wounded self-love, that refuses to be com- 
 forted by any deliberate return to its old illusions, 
 is, as Adam Smith long since pointed out, an emo- 
 
200 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tional expression of the result of putting ourselves 
 at the point of view of our critics. We see our 
 limitations as they see them. Our will conforms 
 itself, therefore, to their contemptuous will concern- 
 ing us, because we realize the existence of that will. 
 In recognizing and sharing their contempt, we there- 
 fore realize in part the universal will that must con- 
 demn all individual limitations as such. We prac- 
 tically experience the truth that a perfectly fair judge 
 of us all would not be satisfied merely with our indi- 
 vidual contentments as such, but would also demand 
 the destruction of all our individual limitations. We 
 thus get practically far beyond hedonism. We see 
 that as we are weak and wretched in the eyes of one 
 another, we should all be far more so in the eyes of 
 a god Our ideal of life must then be the notion of 
 a life where no one being could fairly criticise any 
 other at all. But such a life would be no longer a 
 life of separate individuals, each limited to his petty 
 sphere of work. It would be a life in which self was 
 lost in a higher unity of all the conscious selves. 
 
 Singular may appear this conception even now, 
 after all that we have said ; but it is a practical con- 
 ception in our every-day human life. That we criti- 
 cise the limitations of others, and desire them to sac- 
 rifice their pleasures for the sake of removing these 
 limitations, may be regarded at first as our cruel ca- 
 price, if you will so regard it. But when the edge 
 of the sword is turned against us, when we, feeling 
 the bitterness of criticism and seeing our limitations, 
 long to be beyond them, hate ourselves for them, and 
 yet refuse to escape from the pain of all this by 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 201 
 
 forgetfulness of the defect, we pass from capricious 
 criticism to something higher. We accept with ag- 
 ony the point of view of the one who stands outside 
 of us. And, so doing, we pass in effect to the accep- 
 tance of the demands of the universal will. If there 
 were a will that included in one consciousness all our 
 separate wills, it could not will our individual de- 
 fects as such. It would be absolute critic, as well 
 as absolute harmonizer, of all of us. It would tear 
 down these individual barriers of our petty lives, 
 as the corporation of a great city may tear down 
 wretched old rookeries. It would demand that we 
 be one in spirit, and that our oneness be perfect. 
 But if we experience this universal will, we experi- 
 ence that hedonism, whose life-blood is the insistence 
 upon individual states as such, cannot be upheld by 
 the moral insight, either now, or at any future stage 
 of our human life on this earth. We perceive too 
 that we all have a deep desire for self-destruction, in 
 so far as we recognize that our self-love means ab- 
 sence of perfection. 
 
 IV. 
 
 We have seen in general the moral outcome of in- 
 dividualism. Let us study some of its forms and for- 
 tunes more in detail. Individualism, viewed as the 
 tendency to hold that the ideal of life is the separate 
 happy man, is itself very naturally the normal ten- 
 dency of unreflecting strong natures, to whom happi- 
 ness has been in a fair human measure already given. 
 Children and child-like men, full of vigor, are inno- 
 cently selfish ; or, when they act unselfishly, their 
 
202 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 whole ideal is the making of others like themselves. 
 They fall into a notion about life that the author 
 not long since heard well-expressed by a cheerful 
 young friend, a former fellow-student, who, having 
 early plunged into a busy life, has already won both 
 influence and property. This man, full of the enthu- 
 siasm of first success, was talking over his life with 
 the writer, and fell to defining his opinions on vari- 
 ous subjects, such as young men like to discuss. At 
 last he was asked about the view of life that he had 
 already formed in his little experience. He was 
 quick, honest, and definite in his answer, as he al- 
 ways has been. " My notion of a good life is," he 
 said, " that you ought to help your friends and whack 
 your enemies." The notion was older than the 
 speaker remembered ; for Socratic dialogues on the 
 Just, with their ingenious Sophists making bold as- 
 sertions, form no part of his present stock of sub- 
 jects for contemplation. But what was interesting 
 in the fresh and frank manner of the speech was 
 the clearness of the conviction that a world of suc- 
 cessful and friendly selves, whose enemies chanced 
 to be all recently " whacked," would be at the goal 
 of bliss. Such indeed is and must be the individ- 
 ualism of the successful and unreflecting man, by 
 whom all the world is classified as being either his 
 or not his, as to a cow all is either cow feed or not 
 cow feed. A man in this position has never yet 
 known the burden of Faust's soul when he says, 
 Cursed be what as possession charms us. If such 
 a man gets any moral insight, it will be on this stage 
 imperfect. He will seek only to multiply himself 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 203 
 
 in the forms of other men. These he will call his 
 friends. That in which he does not recognize him- 
 self, he will " whack." 
 
 But most men cannot keep this form of the illu- 
 sion of individualism. They pass most of their lives 
 in the midst of disappointment. The self cannot get 
 its objects. The ideal independence is hampered. 
 The stubborn world asserts itself against us. We 
 feel the littleness of our powers and of our plans. 
 The broken and despairing self has to seek refuge 
 elsewhere. And so individualism most commonly 
 assumes another shape. In inner self-development 
 we seek what the world refuses us in outer self-reali- 
 zation. Thoughts at least are free. Our emotions 
 are our own. The world does not understand them ; 
 but the world is cold and unappreciative. Let us 
 be within ourselves what we cannot get in the outer 
 world. Let us be inwardly complete, even if we are 
 outwardly failures. Then we shall outwit the cruel 
 world, and produce the successful self, in spite of 
 misfortunes. 
 
 The reader need not be reminded of what vast 
 development individualism has undergone in this di- 
 rection. Literature is full of accounts of struggles 
 for inward self-realization, made by men whose outer 
 growth is impeded. The Hamlets and the Fausts 
 of poetry, the saints and the self-conscious martyrs 
 of great religious movements, are familiar examples. 
 We have already in a former chapter studied the out- 
 come of this romantic individualism in a few cases. 
 There is no time to dwell here afresh at any length 
 on so familiar a theme, but for the present we may 
 
204 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 point out that all illustrations of the tendency fall 
 into two classes, representing respectively the senti- 
 mental and the heroic individualism. These are the 
 forms of that Nobler Selfishness which benevolent 
 hedonism defends. They are efforts to find the con- 
 tented and perfected self. Their failure is the fail- 
 ure of individualism, and therewith of hedonism. 
 
 As for the sentimental individualism, we have seen 
 already how unstable are its criteria of perfection, 
 how full of fickleness is its life. \he sentimental self ' 
 admits that the world cannot understand it, and will 
 not receive it ; but it insists that this neglect comes 
 because the world does not appreciate the strength 
 and beauty of the inner emotional life. The ideal, 
 then, is devotion to a culture of the beautiful soul, 
 and to a separation of this soul from all other life. 
 Let other souls be saved in like fashion. One does 
 not object to their salvation ; but one insists that 
 each saved soul dwells apart in its own sensitive feel- 
 ings, in the world of higher artistic pleasures. Now 
 in fact such lives may be not uninteresting to the 
 moralist ; but no moralist can be really content with 
 their ideal. Its best direct refutation is after all a 
 sense of humor strong enough to let the sensitive and 
 beautiful soul see once in a while how comical is its 
 demure pursuit of these subjective phantoms. This 
 miserable life of deep inward excitements and long- 
 ings, how absurd it seems to any critic who, standing 
 outside, sees that there is nothing more than froth 
 and illusion and hypocrisy in it. Heine's anecdote 
 of the monkey boiling his own tail so as to get an 
 inward sense of the nature and worth of the art of 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 205 
 
 cookery, is what first comes to mind when we see 
 such a man as this subjective idealist of the emo- 
 tions. You have only to get him to laugh heartily 
 once or twice, and his Philistine narrowness can no 
 longer content hini. "Why is just my feeling worth 
 so much?" he will say. And then he will wake up 
 to observe that his ideal was all a bad dream ; and 
 that an experience has no more or less worth because 
 it happens in connection with the decomposition of 
 his particular brain-stuff. Faust discovered that, as 
 we have seen ; and so in time will any other sensible 
 man. The real reason after all why Mephistophe- 
 les could not get Faust's soul was that Faust could 
 understand the Mephistophelean wit, which was 
 throughout destructive of individualism. The sen- 
 timentalist wno has no humor is once for all given 
 over to the devil, and need sign no contract. He 
 stares into every mirror that he passes, and, cursing 
 the luck that makes him move so fast in this world, 
 he murmurs incessantly, Verweile dock, du bist so 
 schon. And so in the presence of the moral insight 
 he is forthwith and eternally damned, unless some 
 miracle of grace shall save him. It is noteworthy 
 that one or two of our recent and youngest novelists 
 in this country have gained a certain reputation by 
 sentimental stories of cpllegiate and post-graduate 
 life that precisely illustrate this simple-minded but 
 abominable spirit. May these young authors repent 
 while there is time, if indeed they can repent. 
 
 Less dangerous to genuine morality, and far 
 higher in the scale of worth, is the Titanic form of 
 individualism, the form that has given birth to such 
 
206 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 expressions as the Everlasting No of " Sartor Resar- 
 tus." The name of Prometheus at once springs to 
 our lips when we think of this view of life. Pro- 
 metheus is so fully the representative of Titanism, 
 that there is no better way of characterizing its 
 whole spirit than to call it the Heresy of Prome- 
 theus, the finest of all moral heresies, and the last. 
 
 The world will not grant you outward freedom, and 
 you see the hollowness of that inward life of blessed 
 emotions. You despise it in others ; you see that 
 the moral insight cannot approve such a form of 
 selfish separation in you or in them. But there is 
 another form of self - development. You must be 
 something. Why not be heroic ? Possibly the ideal 
 is a world of courageous selves, that find their per- 
 fection in their independence of action. Prometheus 
 gave this ideal a peculiar emphasis by reason of the 
 fact that he had a Zeus to defy. But the same ideal, 
 in a more moderate expression, is the ideal of many 
 a quiet, matter of fact man, who has little happiness, 
 but much spirit and energy, who is too busy and too 
 healthy to be sentimental, who knows little of poetry, 
 who has never heard the name of Prometheus, but 
 who knows what it is to hold his own in the fight 
 with the world. This man you cannot put down ; 
 he cares little for the opinions of others. There is 
 no judge above him save God or his conscience. He 
 is no saint ; but he is at least an admirable fellow. 
 He belongs to the race of Achilles ; he believes in 
 the gospel of eternal warfare against whatever seems 
 to him evil. He respects others ; he wants to do 
 good in his way. But he thinks that the best good 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 207 
 
 that he could do would be to make other men brave 
 like himself. This lonely, active, indomitable self 
 he thinks the ideal type of perfection. For him the 
 moral insight does not go beyond the approval of 
 such life as this, indefinitely multiplied. 
 
 It is always a delight to follow this Titanism in 
 its various shapes. Buddhism, as we know, is a re- 
 ligion wholly founded on self-denial, and it counsels 
 austere self-extinction. And yet, by a strange freak 
 of moral dialectics, it is Buddhism that has given 
 us some of the best expressions of the Titanic indi- 
 vidualism. In a Buddhist homily in the Sutta Ni- 
 pata 1 one may find such an outburst as the follow- 
 ing, one of the finest of the confessions of the 
 Titans : 
 
 " Having laid aside the rod against all beings, and not 
 hurting any of them, let no one wish for a son, much less 
 for a companion : let him wander alone like a rhinoceros. 
 
 " In him who has intercourse with others, affections 
 arise, and then the pain which follows affection ; consid- 
 ering the misery that originates in affection, let one wan- 
 der alone like a rhinoceros. 
 
 " He who has compassion on his friends and confiden- 
 tial companions loses his own advantage, having a fettered 
 mind ; seeing this danger in friendship, let one wander 
 alone like a rhinoceros. 
 
 " Just as a large bamboo-tree, with its branches entan- 
 gled in each other, such is the care one has with children 
 and wife ; but like the shoot of the bamboo not clinging 
 to anything, let one wander alone like a rhinoceros. 
 
 " As a beast unbound in the forest goes feeding at pleas- 
 1 Max Miiller's Sacred Books of the East, vol. x., part ii., p. 6 
 
208 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 lire, so let the wise man, considering only his own will, 
 wander alone like a rhinoceros. . . . 
 
 ..." Discontented are some ascetics, also some 
 householders, dwelling in houses ; let one, caring little 
 about other people's children, wander alone like a rhinoc- 
 eros. 
 
 " If one acquires a clever companion, an associate right- 
 eous and wise, let him, overcoming all dangers, wander 
 about with him glad and thoughtful. 
 
 " If one does not acquire a clever companion, an asso- 
 ciate righteous and wise, then as a king abandoning his 
 conquered kingdom, let him wander alone like a rhinoc- 
 eros. . . . 
 
 . . . " Seeing bright golden bracelets, well- wrought by 
 the goldsmith, striking against each other when there are 
 two on one arm, let one wander alone like a rhinoceros. 
 
 " Thus, if I join myself with another, I shall swear or 
 scold ; considering this danger in future, let one wander 
 alone like a rhinoceros. . . . 
 
 . . . " Both cold and heat, hunger and thirst, wind and 
 a burning sun, and gadflies and snakes, having over- 
 come all these things, let one wander alone like a rhinoc- 
 eros. 
 
 " As the elephant, the strong, the spotted, the large, 
 after leaving the herd walks at pleasure in the forest, even 
 so let one wander alone like a rhinoceros. . . . 
 
 " Not adorning himself, not looking out for sport, amuse- 
 ment, and the delight of the pleasure in the world ; on 
 the contrary, being loath of a life of dressing, speaking 
 the truth, let one wander alone like a rhinoceros. . . . 
 
 ..." This is a tie, in this there is little happiness, 
 little enjoyment, but more of pain, this is a fishhook, so 
 having understood, let a thoughtful man wander alone 
 like a rhinoceros. 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 209 
 
 " Having torn the ties, having broken the net as a fish 
 in the water, being like a fire not returning to the burnt 
 place, let one wander alone like a rhinoceros. . . . 
 
 ..." Not abandoning seclusion and meditation, always 
 wandering in accordance with the Dhammas, seeing misery 
 in the existences, let one wander alone like the rhinoc- 
 eros. 
 
 44 Wishing for the destruction of desire, being careful, 
 no fool, learned, strenuous, considerate, restrained, ener- 
 getic, let one wander alone like a rhinoceros. 
 
 " Like a lion not trembling at noises, like the wind not 
 caught in a net, like a lotus not stained by water, let one 
 wander alone like a rhinoceros. 
 
 " As a lion strong by his teeth, after overcoming all an- 
 imals, wanders victorious as the king of the animals, and 
 haunts distant dwelling-places, even so let one wander 
 alone like a rhinoceros." 
 
 ..." They cultivate the society of others, and serve 
 them for the sake of advantage ; friends without a motive 
 are now difficult to get, men know their own profit and 
 are impure ; therefore let one wander alone like a rhinoc- 
 eros." 
 
 When one contemplates the ideal of the heroic in- 
 dividualism in this its purest form, rugged, empty of 
 sensuous comforts, yet noble and inspiring in all but 
 the highest degree, one feels how hard the decision 
 as to its worth will be, unless the moral insight gives 
 very definitely and authoritatively its ruling in the 
 matter. But fortunately, in trying to judge of even 
 so splendid a caprice as this, we are not left to our 
 individual opinion. The will of the Titan as to the 
 world of life is simply, by hypothesis, not the univer- 
 sal will. The one being that included in his life all 
 14 
 
210 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 our petty lives, how must he regard this self-seeking 
 loneliness of disposition ? What is this heroic life 
 but an overflow from the great stream of universal 
 life, a pool, that, left to itself by some subsiding 
 flood, slowly dries away in its shallow stagnancy, 
 until it becomes a mud-puddle? And as for the 
 proof of this, what becomes of your hero if you take 
 him at his word, and leave him to himself like a rhi- 
 noceros ? Then indeed he soon sinks to the level of 
 a peevish animal. His admirable character is what 
 it is by reason of his conflicts with his fellows, and 
 by reason of the respect that he excites in others. 
 Stop talking about him, cease admiring him, do not 
 even fight with him, ignore him utterly ; and with 
 these external supports see his inner heroism vanish. 
 He exists as hero, in fact, only because he is in or- 
 ganic relation to the world about him. His boasted 
 loneliness is an illusion. Could not Mephistopheles 
 have his laugh here too? 
 
 But the Titan is often properly the hero not only 
 of a comedy, but also of a tragedy ; and a tragedy, 
 as we know, always discovers to us the gloomy worth- 
 lessness of this individual life as such. Mortal man, 
 once brought to possess the moral insight, finds his 
 destiny not in himself, but in the life about him, or 
 in the ideal life of God. And the tragedy expresses 
 one way of getting this insight. 
 
 In short, just what the Heresy of Prometheus as- 
 serts to be the perfect, namely, the complete and all- 
 sided development of life, just that can belong only 
 to the general, not to the individual life. Hence 
 Titanism always contradicts itself. It says that I, 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 211 
 
 the narrow, limited self, who am dependent for every 
 quality of my life on constant living intercourse with 
 other people, must become perfect, independent, 
 practically infinite. But to ask this is to ask that I 
 destroy myself, and my Titanism with me. Unquiet 
 is and must be the life that seeks perfection in any 
 group of selves. And so the ideal cannot here be 
 found. 
 
 V. 
 
 Somewhat hastily, as our limits have required, we 
 have pursued the definition of our ideal through the 
 imperfect forms of individualism. And now what 
 must it be that the moral insight, with its Universal 
 Will, demands of the possible future moral humanity, 
 not as the negative task of preparing the way for 
 goodness, but as the positive ideal task of the com- 
 munity in which the moral insight is attained ? This 
 demand is : Organize all Life. And this means : 
 Find work for the life of the coming moral human- 
 ity which shall be so comprehensive and definite that 
 each moment of every man's life in that perfect 
 state, however rich and manifold men's lives may 
 then be, can be and will be spent in the accomplish- 
 ment of that one highest impersonal work. If such 
 work is found and accepted, the goal of human prog- 
 ress will be in so far reached. There will then be 
 harmony, the negative expression of the moral in- 
 sight ; and there will be work, and organization of 
 work. And this work will be no more the work of 
 so and so many separate men, but it will be the work 
 of man as man. And the separate men will not 
 
212 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 know or care whether they separately are happy ; 
 for they shall have no longer individual wills, but 
 the Universal Will shall work in and through them, 
 as the one will of two lovers finds itself in the united 
 life of these twain, so that neither of them asks, as 
 lover, whether this is his perfection or the other's 
 that he experiences. For their love makes them 
 one. In such wise we must figure to ourselves the 
 ideal state of humanity. And anything short of 
 that we are required by the moral insight to alter in 
 the direction of that end. 
 
 The reader may ask, What work can be found 
 that can thus realize the universal will ? It is not 
 for us to know the whole nature of that work. We 
 set before us the ideal task to discover such forms 
 of activity as shall tend to organize life. The com- 
 plete organization we cannot now foresee. But we 
 can foresee in what general direction that human 
 activity will tend, if it is ever discovered. For we 
 have certain human activities that do now already 
 tend to the impersonal organization of the life of 
 those engaged in them. Such activities are found 
 in the work of art, in the pursuit of truth, and in a 
 genuine public spirit. Beauty, Knowledge, and the 
 State, are three ideal objects that do actually claim 
 from those who serve them harmony, freedom from 
 selfishness, and a wholly impersonal devotion. Both 
 in art and in the service of the state, the weakness 
 of human nature makes men too often put personal 
 ambition before the true service of their chosen 
 ideal. The faultiness of all such individualism is, 
 however, generally recognized. The dignity and se- 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 213 
 
 verely impersonal relationships and language of offi- 
 cial life are intended to express the sense that no in- 
 dividual has as such the right to recognition at the 
 moment when he exercises an official function. He 
 lives at the time wholly in his office. The state is 
 just then everything. Even so all higher criticism 
 professes to disregard the personal pleasure of the 
 artist, and the personal whim of the critic. The 
 production and the criticism of Art are no amuse- 
 ments of two individuals. They are work done 
 in the service of the one mistress, the divine art it- 
 self. But still, notwithstanding the recognition o 
 this ideal devotion to one's country or to one's art, 
 our typical politician and our typical ambitious ar- 
 tist show us that these activities still but imperfectly 
 overcome individualism, or lead men to the higher 
 plane of moral life. Better success in organizing life 
 one finds, when one passes to the activity of truth- 
 seeking, especially in fields where human thought 
 is best master of itself, and best conscious of its 
 powers. When one considers the work of a company 
 of scientific specialists, how each one lives for his 
 science, and how, when the specialty is advanced 
 and well organized, no one in official expressions 
 of his purely scientific purposes dares either to give 
 himself airs of importance as an individual, or to 
 show any benevolence or favoritism or fear in con- 
 sidering and testing the work of anybody else ; when 
 one sees how impersonal is this idea of the scientific 
 life, how no self of them all is supposed to have a 
 thought about his science because it pleases him, 
 but solely because it is true, when one consid- 
 
214 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ers all this, one sees faintly what the ideal relation 
 of mankind would be, if the ideal work for all men 
 were found. This devoted scientific spirit is itself 
 only an ideal even to-day ; and all sorts of personal 
 motives still interfere to disturb its purity. But 
 here, at all events, one sees dimly in a concrete in- 
 stance what the organization of life may yet be- 
 come. 
 
 Now suppose a world in which men had some one 
 end of activity that united somehow all the differ- 
 ent strivings of our nature, aBsthetie, social, theo- 
 retical. Suppose that in the pursuit of this end all 
 the petty, selfish aims of individuals had been for- 
 gotten. Suppose that men said no longer : " I have 
 won this good thing for myself and my friends," 
 but only, " This good is attained," no matter by 
 whom. Suppose that thus all life was organized in 
 and through this activity, so that a man rose up 
 and lay down to rest, ate and drank, exercised and 
 amused his senses, met his fellows, talked with them, 
 lived and planned with them, built his cities, wan- 
 dered over the oceans, searched the heavens with 
 his telescopes, toiled in his laboratories, sang his 
 songs, wrote his poems, loved and died, all for the 
 service of this one great work, and knew his life 
 only as the means to serve that one end, then would 
 the ideal of the moral insight be attained. The 
 world of life would be as one will, working through 
 all and in all, seeking the ends of no one individual, 
 caring not for any stupid and meaningless " aggre- 
 gate " of individual states, but getting what as in- 
 sight it demands, the absolute Unity of Life. Then 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 215 
 
 indeed we should have reached the ideal ; and this 
 being the ideal, all is good that helps us in the di- 
 rection thereof, and all is evil that drives us in the 
 opposing direction. 
 
 The imperfection and the relative justification in 
 its place of benevolent hedonism are thus indicated. 
 The moral insight being attained by all men as an 
 experience, this insight could not will for individuals 
 such painful experiences as would degrade the suf- 
 ferers below the level of the insight itself, back to 
 the struggles and the illusions of individualism. It 
 would be the business of men then as now, to remove 
 useless pain out of the world, not however for any 
 other reason than that pain implies separation of 
 the sufferer from the consciousness of universal life, 
 and consequent disharmony of his will in its relation 
 to other wills. Pain that springs from selfish disap- 
 pointments we must often temporarily increase, that 
 we may lead a man out of himself. But for the 
 rest, the moral insight rejects pain, though only be- 
 cause it means disharmony of the wills that are in 
 the world. 
 
 Thus we have completed the expression of our gen- 
 eral ideal. We must add a few concrete precepts 
 that this ideal has to give us concerning the conduct 
 of our daily life. Plainly, if such a goal as this is 
 what we aim at from afar, the acts of our lives must 
 be influenced by it. What relation between me and 
 my neighbor to-day does this moral law establish ? 
 
 Thou and I, neighbor, have in this world no rights 
 as individuals. We are instruments. The insight 
 that begins in me when I find thee, must go further. 
 
216 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 I find not only thee, but also Life Universal. In- 
 asmuch as I do anything for thee, I do it also to 
 the life universal; but, even so, it is only because 
 I serve the life universal that I dare serve thee. 
 Thy happiness, however near and dear thou art to 
 me, is but a drop in this vast ocean of life. And 
 we must be ready to sacrifice ourselves to the Whole. 
 But while we live together, and while we may with- 
 out sin enjoy each other's presence, how shall we treat 
 each other ? As mere masses of happy or miserable 
 states ? As selves to be made separately perfect ! 
 No, that cannot be. We must live united with each 
 other and the world. Therefore must we do our 
 part to find work vast enough to bring us all in so 
 far as may be into unity, without cramping the tal- 
 ent of any of us. Each then is to do his work, but 
 so as to unite with the work of others. How may 
 we accomplish this ? By seeking to develop every 
 form of life that does bring men into such oneness. 
 Our vocation, whatever it be, must not end simply 
 in increasing what people call the aggregate happi- 
 ness of mankind, but in giving human life more 
 interconnection, closer relationship. Therefore we 
 must serve as we can art, science, truth, the state, 
 not as if these were machines for giving people pleas- 
 ant feelings, but because they make men more united. 
 When we urge or seek independence of character, 
 we must do so only because such independence is a 
 temporary means, whose ultimate aim is harmony and 
 unity of all men on a higher plane. In all this we 
 must keep before us very often the high ideal that 
 we are trying to approach. And when we judge of 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 217 
 
 a good action we must say, not that this was good be- 
 cause it made some one happy, but that it was good 
 because it tended directly or remotely to realize the 
 Universal Will. 
 
 And so, however much mere harmony may be our 
 aim, we must be ready very often temporarily to fight 
 with disorganizing and separating tendencies, forces, 
 or men. When we fight we must do so for the sake 
 of conquering a peace in the name of the Highest. 
 And so we must fight resolutely, fearlessly, merci- 
 lessly. For we care not how many stubbornly disor- 
 ganizing spirits are crushed on the way. The One 
 Will must conquer. But on the other side we must 
 be very careful of every soul, and of every tendency 
 that may, without destruction, be moulded into the 
 service of the Universal Will. The moral insight 
 desires that no hair fall from the head of any living 
 creature unnecessarily. The one aim is stern to its 
 steadfast enemies, but it is infinitely regardful of all 
 the single aims, however they may seem wayward, 
 that can at last find themselves subdued and yet 
 realized in its presence, and so conformed to its will. 
 All these rivulets of purpose, however tiny, all these 
 strong floods of passion, however angry, it desires to 
 gather into the surging tides of its infinite ocean, 
 that nothing may be lost that consents to enter. Its 
 unity is no abstraction. The One Will is not a one- 
 sided will. It desires the realization of all possible 
 life, however rich, strong, ardent, courageous, mani- 
 fold such life may be, if only this life can enter into 
 that highest unity. All that has will is sacred to it, 
 save in so far as any will refuses to join with the 
 
218 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 others in the song and shout of the Sons of God. 
 Its warfare is never intolerance, its demand for sub- 
 mission is never tyranny, its sense of the excellence 
 of its own unity is never arrogance ; for its warfare 
 is aimed at the intolerance of the separate selves, 
 its yoke is the yoke of complete organic freedom, 
 its pride is in the perfect development of all life. 
 When we serve it, we must sternly cut off all that 
 life in ourselves or in others that cannot ultimately 
 conform to the universal will ; but we have nothing 
 but love for every form of sentient existence that can 
 in any measure express this Will. 
 
 VI. 
 
 We have done for the present with the ideal, and 
 must turn to reality. Our religious consciousness 
 wants support for us in our poor efforts to do right. 
 Is this real world that we have so naively assumed 
 thus far, in any wise concerned to help us in realizing 
 ideals, or to support us by any form of approval in 
 our search for the right ? We must face this prob- 
 lem coolly and skeptically, if we want any result. 
 We must not fear the thunders of any angry dog- 
 matic thinker, nor the pain that such researches must 
 cause us if they are unsuccessful. It is something 
 very precious that we seek, and we must run great 
 risks, if need be, to get it. 
 
 Let us begin to define a little better what this is 
 that we seek. By a support for moral acts in outer 
 reality, we do not mean merely or mainly a power 
 that will reward goodness. The moral insight cares 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 219 
 
 not for individual rewards. Only the good intention 
 is truly moral. Good acts done for pay are selfish 
 acts. So the outer support that we want in our mo- 
 rality is not reward as such. We want to know that, 
 when we try to do right, we are not alone ; that there 
 is something outside of us that harmonizes with our 
 own moral efforts by being itself in some way moral. 
 This something may be a person or a tendency. Let 
 us exemplify what we mean by some familiar cases. 
 Job seeks, in his consciousness of moral integrity, 
 for outer support in the midst of his sufferings. 
 Now whatever he may think about rewards, they are 
 not only rewards that he seeks. He wants a vindi- 
 cator, a righteous, all-knowing judge, to arise, that 
 can bear witness how upright he has been ; such a 
 vindicator he wants to see face to face, that he may 
 call upon him as a beholder of what has actually 
 happened. " Oh that I knew where I might find 
 him, that I might come even to his seat. I would 
 order my cause before him, and fill my mouth with 
 arguments. I would know the words which he 
 would answer me, and understand what he would 
 say unto me. . . . There the righteous might dis- 
 pute with him ; so should I be delivered forever from 
 my judge. Behold I go forward, but he is not there ; 
 and backward, but I cannot perceive him : On the 
 left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold 
 him : he hideth himself on the right hand, that I 
 cannot see him : But he knoweth the way that I 
 take : when he hath tried me I shall come forth as 
 gold." . 
 
 So again in the great parable of the judgment day, 
 
220 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 in the twenty -fifth chapter of Matthew, the moral 
 force of the story is not expressed by the rewards 
 and punishments described, any more than in Elijah's 
 vision on Horeb, the Lord was in the thunder and 
 in the fire. But the moral force of the scene lies in 
 the concluding words that the judge is made to speak 
 to the multitudes of just and unjust. " Inasmuch as 
 ye did it unto the least of these, ye did it unto me." 
 That is, if we may paraphrase the words of the judge : 
 "J^LJie says, " represent all beings. Their good is 
 mine. If they are hungry or naked or sick or im- 
 prisoned, so am I. We are brethren ; ours is all 
 one universal life. That I sit in this seat, arbiter 
 of heaven and hell, makes me no other than the rep- 
 resentative of universal life. Such reverence as ye 
 now bear to me is due, and always was due, to the 
 least of these my brethren." The infinite sacredness 
 of all conscious life, that is the sense of the story ; 
 the rest is the scenic accompaniment, which, whether 
 literally or symbolically true, has no direct moral 
 significance. Now the knowledge such as Job sought, 
 the knowledge that there is in the universe some con- 
 sciousness that sees and knows all reality, including 
 ourselves, for which therefore all the good and evil 
 of our lives is plain fact, this knowledge would be 
 a religious support to the moral consciousness. The 
 knowledge that there is a being that is no respecter 
 of persons, that considers all lives as equal, and that 
 estimates our acts according to their true value, 
 this would be a genuine support to the religious need 
 in us, quite apart from all notions about reward 
 and punishment. A thinking being, a seer of all 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 221 
 
 good and evil, is thus desired. This thinking being 
 would still have religious significance, even if it had 
 no other attributes than these. Should we find it 
 necessary to regard this being as without affection, 
 sympathy, or even power to act, as without willing- 
 ness to avenge wrong-doing, if we had to deprive it 
 of everything else that is human save knowledge ; 
 let this be a passionless and perfect knowledge, 
 an absolutely fair judgment of our moral actions, 
 and there would still be in the world something of 
 religious value. It is not affirmed that we ought 
 to rest content with such a conception as this, but 
 at all events this conception would not be valueless. 
 Even so again, the conception of some natural ten- 
 dency in the world that, being " a power not our- 
 selves," " makes for righteousness," this conception, 
 as Mr. Matthew Arnold has so well shown us, would 
 have a religious value. Something of this kind then, 
 more or less definite and full of life, is what we seek. 
 What indication is there that such search is not 
 hopeless ? For the author's part, he professes to be 
 quite willing to accept any result of research, how- 
 ever gloomy or skeptical, to which he is led by gen- 
 uine devotion to the interests of human thought as 
 thought. But he insists that as moral beings we 
 should make clear to ourselves what are the inter- 
 ests of thought, and that we should see whether they 
 do lead us to results that are not wholly skeptical, 
 nor altogether gloomy. There is no reason for clip- 
 ping our own wings for fear lest we should escape 
 from our own coops and fly over the palings into 
 our own garden. Let us get all the satisfaction from 
 
222 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 philosophy that we can. In truth we shall never get 
 too much. 
 
 But, for the rest, the reader must be reminded of 
 one thing that was said in the opening chapter about 
 the magnitude and boldness of the demands that re- 
 ligious philosophy makes in coming to the study of 
 the world. We said that we will be satisfied only 
 with the very best that we can get. We want to 
 find some reality that our ideal aims can lead us to 
 regard as of Infinite Worth. If we cannot find that, 
 then the best possible aspect of reality must be 
 chosen instead. We will not be satisfied with little, 
 if we can get much. Our religious demands are 
 boundless. We will not falsify the truth ; nor yet 
 will we dread any disaster to our ideal aims, how- 
 ever great the disappointment that would result from 
 failure. But, while pursuing the truth with rever- 
 ence, we will not withdraw our demands until we see 
 that we can get no certain success in them. 
 
 We insist, therefore, that the religiously valuable 
 reality in the world shall be, if so we can find it, a 
 Supreme Reality, no mere chance outcome of special 
 circumstances, but an ultimate aspect of things. 
 
 Furthermore, the special form that our ideal has 
 taken demands another character in our object of 
 religious satisfaction. It must be such as to support 
 the realization of our particular ideal. If a power, 
 it must aim at the unity of our lives ; if in some 
 other way approved as the deepest truth of things, it 
 must show us how our ideal either can be realized 
 by us, or else is already realized at the heart of this 
 truth. 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 223 
 
 Such is the work of our second book. We ap- 
 proach it not as if we expected any mystical revela- 
 tion, but solely as having for our one desire to find 
 out what a sensible man ought reasonably to think of 
 the world wherein he finds himself. 
 
BOOK II. 
 
 THE SEARCH FOE A RELIGIOUS TRUTH. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 
 
 WHEN we turn from our world of ideals to the 
 world actually about us, our position is not at once 
 a happy position. These ideals that we have agreed 
 upon, in so far as they are our own, do not make the 
 world, and people differ endlessly about what the 
 world is and means. Very naturally, then, we also 
 must ourselves begin with difficulties and doubts. 
 For if we want a religious doctrine that in these days 
 can stand us in good stead, we must fear nothing, 
 and must run the risk of all the disasters of thought. 
 The warfare of faiths is so angry and ancient, that 
 we must be content if, with our best efforts, we get 
 anything out of it at all. As millions of brains must 
 toil, doubtless, for centuries before any amount of 
 ideal agreement among men is attained or even ap- 
 proximated, we must be content if we do very little 
 and work very hard. We can be tolerably certain 
 that in a world where nearly all is dark very much 
 of our labor will be wasted. But this is natural. 
 There is the delight of activity in truth-seeking ; but 
 when, at the outset, you compare your hopes and 
 claims with the shadowy and doubtful results that 
 you may reach, the comparison cannot seem other- 
 wise than melancholy. Through the failures of mil- 
 
228 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 lions of devoted servants, the humanity of the future 
 may possibly (we do not, at least at this point in our 
 study, know that it will certainly) be led to a grand 
 success. This far-off divine event to which, for all 
 we know, our fragment of creation may be moving, 
 but which at any rate we regard with longing and 
 delight, constitutes the moral aim of our philosophic 
 studies. It is good to strive. 
 
 In the present chapter, therefore, we shall devote 
 ourselves for the most part to negative criticism of 
 certain views that are or may be held about the real 
 world. 
 
 I. 
 
 That skepticism in studying reality is to some ex- 
 tent useful, most people will admit. But not every 
 one will follow us at once into the thorough-going 
 and uncompromising skepticism that we shall have 
 to present in the following as the very basis of our 
 positive doctrine. It is surprising how easily the 
 philosophic need is satisfied in the minds of most 
 persons, even in the minds of many professed philo- 
 sophic students. A few very complacent questions, 
 readily if unintelligibly answered, put to rest the 
 whole desire that such people feel to cross-examine 
 reason. In fact they seem to hold that a certain 
 disrespect would be shown by questioning reason 
 any more sharply ; and so their philosophy is like a 
 Congressional investigation of the doings of a politi- 
 cian, conducted by his fellow-partisans. But we feel, 
 in writing this book, that such a philosophy, whose 
 only business it is to " whitewash " reason, is an in- 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 229 
 
 suit to reason. Reason's investigations of its own na- 
 ture are not partisan affairs conducted for the sake 
 of effect ; nor does reason seek, like a demagogue, to 
 get a popular " vindication," but solely to reach the 
 deepest possible insight into its own absolute truth. 
 Hence we refuse utterly to have the following re- 
 garded as in any narrower sense an " apology " for 
 any religious truth, since the defensive or apologetic 
 attitude in presence of religious problems is once for 
 all an insult to genuine religion. If there is truth 
 absolute, we desire to know the same, and if we ever 
 get a glimpse of it, doubtless it will need very little 
 apology from us. But meanwhile we propose to 
 doubt fearlessly and thoroughly. If our limits pre- 
 vent here the proper exhaustive search for all the 
 actual difficulties of the views that we present, still 
 we want to have, and as far as may be to show, the 
 spirit of honest, determined, conscientious skepti- 
 cism. A clerical friend of the author's impressed 
 him very much in early youth by the words : " God 
 likes to have us doubt his existence, if we do so sin- 
 cerely and earnestly." These words are almost a 
 truism ; they surely ought to be a truism. Yet they^ 
 have been forgotten in many a controversy. Surely, 
 if God exists, he knows at least as much about phi- 
 losophy as any of us do ; he has at least as much ap- 1 
 preciation for a philosophic problem as we can have. 
 And if his own existence presents a fine philosophic ) 
 problem, he delights therein at least as much as we 
 do. And he then does not like to see that problem 
 half-heartedly handled by timid, whining, trembling 
 men, who constantly apologize to God because the 
 
230 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 existence of certain fools called atheists forces them 
 to present in very pious language certain traditional 
 proofs of his existence. No, surely not in this spirit 
 would a rational God, if he exists, have us approach 
 the question. But with at least as much coolness and 
 clearness of head as we try to have when we toil over 
 a problem in mathematics ; with at least as merciless 
 an analysis of all that is obscure and doubtful and 
 contradictory in our own confused ideas as we should 
 use in studying science ; with at least as much eager- 
 ness in finding out the weakness and the uncertainty 
 of men's wavering and ill-trained judgments as we 
 should bring to the examination of an important 
 commercial investment, with at least so much of 
 caution, of diligence, and of doubt we should ap- 
 proach the rational study of the Highest. For what 
 can insult God more than careless blundering ? It 
 is shameful that men should ever have treated this 
 matter as if it were the aim of religious philosophy 
 to have a store-house of formulated traditional an- 
 swers ready wherewith to silence certain troublesome 
 people called doubters. In these matters the truly 
 philosophic doubt is no external opinion of this or 
 that wayward person ; this truly philosophic doubt 
 is of the very essence of our thought. It is not to 
 be " answered " or " silenced " by so and so much 
 apologetic pleading. The doubt is inherent in the 
 subject-matter as we must in the beginning regard 
 the same. This doubt is to be accepted as it comes, 
 and then to be developed in all its fullness and in all 
 its intensity. For the truth of the matter is con- 
 cealed in that doubt, as the fire is concealed in the 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 231 
 
 stony coal. You can no more reject the doubt and 
 keep the innermost truth, than you can toss away the 
 coal and hope to retain its fire. This doubt is the 
 insight partially attained. 
 
 Such must be our spirit. And now, to apply it 
 at once to the problems before us, where shall we be- 
 gin our search for a religious truth ? We are to find, 
 if possible, some element in Reality that shall have 
 religious significance. But how shall we do this un- 
 less we have made clear to ourselves in what sense 
 we know Reality at all ? It would seem that our re- 
 ligious philosophy must begin with the problem of all 
 theoretical philosophy : What can be our knowledge 
 of this world, and whereon can this knowledge be 
 founded ? 
 
 A dark and dismal topic, one may say. But re- 
 member, here and here only can our beloved treas- 
 ure be found buried. Either there is no religious 
 philosophy possible, or it is here ; and here we must 
 delve for it. Nor let one be too much terrified at 
 once by the forbidding aspect of the question. It is 
 indeed no easy one ; yet to answer it is but to know 
 the real meaning of our own thoughts. This truth 
 that we seek is not in the heavens, nor in the depths ; 
 it is nigh us, even in our hearts. Only inattention 
 can be hiding it from us. Let us look closer. 
 
 This real world that popular thought declares to 
 exist outside of us we have so far taken it on 
 trust. But now, what right have we so to take it? 
 What do we mean by it? When we say that we 
 can know it, do we not mean that it is in some way 
 bound to conform to some of our thoughts ? Or, if 
 
232 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 you will put the matter in the reverse order, and 
 will say, with seeming modesty, that our thought is 
 so constituted as to have a certain likeness to real- 
 ity, do you really make the matter clearer? The 
 mysterious conformity between our thought and 
 what is no thought of ours remains, and we have to 
 make clear our assurance of that. This assurance 
 itself, if we got it, would seem to be in just the same 
 position as is the conformity of which it is to assure 
 us. Itself again would be outside of the external real 
 world, and in our thought. Yet this assurance is to 
 tell us something about that external world, namely, 
 its conformity to certain of our thoughts. What 
 can we thus know about any external object at all ? 
 
 The difficulty is an old one. Our solution of it, 
 if we get any, must determine the whole of our re- 
 ligious thought. Let us see at all events where the 
 difficulty arises, and why. Whether or no there is 
 possible any solution, the difficulty plainly lies in a 
 certain conceived relation between us and the world. 
 All the common metaphysical and religious doctrines 
 begin by setting a thinker over against an external 
 world, which is declared independent of his thought, 
 and which his thought is then required to grasp and 
 know. This supposed relation of subject and object 
 gives metaphysics its seemingly insoluble problems. 
 This thinker, whose thought is one fact, while that 
 world out there is another fact, how can he learn by 
 what takes place in his thought, that is, in the one 
 of these two supposed entities, what goes on in the 
 other of these entities, namely, in the world ? Once 
 for all, this marvelous relation of pre established har- 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 233 
 
 mony between these supposed separate entities de- 
 mands philosophic deduction. The relation, to be 
 sure, may be itself a metaphysical figment. We 
 hold that it is. We shall try to show hereafter the 
 baselessness of this notion of a world of external 
 fact on one side, in the barren isolation of its tran- 
 scendental reality, with an equally lonesome thinker 
 on the other side, somehow magically bound to fol- 
 low after the facts of that world. We hold, to put 
 it in plain language, that neither the external world 
 nor the individual thinker has any such reality as 
 traditional popular beliefs, together with most met- 
 aphysical schools, have desired us to assume. But, 
 for the first, we cannot yet undertake to trouble the 
 reader with this our philosophic speculation. That 
 will come in its good time, we hope not too unintel- 
 ligibly, and it will have its place in our religious 
 doctrine. 
 
 We begin, however, with the popular metaphys- 
 ical concept, of a separate external world, and of a 
 thinker bound somehow to repeat the facts of it in 
 his thought. We ask, with popular metaphysics: 
 How can we be sure that he does this ? And from 
 metaphysical systems, both popular and unpopular, 
 we get an amazing jargon of answers. 
 
 The most popular answer, after all, is a threat, a 
 threat repeated endlessly in all sorts of apologetic 
 books, but still a mere base, abject, wholly unphilo- 
 sophical threat. It is said to us that we must be- 
 lieve our human thinker to be capable of thinking 
 correctly the facts of this supposed external world, 
 because, if he does not, the result will be disastrous 
 
234 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 to the whole common sense conception of the world. 
 If this thinker does not somehow magically repro- 
 duce external facts in his private mind, then is our 
 faith vain, and we are all very miserable. It is as- 
 tonishing how this, the most helpless abandonment 
 of all philosophic thought, is constantly reiterated 
 by certain of those who pretend to be philosophers. 
 Can a threat scare us from philosophy ? To get a 
 sure foundation for our religion, we begin by asking 
 how a man can really know the external world at 
 all. We get as reply the threat that, unless we ad- 
 mit the knowledge of the external world, we must 
 be in eternal doubt, and therefore wretched. To 
 doubt this knowledge, we are told, would be to 
 doubt all that makes life worth living. But it is 
 just because we want to find a sure basis for what 
 makes life worth living that we begin with this 
 doubt. We are determined to get at the root of 
 this matter, however bitter may be the evil that will 
 befall us if our skepticism does not succeed in get- 
 ting past this guarded gateway of philosophy. We 
 persist in asking, all threats to the contrary notwith- 
 standing, just how and why and in what sense the 
 external world can be known to us, if indeed this 
 conception itself of an external world is justly 
 formed at all. 
 
 Yet we grant that the full force and need and 
 bitterness of our problem may not be plain to the 
 reader, unless he has first undertaken to examine 
 with us at some length the philosophic character 
 and consequences of this popular metaphysical con- 
 ception of the external world. To get him to share 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 235 
 
 well our doubt, we must first provisionally accept 
 this notion of popular metaphysics itself. We must 
 waive for the moment our difficulty, that it may re- 
 cur to us with greater importance by and by. Let 
 the reader once come to see that this popular notion 
 of an external world is an utterly vague conception, 
 capable of numberless forms, and religiously unsat- 
 isfactory in all of them, and then we shall expect 
 him to feel the force of the deeper philosophic prob- 
 lems involved. This present chapter will therefore 
 proceed directly to an examination of the popular 
 notions about the external world. We shall exam- 
 ine them, namely, to find whether they offer any 
 religious aspect. We shall find that they do not 
 offer any such aspect in any satisfactory sense. 
 That the good is supreme in the external world as 
 popularly conceived, nobody can establish. This 
 supposed external world is once for all a World of 
 Doubt, and in it there is no abiding place. When 
 the reader has come to feel with us this truth, then 
 he will be ready to look deeper into the matter. 
 Then some other more genuinely philosophic con- 
 ception of Reality will have its place. Hence in 
 the rest of this chapter we shall be accepting pro- 
 visionally notions that we are hereafter to reject, 
 and assuming much on trust that is at best very 
 doubtful. We shall show that, even so aided, the 
 popular notions about the religious aspect of this 
 world cannot bear criticism. This visible world of 
 popular faith will lose its worth for us. We shall 
 have to look elsewhere. 
 
 The religious significance once removed from the 
 
236 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 popular realistic philosophy, with its crudely meta- 
 physical notion of things, we shall be ready to listen 
 to skepticism about the foundations of this notion ; 
 and we shall be ready for some new conception. 
 This new conception will indeed* not falsify the true 
 moral meaning of that innocent faith in a real world 
 upon which we have so far depended in our research. 
 The popular notion of an external world, practically 
 useful for many purposes, and sufficient for many 
 scientific ends, will be refuted and rejected in its 
 contradictions and in its absurdities, but the soul of 
 truth that is in it will be absorbed into a higher 
 conception both of the eternal Reality and of our 
 relation thereto. Our seeming loss will become our 
 gain. That bad dream, the dead and worthless 
 World of Doubt in which most of our modern teach- 
 ers remain stuck fast, will be transformed for us. 
 We shall see that the truth of it is a higher World, 
 of glorious religious significance. 
 
 So for the first we turn to that supposed world of 
 popular metaphysics, to test its religious value. It is 
 conceived as a world existent in space and time, and 
 as a world of real things which act and interact. For 
 convenience sake, we shall in the following use the 
 word Power to mean any one of these things, or any 
 group of them, that in this external world may be 
 supposed to produce effects upon any other thing or 
 group of things. However these Powers get their ef- 
 ficiency, the religious significance of the supposed ex- 
 ternal world, if it has any, must lie in the supremacy 
 of the Good in this world of the Powers. One must 
 then view this external world historically as a mass 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 237 
 
 of Powers, which work together in harmony or in 
 discord, and which give you Products. The religious 
 ideals must find satisfaction here, if at all, in con- 
 templating the goodness of these powers and of their 
 works. If the religious ideals here fail, there will 
 be the other aspect open. Regarded in a truly phil- 
 osophical way, and in its eternal nature, the world, 
 as we shall hereafter come to see, cannot be supposed 
 to be either a power or a heap of powers. For pow- 
 ers have their being only in time, and only in rela- 
 tion to one another. If then all fails when we con- 
 sider this external world of powers, this figment of 
 popular metaphysics, the eternal nature of reality in 
 some deeper view of that nature may still be found 
 of infinite value to us. In fact we shall find the 
 search for a religious truth, among the powers of this 
 popularly conceived external world, very dishearten- 
 ing. The jargon of their contending voices will not 
 unite into any religious harmony. We shall find 
 these powers like the thunder and the fire. The still 
 small voice is not in them. We shall be driven to 
 some other aspect of the world. We shall approach 
 that aspect in ways that imply no disrespect to those 
 who have been so long scientifically studying the 
 history and forces of the assumed external world. 
 Their results, with the practical consequences in daily 
 life, and with all that Agnosticism about the nature 
 and purposes of the powers of this visible world 
 which such men nowadays feel bound to proclaim, 
 we shall on the whole accept. We too shall be Ag- 
 tics, namely, as to the powers that rule the visible 
 world. But we shall find a very different way, un- 
 
238 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 trodden by scientific research, and yet, we hope, not 
 a way of mere dreams, not a way into a world of 
 fancy, but a way that leads us to a point whence we 
 get a glimpse into that other aspect of things. This 
 way Modern Idealism since Kant has been busy in 
 finding and clearing. How wearisome some of the 
 exploring expeditions have been, we well know. Our 
 search also may end in a wilderness ; but we fancy 
 ourselves to have found an open path that to some 
 readers will seem at least in part new. And some 
 of the prospects on that road may not be wholly dis- 
 heartening, even to the most exacting religious 
 seeker. But all this is anticipation. First then : 
 The World as a theatre for the display of power, 
 physical or metaphysical. This is the World of 
 Doubt. 
 
 II. 
 
 Let us begin our study of the powers that work to- 
 gether in the supposed external reality, by accepting 
 for a moment, without criticism, the notion of this 
 supposed external world from which scientific expe- 
 rience sets out. Let us say : there it is, an objective 
 world of moving matter, subject to certain laws. All 
 the powers are but manifestations or forms of mat- 
 ter in motion. Planets revolve, comets come and go, 
 tides swell and fall, clouds rise and rivers flow to the 
 sea, lightning flashes, volcanoes are active, living be- 
 ings are born, live, and die, all exemplifying certain 
 universal principles, that are discoverable by experi- 
 ence, that are capable of being used to predict the 
 future, and that are related to one another in such a 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 239 
 
 way as to show us a vast connected whole, the nat- 
 ural universe. This matter however is dead ; these 
 laws are ultimate given truths. We did not make 
 them, cannot see why just they and none other were 
 from the beginning ; we must accept them as they 
 are. The whole world is a vast machine. A mind 
 powerful enough might be possessed of the knowl- 
 edge that La Place, and, in our own generation, Prof. 
 Du Bois Eeymond, have so finely described as the 
 scientific ideal. Such a mind might have an univer- 
 
 o 
 
 sal formula, in its possession, a key to the mysteries 
 of the succession of phenomena. Such a being could 
 then, using this formula, calculate all events, as as- 
 tronomers now predict eclipses. At every instant 
 multitudes of air pulsations quiver about us. These, 
 in all their forms, our mind possessed of this univer- 
 sal formula, would have been able to predict ages 
 ago, just as certainly as you now can predict that the 
 sun will rise to-morrow morning. All is predeter- 
 mined : the glitter of every ice crystal on your frozen 
 window-panes on a winter morning, the quiver of 
 every muscle in the death agony of the fish that you 
 pull out of a mountain-stream, the falling of every 
 yellow leaf in the autumn woods, each of these 
 events could have been foreseen, mathematically cal- 
 culated, and fully described, by one able to use the 
 universal formula, and possessed, myriads of aeons 
 ago, of an exact knowledge of the positions of the 
 atoms of the original nebula from which our great 
 stellar system condensed. Such is the natural world. 
 What religious aspect can this vast machine pos- 
 sess ? What room is there for a higher element to 
 
240 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 be introduced into this mass of dead mathematical 
 facts? The answer of some representatives of sci- 
 ence in our day is well known to us. Whatever else 
 is doubtful, say such men, there stands fast the great 
 law of progress. Evolution in the physical world 
 becomes actual progress in the world of human life. 
 The world, under the influence of all these far-reach- 
 ing laws, is actually growing forever better. Thus 
 natural law agrees with morality. Thus there is a re- 
 ligious aspect to the mechanical laws of the universe. 
 
 Let us consider once more the law of progress. 
 We spoke of it in a previous chapter. There it did 
 not help us. For we wanted to agree upon the na- 
 ture of morality. We were not helped towards such 
 agreement by the knowledge that there is in the 
 world a physical evolution. For we could not tell 
 what ought to be, merely by considering what is. 
 We had first to agree upon a moral law, before we 
 could decide whether evolution is actually progress. 
 But now, perhaps, we can make use of the law of 
 evolution to aid our inquiry into the religious aspect 
 of reality. For now, having defined what the good 
 is, we may estimate whether the world is growing to- 
 ward the good. And if the world is 'morally pro- 
 gressing, then one great demand of the religious con- 
 sciousness is fulfilled. Then there is a power not 
 ourselves that works for righteousness. Or is this 
 really the consequence of the law of evolution ? 
 
 The first answer is that if there is any tendency 
 at work in the world that as time goes on more and 
 more helps men in their struggle towards morality, 
 this tendency is indeed, as far as it goes, what we 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 241 
 
 want to find. And if such a tendency is found, as 
 we are told, in evolution, the result is in just so 
 far encouraging. Although the external world still 
 often hinders moral growth, yet, we are told, as evo- 
 lution reaches higher and higher stages, the world 
 comes to harmonize more and more with man's moral 
 growth. This also seems to be what we seek. In 
 time morality will become a natural product of early 
 childhood. Men will be born with characters that 
 we now seek in vain to develop by a life-time of la- 
 bor. Natural evolution, then, does help moral prog- 
 ress, and the world is more moral to-day than ever 
 before. This then is to be the religious aspect of 
 the outer world. Does it contain enough of the truth 
 of things to content us ? 
 
 We are far from doubting the scientific worth of 
 the natural laws that have been discovered of late 
 years, and that have made so clear to us the great 
 truth of far-reaching physical evolution. But let us 
 reflect before we accept these facts as furnishing any 
 deeply important contribution to our present prob- 
 lem. We thoroughly believe in evolution ; but we 
 must take, in these matters, a very high position. 
 If the world of powers apart from man is to have a 
 religious aspect, then this aspect must belong to this 
 world as a whole. A minor power for good is not 
 enough. It will not suffice to find that one bit of 
 reality fights for our moral needs while another bit 
 of reality fights against them, unless we can in some 
 way harmonize these conflicting aspects, or unless 
 we can show that they that be with us are not only 
 more important or significant than they that be 
 
 16 
 
242 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 against us, but are really the deepest truth of things. 
 Else we shall be left face to face with a gloomy world 
 of conflict, where the good and bad are mingled in 
 hopeless confusion. If such a world is the fact, we 
 must accept that fact ; but we cannot then say that 
 we have made sure of an answer to our religious 
 needs. Now suppose that in examining the world 
 we found two tendencies at work, equally fundamen- 
 tal, equally active, fairly balanced in power, produc- 
 ing in the long run equally permanent, equally tran- 
 sient results, but always in deadly antagonism to each 
 other, the one making for moral goodness, the other 
 for moral evil. Suppose that the world appeared as 
 the theatre and the result of this struggle of the good 
 and of the evil principles, could we say that we had 
 found in these facts a religious aspect of reality ? 
 We should hardly answer in the affirmative. So 
 long as we must fix our minds on this struggle of 
 equally balanced powers, we could not find the world 
 a religiously encouraging vision. We should either 
 have to regard the world in some other and higher 
 aspect, or we should have to give up regarding it as 
 religiously interesting. An answer to our moral 
 needs that is drowned by a hubbub of opposing 
 noises can be no harmonious song. Now we affirm 
 that so long as you look upon the world as a growth 
 in time, as a product of natural forces, as an histor- 
 ical development, you can never make it certain, or 
 even probable, that this world is not such a scene of 
 endless warfare. Hence the progress that you may 
 observe can never overbalance the probability that 
 this progress is a transient and insignificant fact, in 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 243 
 
 the midst of a chaos of confused tendencies. There- 
 fore progress on this planet for a few thousands or 
 millions of years indicates nothing about any true 
 harmony between nature and morality. 
 
 Let us call attention to one aspect, well-known, 
 yet often neglected in recent discussions of a few 
 familiar facts. Modern science is justly sure of 
 physical evolution, but is no less sure that evolu- 
 tion on this planet is a process that began at a 
 period distant by a finite and in fact by a not very 
 great time from the present moment. That our 
 planet was a nebulous mass at a date at most some- 
 where between twenty millions and one hundred mil- 
 lions of years ago, we have all heard, and we have 
 also had explained to us some of the proofs of this 
 fact. Our planet is still imperfectly cooled. At a 
 comparatively recent period in the history of this 
 stellar universe, this little point of it was a spheroid 
 of glowing vapor, from which the moon had not yet 
 been separated. The present heat of the earth is an 
 indication of its youth. Furthermore, what our 
 planet is to become in time, the moon itself tells us, 
 having cooled, by reason of its small size, more rap- 
 idly than we have done. Cold and dead, waterless, 
 vaporless, that little furrowed mass of rock deso- 
 lately rolls through its slow days, looking with pas- 
 sionless stare at our stormy, ardent earth, full of mo- 
 tion and of suffering. What that mass is, our earth 
 shall become. And progress here will cease with 
 the tides. All these are the commonplaces of pop- 
 ular science. Progress then, as we know it here, is 
 a fact of transient significance. Physical nature 
 
244 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 permits progress rather than renders it necessary. 
 Progress is an incident of a certain thermal process, 
 a kind of episode in the history of the dissipation 
 of the energy of our particular mass of matter, and 
 thus, in so far as we yet know, a present occurrence 
 just in our neighborhood, a local item in the news of 
 the universe. Now these are the familiar facts whose 
 meaning we want to enforce in an often neglected 
 aspect. 
 
 But, one says, all this has been anticipated hun- 
 dreds of times. It is really unfair to insist upon 
 such things. For at least here, at least now, the 
 world does realize our moral needs by showing us 
 progress. Is not this all that we need? May we 
 not be content with the few millions of years of 
 growth that remain to our race before the earth 
 grows cold ? Is it not foolish to look into futurity 
 so curiously ? What matters it whether chaos comes 
 again in far-off ages ? 
 
 But we still insist. We desire, vainly or justly, 
 yet ardently, that the world shall answer to our 
 moral needs not by accident, not by the way, not for 
 a time, but from its own nature and forever. If we 
 can see that present progress is an indication of the 
 nature of the universe, that the present is a symbol 
 or a specimen of eternity, we shall be content. But 
 if this is not so, if present progress is seen to be a 
 mere accident, an eddy in the stream of atoms, then 
 present progress is a pleasant fact to contemplate, 
 but not a fact of any deep significance. Still we 
 shall be crying in the darkness for support and find- 
 ing none. For nature will say to each of us : "I 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 245 
 
 give support to thy moral needs so long as the tem- 
 perature of thy earth crust is high enough to prevent 
 thy oceans from being absorbed, so long as the ra- 
 diant heat of the sun is given out in sufficient quan- 
 tities to keep thee warm. When the next stage is 
 reached, I propose to freeze and to dry thy fair 
 home and all thy moral needs, until there shall be 
 nothing found on thy planet lovelier than the ruined 
 crags of thy hills as they glimmer in the last red 
 rays of a torpid sun. What is thy progress to me?" 
 Notice then where our real difficulty lies. The as- 
 pect of the facts that we now mean is this. It is 
 not because progress is to endure on this planet for 
 a short or for a long time, but because the world in 
 which this progress is so to end seems, thus re- 
 gardgd, wholly indifferent to progress, this is the 
 gloomy aspect. To-day, even while progress is so 
 swift and sure, at this moment, we are living in a 
 world for which, as science displays it to us, this 
 progress is as indifferent and unessential as the 
 fleeting hues of an evaporating soap-bubble. Is the 
 physical fact of progress, thus regarded, a moral 
 help to us ? 
 
 Yet men turn away from these plain and often- 
 mentioned facts to all sorts of fantastic dreams of a 
 coming golden age. They make of future humanity 
 a saintly people, living in devotion, or a merry peo- 
 ple, always dancing to waltzes yet undreamt of, or a 
 scientific people, calculating by some higher algebra 
 the relative positions and motions of the molecules 
 in the rocks on the other side of the moon. Every 
 dream of progress is to be realized in that blessed 
 
246 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 time, and we are invited to praise a nature that 
 could produce all this blessedness by pure physical 
 law. Now we must indeed wish well for the men of 
 the year A. D. 1,000,000, but we can receive no re- 
 ligious support from the knowledge that if all goes 
 right and if the sun keeps well at work, the men of 
 that time will be better than we are. For still the 
 world as a whole gives no support to our real moral 
 needs, for only by a happy accident will this blessed- 
 ness be possible. Or, in short, two tendencies are 
 seen before us in the world, one working for evo- 
 lution, for concentration of energy in living beings, 
 for increase of their powers, for progress ; the other 
 for dissipation of energy, for death, for the destruc- 
 tion of all that is valuable on our earth. We learn 
 that the latter tendency has triumphed quite .near 
 us, on the moon. We hear that it is certain in 
 time to triumph on the earth, and that the other ten- 
 dency is to be only of transient superiority. We 
 know that its present predominance here is, phys- 
 ically speaking, a happy accident, which a cosmical 
 catastrophe might at any moment bring to an end. 
 And now we are asked to see in this combination of 
 facts a religious aspect. For the writer's part, he 
 refuses to regard it as anything but an interesting 
 study in physics. He delights in it as science, but 
 it has nothing to do with religion. Yet some people 
 talk of a Religion of Evolution. 
 
 But no doubt believers in universal progress are 
 ready with hypotheses that shall show how signifi- 
 cant a fact progress really is. A world that has 
 progressed so many millions of years doubtless has 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 247 
 
 resources of which we know nothing. There are all 
 the stars with their vast stores of energy. Possibly 
 they are infinite in number. Progress ceasing just 
 here may flash out in renewed brilliancy elsewhere. 
 Who knows what is in store for the future, when 
 the present seemingly chaotic arrangement of the 
 stars gives way to vastly higher organized systems 
 of interacting bodies, in whose light life shall flour- 
 ish eternally ? 
 
 Well, all this we can all fancy as well as our 
 scientific neighbors. Nobody would call such dreams 
 scientific, but they are logically possible dreams, 
 and they are very beautiful. But they have one 
 terrible negative consideration against them. This 
 progress is either conceived as having gone on 
 through infinite past time, or else it has no genuine 
 significance for the true nature of the universe. A 
 world that has now grown, now decayed, that has 
 sometimes progressed, sometimes become worse, is a 
 world in which progress is an accident, not an essen- 
 tial feature. But now, if progress has gone on 
 through infinite time, it has so gone on as to make 
 possible, after all this infinite time, just the misery 
 and imperfection that we see about us. Let us re- 
 member that fact. This poor life of ours is in the 
 supposed case the outcome of infinite ages of growth. 
 That must be our hypothesis, if we are to cling to 
 progress as an essential truth about the world. Very 
 well then, all our temptations, all our weakness, our 
 misery, our ignorance the infinite past ages have 
 ended in fashioning them. Our diseases, our fears, 
 and our sins are they perfect ? If not, then what 
 
248 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 is the meaning of endless progress toward perfec- 
 tion ? For we are an outcome of this infinite prog- 
 ress. Another infinity of progress is not certain 
 then to remove such imperfections. Here is prog- 
 ress put to the simple test. Is it the removal of 
 evil ? Then can infinite progress, as facts show us, 
 pass by with evil yet unremoved. And if progress 
 is not the removal of evil, then what means prog- 
 ress ? Is not the temporary removal of evil more 
 probably a mere occasional event in the history of 
 the world? 
 
 It is surprising that we ever think of talking 
 about universal progress as an essential fact of the 
 popularly conceived external world. If nothing cer- 
 tain can be made out about it, still the world as a 
 whole seems, as far as we can judge by the above 
 considerations, so indifferent to progress, that it is 
 marvelous to behold the religious comfort that, in 
 their shallow optimistic faith, so many amiable peo- 
 ple take, while they wax fervent over the thought of 
 progress. Let us have clear ideas about the matter. 
 What is in the true nature of reality is as eternal 
 as reality itself. Then progress is either an unes- 
 sential, insignificant aspect of reality, or it is eter- 
 nal. If progress has been eternal, then either the 
 world was in the beginning infinitely bad, or else 
 infinite progress has been unable to remove from the 
 world the finite quantity of evil that was always in 
 it. For here in the empirical world is evil now if 
 indeed there is any empirical world at all plenty 
 of evil unremoved. 
 
 If you found a man shoveling sand on the sea- 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 249 
 
 shore, and wheeling it away to make an embank- 
 ment, and if you began to admire his industry, see- 
 ing how considerable a mass of sand he had wheeled 
 away, and how little remained in the sand-hill on 
 which he was working, you might still check your- 
 self to ask hirn : " How long, O friend, hast thou 
 been at work ? " And if he answered that he had 
 been wheeling away there from all eternity, and 
 was in fact an essential feature of the universe, you 
 would not only inwardly marvel at his mendacity, 
 but you would be moved to say : " So be it, O friend, 
 but thou must then have been from all eternity an in- 
 finitely lazy fellow." Might we not venture to suspect 
 the same of our law of universal physical progress ? 
 
 But let us already hint by anticipation one fur- 
 ther thought. Why is not any purely historical view 
 of the world open to the same objection ? If the his- 
 tory began by some arbitrary act of will at some 
 time not very long since, then this history, viewed 
 by itself apart from the creative act, may be intelli- 
 gible enough in its inner unity and significance, al- 
 though an arbitrary act of will can be no true expla- 
 nation. But the whole physical world cannot be 
 regarded at once as a complete, self -existent whole, 
 with an eternity of past life, and as, in its deepest 
 truth, an historical process of any sort. For it is of 
 the essence of an intelligible historical process to 
 have, like a tragedy in Aristotle's famous account of 
 tragedy, a beginning, a middle, and an end. An in- 
 finite series of successive acts cannot be one organic 
 historical process. Either this everlasting series of 
 facts has no significance at all, or else it must have 
 
250 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 had essentially the same significance all the way 
 along. So, if the world is infinite in time, it can- 
 not as a whole have, strictly speaking, any history. 
 The longest continued story in the most thrilling of 
 the cheap weeklies reaches, as we are given to un- 
 derstand, a conclusion at some time. Imagine an 
 infinite continued story, with the poor lovers eter- 
 nally weeping and quarreling, and you will see what 
 an infinite historical process in the world would 
 mean. It would of course be an eternal repetition 
 of the same thing, no story at all. If the world, re- 
 garded in time, cannot as a whole have any genuine 
 history at all, it is then hopeless to look in the 
 world's history, as distinct from the world's nature, 
 for anything of fundamental religious significance. 
 
 And so we are thrown back to our starting-point. 
 This splendid conception of science, this world of 
 unalterable mechanical law, in which all things that 
 happen are predetermined from all eternity, this 
 mathematical machine, has a real history no more 
 than the ebbing and flowing sea-tides would have 
 from day to day any history, apart from the fact 
 that they once did not so ebb and flow at all. Eter- 
 nally repeated rhythms, or ceaseless new combi- 
 nations of elements, clash of atoms, quiver of ether 
 waves, mechanical changes forever ; but no eternal 
 progress, no historical sense to the whole, that 
 seems the conception of the physical world as a 
 whole to which we are driven. It is a strictly math- 
 ematical, a physically intelligible, conception, but 
 what religious significance has it ? Yet such is the 
 conception that we must have of any eternal phys- 
 ical process. 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 251 
 
 We have gone through this thorny path of prob- 
 lems, because we want already to indicate one thing 
 as the result of it all, namely, that not what the 
 present world has come from, not what it is becom- 
 ing, not what it will be by and by, but what it eter- 
 nally is, must furnish us with the deepest religious 
 aspect of reality. All else is subordinate. We do 
 not care so much to know what story anybody has 
 to tell us about what has happened in the world, as 
 to know what of moral worth always is in the world, 
 so that whatever has happened or will happen may 
 possess a religious significance dependent on its rela- 
 tion to this reality. That which changes not, wherein 
 is no variableness, neither shadow of turning, that 
 must give us the real religious truth upon which all 
 else will depend. A particular event in the world 
 may have a religious significance, but that signifi- 
 cance will depend on the relation of this event to 
 eternal truth. And the eternal truth is what we 
 want to know. 
 
 Therefore our search will become somewhat nar- 
 rowed, whenever at least we grow fully convinced of 
 this truth. The " power that makes for righteous- 
 ness " will become a conception of doubtful religious 
 value. An eternal power, that with all its past 
 eternity of work cannot yet quite vindicate right- 
 eousness ? Perhaps we shall have to find the relig- 
 ious aspect of things elsewhere. But let us leave, at 
 all events, the world of pure science. 
 
 As we do so some objector may interpose the as- 
 sertion that we have generalized too hastily in speak- 
 ing of the insignificance of the historical aspect of 
 
252 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 things ; for, after all, we have been talking of nat- 
 ural science. Let us turn then to the more philo- 
 sophical theories of the powers that are at work in 
 this supposed external world of metaphysics. There 
 are philosophical theories that try to show us of what 
 hidden reality this mechanical world of ours is the 
 mere appearance, or phenomenal symbol. Let us 
 see if any of them can give a religious interpretation 
 to the powers that rule the world. 
 
 III. 
 
 We pass, then, from the scientific to the more 
 metaphysical view of the world. What can we hope 
 from realistic metaphysics? Let us first consider 
 the value of that philosophic view nowadays most 
 frequently held, namely, what in general is called 
 Monism. We hear nowadays, with almost weari- 
 some repetition, of Matter and Spirit, of Force and 
 Intelligence, of Motion and Sensation, as being op- 
 posite aspects, or faces, or manifestations, of one ul- 
 timate Reality, until we wonder whether clear think- 
 ing is not in danger of losing itself altogether in 
 the contemplation of a mere empty form of words. 
 From whispers and low mutterings with bated breath 
 about the inscrutable mystery of the ultimate unity 
 of Being, one turns with satisfaction to efforts to- 
 wards some intelligible account of the sense in which 
 all things can be regarded as manifestations of one 
 Power or actual Existent. Yet in truth even these 
 efforts, in so far as they consider the world of the 
 Powers, have thus far failed to satisfy the demands 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 253 
 
 of criticism. Where they are clearly stated they are 
 inadequate. Where they resort to figures of speech 
 and tell us about the two sides of the shield, or the 
 convexity and concavity of the same curve, as illus- 
 trations of the ultimate oneness of nature amid the 
 various manifestations of experience, there these ef- 
 forts merely sink back into the primitive incoherency 
 so dear to all pre-Kantian metaphysics. The same 
 curve is, indeed, convex and concave ; but matter 
 and spirit are simply not the two faces of a curve, 
 and the relevant circumstance on which this meta- 
 phor turns will never be clear to us until we learn, 
 quite literally, wholly apart from fables about shields, 
 just how, in what sense, and by what evidence, mat- 
 ter and mind are known to be of like substance. 
 And that we must do, ere this hypothesis can have 
 for us a religious value. The failure of dogmatic 
 Monism, if it should take place, ought, indeed, not 
 to throw us over into the arms of an equally dog- 
 matic Dualism ; but we must refuse to accept the 
 monistic hypothesis until it has been freed from all 
 trace of mysticism. We shall here follow the plan 
 announced at the outset of the chapter, and confine 
 our attention to the realistic Monism, that regards 
 the events in the external world as the results of the 
 action of the one Power. A very different form of 
 monism we shall ourselves hereafter maintain. But 
 just now we deal in negations. 
 
 Let us begin with the attempts that have been 
 made to interpret the results of modern physical sci- 
 ence in a monistic sense, by regarding the ultimate 
 physical or chemical units as endowed with some 
 
254 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 form of actual or potential consciousness. Organ- 
 isms of the highest sort are combinations of atoms. 
 The whole is the sum of its parts. Why may not 
 the mental possessions of these highest organisms 
 be the sum of the indefinitely small mental powers 
 of the atoms ? An atom in motion may be a thought, 
 or, if that bo saying far too much of so simple a 
 thing, an atom in motion may be, or may be endowed 
 with, an infinitesimal consciousness. Billions of 
 atoms in interaction may have as their resultant quite 
 a respectable little consciousness. Sufficiently com- 
 plex groups of these atoms of Mind-Stuff (to use 
 Professor Clifford's ingenious terminology) might 
 produce a great man. One shudders to think of the 
 base uses to which the noble mind-stuff of Shake- 
 speare might return ; but the theory tries to be an 
 expression of natural phenomena, not merely an aes- 
 thetic creation, and must not pause before such con- 
 sequences. And, if it be the truth, might it not 
 somehow, no matter in what way, be made of relig- 
 ious value ? Or otherwise, if true, might it not end 
 our vain search for a religion ? 
 
 Such is an outline that will suggest to the initiated 
 thoughts common to several modern theories of be- 
 ing. Are these theories in a fair way to satisfy crit- 
 ical needs ? The writer is not satisfied that they 
 are. Time does not permit any lengthy discussion 
 of the matter here, but let us remind ourselves of the 
 considerations that will most readily occur to any 
 one that is disposed for a moment to accept one of 
 these modern forms of monism. Even if they prom- 
 ised us the religious aspect that we seek, we could 
 not accept them. As it is, we need not fear them. 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 255 
 
 Can our consciousness be regarded as an aggre- 
 gate of elementary facts, such as sensations or as 
 atoms of pleasure and pain ? If so, what aggregate 
 of sensations forms a judgment, such as, " This man 
 is my father ? " Evidently here is indeed an aggre- 
 gate of sensations represented, but also something 
 more. What is this more? A product, it may be 
 said, formed through association from innumerable 
 past experiences. Granted for the moment ; but the 
 question is not as to the origin of this consciousness, 
 but as to its analysis. This judgment, whereby a 
 present sensation is regarded as in definite relation 
 to real past experiences, as a symbol, not merely of 
 actual sensations now remembered, not merely of fu- 
 ture sensations not yet experienced, but of a reality 
 wholly outside of the individual consciousness, this 
 fact of acknowledging something not directly pre- 
 sented as nevertheless real is this act possibly to 
 be regarded as a mere aggregate of elementary men- 
 tal states? Surely, at best, the act can be so re- 
 garded only in the sense in which a word is an ag- 
 gregate of letters. For and in the one simple mo- 
 mentary consciousness, all these elements exist as 
 an aggregate, but as an aggregate formed into one 
 whole, as the matter of a single act. But in them- 
 selves, without the very act of unity in which they 
 are one, these elements would be merely an aggre- 
 gate, or, in Mr. Gumey's apt words, 1 " a rope of 
 sand." Our mental life then, as a union of innum- 
 erable elements into the one Self of any moment, is 
 more than an aggregate, and can never be explained 
 as an aggregate of elementary atoms of sensation. 
 
 1 Mind for April, 1881, article, " Monism." 
 
256 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Nor may we say that the ultimate atomic states of 
 consciousness may be, as it were, chemically united 
 into a whole that is more than an aggregate. Phys- 
 ical atoms in space, if endowed with sufficiently 
 numerous affinities, may unite into what wholes you 
 will; but a mental fact is a mental fact, and no 
 more. An ultimate independent unit of conscious- 
 ness, conceived after the analogy of a sensation, can 
 have to another like unit only one of three relations : 
 it may coexist with this other unit, or it may pre- 
 cede or follow it in time. There is no other relation 
 possible. Affinity, or attraction, or approach of one 
 pain or pleasure, of one sensation of pressure or of 
 motion to another, is a meaningless jingle of words, 
 unless, indeed, such an expression is used to name 
 figuratively the relations that in and for a compar- 
 ing, contrasting, uniting, and separating active con- 
 sciousness, two ideas are made to bear. Thus, then, 
 this atomic monism brings us no nearer than before 
 to the relation between the data of consciousness and 
 the facts of physical nature. For the rest, how me- 
 chanical science can be satisfied to regard its mate- 
 rial points as nothing but independently existing 
 fragments of mind, whose whole being is intensive ; 
 how, out of these intensive units, space-relations are 
 to be constructed at all these questions we may 
 for the present neglect. Atomic monism, a synthe- 
 sis, or, rather, a jumble of physiological psychology 
 with doctrines that are incompatible with any sci- 
 ence whatever, has never answered these questions, 
 and doubtless never will. 
 
 But let us not be over-hasty. There are other 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 257 
 
 forms of monism now extant. The purely material- 
 istic monism, for which the hard and extended atoms 
 of naive realism are already and in themselves po- 
 tentially mind, the old-fashioned materialism of days 
 when Mind-Stuff and physiological psychology were 
 alike undreamed of, may indeed be neglected. 
 That doctrine needed not critical philosophy, of more 
 than a very undeveloped sort, to do away with it 
 once for all. Modern monism knows of supposed 
 atoms that are in their ultimate nature psychical ; 
 and of supposed psychical forces or agents that, when 
 seen from without, behave much like extended atoms. 
 But the old fragment of matter that, being no more 
 than what every blacksmith knows as matter, was 
 yet to be with all its impenetrability and its inertia 
 a piece of the soul, has been banished from the talk 
 of serious philosophers. There remain, then, the 
 numerous efforts that see in the world the expression 
 of psychical powers as such, not mere mind-stuff 
 atoms, but organized wholes, related in nature to 
 what we know by internal experience as mind, yet 
 higher or lower, subtler or mightier, wiser or more 
 foolish, than the human intelligence. These views 
 may be divided into two classes : those that see in 
 nature the manifestations of a logical or intelligent 
 power, and those that see in it the manifestations of 
 an alogical or blind, though still psychical power. 
 Each of these classes again may be subdivided ac- 
 cording as the power is conceived as conscious or as 
 unconscious in its working. How do these ontolog- 
 ical efforts stand related to critical thought ? 
 
 First let us consider logical monism. Since hu- 
 
 17 
 
258 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 man intelligence is itself an activity, a working to- 
 wards an end, and since the logical monist thinks 
 the external universe after the analogy of the human 
 reason, the constant tendency is for him to conceive 
 the world as a process whereby his World Spirit 
 makes actual what was potential. Modern science, 
 in fact, when viewed speculatively, though it does not 
 confirm, yet lends itself easily to such efforts, and 
 we can always, if we choose, imagine the evolution 
 of the organic kingdom as possibly the process of 
 self - manifestation of one eternal rational Power. 
 Only in this way we are very far from a satisfactory 
 ontology. A world, the work or the child of the uni- 
 versal reason, developing in time, how can any re- 
 flective mind be content with this account of things ? 
 The universal reason surely means something by its 
 process, surely lacks something when it seeks for 
 higher forms. Now, on a lower stage the universal 
 reason has not yet what it seeks, on the higher stage 
 it attains what it had not. Whence or how does it 
 obtain this something ? What hindered the possible 
 from being forthwith actual at the outset ? If there 
 was any hindrance, was this of the same nature with 
 the universal reason, or was it other? If other, 
 then we are plunged into a Dualism, and the good 
 and evil principles appear once more. But if there 
 was no external hindrance, no illogical evil principle 
 in existence, then the universal reason has irration- 
 ally gone without the possible perfection that it 
 might possess, until, after great labor, it has made 
 actual what it never ought to have lacked. The in- 
 finite Logos thus becomes no more than the " child 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT, 259 
 
 playing with bubbles " of the old philosopher. 
 Everything about the process of evolution becomes 
 intelligible and full of purpose except the fact 
 that there should be any process at all where all was 
 in, and of, and for the universal reason at the outset. 
 The infinite power has been playing with perfection 
 as a cat with a mouse, letting it run away a few 
 aeons in time, that it might be caught once more in a 
 little chase, involving the history of some millions of 
 worlds of life. Is this a worthy conception ? Nay, 
 is it not a self - contradictory one ? Evolution and 
 creative Reason are they compatible? Yes, in- 
 deed, when the evolution is ended, the hurly-burly 
 done, the battle lost and won ; but meanwhile ? 
 In short, either evolution is a necessity, one of the 
 twelve labors of this Hercules-Absolute, or else it is 
 irrational. In the one case the Absolute must be 
 conceived as in bonds, in the other case the Logos 
 must be conceived as blundering. Both conceptions 
 are rank nonsense: This kind of Monism will not 
 satisfy critical demands. 
 
 And then there is the objection, stated by Scho- 
 penhauer, and by we know not how many before 
 him, and that we have already insisted upon, namely, 
 that every historical conception of the world as a 
 whole, every attempt to look upon Being as a ra- 
 tional process in time, as a perpetual evolution from 
 a lower to a higher, is beset by the difficulty that 
 after an infinite time the infinite process is still in 
 a very early stage. Infinitely progressing, always 
 growing better, and yet reaching after all this eter- 
 nity of work only the incoherent, troublous, blind 
 
260 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 imperfection that we feel in ourselves, and that we 
 see in every dung-heap and sick-room and govern- 
 ment on the earth, in every scattered mass of nebu- 
 lous matter, in every train of meteor-fragments in 
 the heavens what is this but progress without a 
 goal, blind toil? The world would be, one might 
 think, after an infinity of growth, intensively infi- 
 nite at every point of its extent. We mortals see 
 no one point in the physical universe where one 
 viewing things as we in this chapter have chosen to 
 do, namely, from outside, might lay his hand and 
 say : Here the ideal is attained. 
 
 Yet we should be very far from dreaming of ac- 
 cepting the opposing dogmatic theorem, the antith- 
 esis of this sublime Antinomy, namely, " The world 
 is the product of an irrational force. The One is 
 blind." Schopenhauer undertook the defense of 
 this antithesis, and, in bad logic, as we all know, he 
 somewhat surpassed even that arch blunderer, the 
 universal Will of his own system. This Will, after 
 all, desired a good deal of trouble, and got his wish. 
 But Schopenhauer desired a consistent statement, 
 and, with all his admirable ingenuity and learning, 
 he produced a statement whose inconsistencies have 
 been exposed too often to need much more discus- 
 sion. No ; to the defenders of the alogical hypoth- 
 esis, as a dogmatic doctrine, it has not yet been 
 given to make out more than the purely negative 
 case that we have stated above. Dogmatic panlo- 
 gisin can be assaulted, with much show of success. 
 The opposite doctrine has not yet been dogmatically 
 maintained without even worse confusion. 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 261 
 
 Panlogism and Alogism are difficult enough in 
 themselves, but how much worse becomes their con- 
 dition when, as in the " Philosophy of the Uncon- 
 scious," of Von Hartmann, either one of them, or a 
 hybrid of the two, is burdened with yet another hy- 
 pothesis, namely, that the One Being is unconscious, 
 and yet in nature psychical. Founding himself on 
 certain physiological facts, very doubtfully inter- 
 preted, on a monstrous perversion of the mathemat- 
 ical theory of probabilities, on an ingenious view of 
 the history of philosophy, on a like ingenious criti- 
 cism of Kant, Von Hartmann has expounded an on- 
 tological doctrine of which, after all, serious thought 
 can make nothing. This unconscious being, exist- 
 ent not for itself, for it is conscious of nothing, nor 
 for others, because all else is a part of it (and, for 
 the rest, nobody ever thought of it before Von Hart- 
 mann), shall be the maker and upholder of the uni- 
 verse. Surely all this is a philosophy of round 
 squares, and is not to be taken very seriously. 
 
 Of course the previous criticism is absurdly inad- 
 equate to the magnitude of the problems involved, 
 and is intended only as the merest sketch, dogmat- 
 ically stated, of critical objections to certain ontolo- 
 gies. Seeming irreverence, in this hasty style of 
 doing battle, must be pardoned. Only against im- 
 perfect metaphysic as such do we war. Critical 
 philosophy holds no theoretical opinion sacred, just 
 as it regards no earnest practical faith as other than 
 sacred. The question is here not yet what we are 
 to believe, but what we can in argument maintain, 
 and what our method of search ought to be. Abso- 
 
262 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 lute and Infinite, Logos and not Logos, Mind-Stuff 
 and Spirit what are they all for critical philoso- 
 phy, but, in the first place, mere ideas, conceptions 
 of reason, to be mercilessly analyzed without regard 
 for consequences ? 
 
 One way remains whereby this realistic monism 
 can still hope to reach a satisfactory statement of the 
 world-problem. Suppose that, once for all, the his- 
 torical form of statement is abandoned, while the no- 
 tion of the Reason as a power is retained. This may 
 be done in either of two ways. The universal reason 
 may be conceived as manifesting itself in time, but 
 not in a series of events that are united as the parts 
 of a single process. The world-life may be conceived 
 not as a single history, but as an eternally repeated 
 product of the One reason, a process ever renewed 
 as soon as finished, an infinite series of growing and 
 decaying worlds worlds that are like the leaves 
 of the forest, that spring and wither through an eter- 
 nity of changing seasons. The rationality of the 
 world-process is thus saved for our thought by the 
 hypothesis that reason is not like a belated traveler, 
 wandering through the night of time, seeking for 
 a self-realization that is never reached, but, rather, 
 like the sun that each day begins afresh his old 
 task, rejoicing as a giant in the fullness of his at- 
 tained power. Whoever regards the world as it now 
 is as plainly a sufficient expression of infinite ra- 
 tional power, is at liberty to accept this hypothesis ; 
 but he must prepare to answer those of his object- 
 ors to whom reason means perfection, and to whom 
 the world of sense will not appear as just at present 
 more perfect than the world of Candidas experi- 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 263 
 
 ences. For every one but the blind optimist there 
 is difficulty in regarding this wind-swept battle-field 
 of human action as obviously and altogether a drama 
 of unhindered infinite reason, to be repeated with 
 unwearying tautology through an unending future. 
 Thus, then, we are tossed back and forth between 
 the possibilities suggested by our hypothesis. " The 
 world is the manifestation of infinite reason ; " 
 good, then, but how ? " The world is a rational 
 growth from lower to higher" How, then, is this 
 possible if the infinite reason rules all and desires 
 the higher ? Was it not always at the goal ? So, 
 then : " The world is not one process merely, but 
 an eternal repetition of the drama of infinite reason, 
 which, as infinite, is thus always active and always 
 at the goal. 7 ' But this hypothesis is seemingly over- 
 thrown by the appearance of the least imperfection 
 or irrationality in nature. The first starving fam- 
 ily, or singed moth, or broken troth, or wasted ef- 
 fort, or wounded bird, is an indictment of the uni- 
 versal reason, that, always at the goal, has wrought 
 this irrational wrong. The other possible hypothe- 
 sis leaves us, after all, in the same quandary. Time 
 may be a mere "mirage." For the eternal One 
 there is, then, no process ; only fact. This notion 
 of a timeless Being is, no doubt, very well worth 
 study. But, then, the eternal One is thus always at 
 the goal, just as in the other case. The One, we 
 should think, cannot be infinite and rational and yet 
 productive of the least trace of wrong, absurdity, 
 error, falsehood. Again our Monism fails. For, 
 after all, the world has been viewed by us only from 
 without ; and so remains dark. 
 
264 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Our monism fails, namely, to establish itself on 
 any ground of experience. Absolute refutation is 
 indeed not yet thus attained, for the defender of 
 the hypothesis of an infinite reason always has at 
 his disposal the suggestions of the ancient theodicy, 
 modified to suit his needs. He can say : " The par- 
 tial evil is, somehow, we cannot see how, universal 
 good." Or, again, " Evil results from the free-will 
 of moral agents, who have to suffer for their own 
 chosen sins." The latter answer, a very plausible one 
 in its own sphere, is for the general problem insig- 
 nificant. That there is free-will we do not dispute, 
 and that free-will, if it exists, is a cause of much 
 mischief is undoubted. Yet if the universe is so 
 made that the free-will of the slave-driver, or of the 
 .murderer, or of the seducer, or of the conqueror, 
 works untold ill to innocent victims, then the fault 
 of the suffering of the victims rests not wholly with 
 the evil-doer, but partly with the order of the world, 
 which has given him so much power, such a wide 
 freedom to do the mischief that he desires. The 
 world in which such things happen must justify its 
 religiously inspiring nature in some other way. 
 
 The other answer, that partial evil is universal 
 good, we have to regard as a much deeper answer, 
 shallow as have been the uses often made of it in the 
 past. But if it is to be a valid answer, it must take 
 a particular form. The words are usually spoken 
 too glibly. Their meaning, if they are to have any, 
 we must very carefully consider, ere we can dare to 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 265 
 
 accept them. Only from a higher point of view 
 shall we in fact be able to apply them. In the 
 world of the Powers they find no resting-place. 
 
 How can a partial evil be an universal good? 
 Only in certain cases. The notion plainly is that 
 the evil in the external world of popular thought 
 is, as known to us, only a part of the whole, and 
 the whole, it is said, may be in character opposed to 
 the part. This must indeed be the case, if the world 
 as a whole is to be the work of an Infinite Reason. 
 For if so, the evil must be, not merely a bad lesser 
 part that is overbalanced by the goodness of the 
 larger half of the world, but non-existent, save as a 
 separate aspect of reality, so that it would vanish 
 if we knew more about the truth. This is what the 
 saying asserts : not that evil is overbalanced by good 
 (for that would leave the irrational still real), but 
 that evil is only a deceitful appearance, whose true 
 nature, if seen in its entirety, would turn out to be 
 good. One could not say of a rotting apple, however 
 small the rotten spot as yet is, that the partial rot- 
 tenness is the universal soundness of the apple. If 
 I have but one slight disorder in but one of my 
 organs, still you cannot say that my partial disorder 
 must be universal health. The old optimists did not 
 mean anything so contradictory as that. They meant 
 that there is no real evil at all ; that what seems to 
 me to be evil, say toothaches, and broken households, 
 and pestilences, and treasons, and wars, all that to- 
 gether is but a grand illusion of my partial view. 
 As one looking over the surface of a statue with a 
 microscope, and finding nothing but a stony surface, 
 
266 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 might say, how ugly ! but on seeing the whole at a 
 glance would know its beauty; even so one seeing 
 the world by bits fancies it evil, but would know it 
 to be good if he saw it as a whole. And the seem- 
 ing but unreal evil of the parts may be necessary in 
 order that the real whole should be good. Such is 
 the position of our optimists. This is the Platonic- 
 Augustinian doctrine of the unreality of evil. 
 
 The logical possibility of all this we do not for the 
 first either dispute or affirm. But we are dealing 
 with a world of difficulties, and we can only point 
 out the antecedent difficulty of this theory. If the 
 world of experience simply lacked here and there in- 
 terest, or positive signs of rational perfection, then 
 one might well compare it to the statue, that seen 
 only piecemeal, and through a microscope applied 
 to its surface, would wholly lack the beauty that ap- 
 pears when all is viewed at once. Then one might 
 say, with great plausibility, that if perceptible har- 
 mony is simply lacking to our partial view, the great 
 whole may still be a grand harmony. But the 
 trouble lies in the seemingly positive character of 
 evil. Not simple lack of harmony, but horrible dis- 
 cord, is here. How the tortures of the wounded on 
 a field of battle can anyhow enter into a whole in 
 which, as seen by an absolute judge, there is actually 
 no trace of evil at all, this is what we cannot under- 
 stand. It seems very improbable. Only absolute 
 proof will satisfy us. And of course, as has been 
 indicated, by some of our examples above, it is not 
 the quantity of any evil (if an evil be a quantity at 
 all), but the quality of it, that makes us urge it in 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 267 
 
 opposition to the claims of reason to be the ruler of 
 all things. Any evil will do, if it seems to be a real 
 and positive evil. For then it seems positively at 
 war with reason. 
 
 Actually, however, theodicies and kindred efforts, 
 whether monistic or not, in trying to vindicate the 
 rational in the world have seldom consistently main- 
 tained this high and slippery ground of the theory 
 of Plato and of St. Augustine. Far from declaring 
 that all physical evil is and must be apparent, the 
 popular theodicies have often consented to accept 
 the reality of this positive evil, and to minimize its 
 significance by certain well-worn, and, for the pur- 
 poses of this argument, contemptible devices. They 
 have pointed out that the evil in the world, though 
 a reality separate from the good, exists as a means to 
 good. Or, again, they have said that evil is neces- 
 sary as something outside of the good, setting it off 
 by way of contrast. Both devices, if applied to a 
 world in which good and evil are conceived as sepa- 
 rate entities, are unworthy of philosophic thinkers. 
 
 For consider the first device. " Evil is a reality, 
 not an illusion, but it is a means to good. There- 
 fore in the world as a whole, good triumphs. There- 
 fore reason, which desires the good, is the One 
 Ruler." But first, to mention a lesser objection, 
 the basis in experience for this view is surely very 
 narrow. Much evil exists whose use as a means we 
 cannot even faintly conceive. But grant this point. 
 Then the real evil is a means to a separate and ex- 
 ternal good end. But if the end was good, why was 
 it not got without the evil means ? Only two answers 
 
268 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 are possible to this, in case the evil is separate from 
 the good. Either the One Reason was driven to 
 take just this way, and could take no less expensive 
 one ; or the One Reason, not being bound to this 
 road, still arbitrarily chose to take it instead of a 
 better. But either answer is fatal. Was the One 
 Reason unable to do better ? Then it is not the only 
 power at work. The Monism fails. The Reason 
 was bound. But he who binds the strong man is 
 stronger than he. If, however, the One chose this 
 way rather than a better, then the One chose evil for 
 its own sake. The dilemma is inevitable. 
 
 To exemplify : If pain is an evil, and if the evil 
 of the pain caused you by a burn, or cut, or bruise 
 is justified by saying that all-wise nature makes your 
 skin sensitive to the end that you may be helped in 
 keeping it whole ; then the obvious answer is, that 
 if nature is all-wise and all-powerful and benevolent 
 towards you, it was her business to find a way of 
 keeping your skin in general whole, without entail- 
 ing upon you the tortures of this present injury. If 
 a machine that we make runs poorly, we are not dis- 
 posed to blame ourselves, in case we are sure that 
 we have done our very best with it. But the ma- 
 chines of all-wise nature must not run with destruc- 
 tive friction, unless all-wise nature intends destruc- 
 tive friction. The same remark applies to all the 
 eloquent speeches about the educative value of our 
 sufferings. If nature could make us perfect without 
 suffering, and if suffering is not itself an organic 
 part of our perfection, but only an external means 
 thereto, then it was nature's rational business to de- 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 269 
 
 velop us differently. But if nature could not perfect 
 our characters save through this imperfect means, 
 then nature's means were limited. Nature was not 
 all-powerful. Reason had some irrational power be- 
 yond it that it could not conquer. Even so we can- 
 not yet run certain engines without smoke. When 
 we are more civilized, we shall abolish smoke, be- 
 cause we shall get more power over the processes of 
 combustion. At present, by this hypothesis, nature 
 can only make characters perfect through suffering, 
 this smoke of the engine of life. So much the worse 
 for nature, unless indeed, in some unknown way, 
 suffering is really no true evil at all, but itself a 
 perfection that, if seen from above, would become 
 plainly universal good. And does that as yet look 
 probable ? 
 
 Even worse is the other device often suggested 
 for explaining evil. " Evil is a reality, but it is use- 
 ful as a foil to good. The two separate facts, good 
 and evil, set each other off. By its contrast, evil 
 increases the importance of good." When this re- 
 mark is made about us personally with our limita- 
 tions of body and circumstance, with our relativity 
 of feeling and of attention, the remark has some 
 psychological interest. Made to justify the supposed 
 universal reason, the remark is childish. Always, 
 indeed, it is possible that evil as a separate entity 
 may be made out to be an illusion ; and that good 
 and evil have some higher unity that involves the 
 perfection of the world. But if evil is real, and sep- 
 arate from goodness, then the talk about explaining 
 it as a useful contrast is of no worth in the present 
 
270 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 argument. For we ask : Could not the One create 
 a perfect good save by making good more attractive 
 as set off against the foil evil ? Shall we say that 
 Reason could do better than to depend upon this 
 contrast? Then why the evil? If, however, the 
 One Reason could not do better, but had to use the 
 contrast, then the One was less powerful in its de- 
 vices than is the maker of a concert - programme, 
 who has no need to introduce into his concert any 
 saw-filing or tin-trumpeting or pot-scraping to set off 
 the beauty of his songs and symphonies. But as a 
 fact of experience, is most evil seemingly even thus 
 useful ? Are the sick needed to make the healthy 
 joyous ? Was Judas necessary in order that Jesus 
 should show himself wholly good ? Tradition, in 
 this latter case, says yes, and adds the mystical 
 speech about the need that the offense should come. 
 But what enlightened man nowadays will have it 
 that, supposing good and evil to be separate facts, 
 there can be logically possible nothing thoroughly 
 good, in case some of this evil were removed? Could 
 not Jesus have been what he was without Judas ? 
 One doubts here the fact of the necessity of the evil, 
 even in our own little lives; and one is indignant 
 at the trifling that supposes so weak a device as 
 mere external contrast to be the sole device at the 
 disposal of the One Reason. Yet this weak hypoth- 
 esis of good and evil as externally contrasting sepa- 
 rate entities is, after all, provokingly near in form 
 to what we shall hold to be the true solution of the 
 great problem. But that solution is still far away 
 from us and from this world of sense. 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 271 
 
 Thus far, then, monism seems, if not an impos- 
 sible, still a decidedly doubtful, view of the world. 
 Its value as furnishing religious support seems small. 
 We cannot yet by experience prove that the rational 
 power is supreme in the world ; and we fail to make 
 clear to ourselves a priori how it should be supreme. 
 So far we remain agnostics. Our only escape would 
 seem to be through the still doubtful doctrine of the 
 unreality of EviL And that way seems very dark. 
 
 V. 
 
 Dualistic Theism here confronts us, the doctrine 
 in which the wise of so many ages have found so 
 much support, the doctrine of a Father, separate 
 from the world of created finite beings, who directs 
 all things, pities and loves his children, and judges 
 with supreme truthfulness all human acts. The re- 
 ligious value of this doctrine, on one side at least, 
 nobody can possibly question. The Father, as Jesus 
 conceives him, has in a very high sense the charac- 
 ter that we desire to find in reality. To be sure, 
 there is the other side. This God of the dualistic 
 view is seemingly limited. As a Father pitieth his 
 children, so this God pitieth. But this pity seems to 
 be the love of one who yet cannot or will not save 
 us from all our evil. And if the evil is a reality, 
 and is meant to work for our good, still there is the 
 unanswerable objection that if the Father is not 
 bound by an irrational power beyond him, he need 
 not have put us into so evil a state, but might have 
 wrought us our good in some less painful and dan- 
 
272 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 gerous way. In fact, the only plausible explanation 
 of real evil, in case there is separate evil in the 
 world, an explanation which shall yet be consistent 
 with the Father's power and goodness, is the pre- 
 viously mentioned explanation, that, if beings were 
 created, as we are, free, they must needs be also 
 free to choose the evil. But this explanation only 
 serves to explain the evil that has directly resulted 
 from free choice, that directly affects those who 
 made the choice, and that was distinctly foreseen 
 by them when they chose it. No other evil is justi- 
 fiable as a result of free-will ; all other evil seems 
 absolutely mysterious, when viewed with reference 
 to God's goodness ; and very little of the evil that 
 we experience in this world is the direct result of 
 the deliberate choice of those who suffer it. It is 
 hardly necessary to illustrate these facts, which, like 
 the most of the present chapter, belong to the best- 
 known and most frequently misrepresented of the 
 matters of human controversy. The poor of great 
 cities, the men who inherit loathsome diseases, the 
 naturally weak of will, the insane, the sufferers in 
 accidents, the soldiers led to slaughter, the slaves, 
 the down-trodden peasants and laborers of the world : 
 all these, whose ills are simply inconceivable in 
 might, have no more brought all this on themselves 
 of their own free-will, than have the healthy and 
 happy, the heirs of wealth, the ever-joyous, earned 
 for themselves the good fortune to which they are 
 born. A man can do much with and for himself ; 
 but the best part of him, and commonly of his envi- 
 ronment, is determined by birth. And for most of 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 273 
 
 that " with which the face of man is blackened," the 
 power is thus responsible which no free-will of man 
 has made. This evil must either be an organic ele- 
 ment in a real higher perfect unity of the world, or 
 else free-will is no explanation or justification for its 
 existence. 
 
 But really, the intelligent reader needs, when we 
 get to this most familiar part of our discussion, no 
 very lengthy repetition of the old story. His mind 
 is doubtless made up already, and he will desire only 
 a brief reminder of the chief points that have to do 
 with this question and with those questions most 
 nearly related thereto. 
 
 If, then, the doctrine of God's Fatherhood is to 
 be religiously useful to us, we must make up our 
 minds whether the Father that we seek is to be the 
 omnipotent Ruler of things, or only a limited Power, 
 or again, something else that is not power. In the 
 last mentioned case, he belongs to that aspect of the 
 world which we just now purposely exclude from 
 consideration. If the Father is a Power, then we 
 all know the old but eternally fresh dilemma about 
 his nature. He is either infinite or limited. If he 
 is infinite, we find arising all the difficulties just sug- 
 gested in our consideration of the hypothesis of an 
 Infinite Reason, and one other difficulty, worse, if 
 anything, than they all. That difficulty we shall 
 mention soon again. But if, on the other hand, the 
 Father is to be conceived as a limited power, if we 
 are to accept some sort of modern Manicheanism, 
 then no a priori disproof of the possibility of the 
 hypothesis can be offered ; since, a priori, any finite 
 
 18 
 
274 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 power you please is a possibility ; but our great 
 trouble will then lie in the fact that only experience 
 can establish such an hypothesis, which by its very 
 nature needs a posteriori proof. And experience, 
 as summed up in science, has in fact simply no need 
 of that hypothesis. Hence we shall be left alto- 
 gether in doubt, at least while we study the World 
 as Power. 
 
 Such is the argument in its most general state- 
 ment. Now as to the points in greater detail. The 
 great difficulty mentioned above as lying in the way 
 of the hypothesis of an infinite creative power is a 
 difficulty in the conception of creation itself. Crea- 
 tion, for the popular conception, certainly involves 
 producing a thing of some kind by a creative act, 
 the thing produced existing forthwith outside of the 
 creator. To give up this separation of creator and 
 product is to become pantheistic. And with monism 
 we are not here concerned. But now the idea of 
 an infinite creative Power outside of his products 
 involves more than one difficulty. We shall not 
 dwell on the old difficulty that this infinite Power 
 would become finite as soon as there was in existence 
 something outside of it. We shall proceed at once 
 to a more fruitful and serious difficulty, which we 
 find in the fact that the concept of producing an ex- 
 ternal thing involves, of necessity, a relation to a 
 Law, above both producer and product, which de- 
 termines the conditions under which there can be 
 a product at all. The creative power must then 
 work under conditions, however magical and myste- 
 rious its acts may be. And working under condi- 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 275 
 
 tions, it must be finite. No device for minimizing 
 the meaning of this separation of creative power and 
 created thing will really escape the difficulty result- 
 ing. And this difficulty will appear in all cases 
 of supposed creation. It may be summed up once 
 more in the statement that any creative power in act, 
 just as much needs explanation in some higher law 
 and power as does the thing created itself, so that 
 whatever creates a product external to itself becomes 
 thereby as truly dependent a power as we ourselves 
 are. Let us exemplify. 
 
 " Let there be light" shall represent a creative 
 act. If the light that results is simply a fact in God, 
 then our difficulty is avoided, but the very concep- 
 tion of a power creating anything external to itself 
 is abandoned. Then one becomes frankly pantheis- 
 tic, and identifies all things with the creative power. 
 But if the light is not the creative act, but sepa- 
 rate from it, then you have an insurmountable diffi- 
 culty in the conception. For the power that makes 
 the fiat is not itself the created thing, but, as it were, 
 this power finds the product as a result of t\&fiat. 
 God saying, Fiat lux, finds that this act, this word, 
 or whatever process it symbolizes as actually happen- 
 ing in the divine mind, is followed by the external 
 appearance of something, namely, light. Now as 
 creator of light, God is not yet conceived as the 
 creator of those conditions under which just this 
 fiat could be followed by just these consequences. 
 But the external success of the j#a presupposes ex- 
 ternal conditions under which the fiat can succeed. 
 Just as when I say, " let there be light," and pro- 
 
276 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 duce it by my own fiat plus the necessary physical 
 acts, even so the conceived Deity in the conceived 
 case, though needing no other means save his fiat, 
 has yet needed that, and has found his fiat a suffi- 
 cient cause of this external change from darkness to 
 light. But just as my success in making light needs 
 explanation by the laws of an external world, so 
 God's success in making it also needs explanation, in 
 the case thus conceived, although his means are sup- 
 posed to have been less complex than mine have to 
 be. He too is put by this conception in a world of 
 law external to himself, the laws of this world being 
 such as require that, in order to produce light as an 
 external fact he shall perform a certain act, the fiat. 
 These laws secure him success, in the supposed case, 
 under just these conditions. The fiat may itself be 
 whatever process you will. 
 
 But how then did these conditions arise ? How 
 is it that God is able to make light as an existence 
 external to himself? The external conditions on 
 which his present success depends may indeed have 
 been again created by himself. Even so a man could 
 now possibly make some ingenious mechanism, com- 
 pounded of telephones and what else you will, so as 
 to be able to light a whole building by the impulse 
 produced by some very simple act, e. g., by speaking 
 the words, " Let there be light," against some pre- 
 pared membrane. But then we are involved in just 
 the same difficulties. As the man's mechanical skill 
 would imply a conformity to laws of nature preced- 
 ing his present power to make light by the word of 
 his mouth, even so, if God's creative power has pre- 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 277 
 
 viously created the conditions of the success of this 
 his present fiat, the same questions would arise about 
 those conditions, and so on ad infinitum. Always 
 even the infinite series of acts would imply, at every 
 step of the regress, God working upon a nature ex- 
 ternal to himself, and so God as a finite power, sub- 
 ject to the laws that let him work. 
 
 But then may we not hereupon accept the doctrine 
 of God's infinity, and say that this infinite power is 
 identical with its products ? Shall we not be panthe- 
 ists of the old-fashioned sort, and yet keep the doc- 
 trine of God's Fatherhood? The attempt is hope- 
 less. And the difficulties in the way of the religious 
 use of the pantheistic hypotheses have already been 
 considered. Furthermore, many theistic thinkers 
 have felt the force of an old set of arguments that, 
 in this country and recently, Professor Bowne, in his 
 " Metaphysics," has more than once set forth at 
 length, namely, the thought that, if God can be as 
 Creator identical with his other creations, he cannot 
 as a Power well be identical with us, who feel our- 
 selves to be also creative powers, and not mere forms 
 or acts in any other power. But if we are separate 
 from God, then in this class of cases his creation of 
 us involves all the difficulties before pointed out. 
 When he made us, his fiat was successful beyond 
 himself. The success needs a preexistent law, or, if 
 you will, a preexistent power outside of him, to ex- 
 plain it ; just exactly as my power to move my hand 
 or to wink my eye implies a whole universe of being 
 outside of me in order to give my will just this posi- 
 tion of authority. Merely assume in your thought 
 
278 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 these conceptions, namely, a power that acts and an 
 external product resulting from its acts ; and at once 
 you need a higher power and a higher law, external 
 to the first power, to explain how the first power, 
 acting in just this way, could achieve just this exter- 
 nal result. Hence either God creates nothing exter- 
 nal to himself, or else, in creating, he works under 
 the laws that presuppose a power higher than him- 
 self, and external to himself. In the briefest form : 
 Acts that produce external changes imply adjust- 
 ment of means to ends. The creation of external 
 things is such an act. Unless an actor is identical 
 with the product itself, he must therefore be subject 
 to the external conditions of adjustment, i. e., he 
 must be finite. 
 
 Certain thinkers are accustomed to suppose that 
 they honor God by having obscure and self-contra- 
 dictory ideas about him. Hence they avoid all of 
 the foregoing difficulties by calling the creative act 
 a mystery. Now there are mysteries and mysteries. 
 We do not know how trees grow, nor why the planets 
 obey the law of gravitation. But we are sure that 
 they do. On the other hand, we do not know how 
 squares can be round ; but we happen in this case 
 to perceive that squares cannot be round. Now if 
 somebody tells me that God is a round square, and 
 appeals to me to consider reverently whether piety 
 allows me to assert, in view of the mystery of God's 
 being, that God is not a round square, my answer is 
 very plain. I say at once that it must be as irrever- 
 ent to call God absurd and self -contradictory in his 
 nature as to call him anything else discreditable ; 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 279 
 
 and that I, for my part, hesitate not to declare very 
 frankly that though I know very little about God, I 
 am sure that he is no round square. Now even so, 
 an absurd and self-contradictory account of the act 
 of creation must not be allowed to escape us by 
 pleading that creation is a mystery, and that nobody 
 can see how God makes things. For, mysterious as 
 creation may be, we can be sure that if creation is of 
 such a nature as to involve an external power and an 
 external law, outside of God's creative power itself, 
 then God is himself not infinite. And we can be 
 equally sure that unless God as creator is identical 
 with his products, the idea of a creative act does in- 
 volve just such a power preceding the act and out- 
 side of God himself. The device then by which so 
 many thinkers seek to escape from this well-known 
 and ancient net of dialectics, seems for us necessarily 
 unsuccessful. There are mysteries that we have rev- 
 erently to accept, and before long we ourselves shall 
 find such, and we shall be glad to bow before them. 
 But if creation is indeed such a mystery, at all events 
 a self-contradiction about creation is not such a mys- 
 tery. 
 
 VI. 
 
 We have dwelt at length on one of the alterna- 
 tives of Theism. Disheartened, and without any en- 
 thusiasm, we turn to the other. Must we after all 
 remain content in our religion without any assur- 
 ance of the supremacy of the good ? Must we be con- 
 tent with this halting half Theism of the empirical 
 Design- Argument? If we must be, we must be. But 
 
280 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 what if that too should fail us ? Let us at least try 
 it. This unsatisfactory view says : " What powers 
 there may be in the world we can never wholly know. 
 But we think that there is evidence that they that 
 be for the moral law are more than they that be 
 against it. And this evidence is given us by the em- 
 pirically discerned marks of benevolent design about 
 us in the world." This view, whatever its relig- 
 ious worth, is at all events capable only of empirical 
 proof, and pretends only to such a rank. And it is 
 in discussing this hypothesis, in the dim light of the 
 weary centuries of dispute about it, that one comes 
 at last fully to feel the bitterness of the doubt that, 
 like a tormenting disease, assails and eternally must 
 assail one who tries to be content with this dreary vis- 
 ible world in which we have been so far vainly seek- 
 ing for comfort. Wrangle upon wrangle, ceaseless 
 balancing of probabilities this way and that, opinions 
 and ridicule and abuse forever, and no result : such 
 is this empirical teleology that seeks a world-manu- 
 facturer, and cannot discover him. Let us take up 
 the miserable business just where we happen to 
 find it. 
 
 There is no doubt about this, that the doctrine of 
 evolution has rendered the popular empirical proof 
 of a special designing power much harder than we 
 used to suppose. And when we pass to this aspect 
 of our question, we must confess at once that we have 
 nothing to say which can be new to any reader of 
 modern discussion. This empirical teleology will al- 
 ways remain a doubtful subject for human inquiry. 
 Any dogmatic disproof of intelligent finite powers 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 281 
 
 or daemons above us must be regarded as impossi- 
 ble. The only question to be here solved is the 
 possibility of purely inductive proof of the existence 
 of such higher intelligent agencies. And here, as 
 we hold, just the ancient difficulties as to the proof 
 of any empirical teleological theory survive, and are, 
 in spite of all that recent writers have done, rather 
 increased by our knowledge of the facts of evolution. 
 Especially does evolution make the empirical hypoth- 
 esis of the existence of any finite and good daemonic 
 power, intelligently and morally working in the 
 world, continually more and more obscure. For 
 first, as to the intelligence of the higher powers, what 
 the theory of evolution has done for us in this re- 
 spect is simply to make us feel that we know not, 
 and cannot yet even guess, how much what we em- 
 pirically call bare mechanism can do to simulate the 
 effects of what, in an equally empirical and blind 
 way, men call intelligence. Therefore no empirical 
 design-argument has longer anywhere nearly the 
 same amount of persuasive power that it once seemed 
 to have. The matter stands thus : An empirical de- 
 sign-argument might very plausibly reason that, if I 
 find a child's blocks arranged to make a house or to 
 spell words, I can assume that some designing human 
 hand has so placed them. But the inductive force 
 of the argument rests on my previous knowledge 
 that nothing is so apt to put blocks in that order, 
 in this present visible world, as just a designing 
 human hand. But if I discovered certain physical 
 conditions that did very frequently work, and that 
 did often so arrange blocks, then I should no longer 
 
282 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 consider the given arrangement good proof of human 
 design. Even so, until I see that natural selection 
 can simulate the designing power of human beings, 
 I may be disposed to regard a given case of appar- 
 ent design in nature as a fair inductive proof of 
 some great carpenter or watch-maker working there. 
 But the induction, never overwhelming, becomes very 
 weak when I learn that there are so-called physical 
 conditions such as we or chance can produce, which, 
 however, do nevertheless result in things that my eye 
 would have called full of design. For then I am led 
 to feel as if I could pass no judgment at all upon 
 concrete cases. Yet only by concrete cases can an 
 empirical hypothesis be proved. Therefore unless a 
 pebble proves design an eye does not prove design. 
 But design, we hear, is not incompatible with evo- 
 lution. Of course not. And if there is a designer, 
 who works through evolution, then indeed he shows 
 wonderful foresight and mastery. But the question 
 is, not what is compatible with evolution, but what 
 can be proven from bare experience. And what the 
 modern man has very justly come to see is that mere 
 experience must leave him in utter doubt about 
 what powers, intelligent or not intelligent, are the 
 sources of all our experience. We can find laws ; 
 but they take us only a short way. And the more 
 we know about nature, the less inclined we feel to 
 dogmatize on the basis of mere experience about 
 what powers are behind the scenes. They may be 
 intelligent, and they may be what we call in this 
 world of sense mechanical. But as finite powers, 
 given in experience, we men know them solely by 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 283 
 
 their effects. And their effects are very remote 
 hints of their real nature. It is really painful to 
 read the elaborate wastes of effort made in our day 
 to prove that some theological dogma about some 
 power beyond experience is not refuted by expe- 
 rience. As if such proof made anybody's creed 
 either more or less doubtful. A really well-founded 
 Theism would not be, in this tedious way, eternally 
 on the defensive. 
 
 But there is the other aspect of the matter. An 
 intelligent power, were it admitted, would not need to 
 be moral. If there is design, is the designer demon- 
 strably good ? Let us pass over to that question. 
 
 VII. 
 
 If evolution has done anything for us, it has 
 tended to increase our sense of the mystery of the 
 world of experience, and therefore the philosoph- 
 ically minded religious student is in truth, for yet 
 this other reason, weary of all this empirical Theism, 
 namely, because he despairs of finding out, by such 
 an empirical process, anything about the actual pur- 
 poses of any designer, even if there be a designer. 
 To study English literature in the rubbish heaps of 
 a book-binder's work-shop, would seem to a wise man 
 a much more hopeful undertaking than to seek any 
 one notion of the real plan on which this world is 
 made from a merely empirical study of our little 
 fragment of nature. Science is right in abandoning 
 such undertakings wholly and for all its now prob- 
 able future work. Religion must find the religious 
 
284 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 aspect of reality in a totally different direction. The 
 higher the realities that we study, the harder the 
 task. The heavens declare very many things not 
 wholly clear to us ; but the earth and man declare, 
 as natural facts, very many more and more confusing 
 things. Only a poetical abstraction can show us any 
 one plan of religious value in the world of sense, 
 any one declaration of anybody's glory therein. An 
 equally strong opposing interest would find just as 
 good evidence for what it sought if it should hold 
 another view of what is designed. Nature is, so re- 
 garded, a confused hum of voices. " Nature," says 
 one voice, " is meant to provide bountifully for the 
 wants of sentient life." " Therefore," says another 
 voice, " all the weak, the sick, the old, must starve, 
 and all the carnivorous destroy their neighbors." 
 " Nature aims at the evolution of the highest type of 
 life," says the first voice. " Therefore," it is replied, 
 " she bountifully provides swarms of parasites of all 
 sorts to feed on higher life." " Nature desires or- 
 der and unity," says the voice from the heavens. 
 " Therefore she makes meteors and comets," replies 
 the echoing voice. And if now the Fiend appears, 
 and suggests, as the only satisfactory design-hypoth- 
 esis, something of this sort, how could experience 
 answer him ? " Nature," he says, " is designed by 
 a being who delights in manifold activity of all sorts, 
 in variety of organization throughout the world, in 
 the fine contrasts of the numberless forms of sentient 
 life, and in whatever means vigor. He likes to see 
 many living creatures, and he likes to see them fight. 
 He likes the sight of suffering, as well as of joy ; 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 285 
 
 because both mean variety of action. He delights in 
 the triumphs of the victors, in the groans of the con- 
 quered, in the sportiveness of young animals, in the 
 writhing of a poor beast that dies in torture, in the 
 insidious struggle for existence that the Entozoa 
 carry on, in the hopeless sighs that men send up to 
 him in their woe, and in the ideal raptures and 
 agonies of saints, artists, and lovers. All these things 
 he likes, because they are just so many forms of ex- 
 istence. He wants plenty of life and vigor to con- 
 template, as a boy wants stiff soap-suds to make 
 pretty bubbles for his pleasure as he lies idle. This 
 being is doubtless finite (like his brother, the Sete- 
 bos of the inimitable monologue that Browning has 
 put into Caliban's mouth). But just now he reigns 
 hereabouts, even as Caliban's Setebos reigned in the 
 island. And his designs are so obviously shown in 
 nature, that anybody ought to believe in him who 
 simply looks at the facts of experience." 
 
 Of this horrible doctrine we apprehend that ex- 
 perience as such offers no disproof. For all that 
 science can say, we might be in the hands of just 
 such a demon. Hence it behooves religious students 
 to cease looking for the living God among the dead 
 facts of physical science, and to betake themselves 
 to their own proper field. Science simply leaves all 
 such hypotheses utterly doubtful. Our little corner 
 of the world may have become what it is in any one 
 of numberless physically definable ways. And, if 
 designed, its immediate purpose may be any one of 
 numberless purposes. It is not probable that expe- 
 rience can tell us much about that matter. Science 
 
286 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 is very right in appealing to experience with wholly 
 different aims, namely, for the sake of understanding 
 the laws of the sequence of phenomena, to the 'end 
 that we may be able to know what the world-plan, 
 however it may be formed, does actually render us 
 capable of accomplishing just now and here in our 
 concrete dealings with things. And if science, in 
 doing all this, has to make certain postulates, and to 
 accept them on faith, then such faith, though it needs 
 indeed a deeper foundation, is at least not identical 
 with the presumption that, undertaking not simply 
 to postulate, but to prove beyond doubt, pretends to 
 discover with certainty, from bare experience, that 
 the world -maker's plans do agree with our plans. 
 After all, such empirical Theism is assuming its 
 safest and most characteristic form when it appears 
 no longer as a genuine investigator, but poses as the 
 defendant's attorney, takes prudent refuge behind the 
 rules of debate, and demands that other people shall 
 assume the burden of proof, and either show it to be 
 certainly false, or else accept it for the sake of pro- 
 priety. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 We turned to the supposed external World of 
 Powers, and we have found it either dumb, or else 
 given to dark and doubtful speeches. The Powers 
 may indeed be somehow of the highest worth. But 
 to us, even if we accept unquestioningly the supposed 
 external world, the worth of it all seems doubtful, 
 and more so the longer we study the matter. The 
 partial evil may be universal good ; but we could not 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 287 
 
 in this external world see how, nor could we find 
 proof of the fact. What a Power causes, that the 
 power seems responsible for. And so the Powers 
 that cause the inestimable might of evil in the world 
 seem of very doubtful religious worth. 
 
 We have already suggested in outline why this 
 doubtful result was to be expected. These Powers 
 were assumed to exist apart from our thought, in 
 time and space, and to work in time. They have, 
 as workers in time, no certain and eternal signifi- 
 cance. A single Infinite Power is, properly speak- 
 ing, a misnomer. If a power produces something 
 that is external to itself, then the very idea of such 
 an occurrence implies another power, separate from 
 the first, and therefore limiting it. If however the 
 power is identical with its own products, then the 
 name power no longer properly belongs to it. For, 
 as we shall see when we come to speak of the world 
 in its other aspect, namely, as eternal, the conceptions 
 of power and product, of cause and effect, and of 
 all like existences, are found to be only subordinate 
 to the highest conception of the world as Thought. 
 For the Eternal Thought are all these powers ; but 
 in themselves they belong to the flux of things. 
 Each one of them says, Not in me, when you ask it 
 for the significance of the world as a whole. Each 
 power says : " I work here along with the others. 
 I fight, I strive, I conquer, I obey, I seek my ends 
 as I can. But beyond me are the conditions that 
 limit me. " And these conditions are the other 
 powers. The world of powers is the world of the 
 children of the dragon's teeth. Their struggles are 
 
288 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 endless. The only religion that they can teach is the 
 religion of endurance and of courage. Or one may 
 compare them to the warriors in king Atli's house. 
 Only the all-seeing Eternal Thought can possibly 
 discover their significance. Of themselves they are 
 just the fighters in the blood and dust of the ban- 
 queting hall. 
 
 All this we just now affirm without full proof. 
 But our previous discussion has been one long illus- 
 tration of it. You find or think you find in the 
 world a religiously valuable power or tendency at 
 work. But at once there stands beside it its sworn 
 foe. Is it Evolution that you have found ? There 
 stands beside it Dissolution. Is it the tender care of 
 a fatherly nature for the very sparrows ? Then ap- 
 pears beside it the cruelty and deceit of nature. Is 
 it the beauty of the world that suggests a power- 
 loving beauty? Nay, but the rottenness and the 
 horror of natural disease and decay assert as boldly 
 the workings of a power that hates beauty. Are 
 all these seeming powers just mere phantoms, whose 
 truth is in the laws of physics ? Then the world is 
 a vast wreck of colliding molecules. Are these pow- 
 ers real tendencies ? Then their fight is seemingly 
 endless. The world of the powers is indeed full of 
 physical law, because and only because its facts are 
 found, by means of thought that has a deeper foun- 
 dation, to be cases of certain general rules. But 
 for our religious purpose, this world of the powers 
 seems a chaos. 
 
 " But," says some one, " all this is no disproof of 
 the existence of a real but to us not perfectly clear 
 
THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 289 
 
 harmony of all the powers. This is simply absence 
 of proof." Yes ; but if proof is what we want, and 
 if every single power sends us beyond itself for the 
 interpretation of the meaning of the whole, we can- 
 not hope to grasp that meaning so long as we avoid 
 studying the world in its eternal aspect. The pow- 
 ers themselves make and unmake. We understand 
 them not. They remind us of the night-scene of 
 Faust : 
 
 Faust. Was weben die dort um den Rabenstein ? 
 Mephistopheles. Weiss nicht was sie kochen uiid schaffen. 
 Faust. Schweben auf, schweben ab, neigen sich, beugen sich. 
 Mephistopheles. Erne Hexenkunst. 
 Faust. Sie streuen und weihen. 
 Mephistopheles. Vorbei ! Vorbei ! 
 
 And if we will hear the wisdom of Mephistopheles 
 about all this, he has elsewhere given his view, which, 
 as an opinion about the world of powers by one of 
 the more authoritative powers in it, is worthy of 
 as much respect as any other suggestion from an 
 equally limited being : 
 
 " Was soil uns dann das ewige Schaffen ! 
 
 Geschaffenes zu nichts hinwegzuraffen ! 
 ' Da ist's vorbei ! ' Was ist daran zu leseu ? 
 
 Es ist so gut als war'es nicht gewesen. 
 
 Und treibt sich doch im Kreis, als wenn es ware. 
 
 Ich liebte mir dafiir das Ewig-Leere." 
 
 And possibly it would be hard for us to be sure of 
 much more meaning in this world of powers as such, 
 than Mephistopheles has found. 
 
 For us, we turn, not with despair, but with hope, 
 elsewhere. We go to seek the Eternal, not in ex- 
 perience, but in the thought that thinks experience. 
 
 19 
 
290 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Our hope is not less because we have found in the 
 temporal a world of doubt. Our song is simply 
 the " Good-by proud world, I'm going home" of 
 the religious minds of all ages. The truly religious 
 elements of theism are not hurt by the destruction 
 of traditions about theistic arguments. It is only an 
 example of shallow thought when either the destruc- 
 tive or the constructive thinkers imagine that the bat- 
 tle is decided if the world of the powers is judged 
 in one way or in another. Religion is as independ- 
 ent of all that as Sirius is independent of the north 
 wind. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 
 
 Das bestandige Wetzen der Messer 1st langweilig, wenn man Nichts 
 zu schneiden vorhat. LOTZE, Metaphysik. 
 
 What 's so false as truth is 
 False to thee ? 
 
 BROWNING. 
 
 IF the reader has become thoroughly weary of the 
 world of doubt, we are only glad of the fact. Armed 
 with a genuine philosophy, a man may indeed go 
 back to that world, and find in it an expression of 
 ideal truth in empirical form. We hope to have 
 such a right ourselves in time ; but, without a well 
 thought out philosophy, a man venturing into the 
 world of empirical facts to find there any religious 
 significance actually discovers himself to be in a nest 
 of hornets ; and he deserves as much. We desired 
 to bring the reader to feel this with us ; else our 
 own prudent flight from that world to another might 
 seem to him unnecessary. Now we are ready to 
 come nearer to our former question. What right 
 has any one to assume that empirical external world 
 at all as having any absolute truth ? " O thou that 
 hast troubled us," we may say, " what art thou at 
 bottom more than our own assumption ? " What 
 right has that external world to be the sole region 
 
292 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 where we could seek the religious truth, when per- 
 chance the external world, as we assumed it, is not 
 a truth at all ? Let us consider once more our steps. 
 Perchance the religiously inspiring reality is in some 
 higher world. If we are only skeptical enough, per- 
 chance we shall find that Reality. Then, indeed, 
 the old assumption of an external world of empir- 
 ical facts may remain a part of our future thought, 
 but it will get a new sense, and occupy a new place. 
 
 The first answer that occurs to this our question 
 about the meaning of the external world that has 
 so far troubled us, is this : The assumed world is 
 no fixed datum, to which we are bound to submit at 
 all hazards, but a postulate, which is made to sat- 
 isfy certain familiar human needs. If this postulate 
 is found to have no religious significance, we may 
 supplement the doubt thus arising by remembering 
 that we who postulated once have the right to postu- 
 late again. Our religiously satisfactory truth may 
 be reached, not by hypotheses about powers in the 
 empirical world, but by a deeper faith in something 
 that is eternal, and behind or above the world of the 
 senses. 
 
 This view gives us a new world, the world of the 
 Postulates. We cannot be content to remain in this 
 world, but we must pass through it on our way up- 
 wards. Let us hear it described. 
 
 I. 
 
 The world of Doubt has passed before us, a huge 
 mass of inexplicable facts. Here and there we find 
 
THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 293 
 
 a connection ; we hope that we shall soon find more 
 connection ; but still the vast plan, if indeed there 
 be a plan, we search for in vain. But now, strangely 
 enough, all this doubt affects in no wise the willing 
 trustfulness of our devotion to the interests, not only 
 of common life, but also of science. The doubt con- 
 fuses -us only when we talk of religion. That the 
 world as a whole is dark, nobody admits more cheer- 
 fully than does the modern scientific man, even when 
 he looks to his science for all his religious consola- 
 tion. For he seeks no consolation save what the 
 phenomena as such furnish. But his philosophical 
 doubt about the ultimate foundation of science is 
 no check to his scientific ambition. He believes in 
 science just as ardently as if he did not in the very 
 first breath of each new philosophical dispute de- 
 clare that the real world is unknowable. His faith 
 in the methods of his specialty is as firm as his in- 
 difference to all extra - scientific speculation. His 
 work is in fact done with a kind of instinctive con- 
 fidence in himself and his fellows. The instinct is 
 no doubt highly trained, but it remains an instinct, 
 and a delightful one it is to him. The untrained 
 instincts of the unscientific man must indeed be crit- 
 icised and altered in many respects ere they can 
 serve the purposes of science ; but, after all the crit- 
 icisms and alterations, the instinct remains with al- 
 most all men an instinct, useful, pleasing, yes, in- 
 dispensable ; but its philosophical justification few 
 people care to know, while its self-confidence every 
 scientific essay, or lecture, or instructor will attest. 
 Why now is it that, trusting as we all do this scien- 
 
\Z9> THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tific instinct, we all feel it hard to give a like trust 
 to the religious instinct, whose most general tendency 
 is to have some sort of faith in the goodness of 
 things? Why is it that the doubtfulness and the 
 contradictions of the real world seem to everybody 
 to throw a cloud upon religion, even when it is not 
 supernatural religion, but to have no significance 
 whatever for the bases of science? This scientific 
 notion of a world of law, all of whose facts could 
 conceivably be predicted by one formula, why does 
 that remain in our minds untouched by the doubts 
 of the skeptical philosophers, while the same skep- 
 ticism at once seems to remove from us that trust in 
 the moral goodness of things which religion has 
 tried to establish in our hearts? Shall the world 
 be indifferent to one set of our ideals, and not to 
 another ? Shall the moral value of things be dark, 
 and not also their value for the purposes of science ? 
 Why is the one doctrine so different from the other ? 
 I You are placed in a world of confusion, and you as- 
 ' sert that in its ultimate and eternal nature it answers 
 your moral needs. That seems presumptuous. You 
 did not make that world. How do you know whether 
 it cares for your moral ideals ? Very well then, be 
 impartial. You are placed in a world of confusion, 
 and you assert that it answers your intellectual 
 needs, namely, that it is a world of order, whose 
 facts could be reduced to some rational and intelligi- 
 ble unity. What business have you to do that ? In 
 both cases you transcend experience. Nature gives 
 you in experience partial evil that you cannot in all 
 cases perceive to be universal good. Nature also 
 
THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 295 
 
 gives you in experience partial chaos that you can- 
 not in all cases perceive to be universal order. But 
 unwaveringly you insist that nature is orderly, that 
 the chaos is an illusion ; and still you do not feel 
 ready to insist that the partial evil is universal good. 
 Why is this so ? Is the ethical side of reality less 
 important than the other? Or is it the very im- 
 portance of the religious aspect of things that makes 
 us more ready to doubt the truth of this aspect ? 
 
 Such questions occur to us as suggesting a possi- 
 ble way out of our difficulties. It is not exactly our 
 desired way, but is it not possibly a good way ? Sci- 
 ence, namely, uses a certain kind of faith, whenever 
 such faith is practically necessary. This scientific 
 faith is indeed no faith in particular uninvestigated 
 facts, but it is a faith in general methods and princi- 
 ples. The creed of science knows of no dogmas 
 about unexperienced single facts, as such ; but it does 
 know of dogmas about the general form of the laws 
 that must be assumed to govern all experience. Now 
 why may not religion be reduced to certain essential 
 general and fundamental moral demands, that we 
 must make in the presence of reality ? Why are not 
 these a legitimate, yes, a morally necessary object of 
 faith ? Why, as the scientific man postulates a the- 
 oretical rationality in the world, may not we postu- 
 late a moral rationality in the world ? These ques- 
 tions stand in our path. Might not the answer to 
 them transform our barren doubts into something 
 less disheartening ? 
 
 We see what all this supposed religious faith 
 would mean. It would not be a faith in any partic- 
 
296 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ular facts of experience that might have for us per- 
 sonally a selfish value, whether greater or less. It 
 would be, like the scientific faith, wholly general. It 
 would demand that the world in its entirety should 
 be regarded as in some higher sense morally ra- 
 tional. It would say : The real world must be, what- 
 ever its true nature, at least as high in the moral 
 scale as my highest ideals of goodness. Have we a 
 right to such a faith ? Let us cautiously consider 
 this point. 
 
 But at once we must distinguish the proposed re- 
 ligious faith from what we should call mere blind 
 faith. Blind faith in what we cannot establish is 
 indeed inadmissible. But then, is there not another 
 kind of faith, the kind that Kant used in his prac- 
 tical philosophy ? To this may we not now turn ? 
 Perhaps the world of the powers, approached in the 
 usual way, is dark, but the world for the practical 
 reason may be opened in another way. Kant said, in 
 effect : " Such and such supersensual realities, of re- 
 ligious significance, cannot be theoretically proven ; 
 but we can see why we ought to postulate their ex- 
 istence, that is, we can see wliy we ought to act as 
 if they existed. Behind the veil of sense, we must 
 postulate that there is an intelligible world, in which 
 all is harmony, and in which the highest good is 
 realized." May we not also try with Kant to do 
 this ? 
 
 We shall in any case find this effort, an effort 
 that has been so often made since Kant, a subject 
 well worth our study and careful examination. In 
 truth it is not by itself satisfactory ; but we shall 
 
THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 297 
 
 see that it enters as one moment into the higher 
 view that we shall hereafter reach. So, in our own 
 way, we shall now try to answer the question sug- 
 gested to us by Kant's method. Does not then the 
 'religious aspect of the world lie in the fact that, do 
 , spite the contradictions of the world of sense, we 
 may, and indeed, morally speaking, must postulate, 
 that the Eternal, of which this world is the mere 
 show, is in itself absolutely righteous? We shall 
 not be able to answer this question with a simple 
 affirmative ; but still, postulates must enter in some 
 wise into every moment of our lives, and must there- 
 fore have some value in religion. 
 
 II. 
 
 In the last chapter we sought for a demonstration 
 of religious truth, and found none. But perhaps it 
 was not demonstration that we should have sought. 
 Possibly religion may be content to rest on postu- 
 lates. 
 
 A postulate is a mental way of behavior. In so 
 far it is like all other thought. In general, to be- 
 lieve that a thing exists is to act as if it existed. 
 But the act may be forced upon one, or it may be 
 freely chosen. One cannot fail to act upon the prin- 
 ciple that 2 + 2 i= 4, so soon as he perceives it. But 
 one may voluntarily determine to act in a given way, 
 not being rationally forced so to do, and well know- 
 ing the risk. In such cases one voluntarily takes 
 to himself the form of belief called a postulate. 
 Thus, apart from any philosophic theory, we all pos- 
 
298 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tulate a certain kind of uniformity in nature. We 
 do so, whenever we reflect upon the matter, volun- 
 tarily. For we then say that surprises are always 
 possible, and that any law may have exceptions, but 
 that we must act as if we knew certain laws to have 
 no possible exceptions. Postulates, however, are not 
 blind faith. Postulates are voluntary assumptions 
 of a risk, for the sake of a higher end. Passive faith 
 dares not face doubt. The postulate faces doubt, 
 and says : " So long as thou canst not make thyself 
 an absolute and certain negative, I propose to act as 
 if thou wert worthless, although I do well see thy 
 force." Blind faith is emotion, and often cowardly 
 emotion. The postulate is deliberate and courageous 
 volition ._ Blind faith says : " I dare not question." 
 The postulate says : " I dare be responsible for as- 
 suming." Examples of both are very common. 
 Blind faith the fond parent has, who says of his 
 wicked son : " I know tfeat he must be good, hence 
 I will not suspect him, nor train him ; I will not 
 watch him, nor warn others against him." A pos- 
 tulate the wise parent makes, who sends his full- 
 grown son boldly out into the world, with the best 
 attainable safeguards, saying : " It is useless to keep 
 him longer in leading-strings, or to protect him from 
 the world. It is now his place to fight his own bat- 
 tles, since I have done what I could to get him ready. 
 I postulate that he will win the fight ; I treat him, 
 and must treat him, as if he were sure to win, al- 
 though T well know the risks." The sea-captain 
 beginning his voyage postulates that he can get 
 through. The general postulates that he will be 
 
THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 299 
 
 victorious. The Prime Minister of a country postu- 
 lates that he can do his country better service than 
 could the Opposition. We all postulate that our 
 lives are worth the trouble. Yet we all know per- 
 fectly well that many just such postulates must in 
 the nature of things be blunders. But they imply 
 not blind faith, but active faith. With blind faith 
 little good is done in the world ; without active faith, 
 expressed in postulates, very little practical good 
 can be done from day to day. Blind faith is the 
 ostrich behind the bush. The postulate stands out. 
 like the lion against the hunters. The wise shall live 
 by postulates. 
 
 III. 
 
 But how is this postulating activity actually re- 
 lated to our knowledge of reality? Much more 
 closely than one might suppose. Very much of our 
 thought naturally rests upon a blind faith, or upon 
 what many take to be a blind faith ; but this, when 
 we reflect upon it with due attention to the office it 
 fills, is transformed before our eyes into practically 
 unavoidable postulates. Such are the assumptions 
 upon which our science rests in forming its ideal of 
 an " universal formula." There may indeed be some 
 deeper basis for these postulates of science. But 
 most men know nothing of this basis. And so, when 
 we accepted in our last chapter these postulates, we 
 had to admit that they are a kind of faith. If we 
 then nevertheless objected to certain religious doc- 
 trines that they rest on insufficient evidence, we did 
 this because they set themselves up as dogmas. 
 
300 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 With further consideration, we might coine to accept 
 some one of them again in the form, not of a demon- 
 strable dogma, but of a practically unavoidable pos- 
 tulate, uncertain of course, but taken and to be taken 
 on risk ; just as every one of us goes through the 
 world taking all sorts of risks day by day. Any- 
 thing not contradictory may be a possible object of 
 postulates ; although, again, every postulate is to be 
 assumed only after careful criticism, and only be- 
 cause we cannot do better. 
 
 To do justice then to the proper office of postu- 
 lates in our religious theory, we must sooner or later 
 consider in what cases they naturally arise, what is 
 the proper extent of their use, what is the basis upon 
 which they can be made, in any special case, to rest ; 
 and, finally, whether, in view of all this, we can give 
 them any important place in our religious doctrine. 
 We confess at once that we want something much 
 better than a postulate as the basis of our religion, 
 in case we can get it. If postulates are to have any 
 part in our religion, we want them to be justified by 
 some ultimate religious certainty that is more than 
 a postulate. We shall investigate all that in time. 
 We shall see what we shall see. Meanwhile, what 
 is the work of postulates in the actual daily life of 
 human thought ? 
 
 Popular belief about an external world is for the 
 first an active assumption or acknowledgment of 
 something more than the data of consciousness. 
 What is directly given in our minds is not external. 
 All direct data are internal facts ; and in the strict- 
 est sense all data are direct. Suppose a merely pas- 
 
THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 301 
 
 sive acceptance of what is in consciousness, and you 
 have no belief in an external world. An addition to 
 the data of consciousness, a more or less clearly vol- 
 untary reaction, is involved in your idea of external 
 reality. The truth of this principle appears when 
 your belief in any particular object is called in ques- 
 tion. You hold that you see yonder a snowy moun- 
 tain. Your companion insists that beyond the wide 
 misty valley there is to be seen only a gray cloud. 
 You reassert your belief, and in the reassertion feel 
 more definitely than at first the active addition of 
 your own belief to the meagre data of sense. The 
 addition existed, however, in your first assertion. 
 Or again, one man is trying, perchance in sport, to 
 make another doubt the existence of material ob- 
 jects. " There is no external matter," says the first. 
 " There are but these states of consciousness in our 
 minds. Nothing beyond them corresponds to them." 
 The second, maintaining the position of the man of 
 common sense, retorts sharply : " Doubtless I cannot 
 refute altogether your fine-spun arguments ; but they 
 are nevertheless nonsense. For I persist in believing 
 in this world of sense. I live in it, I work for it, my 
 fellows believe in it, our hearts are bound up in it, 
 our success depends upon our faith. Only dreamers 
 doubt it. I am not a dreamer. Here is a stone ; 
 I hit it. Here is a precipice ; I fear and shun it. 
 My strongest conviction is concerned with the exist- 
 ence of this world of sense. Do your worst ; I am 
 not afraid of talk." Thus then by every device of 
 the active spirit,, by reminding himself of his most 
 cherished interests, of his affections and hatreds, by 
 
802 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 arousing his social sentiments, by bodily acts, the 
 practical man preserves himself from fantastical spec- 
 ulation. When better-trained thinkers call the belief 
 in an external reality " a natural conviction, to be re- 
 tained until we are compelled to abandon it," or " a 
 convenient working hypothesis, to be received on the 
 testimony of consciousness, testimony assumed to be 
 trustworthy until the opposite is proven," what are 
 these but similar practical considerations, appeals to 
 the will ? Concerning data of immediate conscious- 
 ness such remarks would be wholly out of place. 
 That I see a certain color at this moment is not a 
 " convenient working hypothesis." Is consciousness 
 merely a "presumably trustworthy witness" when it 
 testifies to the pangs of toothache? Nobody could 
 balance evidence as to the reality of his sensation 
 qud sensation when consciousness is filled with the 
 sound of a street-organ. Sound, color, pang, these 
 are data, not merely things believed in. But the 
 external world that is actively accepted as being 
 symbolized or indicated by the present conscious- 
 ness, not as being given in the present consciousness. 
 In short, the popular assertion of an external 
 world, being an assertion of something beyond the 
 data of consciousness, must begin in an activity of 
 judgment that does more than merely reduce present 
 data to order. Such an assertion must be an active 
 construction of non-data. We do not receive in our 
 senses, but we posit through our judgment, whatever 
 external world there may for us be. If there is 
 really a deeper basis for this postulate of ours, still, 
 at the outset, it is just a postulate. 
 
THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 303 
 
 All theories, all hypotheses as to the external 
 world, ought to face this fact of thought. If the his- 
 tory of popular speculation on these topics could be 
 written, how much of cowardice and shuffling would 
 be found in the behavior of the natural mind before 
 the question : " How dost thou know of an external 
 reality ? " Instead of simply and plainly answer- 
 ing : " I mean by the external world in the first place 
 something that I accept or demand, that I posit, 
 postulate, actively construct on the basis of sense- 
 data," the natural man gives us all kinds of vague 
 compromise answers : " I believe in the external re- 
 ality with a reasonable degree of confidence ; the 
 experience of mankind renders the existence of ex- 
 ternal reality ever more and more probable ; the 
 Creator cannot have intended to deceive us ; it is un- 
 natural to doubt as to external reality ; only young 
 people and fantastic persons doubt the existence of 
 the external world ; no man in his senses doubts the 
 external reality of the world ; science would be im- 
 possible were there no external world ; morality is 
 undermined by doubts as to the external world ; the 
 immovable confidence that we all have in the prin- 
 ciple of causality implies the fixity of our belief in 
 an external cause of our sensations." Where shall 
 these endless turnings and twistings have an end ? 
 The habits of the law-courts as condensed into " rules 
 of evidence," the traditional rules of debate, the 
 fashion of appealing to the " good sense " of honor- 
 able gentlemen opposite, the motives of shame and 
 fear, the dread of being called " fantastical," Philis- 
 tine desire to think with the majority, Philistine 
 
304 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 terror of all revolutionary suggestions, the fright or 
 the anger of a man at finding some metaphysician 
 trying to question what seem to be the foundations 
 upon which one's bread winning depends, all these 
 lesser motives are appealed to, and the one ultimate 
 motive is neglected. The ultimate motive with the 
 man of e very-day life is the will to have an exter- 
 nal world. Whatever consciousness contains, reason 
 will persist in spontaneously adding the thought: 
 "But there shall be something beyond this." The 
 external reality as such (e. g. the space beyond the 
 farthest star, any space not accessible, even whatever 
 is not at any moment given in so far as it is viewed 
 from that moment, in particular every past event) is 
 never a datum. We construct but do not receive 
 the external reality. The " immovable certainty " is 
 not such a dead passive certainty as that with which 
 we receive a pain or an electric shock. The pop- 
 ular assurance of an external world is the fixed de- 
 termination to make one, now and henceforth. 
 
 In the general popular conceptions of reality we 
 find then the first use of postulates. We have as yet 
 no justification for them. But even thus we get no 
 adequate idea of their use and of their number. We 
 must look at the facts of every-day mental life a lit- 
 tle more closely. For there is a curious tendency 
 of many to make these postulates appear something 
 else than what they are. Often they are interpreted 
 as if they were no postulates at all, but data of 
 sense. Often, again, their active nature is disre- 
 garded in yet another way, and they appear as blind 
 passive faith. Such in fact they must appear if we 
 
THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 805 
 
 reflect upon their mere content, and not upon the 
 processes by which we get them. But if we inter- 
 pret them rightly, we shall see that they ought to be 
 regarded as beliefs, taken for the first on risk, and 
 because the risk is worth taking. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Sometimes we hear men asserting that their be- 
 liefs are independent of their will. Such a man 
 will express himself in some such way as the follow- 
 ing: 
 
 " I try to conquer prejudice ; but having done 
 this, I can do no more. My belief, whatever it is, 
 forms itself in me. I look on. My will has noth- 
 ing to do with the matter. I can will to walk or 
 eat ; but I cannot will to believe. I might as well 
 will that my blood should circulate." 
 
 But is this expression a fair one ? Does such a 
 man really remain passive in the struggle that goes 
 on within him ? We think not. These beliefs in 
 such a man have resulted, we hold, from a sort of 
 struggle between him and the surrounding world. 
 The world has tried sometimes to check his thought, 
 and to confine it to one channel ; sometimes to con- 
 fuse his thought, and to scatter it into spray before 
 the quick, heavy blows of innumerable, disconnected 
 sense apparitions. But the man, if he is a man of 
 energy, has controlled the current of his thought. 
 He has fought hard, now for freedom from oppres- 
 sive narrowness of thought, now for wholeness and 
 unity of thought ; and perhaps he has in so far con- 
 
 20 
 
306 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 quered as to be the master of a manly and many- 
 sided system of doctrine. We think him responsible 
 for this system; and we hold that any such man 
 ought to admit the responsibility. 
 
 To study briefly the nature of the process involved 
 in all such cases will be important for our whole 
 doctrine. We shall see thereby how much our the- 
 ory of the world must itself tend to fall under the 
 head of the purely practical. We shall appreciate 
 also the limitations of ordinary thought, and the 
 need of some higher ideal standard to rescue us from 
 the pure subjectivity of mere postulates. And we 
 shall be contributing by the way to a question of ap- 
 plied ethics, the question of the morality of belief. 
 
 Every one recognizes that at least our more ab- 
 stract knowledge depends largely upon our own 
 mental activity. Knowing is not mere passive re- 
 ception of facts or of truths. Learning is not solely 
 an affair of the memory. The man that without re- 
 flection commits things to memory is justly com- 
 pared to a parrot, and might yet more justly be 
 compared to the sponge of Hamlet's figure : " It is 
 but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry 
 again." No knowledge, then, without active hos- 
 pitality in the mind that receives the knowledge. 
 But as soon as we recognize in mental life this our 
 power to modify our knowledge by means of our own 
 activity, just so soon do all the old comparisons of 
 the mind to a wax tablet, to a sheet of paper, or to 
 other like passive subjects of impression, lose for us 
 their meaning. Mental life becomes for us, in view 
 of these facts, a field of constant activity. The com- 
 
THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 307 
 
 monest processes of knowledge acquire a new signifi- 
 cance. 
 
 Two kinds of activity are concerned in the attain- 
 ment of knowledge. One kind consists in simply 
 receiving impressions from without, such as sensa- 
 tions, or, on a higher plane, statements of truth ; the 
 other consists in modifying and in organizing these 
 impressions. The receptive activity is partly a phys- 
 ical activity, since the one who receives information 
 must use his eyes and ears, must keep awake, must 
 at times move about ; and this receptive activity is 
 also partly made up of the mechanical processes of 
 the memory. Association by contiguity, or learning 
 by rote, is in the main a receptive process, though 
 this process of reception requires some active effort 
 on the part of the receiver. Committing words and 
 sentences to memory is often hard labor, as we all 
 of us learned when we first were tortured with ill- 
 wrought geographies and grammars, or with merci- 
 less Latin declensions and conjugations. But of the 
 whole of this receptive activity we shall make no 
 further mention in this connection. Simply receiv- 
 ing, keeping your mind in a submissive attitude, 
 turning your eyes in the proper direction, using your 
 ears, writing down your notes, memorizing whatever 
 needs memorizing all this is essential to knowl- 
 edge, but has no reactive effect, does not modify the 
 form or the matter of your knowledge. Secondly, 
 however, knowledge is determined for each of us 
 by his own reaction upon what he receives ; and 
 this second mentioned kind of mental activity, that 
 which forms our topic at present, consists in a modi- 
 
308 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 fication as well as in an organization of what we have 
 received from without. All processes of reasoning, 
 and so all original discoveries in science and in phi- 
 losophy, all speculations, theories, dogmas, controver- 
 sies, and not only these complex processes, but, as 
 we shall see, even simple judgments, commonplace 
 beliefs, momentary acts of attention, involve such 
 independent reaction upon the material furnished to 
 us from without. The nature of this reaction we 
 are further to examine. 
 
 Let us consider simpler forms of knowledge. 
 Sense-impressions constantly suggest to us thoughts ; 
 in fact, we have few thoughts that are not either im- 
 mediately suggested by sense - impressions, or else 
 sustained in their course by a continuous stream of 
 suitable sense-impressions. To carry on even a train 
 of abstract reasoning, sense-impressions either pres- 
 ent or repeated seem necessary as supports. But 
 when sense-impressions come to us, what transforms 
 them into thought ? 
 
 The answer is, First of all, attention, an active 
 mental process. The sense-impression is itself not 
 yet knowledge. A sense-impression to which we 
 give no attention slips through consciousness as a 
 man's hand through water. Nothing grasps and re- 
 tains it. Little effect is produced by it. It is un- 
 known. You cannot even tell what it is. For to 
 know what such an unnoticed impression is would 
 be to pay attention to it. But let us now consider 
 some familiar examples of the working of attention. 
 A simple instance will bring home to us how the 
 boundaries of our consciousness are crowded with un- 
 
THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 309 
 
 known impressions unknown, because not attended 
 to ; but yet in some inexplicable way a part of our 
 consciousness, since an effort of attention serves to 
 bring them, any one of them, cleafly into mental 
 vision. At this instant you are looking at some- 
 thing. Now, without moving your eyes, try, by 
 merely attending to your visual impressions, to say 
 what is now in the field of vision, and where is the 
 boundary line of the field of vision. The experi- 
 ment is a little hard, because our eyes, condensed 
 embodiments as they are of tireless curiosity, are al- 
 ways restless, and rebel when you try to hold them 
 fast. But conquer them for an instant, and watch 
 the result. As your attention roams about the arti- 
 ficially fixed visual field, you will at first, indeed, be 
 confused by the vagueness of all but the centre ; but 
 soon you will find, to your surprise, that there are 
 more different impressions in the field than you at 
 first can distinguish. One after another, many va- 
 rious impressions will appear. But notice : you can 
 keep your attention fixed on only a portion of the 
 field at a time. The rest of the field is always lost 
 in a dim haze. You must be receiving impressions 
 all the time from all points of the field. But all of 
 these, except the few to which you pay attention, 
 nearly or quite disappear in the dim thickets that 
 seem to surround the little forest-clearing made by 
 our attentive consciousness. A like experiment can 
 be tried with the sense of hearing, when you are in 
 a large room full of people who are talking all around 
 you in many independent groups. A mass of sound 
 comes to your ear. Consciousness interferes to make 
 
810 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 you pick out one or another of the series of sounds, 
 an act which is indeed made possible by the natural 
 analytic tendency of the human auditory sense, but 
 which does not take place without a noticeable effort 
 of attention. When you are learning a foreign lan- 
 guage, and are for a while much among those who 
 speak it, there comes a time when your ear and 
 mind are well enough trained to follow and under- 
 stand ordinary speakers with only a little effort of 
 attention ; but yet, at this stage, you are able, by 
 simply withdrawing your attention a mere trifle, to 
 let very common phrases run through your sense 
 without your understanding them one whit. You 
 can thus, by a slight change of attention, convert 
 the foreign language from a jargon into a familiar 
 speech, and back again into a jargon, just as, in the 
 fixed visual field, you can make yourself see an ob- 
 ject pretty plainly, or lose it altogether, by ceasing 
 to give attention. 
 
 All these instances, which could be indefinitely 
 multiplied, prove, first, that what we call attention 
 modifies the knowledge that we at any moment get ; 
 and secondly, that this modification, through atten- 
 tion, may take place without any change in the im- 
 pressions that at any moment come from without. 
 The first stage in getting knowledge from bare sense- 
 impressions is therefore the modification of sense by 
 attention a process belonging wholly to the sub- 
 jective side ; i. e. to our own minds. 
 
 But what is attention ? and how does it modify 
 sensation? Apparently, attention in the previous 
 instances has been merely a power to increase or to 
 
THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 311 
 
 diminish the intensity of impressions. But is this 
 all that attention does ? No : there are many cases 
 in which attention directly affects the quality, at 
 least of our complex impressions. This direct modi- 
 fication is commonly attended by some alteration of 
 our emotional state. It is a familiar fact, that in 
 listening to a series of regular and even beats, such 
 as the strokes of an engine, or of a pendulum, or the 
 ticking of a watch, we have a tendency to modify 
 the impressions by introducing into their series the 
 more elaborate regularity of rhythm. In paying at- 
 tention to them, we increase, at our pleasure, the in- 
 tensity of every third or fourth beat as heard, and 
 so make a rhythm, or series of measures, out of the 
 actually monotonous impressions. Now attention, 
 which here first acts by modifying the intensity of 
 impressions, soon produces the effect of qualitatively 
 modifying our total impression of the whole series. 
 If I have taken the fancy to listen to the even 
 strokes in quadruple time, intensifying by my own 
 act every fourth stroke, the character of the series is 
 changed for me. The impressions are less monoto- 
 nous, and they arouse new associations. They seem 
 to be caused by some force that rhythmically in- 
 creases and decreases. Perhaps a melody, or some 
 phrase of a few words, arises in my mind, and per- 
 sists in associating itself with the strokes. Probably 
 some vague feeling, as of rhythmic motion through 
 the air, or of pleasure or of displeasure in the pres- 
 ence of some rhythmically moving living being, is 
 awakened. Qualitatively, my consciousness is thus 
 altered through my attention. I seem to be experi- 
 
312 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 encing something that, as an objective reality, I do 
 not experience. More striking becomes this quali- 
 tative alteration of experience through attention, 
 in ca.se you bring two watches of different beat, or 
 a watch and a clock, and listen to both at once at 
 the distance of a few inches, first, perhaps, stopping 
 one ear to avoid confusion. Here, by attention, 
 you make or try to make a compound rhythm, 
 and this effort alters a good deal the total impres- 
 sion that you derive from the sound. If the two 
 series are such that a simple small multiple of the 
 interval of one gives you a simple small multiple of 
 the other's interval, you can combine the two series 
 into one rhythm, and then there is an immediate 
 impression as if the two series were really but the 
 complex ticking of one source of sound. But if the 
 series will not agree, there is an odd sense of some- 
 thing wrong, a disappointed effort to combine, 
 joined, perhaps, with a tendency to hasten one of the 
 series, so as to make it agree with the other. An- 
 other case where attention alters the quality of total 
 impressions, and not merely the intensity of any 
 part, appears in certain psychological laboratory ex- 
 periments, described by Wundt in his "Physiolo- 
 gische Psychologic." Here, for the sake of deter- 
 mining the actual time taken by an act of attention, 
 an observer is to make an electric signal as soon as 
 he becomes conscious of a certain impression, while 
 the impression itself is produced by an assistant at a 
 time exactly determined. The source of the impres- 
 sion is the ringing of a bell, the flash of an electric 
 spark, or something of the kind agreed upon at the 
 
THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 313 
 
 outset. To distinguish from one another the various 
 causes of the delay of the signal, the conditions of 
 experiment are variously modified. In one set of 
 experiments, the observer does not know beforehand 
 whether he is to experience a flash of light, or a 
 sound, or some sensation of touch, nor how intense 
 the sensation will be, nor when it will come ; but he 
 knows that he is to be on the lookout for one of the 
 three kinds of sensation. He waits, with attention 
 all aroused. In this case, it always takes him longer 
 to signal than if he knew beforehand the kind and 
 the strength of the coming sensation. Moreover, his 
 attention now makes him uneasy ; the coming sen- 
 sation is expected, with signs of excitement, and is 
 often received with a start. Here the feeling of ef- 
 fort that accompanies attention affects by its strength 
 the character of the impression received. Moreover, 
 in many of these experiments there appear phenom- 
 ena that show that attention alters our perception 
 of time, not merely as to length, but also as to se- 
 quence ; so that under circumstances, an impression 
 that really precedes another can appear in conscious- 
 ness as succeeding it. Yet more : attention some- 
 times serves to combine two sets of simultaneous im- 
 pressions, and to make them seem as if proceeding 
 from one source. 
 
 So much for the influence of attention alone. But 
 what is attention ? We reply, evidently an active 
 process. When impressions are modified by atten- 
 tion, they are actively modified. And if you ask 
 about the nature of this active process, the reply is, 
 attention, in its most elementary forms, is the same 
 
314 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 activity that in a more developed shape we commonly 
 call will. We attend to one thing rather than to 
 another, because we will to do so, and our will is 
 here the elementary impulse to know. Our attention 
 leads us at times into error. But this error is merely 
 an accompaniment, the result of our will activity. 
 We want to intensify an impression, to bring it 
 within the sphere of knowledge. But in carrying 
 out our impulse, we do more than we meant. We not 
 only bring something into clearer consciousness that 
 was before out of clear consciousness, but we quali- 
 tatively modify this thing in attending to it. I want 
 to observe a series of beats, and in observing it, I 
 make one beat in three or four seem heavier than the 
 others, or I even alter the apparent length of one in- 
 terval in three or four, by making it seem longer 
 than the others. I observe a series of visual im- 
 pressions, and at the same time a series of auditory 
 impressions ; if there is a certain agreement between 
 them, I irresistibly unite these two series by my act 
 of attention into one series, and refer them to a com- 
 mon cause. And so in the other cases. Attention 
 seems to defeat, in part, its own object. Bringing 
 something into the field of knowledge seems to be 
 a modifying, if not a transforming, process. 
 
 We all know how this same law works on a higher 
 plane. Giving our whole attention for a time to a 
 particular subject seems necessary for the growth of 
 our knowledge. Yet such attention, if long kept up, 
 always modifies our power to know, affects our whole 
 mental condition, and thus injures our power to ap- 
 preciate the relations between the subject of our 
 
THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 315 
 
 study and the other things in the world. Constant 
 attention to one thing narrows our minds, until we 
 fail to see the very thing we are looking at. Our 
 lives are thus really passed in a constant flitting 
 from one more or less partial and distorted view of 
 things to another, from this one-sided judgment to 
 that. Change the book you are reading, and your 
 whole notion of the universe suffers some momentary 
 change also. Think this week in the fashion of 
 Carlyle, attending to things as he brings them to 
 your attention, and human life in fact, the whole 
 world of being as you thought of it last week, when 
 you were following some other guide becomes mo- 
 mentarily clouded. This truth seems out of relation 
 to that. Your change of attention qualitatively alters 
 your apprehension of truth. Attending now even to 
 the same things, you view them in new lights. The 
 alteration of mental attitude becomes confusing to 
 yourself. But refuse to make any such changes, set- 
 tle down steadfastly to some one way of regarding 
 all things, and your world becomes yet more misty. 
 You see only a few things, and those in such a bad 
 light that you are in danger of utter darkness. Fre- 
 quent change of mental view (we of course do not 
 mean constant change of creed or of occupation, but 
 only frequent alteration of the direction of our 
 thought) is essential to mental health. Yet this 
 alteration implies at least some temporary change in 
 our knowing powers, and so some change in our ap- 
 preciation of truth. 
 
 Before going on to speak of the effect of our own 
 activity upon our knowledge, when attention is com- 
 
316 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 bined with active recognition of impressions, we 
 want to formulate the law that governs the action 
 of attention upon sense-impressions apart from rec- 
 ognition. This law seems pretty well established by 
 experience, and is, at all events, quite simple. It is 
 this : Any act of attention tends, first, to strengthen 
 the particular set of impressions to which it is at the 
 moment adapted ; and secondly, to modify those im- 
 pressions in such a way as shall make the total im- 
 pression derived from them all as simple an impres- 
 sion as possible. These two statements could be 
 reduced to one, thus : Attention constantly tends 
 to make our consciousness more definite and less 
 complex; that is, less confused and more united. 
 More definite, less confused attention tends to make 
 consciousness ; since, out of many vague impressions, 
 attention fixes upon one or a few, and helps them 
 to crowd out the others. Less complex and more 
 united or integrated attention makes the impressions 
 attended to ; as when, for the indefinite multiplicity 
 of the successive even beats of a watch or of an en- 
 gine, attention substitutes the simpler form of a ris- 
 ing and falling rhythm of more and less emphatic 
 beats, or as when two parallel series of impressions 
 are reduced to one, by combination. If impressions 
 are so complex and so imperative in their demands 
 as to impede greatly the simplifying and clarifying 
 efforts of attention, the result is a disagreeable feel- 
 ing of confusion, that may increase to violent pain. 
 
 This law, that our consciousness constantly tends 
 to the minimum of complexity and to the maximum 
 of defmiteness, is of great importance for all our 
 
THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 317 
 
 knowledge. Here we have a limitation that cannot 
 be overleaped. Whatever we come to know, what- 
 ever opinions we come to hold, our attention it is 
 that makes all our knowing and all our believing 
 possible ; and the laws followed by this, our own ac- 
 tivity of attention will thus determine what we are 
 to know and what we are to believe. If things have 
 more than a certain complexity, not only will our 
 limited powers of attention forbid us to unravel this 
 complexity, but we shall strongly desire to believe 
 the things actually much simpler than they are. For 
 our thoughts about them will have a constant ten- 
 dency to become as simple and definite as possible. 
 Put a man into a perfect chaos of phenomena, sights, 
 sounds, feelings ; and if the man continued to exist, 
 and to be rational at all, his attention would doubt- 
 less soon find for him a way to make up some kind 
 of rhythmic regularity, which he would impute to the 
 things about him, so as to imagine that he had dis- 
 covered some law of sequence in this mad new world. 
 And thus, in every case where we fancy ourselves 
 sure of a simple law of Nature, we must remember 
 that a good deal of the fancied simplicity may be due 
 in the given case not to Nature, but to the ineradi- 
 cable prejudice of our own minds in favor of regular- 
 ity and simplicity. All our thought is determined, 
 in great measure, by this law of least effort, as it is 
 found exemplified in our activity of attention. 
 
 But attention is not the only influence that goes 
 to transform sense-impressions into knowledge. At- 
 tention never works alone, but always in company 
 with the active process of recognizing the present 
 
318 THE KELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 as in some way familiar, and of constructing in the 
 present ideas of what is not present. At these two 
 other active processes we must very briefly glance. 
 
 Recognition is involved in all knowledge. Recog- 
 nition does not always mean a definite memory of a 
 particular past experience that resembles a present 
 one. On the contrary, recognition is frequently 
 only a sense of familiarity with something now pres- 
 ent, coupled with a more or less distinct applying of 
 some predicate to this present thing. I recognize a 
 horse, a landscape, a star, a friend, a piece of music, 
 a book, when I feel more or less familiar with the 
 impression of the object in question, and when, at 
 the same time, I predicate more or less distinctly 
 something of it. This, I say, is my friend, or the 
 north star, or Webster's Dictionary, or Smith's 
 horse. Or, perhaps, in recognizing, I recognize, not 
 merely the whole object, but one of its qualities, 
 or of its relation to other things. Then I say, this 
 is large or small, good or bad, equal or unequal to 
 another thing, and so on. In all these cases, recog- 
 nition involves a lively reaction of my mind upon ex- 
 ternal impressions. Recognition is not found apart 
 from attention, though attention may exist more or 
 less completely without recognition. Recognition 
 completes what attention begins. The attentive 
 man wants to know, the recognizing man knows, or 
 thinks that he knows. Recognition implies accom- 
 panying attention. Attention without recognition 
 implies wonder, curiosity, perplexity, perhaps terror. 
 But what is the law of this process of recognition ? 
 Does the process affect the impressions themselves 
 
THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 319 
 
 that are the basis of the recognition ? The answer 
 is: Very distinctly, recognition does affect the im- 
 pressions. The activity involved in jr^eognitiou al- 
 ters the data of sense, and that in almost every case. 
 Two of the ways in which this alteration occurs 
 are these: Cl^L In recognizing, we complete present 
 data by remembered past data, and so seem to expe- 
 rience more than is actually given to our senses. 
 Thus, then, in reading, we read over misprints (even 
 against our own will), thinking that we see words 
 when we do not see them, or when we see only parts 
 of them. Again : in listening to an indistinct 
 speaker we often supply what is lacking in the sounds 
 he makes, and seem to hear whole words when we 
 really hear but fragments of words. Or, merely 
 whistling a few notes, we recall to ourselves, and 
 seem to have present, the complex instrumental har- 
 mony of some music that we have heard played. 
 Or, in dim twilight, we imagine the form of a man, 
 and seem to see ifc plainly in detail, when, in fact, a 
 mass of shrubbery, or a coat on a chair, is the one 
 source of our impressions. In all these cases, the 
 activity of recognition alters the data of sense, by 
 adding to them, by filling out the sketch made by 
 them. (2.) However, even the qualities of sense-im- 
 pressions are altered according to the way in which 
 we recognize their objects. The colors of a landscape 
 are dimmer, and less significant as colors, so long 
 as we recognize the objects in the landscape. Look 
 under your arm, with head inverted, and the colors 
 flash out with unwonted brilliancy. For when you 
 so look, you lose sight of the objects as such, and 
 
320 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 give your attention solely to the colors. Mistake a 
 few brown leaves in some dark corner of a garden 
 for some little animal, and the leaves take on for the 
 moment the distinctive familiar color of the animal ; 
 and when you discover your blunder, you can catch 
 the colors in the very act of fading into their dull, 
 dry-leaf insignificance. Many facts of this sort are 
 recorded by psychologists and by artists, and can be 
 observed by any of us if we choose. To separate a 
 sensation from its modifications that are produced 
 by recognition is not a little difficult. 
 
 Now, in both these kinds of alteration a law is 
 observed, very similar to the one previously noted. 
 The alterations of the data of sense in the moment of 
 recognition are alterations in the direction of simplic- 
 ity and definiteness of consciousness. The present 
 is assimilated to the past ; the new is made to seem 
 as familiar as possible. This reaction of the mind 
 upon new impressions is easily seen in our thoughts 
 and words in the first moment of great surprise or 
 fright. When Macbeth turns from his door to the 
 table, and sees the ghost of Banquo in his chair, his 
 first words are not the " Avaunt, and quit my 
 sight ! " wherewith he greets the second appearance 
 of the ghost, nor yet even the " Which of you have 
 done this f " that he utters as soon as he recovers 
 himself. No : his first conscious reaction, in pres- 
 ence of the horrible impression, is a quiet remark, 
 " The table ' full." And when they teU him that 
 there is a place reserved, he persists with a 
 " Where ? " In this scene, Shakespeare's instinct 
 is perfectly accurate. Our effort always is to make 
 
THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 321 
 
 the new as familiar as possible, even when this new 
 is inconceivably strange. It takes us some time to 
 realize, as we say, a great change of any sort. Rec- 
 ognition, however, is yet further modified by the in- 
 terest with which we at any moment attend to things. 
 But when we speak of interest, we are led to the 
 third kind of active modification by which our minds 
 determine for us what we know. 
 
 At every moment we are not merely receiving, at- 
 tending, and recognizing, but we are constructing. 
 Out of what from moment to moment comes to us, 
 we are building up our ideas of past and future, and 
 of the world of reality. Mere dead impressions are 
 given. We turn them by our own act into symbols 
 of a real universe. We thus constantly react upon 
 what is given; and not only modify it, but even give 
 it whatever significance it comes to possess. Now 
 this reaction takes a multitude of forms, and cannot 
 be fully discussed without far more than our present 
 space. But we can name one or two prominent 
 modes of reaction of mind upon sense-data in this 
 province of mental life. 
 
 1. Definite memory is possible only through pres- 
 ent active construction from the data of feeling. 
 Nothing can come to us certifying for itself that it 
 formed a part of our previous experience. When 
 we know a thing as past, we actively project our 
 idea of it into a conceived past time. Without this 
 active interference of our own minds, everything 
 would be but a present, and there would be no time 
 for us, only fleeting life from moment to moment. 
 
 2. Definite belief in external reality is possible 
 
 21 
 
322 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 only through this active addition of something of 
 our own to the impressions that are actually given 
 to us. No external reality is given to us in the mere 
 sense-impressions. What is outside of us cannot be 
 at the same time within us. But out of what is in 
 us, we construct an idea of an external world. To 
 be sure this belief needs higher justification, like all 
 other beliefs. But at the outset it is just an activ- 
 ity of ours. 
 
 3. All abstract ideas, all general truths, all knowl- 
 edge of necessary laws, all acceptance of doctrines, 
 begin in like fashion, through an active process com- 
 ing from within. Change the fashions of our men- 
 tal activity, and nobody can tell how radically you 
 would change our whole conception of the universe. 
 
 4. All this active construction from sense-impres- 
 sions expresses certain fundamental interests that 
 our human spirit takes in reality. We want to have 
 a world of a particular character ; and so, from 
 sense-impressions, we are constantly trying to build 
 up such a world. We are prejudiced in favor of 
 regularity, necessity, and simplicity in the world ; 
 and so we continually manipulate the data of sense 
 for the sake of building up a notion of a regular, 
 necessary, and simple universe. And so, though it 
 is true that our knowledge of the world is deter- 
 mined by what is given to our senses, it is equally 
 true that our idea of the world is determined quite 
 as much by our own active combination, completion, 
 anticipation of sense experience. Thus all^ knowing 
 is, in a very deep sense, Jjcting ; it is, in fact, react- 
 ing and creation. The most insignificant knowledge 
 
THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 323 
 
 is in some sense an original product of the man who 
 knows. In it is expressed his disposition, his power 
 of attention, his skill in recognition, his interest in 
 reality, his creative might. Exact knowledge is, in 
 fact, best illustrated by cases where we ourselves 
 make what we know. So only is mathematical 
 knowledge possible ; mathematical ideas are all prod- 
 ucts of a constructive imagination. And so it is in 
 all other thought-life. Mentally produce, and thou 
 shalt know thy product. But we must remember, 
 for what we produce we are in some sense morally 
 responsible; and thus, in discussing the nature of 
 knowledge, we are trespassing on the border-land of 
 ethics. 
 
 To sum up all in a few words : Plainly, since ac- 
 tive inner processes are forever modifying and build- 
 ing our ideas ; since our interest in what we wish to 
 find does so much to determine what we do find ; 
 since we could not if we would reduce ourselves to 
 mere registering machines, but remain always build- 
 ers of our own little worlds, it becomes us to con- 
 sider well, and to choose the spirit in which we shall 
 examine our experience. Every one is certain to be 
 prejudiced, simply because he does not merely re- 
 ceive experience, but himself acts, himself makes ex- 
 perience. One great question for every truth-seeker 
 is : In what sense, to what degree, with what motive, 
 for what end, may I and should I be prejudiced? 
 Most of us get our prejudices wholly from the fash- 
 ions of other men. This is cowardly. We are re- 
 sponsible for our own creed, and must make it by 
 our own hard work. Therefore, the deepest and 
 
324 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 most important of all questions is the one, " For 
 
 I what art thou at work?" It is useless to reply, " I 
 
 I am merely noting down what I find in the world. 
 
 \ I am not responsible for the facts" The answer is, 
 
 " A mere note-book thou art not, but a man. These 
 
 are never simply notes; thy thoughts are always 
 
 transformed reality, never mere copies of reality. 
 
 For thy transforming activity, as well as for thy 
 
 skill in copying, thou art answerable." 
 
 V. 
 
 It is not then that postulates occur here and 
 there in our thoughts, but that, without postulates, 
 both practical life and the commonest results of the- 
 ory, from the simplest impressions to the most valu- 
 able beliefs, would be for most if not all of us ut- 
 terly impossible ; this it is which makes active faith 
 so prominent a subject for philosophical considera- 
 tion. An imperfect reflection makes that appear as 
 blind faith which ought to appear as postulate. In- 
 stead of saying that he takes all these things on 
 risk, and because they are worth the risk, the natu- 
 ral man is persuaded by such imperfect reflection to 
 say that he trusts very ardently that he is running 
 no risk at all. Or again : the natural man is moved 
 to fear any examination into the bases of his thought, 
 because he does not wish to discover that there is 
 any risk there. And so we live dishonestly with 
 our thoughts. Where there is a deeper basis, that 
 involves more than mere risk, let us find it if we can. 
 But where we have nothing better than active faith, 
 
THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 325 
 
 let us discover the fact, and see clearly just why it 
 is worth while to act in this way. 
 
 To speak more particularly of the postulates of 
 developed science. The ancient discussions about 
 the basis of physical knowledge of all sorts have 
 had at least this as outcome, that it is useless to pre- 
 tend to make science of any sort do without assump- 
 tions, and equally useless to undertake the demon- 
 stration of these assumptions by experience alone. 
 No one has ever succeeded in accomplishing such a 
 thing, and the only difference among thinkers about 
 these assumptions is that some think it worth while 
 to seek a transcendental basis for them all, while 
 others insist that a transcendental basis is as impos- 
 sible as a purely experimental basis is inadequate, 
 and that in consequence we can only use the form of 
 threat and say : Unless you make these assumptions, 
 the spirit of science is not in you. As for the exact 
 form that in more elaborate scientific work ought 
 to be taken by these postulates, opinion differs very 
 much, but an approximation to their sense may be 
 attempted very briefly as follows. 
 
 In addition to those postulates that, as we have 
 seen, accompany and condition all thinking alike, 
 science may be considered as making a more special 
 assumption. This assumption has been well defined 
 by Professor Avenarius, in his well-known essay on 
 " Die Philosophic als Denken der Welt Gemass dem 
 Princip des kleinsten Kraftmasses." He regards it 
 as an outcome of the general law of parsimony that 
 governs all mental work. The world of phenomena 
 is conceived at any stage in the simplest form, and 
 
326 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the reality that we accept is for us at any time the 
 simplest description of the phenomena as known to 
 us. To put this view in our own way, we might 
 say that the world is scientifically viewed as a per- 
 fectly united whole, which would, if fully known, 
 fully satisfy our highest mental desire for continuity 
 and perfect regularity of conception. Therefore it 
 is that the "universal formula " of the last chapter 
 is a conception that expresses the scientific ideal. 
 With less perfection, harmony, and unity of thought 
 about the world, science will never rest content so 
 long as she continues to be science. But for this 
 very reason science postulates that this perfect order 
 must be already realized in the world. It is not 
 merely that this order is the practically unattainable 
 but still necessary ideal for our reason ; but we 
 must postulate that this order is already present in 
 things, far off as our thought is from it. This pos- 
 tulate gives life to our scientific thought. Without 
 it our search for an order that need not exist is 
 meaningless play. 
 
 This postulated order, however, if found, would 
 mean for us relative simplicity and economy of con- 
 ception. The infinite mass of phenomena would be 
 conceived as one whole. The maximum of wealth 
 of facts would be grasped with the minimum of men- 
 tal effort. We postulate after this fashion that the 
 world loves parsimony, even as we do. 
 
 To illustrate by the case of one science. A great 
 master of mechanical science has called it the science 
 which gives the simplest possible description of the 
 motions in the world. If we accept this account of 
 
THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 327 
 
 mechanics, we are at once puzzled by the fact that 
 most mechanical theories make assumptions about 
 the forces at work in the world, and that all of them 
 predict coming facts. But forces form no part of 
 the experience or of -the mere description of motion. 
 And the future is not yet given to be described. 
 How then does all this agree with the definition in 
 question? Very well indeed. For those who as- 
 sume forces to explain given motions, always assume 
 just those forces that will directly explain, not any 
 description at random of the motions given in expe- 
 rience, but the simplest possible description. Any 
 motion being relative, never for our experience abso- 
 lute, we can assume at pleasure any point in the 
 world as the origin or point of reference that shall 
 be regarded as at rest, and so we can get an infinite 
 number of descriptions of any given motions. We 
 can make any object in the world move at any de- 
 sired speed or in any desired direction, simply by 
 altering the origin to which we shall choose to refer 
 its motion in our description thereof. But all these 
 possible descriptions are not equally useful for the 
 purposes of the science. Some one of them is the 
 simplest for all the motions of the system in ques- 
 tion ; and this we regard as best expressing the ac- 
 tual natural truth in the matter. The assumption 
 of just such forces as would explain this simplest 
 system of motions as described, satisfies us. We 
 say, these forces are the real ones at work. But 
 still we know that the forces assumed only express 
 in another form the fact that the description in ques- 
 tion is the simplest. Is this, however, really all that 
 
328 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the science does with the given motions ? No, one 
 thing more the science assumes, namely, that if the 
 system of motions in question is not subject to any 
 external influence, it will remain fundamentally and 
 in deepest truth the same in future, that is : The 
 simplest description of the given motions in a sys- 
 tem of bodies that is wholly independent of the ac- 
 tion of bodies without the system, this description 
 is permanent for all states of the system. This 
 assumption is needed before mechanical science can 
 venture on any prediction, or beyond mere descrip- 
 tion of past and present motions. This is the pos- 
 tulate of the uniformity of nature in its mechanical 
 shape. 1 The complete present description of the 
 world would reveal the whole future of the world. 
 
 What, however, does this postulate of uniformity 
 express for our thought? What is the philosoph- 
 ical outcome of it ? It expresses for our thought the 
 demand that nature shall answer our highest intel- 
 lectual needs, namely, the need for simplicity and 
 absolute unity of conception. Mechanical science 
 can no more do without this assumption than can 
 any other science. 
 
 The ground that we have here very briefly passed 
 over is known to all readers of modern controversy. 
 We can only add our conviction that, as far as it 
 goes, the foregoing view is a perfectly fair one. 
 Whether or no there be any deeper basis for this 
 
 1 Professor Clifford, in his essay on Theories of the Physical 
 Forces, in his Lectures and Essays, vol. i., p. 109 sqq., has under- 
 taken to reduce this postulate to the general one of Continuity. 
 The philosophical outcome would be the same. 
 
THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 329 
 
 postulate, it is sure that science makes the postulate, 
 and does not give any deeper basis for it. For nat- 
 ural science it is a faith. 
 
 Now this faith, not blind faith but postulate, not 
 basely submitted to merely because we must submit 
 to it, but boldly assumed because we think it worth 
 the risk, wherein does it differ from what our funda- 
 mental religious faith would be if we made of that 
 also no mere dogmatic creed, but a general assump- 
 tion, no mere passive trust, but an active postulate ? 
 Beneath all the beliefs that we could not demon- 
 strate in our last chapter, lay the determination not 
 so much to prove one cast-iron system of dogmas, 
 as to find some element of reality that should have 
 an infinite worth. The world should be at least as 
 high as our highest conception of goodness. And 
 to this end the partial evil should be in deepest 
 reality universal good, even though our imperfect 
 eyes could never show to us how this could be, 
 could never see through the illusion to the " image- 
 less truth " beneath. Therefore, although we vainly 
 sought among the Powers of the world for proof of 
 all this, may we not still hope to approach the 
 Eternal Eeality with these postulates, and to say : 
 "Though thou revealest to us nothing, yet we be- 
 lieve thee good. And we do so because this faith of 
 ours is a worthy one." Possibly then our Religion 
 will be just the highest form of our conduct itself, 
 our determination to make the world good for our- 
 selves, whatever baseness experience shows us in it. 
 Then we can say : Just as science is undaunted by 
 the vision of the world of confusion, so shall our re- 
 
830 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ligious faith be undaunted by the vision of the evil 
 of the world. We shall war against this evil in the 
 trust that the highest reality is not against us, but 
 with us, just as we try to comprehend the world with 
 the faith that the highest reality is in conformity 
 with our private reason. In both cases we take the 
 risk, but we take the risk because it is worth taking, 
 because to take it is the highest form of activity. 
 As the faith of science helps to make life rational, 
 so the religious faith helps to make life in the high- 
 est sense moral, by insisting that the ideal labors of 
 our moral life are undertaken not alone, but in har- 
 mony with the world as known to the Infinite. 
 
 To make the parallel a little clearer, we may say 
 that science postulates the truth of the description 
 of the world that, among all the possible descrip- 
 tions, at once includes the given phenomena and at- 
 tains the greatest simplicity ; while religion assumes 
 the truth of the description of the world that, with- 
 out falsifying the given facts, arouses the highest 
 moral interest and satisfies the highest moral needs. 
 
 All this has often been said, but it has not always 
 been clearly enough joined with the practical sug- 
 gestion that if one gives up one of these two faiths, 
 he ought consistently to give up tjie other. If one 
 is weary of the religious postulates, let him by all 
 means throw them aside. But if he does this, why 
 does he not throw aside the scientific postulates, and 
 give up insisting upon it that the world is and must 
 be rational? Yea, let him be thorough-going, and, 
 since the very perception of the walls of his room 
 contains postulates, let him throw away all these 
 
THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 331 
 
 postulates too, and dwell in the chaos of sensations 
 unfriended. There is no reason why he should not 
 do this unless he sees a deeper foundation for his 
 postulates. We have no mere dogmas to urge here. 
 Let one abandon all mere postulates if he has not 
 the courage to make them, but then let one consist- 
 ently give them all up. The religious postulates 
 are not indeed particular creeds. One may abandon 
 creeds of many sorts, and yet keep the fundamental 
 postulate. But if he abandons the fundamental pos- 
 tulate of religion, namely, that universal goodness 
 is somehow at the heart of things, then he ought 
 consistently to cease from the fundamental postu- 
 late of science, namely, that universal, order-loving 
 reason is somehow the truth of things. And to do 
 both is to lack the courage of rational and of moral 
 life. 
 
 Such is the way of the postulates. And yet we 
 desire to find, if we can, a more excellent way. 
 These postulates must be confirmed if possible, and 
 then subordinated to higher results. It was the 
 skeptical work of the last chapter to turn attention 
 away from false or inconclusive methods of estab- 
 lishing religious faith. There we saw how much 
 must seem, according to all the ordinary apologetic 
 methods, theoretically doubtful. In this chapter we 
 have seen how postulates, theoretically uncertain, 
 but practically worth the risk, are at the foundation 
 of our whole lives. Hereafter we shall seek to dig 
 beneath these foundations to that other sort of theo- 
 retical certainty whereof we have made mention. If 
 we get it, then all our work will have been worth 
 
332 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 while. Our skepticism will have saved us from an- 
 tiquated methods, and from worn-out dogmas. Our 
 faith will have been purified by being reduced to 
 certain simple postulates that are not identical with 
 the traditional creeds, although those creeds tried to 
 express them. And both our skepticism and our 
 faith will then finally become elements of a broader 
 Keligious Insight. 
 
 The dead external reality, into whose darkness we 
 had to peer in vain for light, has indeed transformed 
 itself. It is no more merely dead, or merely exter- 
 nal. It is ours and for us. It was a world of doubt 
 in the last chapter, just because we made it dead 
 and external. Now that we have seen how it was 
 the expression of postulates, it seems to have become 
 plastic and ideal. Yet what it has gained in plas- 
 ticity, it has lost in authority. After all, is not this 
 business of postulating into the void a dangerous 
 one ? Is it not a hollow and empty activity this, if 
 we really reflect upon it ? Courage indeed we must 
 have ; but is religion no more than courage ? Nay ; 
 we must have if possible some eternal Truth, that 
 is not our postulate, to rest upon. Can we not get 
 some such comfort ? And may there not be some 
 higher relation of our lives to that truth, such a 
 relation that the truth shall be neither the arbitrary 
 product of our subjective postulates, nor a dead ex- 
 ternal reality such as was the world of doubt ? We 
 are bound still to search. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 IDEALISM. 
 
 Ei? TOV oAov ovpavbv a7ro/?Ae^as TO ev eu/ai $rj(Ti rov Oeov* 
 
 ARISTOTLE, concerning the doctrine of Xenophanes. 
 
 STILL we are seeking the Eternal. Postulates 
 about it we must indeed make, or else we shall do 
 nothing. But can we not go beyond the mere postu- 
 lates ? Is there no other road open to the heart of 
 things ? In fact many other ways have been sug- 
 gested. The religiously interesting efforts towards 
 a suggestion of such ways have been the special work 
 of philosophical Idealism in the past. Let us then 
 see to what results philosophical Idealism offers to 
 lead us. 
 
 I. 
 
 "The world of dead facts is an illusion. The 
 truth of it is a spiritual life." That is what philo- 
 sophical idealism says. This spiritual life may be 
 defined in many ways. But the multitude of the 
 ways of defining it do not altogether obscure the 
 sense of the doctrine. Plato and St. Augustine and 
 Berkeley and Fichte and Hegel give us very various 
 accounts of the spiritual life that is to be at the 
 heart of things, but they agree about the general 
 thought. As to the proof of the doctrine, very many 
 
334 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 writers have presented this idealism as a sort of prod- 
 uct of poetical fantasy, and have thereby helped to 
 bring it into disrepute. We profess no such enthu- 
 siasm. If we are to give any foundation for our 
 postulates by means of an idealistic doctrine, then 
 this foundation must be no mere poetic fancy, but a 
 well-framed philosophic doctrine, able to stand crit- 
 icism, and to satisfy very unemotional aims, as well 
 as the higher moral aims themselves. But if ideal- 
 ism is to receive rigid theoretical tests, we may still, 
 in view of our present discussion and its needs, be 
 helped on our way more directly if we first consider 
 very generally and briefly what idealism could do 
 for us if it were established, thereafter going on to 
 the theoretical consideration of its claims. 
 
 That the Eternal is a world of spiritual life is 
 what the idealists of the past have maintained, and 
 the religious force of their doctrine lay not so much 
 in the insight that was thus offered concerning the 
 nature of the powers that are in the world, as in an- 
 other insight. Just here idealistic doctrine and its 
 outcome has been seldom comprehended, even by 
 the idealists themselves. The world, merely viewed 
 as a heap of warring Powers, cannot be a world of 
 spiritual life. If the real world is nevertheless a 
 world of such spiritual life, it must be so because, 
 beyond and above the Powers, there is this higher 
 spiritual Life that includes them and watches over 
 them as the spectator watches the tragedy, a Life 
 in which they live and move and have their being. 
 The characters in a tragedy do not constitute as war- 
 ring powers, in their separate existence, the signifi- 
 
IDEALISM. 335 
 
 cance of the tragedy. The spectator, the overseeing 
 thought, for which and in which these fancied pow- 
 ers contend, this it is that gives them unity and sig- 
 nificance. Even so the highest spiritual life that / 
 the idealist finds in the world is not to be a power 
 among other powers, but a thought for which exists 
 all that is. Hence the deepest assertion of idealism 
 is not that above all the evil powers in the world 
 there is at work some good power mightier than 
 they, but rather that through all the powers, good 
 and evil, and in them all, dwells the higher spirit 
 that does not so much create as constitute them what 
 they are, and so include them all. 
 
 How all this is to be more fully explained, and 
 how it is to be justified, if at all, by idealism, we 
 shall see further on. But for the present we may 
 suggest that such idealism as this has a peculiar ad- 
 vantage in dealing with the problems that we found 
 insoluble in the discussion of the world of the Powers. 
 There we found a world of contending elementary 
 forces, A, B, C, etc. As contending powers they 
 must needs appear finite. If one was good, another 
 was or might be evil. And as we had to deal only 
 with the warring elements, the thought that partial 
 evil may, after all, be universal good seemed not 
 very plausible, and quite indemonstrable. The world 
 being the collection of the powers that are in it, the 
 good and evil of the whole seemed to be the sum of 
 the separate good and evil elements. But now we 
 have a thought that may make possible the existence 
 of universal goodness. If the tragedy as a whole is 
 good, although its elements are evil, so like the trag- 
 
336 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 edy may the world be universally good if the single 
 evils of reality, like the single parts of the tragedy, 
 are elements in a whole that exists for an all-see- 
 ing, all-inclusive Spirit, in whom are all things, and 
 whose nature as a whole is good. Thus, then, if we 
 cannot yet see just how the partial evil is universal 
 good in the all-inclusive mind, we can already, from 
 the outset at least, fancy that it may so be. The All- 
 Enfolding may be good even although of necessity 
 there are elements in his world of infinite experience 
 that, separately considered, may 'be evil. So ideal- 
 ism offers as its theodicy not that the world contains 
 a surplus of good powers, or that the creative power, 
 when it made the devilish powers, still meant well ; 
 but the theodicy of idealism suggests a way in which 
 evil may be, after all, a partial view of an all-em- 
 bracing goodness. 
 
 Hence the importance, for our present discussion, 
 of an effort to treat calmly and critically the main 
 doctrine of philosophic idealism. Here at least is 
 some suggestion of a chance that we may, in time, 
 come to rise above mere postulates, and may found 
 a positive religious theory. For the postulates are 
 indeed, in themselves, not enough. We want, if 
 possible, to get beyond them, though we are ready to 
 accept them as final if we can do no better. Yet 
 we are still forced to begin our account of idealistic 
 doctrine with nothing better than postulates. 
 
IDEALISM. 337 
 
 II. 
 
 The imperfectioD of the author's private under- 
 standing of deeper truth has forced him to come to 
 idealism in the first instance by a very straight and 
 easy path, that most deeper idealists would deride. 
 After he had by that road reached the definite con- 
 ception of one form of idealism, he found a further 
 thought by which this idealism seemed to be trans- 
 formed into a doctrine of greater philosophical and 
 religious significance. At the same time, the proof 
 of the doctrine first seemed to him to become clear 
 and all-embracing. Now a reader cares little for 
 the contents of an author's note-book, or for a his- 
 tory of his opinions ; but sometimes the exposition 
 of a view is a little helped by presenting it in suc- 
 cessive parts that follow in their order somewhat 
 the line of the author's own development. Hence 
 the present chapter shall suggest philosophic ideal- 
 ism as a mere hypothesis, that still only tries to ex- 
 press our fundamental postulates. Then we shall 
 go on to see what deeper foundation for it we can 
 find. And furthermore, our first suggestion of ideal- 
 ism shall be a purely theoretical conception, not 
 assumed to satisfy directly an ethical postulate, but 
 merely to express theoretical postulates about the 
 world. Then we shall be able to see what religious 
 doctrine can be built upon this foundation. This 
 way commends itself as avoiding the greatest dan- 
 ger of idealism, namely, fantastic speculation with 
 noble purposes, but with merely poetical methods. 
 Our present method shall be coldly theoretical, how- 
 22 
 
338 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ever deeply our religious philosophy is concerned in 
 the outcome. 
 
 For the first then we shall suppose our whole task 
 to be the suggestion of a plausible, i. e. of a simple, 
 adequate, and consistent hypothesis about the nature 
 of external reality. Hereafter we shall consider 
 more critically the foundation of such hypotheses. 
 Provisionally, then, we shall suppose that, by a per- 
 fect theory of knowledge, the following result has 
 been reached : Human beings are able to form ideas 
 that correspond in some way with a real world, out- 
 side of themselves. That is, the sequence of human 
 ideas corresponds to sequences of external events, or 
 to relations of coexistence among external things. 
 The necessary or uniform connections of human 
 ideas correspond to regular or to universal connec- 
 tions among external things. Or, in the brief form 
 of Mr. Herbert Spencer's phraseology, to each nec- 
 essary relation a : b in human consciousness there 
 corresponds a relation A : B in the external world. 
 Suppose, then, that all this has been established. No 
 one will admit more readily than the writer that this 
 supposition is at this point merely tentative. Our 
 theory of knowledge is yet to be completed, and be- 
 tween its conception and its realization there are still 
 wide oceans of doubt. We shall, in fact, deal with 
 the problems of this theory in the next chapter. But 
 for the moment suppose admitted what scientific 
 thought generally takes for granted, namely, the cor- 
 respondence of inner and outer relations in such 
 wise that the former are naturally copies of the lat- 
 ter. And, on this foundation, suppose that we in- 
 
IDEALISM. 339 
 
 tend to consider what hypothesis as to the nature of 
 the related terms A and B in the external world is, 
 on the whole, the most plausible. 
 
 For the sake of avoiding controversy we may for 
 the moment leave out of account two old questions. 
 We cannot really escape either, and both will sternly 
 confront us before we get in at the door of the tem- 
 ple of certainty. But here at the outset we are 
 playing with hypotheses, and may be absolved from 
 the responsibility of securing ourselves beforehand 
 from all possible attacks. The first is the question 
 of the idealists : How can any reality be conceived 
 unless as implying or including states of conscious- 
 ness ? For the moment we will waive this part of 
 the Berkeleyan contention altogether ; for we are not 
 yet concerned to prove by metaphysical analysis the 
 universal coincidence of consciousness and reality. 
 We wish merely a plausible hypothesis to be ad- 
 vanced as to the nature of what more popular thought 
 means by reality. The second question that at the 
 outset we avoid is the one concerning tne ground 
 of the assumed agreement between the external and 
 the internal orders of facts. Whether this ground 
 lies in a causal determination of our consciousness by 
 the external world, or in a preestablished harmony 
 of both, matters not. We first take our stand, then, 
 upon the facts admitted by popular belief. Here are 
 feelings, sequences of feelings, thoughts, trains of 
 thought, systems of scientific belief : all internal 
 facts. Beyond the consciousness of these internal 
 facts stretches (so we now assume, and only assume) 
 another world of facts, in which something corre- 
 
840 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 sponds to each one of these feelings, some order of 
 facts to each sequence of feeling, some system of 
 facts and of laws to each properly constituted system 
 of beliefs. The external order of the world beyond 
 corresponds to the order of this internal world of 
 our consciousness, but is not this order. A plausi- 
 ble hypothesis is required as to the nature of this 
 corresponding external order. 
 
 Let us examine Berkeley's familiar hypothesis, 
 which, as a mere hypothesis, we can examine apart 
 from any study of Berkeley's philosophical argu- 
 ments for his idealism. According to Berkeley there 
 exist conscious beings, more or less like ourselves, of 
 whom the head and father is God. Now external to 
 all beings besides God there is a real world. This 
 real world is made up of the eternal system of God's 
 thoughts. 
 
 " When I deny sensible things an existence out of the 
 mind, I do not mean my mind in particular, but all minds. 
 Now it is -plain they have an existence exterior to my 
 mind, since I find them by experience to be independent 
 of it. There is some other mind wherein they exist, dur- 
 ing the intervals between the times of my perceiving 
 them ; as likewise they did before my birth, and would 
 do after my supposed annihilation. And as the same is 
 true with regard to all other finite created spirits, it nec- 
 essarily foUows, there is an Omnipresent Eternal Mind, 
 which knows and comprehends all things, and exhibits 
 them to our view in such a manner, and according to such 
 rules as he himself hath ordained, and are by us termed 
 the laws of nature." l 
 
 1 Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, III. 
 
IDEALISM. 341 
 
 This so familiar hypothesis of Berkeley is in part 
 founded upon a thought that for the present we have 
 agreed to neglect, i. e. upon the notion of the exter- 
 nal world as the cause of our internal impressions. 
 Not being caused by myself, my ideas, reasons Berke- 
 ley, must have an external cause. And the only 
 intelligible cause is an active spirit. Yet for our 
 present purpose this thought is not important. We 
 are not asking about the cause of our conscious 
 states, but about the way in which we can most plau- 
 sibly conceive of an external world corresponding to 
 these states. The correspondence is assumed. Into 
 its ground, be it preestablished harmony or physical 
 influence, we do not just now inquire. Our only 
 criteria of plausibility, if causal explanation is 
 dropped, are therefore adequacy, simplicity, and con- 
 sistency. Is Berkeley's hypothesis consistent with 
 itself, and is it the simplest hypothesis possible? 
 Stripped of non-essential features, the hypothesis is 
 that there corresponds to our consciousness another 
 higher and farther-reaching consciousness, containing 
 all that is abiding in our consciousness, and much 
 more besides. This consciousness is in form and 
 matter a rational spirit, having definite purposes in 
 the creation and education of the various finite spir- 
 its. These purposes require for their accomplishment 
 that our conscious states should within certain limits 
 agree with this higher consciousness, should corre- 
 spond to it in form and to a certain extent. This corre- 
 spondence constitutes what we mean by truth. 'There 
 is no external world but this other consciousness. 
 
 To Berkeley, as we know, the essential part of 
 
342 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 this doctrine was the teleological part. That God's 
 thoughts and our correspondence thereto result from 
 and express God's purposes in creating the world, 
 this was for Berkeley the main point to be proven. 
 But if the teleological element of the doctrine be for 
 this first left out of account, there is another part 
 that we just now wish to hold fast. Our thought\ 
 is true by reason of its correspondence to the facts\ 
 of an actual consciousness , external to our own :\ 
 this hypothesis has an interest apart from its origin 
 and from its original use. Why in philosophy should 
 we be afraid of doctrines because they have an as- 
 sociation with some dreaded theological dogma, or 
 with some enthusiastic and over-confident system of 
 the past ? About the nature of the external world 
 we have at the outset nothing but hypotheses. Be- 
 fore we test them in any very exact way, we may 
 with safety try to understand them. Perhaps what 
 seemed the wildest of them all may turn out to be 
 the very best. Because a certain hypothesis was 
 put forward rather as a demonstrable and eternal 
 truth than as a hypothesis, shall we reject it without 
 further examination ? Perhaps it may in fact turn 
 out to be part of the eternal truth. 
 
 The hypothesis now before us is Berkeley's with 
 the teleological element omitted, along with the 
 causal. How this external consciousness comes to 
 affect us, and why it takes just such forms as it does, 
 we say not. This we ask : What is this supposed 
 external consciousness ? How does it correspond to 
 our own ? We shall not call the supposed conscious- 
 ness by question-begging names. It is not for us 
 
IDEALISM. 343 
 
 just now either absolute or divine. It is simply con- 
 sciousness, and external. The hypothesis is that 
 truth consists in some kind of correspondence be- 
 tween our thought and this outer reality. What 
 kind of correspondence ? 
 
 Two conscious beings can have corresponding 
 states of consciousness, without having like states. 
 The notes of a melody could have corresponding to 
 them the variations in intensity of some source of 
 light. The light-flashes or beats would correspond 
 to the notes of music by having the like rhythm ; 
 yet there would be no resemblance in the content. 
 Correspondence may be yet more obscured. The 
 dashes on a piece of paper that has passed under the 
 point of a telegraphic pen, the series of characters 
 printed from the press in a dozen languages, the 
 sounds of the voice of a reader, the series of signals 
 flashed from shore to a distant vessel, all these dis- 
 similar series of events might correspond exactly and 
 throughout, if it were their purpose to convey in va- 
 rious ways the same meaning. In order, then, that 
 my consciousness should correspond to some other 
 consciousness, external to mine, it is only necessary 
 that for each event or fact in my consciousness there 
 should exist some event or fact in the other con- 
 sciousness, and that some relation existing among 
 my conscious states should be like or parallel to the 
 relation existing among the conscious states external 
 to mine. The more numerous the points of resem- 
 blance between the two series of states, the closer 
 the correspondence. But correspondence in the ab- 
 stract implies only some one definite and permanent 
 resemblance found throughout the two series. 
 
344 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Such being the nature of correspondence in gen- 
 eral, let us consider our hypothesis more in detail. 
 Suppose the clock yonder has some such reality as 
 this hypothesis supposes. There is the clock, with 
 its pendulum beating. For me now that clock is a 
 combination of sensations, joined with a belief in 
 certain possible sensations. For one in the same 
 room with me, the clock has a like existence. But 
 suppose that the clock has, apart from my conscious- 
 ness, apart from the consciousness of any other hu- 
 man being or animal, an existence for some other, as 
 yet undefined, consciousness. Suppose that for this 
 consciousness the clock in its whole present condi- 
 tion exists, not at all as a " possibility of sensations/' 
 but solely and in all its parts as a present group of 
 sensible facts, standing in definite relations. Sup- 
 pose that the sensible facts that constitute this clock 
 as it is given to this hypothetical consciousness are 
 in quality unlike the sensations that for me consti- 
 tute the clock ; but that in their relations, in their 
 number, in their grouping, in their differences from 
 one another, these sensible facts as they are for the 
 hypothetical consciousness agree with the sensations 
 and with the " possibilities of sensation " that for 
 me constitute the clock. Suppose that the clock as 
 it is in the hypothetical consciousness endures for 
 a considerable time, and is called the real clock. 
 Then when I shut my eyes or go away or die, there 
 exists still the real clock, i. e. the clock in the hy- 
 pothetical consciousness. Though all my fellows die, 
 there is still the real clock, independent of our con- 
 sciousness. The clock may for a time go on run- 
 
IDEALISM. 345 
 
 ning ; that is, in the hypothetical consciousness there 
 may be a rhythm of sensible events, corresponding 
 to what for me, were I present, would be the rhythm 
 of the pendulum -beats and the movement of the 
 hands. 
 
 Now suppose this hypothetical consciousness ex- 
 tended, so that it contains facts corresponding to my 
 ideas of the ether-vibrations that fall upon or that 
 are reflected from the face of this clock. Suppose 
 that it further contains facts corresponding to each 
 of niy ideas of the relative position of this clock and 
 of other objects. Suppose at last that the hypothet- 
 ical consciousness is extended to all the facts of what 
 I call my universe of actual and of possible sensa- 
 tion. Suppose that each possible or actual exp'eri- 
 ence of each moment in my life or in the life of any 
 other animal is represented by some actual momen- 
 tarily present fact in the hypothetical consciousness. 
 Then consider the hypothetical consciousness at any 
 moment, and see what it will contain. Every mate- 
 rial atom, every wave of ether, every point of space, 
 every configuration of material bodies, every possible 
 geometrical relation, will be represented in the hypo- 
 thetical consciousness by some definite fact. The 
 relations of these facts will be in nature and in com- 
 plexity similar to the relations among the facts of 
 my actual or possible sensations. On the other 
 hand, the limits of my possible consciousness at any 
 moment will be determined by the actual conscious- 
 ness of this supposed universal Knowing One. What 
 it actually knows, I conceivably might now know. 
 If it is conscious of a certain series of facts, then I 
 
846 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 might be conscious, were I now on the other side 
 of the moon, of living creatures there. If the hypo- 
 thetical consciousness contains another set of facts, 
 then I might be unable to find such living beings 
 were I there. And so with all facts of possible ex- 
 perience. 
 
 We can easily see how, under this supposition, 
 conformity to the supposed universal consciousness 
 will become on my part a goal of effort. Knowledge 
 of possible experiences is useful to me. But all pos- 
 sible experiences are or will be actual in the hypo- 
 thetical consciousness. If I am standing near a con- 
 cealed pitfall, or am in danger of a blow, or in dan- 
 ger of death from poison, that fact, translated into 
 ultimate terms, means, we may suppose, that in the 
 universal consciousness there is now the knowledge 
 of certain relative positions and motions of atoms. 
 The sequence of states in the universal consciousness 
 must be supposed to be a regular sequence, subject 
 to fixed law. But sequence does not now especially 
 concern us ; since we speak only of the nature of 
 this external consciousness. It is enough, therefore, 
 to point out that this supposed universal knowing 
 consciousness, this " Not-Ourselves," has, under the 
 conditions stated, all the essential characteristics of 
 a real world. It is beyond us ; it is independent of 
 us ; its facts have a certain correspondence to our 
 sensations. Under the supposition that by nature 
 we tend to be in agreement with this consciousness, 
 progress in the definiteness and extent of our agree- 
 ment with it may be both possible and practically 
 useful. This agreement would constitute truth. 
 
IDEALISM. 347 
 
 No other real world need be supposed behind or 
 above this consciousness. Rejection of an old theory 
 and acceptance of a new, as when the Copernican 
 doctrine replaces the Ptolemaic, will mean the 
 growth of a belief that the new system of ideas cor- 
 responds more nearly than the old, not with dead 
 matter, but with the sequence of states in the univer- 
 sal consciousness. The universal consciousness it- 
 self will be no illusory consciousness. It will not 
 need a further consciousness to support it. It will 
 need no dead matter outside of it. Our nature leads 
 us to look up to it as to our model. Itself is the 
 pattern, looking up to no other model. The purpose/ 
 of thought will be conformity with this perfect, un-j 
 trammeled thought. For us there is a little range 
 of actual sensation, in the midst of a vast ocean of 
 possible sensation. For the universal consciousness 
 there are at any moment only actual data. We see 
 the clock-face ; and for us the inside of the clock is 
 possible sensation only. For the supposed conscious- 
 ness the inside will be as much present as the out- 
 side. For us colors and odors suggest possible sen- 
 sations, which science interprets as being in the last 
 analysis the possible sensations known as atoms, mo- 
 tions, velocities, distances. For the universal con- 
 sciousness, these atoms, motions, velocities, and dis- 
 tances, or the ultimate facts to which these notions 
 correspond, are not possible but actual data. There 
 need be then, in the last analysis, no dead uncon- 
 scious atoms, nor yet unconscious little atom-souls, 
 striving, fighting, loving, uniting ; there need be in 
 the last analysis only a consciousness of facts corre- 
 
348 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 spending to what we mean by motion, velocity, ex- 
 tension, distance, impenetrability. Corresponding 
 to the relation a : b in our consciousness there will 
 then be the external fact A : B, whereof so much is 
 supposed to be known : first, that the relation a : b 
 is somewhat like the relation A : B ; secondly, that 
 the terms A and B, whatever their particular char- 
 acter, are facts for a consciousness, and nothing 
 but facts for a consciousness. And the hypothetical 
 consciousness for which these facts are all present, 
 together with their manifold relations, this we may 
 call a World - Consciousness. An illusion in my 
 consciousness will mean a failure to correspond with 
 the world-consciousness. A truth for my conscious- 
 ness will be a relation a : b that corresponds with 
 some relation A : B in the world -consciousness. 
 But for the world-consciousness itself there will be 
 no question of its own truth or falsity. It will be 
 for and in itself. It will not have to create a real 
 world ; it will be a real world. It will not have a 
 Nature as its own Otherness, over against itself. 
 It will be in its own facts and in their sequence a 
 nature. As to the individual intelligences, its rela- 
 tion to them is so far viewed as one of independence. 
 Whether hereafter we shall be forced to modify our 
 view or not, so far we treat the individual intelli- 
 gences as separate from the world consciousness. 
 They are neither its " emanations " nor its " modes." 
 But their whole business and purpose will be to carry 
 out and to make full and definite that correspondence 
 with this universal consciousness upon which their 
 existence and their peace depend. A certain lack 
 
IDEALISM. 349 
 
 of correspondence with the universal consciousness 
 on the part of any animal's ideas will be followed 
 by the cessation of that particular grouping of facts 
 in the universal consciousness that is known to us 
 as this animal's body. With the dissolution of this 
 animal's body will cease his consciousness, his chance 
 of disagreeing in his states with the states of the 
 universal consciousness, and therefore his lack of 
 correspondence. An ultimate law of sequence, with 
 which, as with all causal connection, we have here 
 nothing to do, thus binds the individual beings to 
 the World-Consciousness. The whole universe ex- 
 hibits the phenomenon, first, of one great conscious- 
 ness, embracing an infinitude of geometrical, phys- 
 ical, chemical, physiological facts ; and, secondly, of a 
 vast multitude of individual conscious beings, whose 
 number and sorts we shall never be able to tell, whose 
 destiny, however, demands of all of them a more or 
 less imperfect likeness between their states and the 
 relations thereof on the one hand, and the facts of 
 the universal consciousness on the other hand. The 
 universal consciousness, be it noted, is so called thus 
 far as including in its ken all ultimate mathematical 
 and physical facts. Of its nature beyond this we 
 pretend to suppose nothing. And we have not sup- 
 posed it to include the individual conscious beings. 
 Our hypothesis is not yet pantheistic, nor theistic. 
 We simply suppose a " Not - Ourselves " that in- 
 cludes all natural knowledge. This is the External 
 Eeality. 
 
 We have omitted, moreover, all reference to the 
 teleological element that is generally introduced into 
 
350 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 any theory of a World-Spirit. So far, in fact, our 
 World-Consciousness is not what people mean by a 
 World-Spirit. A Spirit, " weaving the living robe 
 of Deity," our World-Consciousness is not ; for as 
 so far described it does nothing, it merely looks on. 
 It looks at its own states, and these are supposed to 
 be altogether its own, given from no higher source. 
 But as to their succession or their worth, their be- 
 ginning or their end, we have said nothing. This 
 Consciousness has these states, but we have supposed 
 them as yet to be attended by no emotion of pleas- 
 ure or of pain, by no modifying reaction of will. 
 This consciousness is not a Creator, it is a Seer. 
 As for the individual conscious beings, it does not 
 make or unmake them by an exercise of power. 
 They, on the contrary, are made and unmade ac- 
 cording as there arise or disappear in this universal 
 consciousness certain groups of data that, as repre- 
 sented in our mortal thought, are called organic 
 living bodies, with tissues, motions, structures, func- 
 tions. These groups pass, and with them the individ- 
 ual consciousness that coexisted with each. This 
 growth and decay is simply a law of experience, an 
 ultimate and inexplicable sequence. But the uni- 
 versal consciousness of nature, for which each of 
 these groups of physical facts existed, that remains. 
 In other words : Each animal body is represented 
 in the universal consciousness, and exists only in so 
 far as it is represented therein, or is known to its 
 possessor or to other animals. The individual mind 
 that coexists with this body has thus far no represen- 
 tative in the universal consciousness, but seems to 
 
IDEALISM. 351 
 
 exist and be real for itself. With the group of facts 
 in the universal consciousness to which, as we say, 
 corresponds our idea of the body, the independent 
 group of facts called the animal's mind lives and 
 dies. The universal consciousness and the individual 
 minds make up together the sum total of reality. 
 So far and so far only do we as yet go. The sequel 
 will show whether we can rest content with this. 
 
 Continuing to mention the consequences of our 
 hypothesis, we see that the well-known questions so 
 often asked of idealists are no longer puzzling when 
 we accept such an idea as the foregoing. Such 
 questions are : What existed before there was any 
 conscious life on the planet? In what sense was 
 there light or heat, matter or motion, before there 
 were eyes to see, tactile organs to feel, animal intel- 
 ligence to understand these external facts? The 
 question of Kant too about the subjectivity of space 
 would seem to have been answered. Before there 
 were conscious beings on this planet, this planet ex- 
 isted only in and for the universal consciousness. 
 In that consciousness were facts corresponding to all 
 the phenomena, or possibilities of experience, that 
 geological science may declare to have really existed 
 at such a time. When the earth became filled with 
 life, there appeared in the universal consciousness 
 the data known as organisms. And at the same 
 time, beside the universal consciousness, somehow 
 related to it, there arose individual conscious beings, 
 whose states were more or less imperfect copies of 
 the universal consciousness in certain of its facts. 
 Even so, empty space is now existent beyond the 
 
352 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 borders of finite observation only as a group of 
 states in the world-consciousness. Space is subjec- 
 tive, belonging to the states of the universal con- 
 sciousness ; and yet to us objective, since in think- 
 ing it we merely conform ourselves to the universal 
 consciousness. But the consequences of our hypoth- 
 esis are numberless. Enough has been said of them 
 for the present purpose. 
 
 Wild and airy indeed ! But why so ? The ordi- 
 nary uncritical Atomism is a worse hypothesis, be- 
 cause we never get from it the least notion of how 
 this eternally existent matter may look and feel when 
 nobody sees or feels it. The mystical " one sub- 
 stance with two faces " is worse, because that is no 
 hypothesis, only a heap of words. Schopenhauer's 
 " Wille " is worse, because it is only a metaphor. 
 The hypothesis that ascribes to the atoms independ- 
 ent life and volition is no more adequate than our 
 hypothesis, and much less simple. The old-fashioned 
 pantheistic " Welt-Geist " of Schelling, and of the 
 romantic philosophy generally, is more poetical than 
 our hypothesis, but that Welt-Geist is a Power ; and 
 no one ever comes to understand how this One Spirit, 
 who after all is represented as a sort of big half -con- 
 scious Daemon, a gigantic worker, is related to the 
 many individual minds. They are parts of him, or 
 else apart from him. In the one case their confidence 
 that they really exist as powers and are not " things 
 in his dream," is unfounded ; in the other case his 
 all-embracing unity is destroyed. In our hypothesis 
 nothing is as yet wonderful but the one miracle of the 
 series of orderly conscious states, following through 
 
IDEALISM. 353 
 
 all time according to fixed laws. Beyond that all 
 is clear. That there should be a consciousness con- 
 taining ideas of all material relations, is no harder 
 to believe than it is to believe in the ordinary unin- 
 telligible world of atoms. That beside this con- 
 sciousness, and in fixed relation to its facts, there 
 should exist a great number of different series of 
 conscious states, each series being called an individ- 
 ual, this is no harder to believe than are the ordi- 
 nary facts of nervous physiology. In reality this 
 hypothesis gives us a simple expression, easily intel- 
 ligible, for all the facts and laws of physics, of ner- 
 vous physiology, and of consciousness. Take, as a 
 final case, Professor Clifford's well-known example of 
 the man looking at the candle. In the world-con- 
 sciousness there is the group of states c, c ( , c n . . . . 
 That is the real candle. In the world-consciousness 
 there is also the group of states A, A', h n . . . . That 
 is the " cerebral image " of the candle, a physiolog- 
 ical fact. Finally, according to the laws of reality, 
 the existence in the world-consciousness of the facts 
 A, A', W, . . . grouped as they are, has coexistent 
 with it the group of ideas C in the man's mind. 
 This group C corresponds more or less completely to 
 the group c, c f c", ... as that group exists beyond 
 the man's mind, in the world-consciousness. The 
 group C is the man's idea of the candle. Such is 
 our hypothesis in a nut-shell. We urge for the mo- 
 ment only this in its favor : that it is simple, intelli- 
 gible, plausible. After all, it is but an hypothesis. 
 We must now follow it until we shall find it, by vir- 
 tue of one momentous consideration, suddenly trans- 
 
 23 
 
354 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 formed from an hypothesis into a theory, and from 
 a doctrine of an eternal normal thought into a doc- 
 trine of an all-embracing Spirit. 
 
 III. 
 
 In several respects our hypothesis needs explana- 
 tion before it can well please a philosophic student. 
 This explanation will next lead us into a decidedly 
 technical discussion, and this a reader not specially 
 accustomed to philosophic discussions, if such a 
 reader we yet have, will do well to omit. We must 
 in fact, in the present section, more particularly set 
 forth the motives that have determined us to try just 
 this hypothesis about Reality. 
 
 First, then, we are concerned to show why we have 
 left out of view the causal element that popular 
 thought makes so prominent in its conception of 
 Reality. For popular thought, the world is a Power 
 that causes our perceptions. But we, both here and 
 in our subsequent religious discussion, shall consider 
 the eternal not as Power, but as Thought. Why is 
 this ? We shall here try to explain, still regarding 
 the real world merely as something postulated to 
 meet the inner needs of our thought. Let us ask, 
 without as yet going beyond this point of view, what 
 is the deepest motive of our purely theoretic postu- 
 lates about reality ? Is it not to have something that 
 corresponds to our ideas, and so gives them truth ? 
 Therefore is not the postulate that reality corre- 
 sponds to our ideas, deeper than the postulate that a 
 real world causes our ideas? And so is not the 
 
IDEALISM. 355 
 
 causal postulate in fact but a subordinate form in 
 our theory of the world ? To exemplify. When I 
 say that my thought demands some cause, C, for a 
 sensation, s, does not my thought even here actually 
 demand something prior to the principle of causa- 
 tion, and deeper than that ? Does not my thought 
 here demand that my idea c of cause in general, and 
 my idea r of the causal relation R between C and s, 
 shall a priori somehow correspond to the truth of 
 things ? Can I conceive of a real cause save by vir- 
 tue of a postulate that my conception of a real cause 
 is like the real cause itself ? Therefore, when men 
 say : " We know external Reality because we know 
 that our sensations need a cause, and that this cause 
 must be external to us," do they say more than this : 
 " We know (or postulate) that to one of our ideas, 
 namely, the idea of a necessary causal relation, there 
 corresponds a reality external to the idea ? " For 
 surely I do not know the validity of my idea of a 
 causal relation merely on the ground that I know 
 that this idea of causal relation must itself have 
 been caused by the real existence of causal relations 
 in the world. Such an attempt to justify my idea 
 would mean endless regress. The deeper notion 
 that we have of the world is therefore founded on 
 the insight or on the postulate that there must be, 
 not merely a sufficient cause for our thought, but a 
 sufficient counterpart thereto. 
 
 We can easily illustrate this view by considering 
 the nature of our thought about past time. The 
 judgment or assertion that there has actually been 
 a series of past events, is not a judgment of causal- 
 
356 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ity. I believe in a past as I believe in a future, not 
 to satisfy my faith in the principle of causality, but 
 to satisfy my tendency to postulate an indefinite 
 time-stream, like in nature to my present succession 
 of immediately given states. I believe in a real 
 time, not primarily as the cause but as the counter- 
 part of my notion of time. How otherwise shall I 
 form the idea of a cause at all, unless I have already 
 assumed the reality of time ? A cause for my be- 
 lief in the past is to be conceived, if at all, only as 
 already a past fact. The conception that it is to cre- 
 ate is a condition of its own existence, unless indeed 
 one has admitted what we wish admitted, that, how- 
 ever the case may be with the belief in any one past 
 fact, the belief in past reality as such is prior to our 
 belief that our present state has been caused by the 
 past. But the same priority of the belief in some 
 agreement between my idea and the external reality, 
 is found in all departments of thought. A material 
 cause of my experience is a cause in space. But, 
 however I came by the idea of space, my present be- 
 lief in the reality of space precedes any particular 
 belief in a material cause for a particular sensation, 
 and renders the latter belief possible. The concep- 
 tion of reality furnished by the search for causes is 
 thus always subordinate to the conception of reality 
 furnished by our first postulate. This first postu- 
 late is, that our ideas have something beyond them 
 and like them. So at each moment of my life I 
 postulate a past and future of my own, like my pres- 
 ent consciousness, but external thereto. So my so- 
 cial consciousness, my original unreflective tendency 
 
IDEALISM. 357 
 
 to work with and for other beings, implies the pos- 
 tulate of the external existence of my fellow-men, 
 like myself and like my ideas of them. So to the 
 present intuition of the space in the retinal field or 
 at my finger tips I join the postulate of an infinitely 
 extended not perceived space, like the perceived 
 space, and like my space-ideas. 
 
 The external reality conceived by us is therefore, 
 so far as we have yet seen, conceived through a spon- 
 taneous reaction of the receiving consciousness in 
 presence of the sense-data received. The forms of 
 this reaction it was the purpose of the Critical Phi- 
 losophy to define. The task set by Kant has not yet 
 been accomplished. But the fact of some reaction 
 seems established. And the general law of the proc- 
 ess seems to be that the external reality is conceived 
 after the pattern of the present data, with such mod- 
 ification as is necessary to bring the conception into 
 harmony with already established habits of thought, 
 and with the conceived results of previous experience. 
 The aim of the whole process seems to be to reach 
 as complete and united a conception of reality as is 
 possible, a conception wherein the greatest fullness 
 of data shall be combined with the greatest simplic- 
 ity of conception. The effort of consciousness seems 
 to be to combine the greatest richness of content 
 with the greatest definiteness of organization. 
 
 This character of our activity in forming our no- 
 tion of reality implies the subordination of the cau- 
 sal postulate to other motives. In the scientific field 
 the postulate of causality is predominant, because 
 there the notion of a world of causal sequences in 
 
358 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 time and in space has been already built up, and 
 what remains is to fill out the picture by discovering 
 the particular sequences. But if I try to banish al- 
 together from my notion of external reality the idea 
 that it is an adequate counterpart of my subjective 
 states of consciousness, what will remain ? Simply 
 the notion of an utterly unknowable external cause 
 of my sensations. Of this nothing will be said, but 
 that it is. Science, experience, serious reflection 
 about reality, will utterly cease. I shall have re- 
 maining a kind of Disfigured Realism, where the 
 real will be as unknowable, as unreal as possible. 
 But reintroduce the omitted postulate, admit that 
 reality is conceived as the counterpart of my con- 
 sciousness, and then the principle of causality can 
 be fruitfully applied. Then indeed experience may 
 lead us to conceive the external reality as unlike 
 this or that suggestive sensation, unlike this or that 
 provisional idea. But we shall be led to new concep- 
 tions, and shall be able to make definite progress, so 
 long as we postulate some sort of likeness between 
 inner and outer. 
 
 In brief, as causality means uniform sequence, the 
 acceptance of any causal relation as real involves 
 a conception of the uniform sequence that is to be 
 accepted. When finally accepted, the sequence in 
 question is conceived as a real fact, wholly or par- 
 tially external to present consciousness, but like our 
 present idea of itself. Causal sequence cannot there- 
 fore be placed first, as giving us a totally undefined 
 notion of an external reality ; but second, as ena- 
 bling us to develop in detail the idea that reality is 
 
IDEALISM. 359 
 
 like our own states of consciousness. Of course to 
 prove by sense experience that the external reality 
 is like our states of consciousness, this we can never 
 accomplish. But from the outset we have seen that 
 verification through experience is in this field impos- 
 sible. The whole of this sensuous reality, past, pres- 
 ent, future, all that is outside of what one now sees 
 and feels, all space, time, matter, motion, life beyond 
 this immediate experience, all that is so far only 
 a postulated experience, and therefore never a da- 
 tum, never in detail verifiable for sense. Since we 
 believe in this external reality, if experience suggests 
 with sufficient force the idea that some causal se- 
 quence is real, our postulate that such suggestions 
 have their counterpart in an external world leads us 
 to regard the conceived causal sequence as an exter- 
 nally real fact. Not however do we first conceive of 
 the external reality as cause, and then in the second 
 place only find it to be or not to be the counterpart 
 of present consciousness. All our thinking is based 
 on the postulate that the external reality is a coun- 
 terpart and not merely a cause. If with time, we 
 drop mythological conceptions of external reality, 
 we do so only because, in the presence of a larger 
 and fuller experience, we no longer find old concep- 
 tions, founded largely on lower forms of emotion and 
 on narrower experience, adequate to our notion of 
 the external counterpart of consciousness. For de- 
 mons and entities we substitute atoms and ethereal 
 media, not because we abandon the position that ex- 
 ternal reality resembles our ideas, but because wider 
 experience is found to be best reduced to unity by 
 
360 THE EELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the latter, not by the former ideas. The atoms and 
 the media are themselves only provisional notions, 
 since more experience may be better reduced to unity, 
 for all we yet know, by some other ideas. But 
 throughout remains the postulate : external reality is 
 somewhat like our ideas of its nature. 
 
 We have been betrayed by the doctrine that we 
 have combated into forms of speech that do not ade- 
 quately express the Critical notion of reality. We 
 hasten to complete our conception by adding the 
 omitted elements. External reality is like our con- 
 ceptions of it ; so much, we have seen, is universally 
 postulated (postulated, be it noticed, not directly ex- 
 perienced, not forced upon us from without). But 
 the kind of likeness still remains to be defined. Can 
 the external reality be conceived as being, although 
 in nature like our conscious states, yet in no neces- 
 sary relation to consciousness, as being neither a con- 
 sciousness nor for a consciousness ? The answer is 
 the whole struggle of idealistic thought, the whole 
 progress of philosophical analysis in modern times. 
 One cannot go over the field again and again for- 
 ever. The state of the controversy can be roughly 
 stated thus : When the notion of external reality 
 is based solely upon the application of the notion of 
 causality, all degrees of likeness or unlikeness be- 
 tween thought and things are assumed, according to 
 the tastes of individual thinkers. External reality 
 is once for all absolved from the condition of being 
 intelligible, and becomes capable of being anything 
 you please, a dead atom, an electric fluid, a ghost, a 
 devil, an Unknowable. But if the subordinate char- 
 
IDEALISM. 361 
 
 acter of this postulate of causality is once under- 
 stood, the conception of reality is altered. What i's 
 real must be not only vaguely correspondent to an 
 ill-defined postulate, but in a definite relation of like- 
 ness to my present consciousness. That this is the 
 actual postulate of human thought is shown by those 
 systems themselves that ignore the postulate of like- 
 Ness, and has been illustrated in the foregoing. But 
 what forms does this postulated likeness take ? For 
 the first, the postulated likeness between my idea 
 and the external reality may be a likeness between 
 my present conscious state and a past or future state 
 of my own, or between this present state and the 
 conscious state of another being. The whole social 
 consciousness implies the postulate of a likeness be- 
 tween my ideas and an actual consciousness external 
 to mine, fashioned in my own image. But the sec- 
 ond generally recognized form in which the postu- 
 late of the likeness of internal and external appears 
 is the form according to which I postulate that a 
 present idea of my own is not like one of my own 
 past or future states, not like any actual past or 
 future state in another being of my own kind, but 
 like a possible experience. That our ideas can ade- 
 quately express possibilities of sensation that are 
 actually never realized, either in ourselves or in any 
 other known creature, this is a familiar postulate of 
 natural science. The laws of nature are generally, 
 as is admitted by all, what Lewes called " ideal con- 
 structions," expressing experiences for us never real- 
 ized, but permanently possible. And so extended is 
 the use of the concept of possible experience, that, as 
 
362 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 we know, Mill in one of his most interesting chap- 
 ters gave " permanent possibility of sensation " as 
 an adequate definition of matter. 
 
 Now the position of modern phenomenism is, that 
 by these two postulates, or forms of the one postu- 
 late of Likeness, the whole notion of external reality 
 is exhausted. 
 
 The external world means, according to this posi- 
 tion, the possible and actual present, past, and fut- 
 ure content of consciousness for all beings. And 
 this result of modern phenomenism we regard, thus 
 far, as the most acceptable postulate about the world. 
 Either as postulate or as demonstrable theory the 
 position is maintained by all the modern idealists. 
 You can find it, for example, stated in Fichte's " Bes- 
 timmung des Menschen " and other shorter philo- 
 sophic essays (less successfully, we think, though 
 much more at length, in the two larger expositions 
 of the " Wissenschaftslehre), in the Hegelian "Pha- 
 nomenologie," in Schopenhauer's " Welt als Wille 
 und Vorstellung," in Terrier's " Institutes of Meta- 
 physic," in J. S. Mill's " Examination of Hamilton," 
 in Mr. Shadworth Hodgson's " Time and Space " 
 and " Philosophy of Eeflection," in M. Renouvier's 
 " Logique G6nerale," in lesser books innumerable, 
 for example, in Professor Baumann's " Philosophic 
 als Orientirung iiber die Welt " (in the first chapter), 
 in Professor Schuppe's " Erkenntnisstheoretische 
 Logik," in Professor Bergmann's " Reine Logik." 
 Not of course that all this multitude of thinkers, dif- 
 ferent in method, in ability, in aim, in everything 
 but in the fact that they are post-Kantian idealists, 
 
IDEALISM. 363 
 
 would accept the foregoing statement as a fairly 
 complete account of their doctrines. Some of them 
 would laugh at the simplicity of our terms. But, we 
 choose to mention so confused a list to show how, in 
 the midst of the greatest variations, they all agree 
 about one fundamental truth, namely, that thought, 
 when it inquires into its own meaning, can never 
 rest satisfied with any idea of external reality that 
 makes such reality other than a datum of conscious- 
 ness, and so material for thought. Sensualism and 
 the most transcendent a priori speculation agree in 
 coming at last to flee in ceaseless unrest from every 
 support for an external reality that may seem to 
 offer itself beyond the bounds of consciousness. This 
 phenomenism of post-Kantian speculation we accept, 
 as at all events the simplest and least contradictory 
 postulate. 
 
 So much, then, for one motive of our hypothesis 
 about the world-consciousness. Reality appears as 
 the object either of an actual or of a possible con- 
 sciousness. But there remains in this definition 
 of the postulate still one obscure point. What is 
 meant by possible consciousness ? What can there 
 be for consciousness beyond the grand total of all 
 actual past and future states of consciousness in all 
 beings ? For what purpose and by what right shall 
 we build a world of possibility above or beside the 
 world of actual experience ? This question seems 
 too little appreciated and too much evaded by most 
 thinkers. When Mill called matter a "permanent 
 possibility of sensation," he left room open for the 
 puzzling question : But what is this creature called 
 
364 THE EELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 a possibility? Is it an actual fact? Then what 
 actual fact? If not actual, then in being a mere 
 possibility matter is non-existent. 
 
 This scholastic character of the abstract noun 
 " possibility " was remarked and criticised by Pro- 
 fessor Max Miiller in an article in "Mind," III. 1 
 We shall not find in most writers on this subject less 
 scholastic or better defined terms for naming the 
 same aspect of the postulate of external reality. In 
 fact, if we suppose that one surveys the whole range 
 of actual consciousness, past, present, and future, and 
 postulates no facts that are not for and in conscious- 
 ness, it is difficult to see what will be the meaning 
 of any added "possible reality." Possible, for the 
 first, is anything that one conceives, in so far as one 
 conceives it at all. I could possibly have wings and 
 a long tail, an hundred eyes, and a mountain of gold. 
 All that is possible, but in what sense? In this 
 sense, that I do actually imagine myself as possess- 
 ing these things. " Empty possibilities," or " imag- 
 inations as one would," are facts of consciousness in 
 so far forth as they are imagined ; and they have no 
 other existence. The world of truth is not enriched 
 by these possibilities, whose whole existence is in 
 the actual conscious idea of them. But not in this 
 
 1 P. 347. " If therefore Mill and his followers imagine that by 
 defining Matter as the permanent possibility of sensation, and Mind 
 as the permanent possibility of feeling, they have removed the dif- 
 ficulty of Kant's Ding an sick, they are mistaken. Their possibil- 
 ity of sensation, if properly analyzed, means things or substances 
 which can become objects of sensation." Professor Miiller's result 
 is not one that we can wholly accept ; his criticism of the word 
 possibility is important. 
 
IDEALISM. 365 
 
 sense is matter to be a "permanent possibility of 
 sensation." The icebergs in the polar seas are to be 
 real, not in so far as I now imagine them, but in so 
 far as there exists or holds good the law, that were 
 I present I should see them, were I to touch them I 
 should feel them, and that both seeing and feeling 
 would be determined in certain ways beyond the 
 control of my will. The pages of that closed book, 
 the bones inside the body of that cat, my own brain, 
 the molecules of the oxygen that I am breathing, all 
 these, in so far as they are not now actually in my 
 consciousness, are to be still real as " possible expe- 
 riences." But what kind of unreal reality is this 
 potential actuality ? 
 
 If we inquire into the motive that leads us to 
 postulate these possible experiences, we shall find it 
 to be the familiar and universal wish to apply the 
 postulate of uniformity to our confused actual ex- 
 perience. Our actual experience is not always gov- 
 erned by obvious laws of regular sequence. But in 
 postulating consciousness beyond our own immediate 
 data, we are led, by our known prejudice in favor of 
 unity and simplicity, to postulate that the real suc- 
 cessions of facts are uniform, whatever may be the 
 case with the fragments of reality that fall within 
 our individual experience. I see an apple fall, and 
 no more than that. But I postulate that if I could 
 have had experience of all the facts, I should have 
 observed a series of material changes in the twig on 
 which the apple hung, that would have sufficed to 
 restore the broken uniformity and continuity of my 
 experiences. In this way it is that, as remarked 
 
366 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 above, the conception of causal sequence does not 
 create, but organizes and perfects, our notion of ex- 
 ternal reality. There is something beyond our expe- 
 rience, namely, another experience ; that is the first 
 postulate. Experiences form an uniform and regular 
 whole of laws of sequence. That is the other postu- 
 late, subordinate to the first. This postulate helps 
 to form for us our idea of the material world beyond 
 individual consciousness ; an idea that science ac- 
 cepts for its uniformity, without inquiring further 
 into its nature, while a more critical reflection de- 
 clares that the facts assumed as existent beyond the 
 range of individual conscious beings are " possible 
 experiences." 
 
 This assumption of " possible experiences," an as- 
 sumption made to satisfy the postulate of uniform- 
 ity, was expressed, in our hypothesis of a world- 
 consciousness, by the supposition of an universal 
 actual experience. Why? We answer, because 
 the assumed "possible experiences" themselves, by 
 ideally filling up the gaps of actual experience, are 
 intended to lead us to the conception of one uniform 
 absolute experience. This absolute experience, to 
 which all facts would exhibit themselves in their 
 connection as uniformly subject to fixed law, is 
 conceived as " possible." But once again, what does 
 that mean ? Is the meaning only the empty tautol- 
 ogy that if all the gaps and irregularities of indi- 
 vidual experience were got rid of by means of con- 
 necting links and additional experiences, these gaps 
 and irregularities would disappear ? Is the mean- 
 ing only this, that if there were an absolute expe- 
 
IDEALISM. 367 
 
 rience of an absolutely regular series of facts, this 
 experience would be absolute and uniform ? Or 
 again, is it enough to say that any possible experi- 
 ence, an iceberg in the polar sea, my brain, the in- 
 side of yonder book, exists for me only as " my rep- 
 resentation " ? Of course, I know of it only what I 
 conceive of it, yet I postulate that it has some real- 
 ity beyond my representation. This postulate is for 
 us in this preliminary discussion a fact, of which we 
 want to know, not the justification (for we still seek 
 none higher than the fact itself of the postulate), 
 but the meaning. I know of my fellow only what 
 I conceive of him. Yet I postulate that my con- 
 ception of him is like him, whereas I do not postu- 
 late that my conception of a dragon is like any real 
 animal. Just so I postulate that my conception of 
 the " possible experience " called an atom, or the 
 North Pole, is valid beyond my experience, and be- 
 yond the actual experience of any known animal. 
 But I do not postulate that my conception of the 
 possibility that future men might have wings and 
 tails is like any future reality whatever, or in any 
 way valid beyond my conception. 
 
 Here, then, is our dilemma. Matter as a mere 
 possibility of experience is more than any animal's 
 known actual experience. And yet this matter is to 
 be real for consciousness. Nor is it to be real for 
 consciousness simply in so far as the possible expe- 
 rience is represented or conceived. The reality con- 
 sists not merely in the representation in present con- 
 sciousness of a possible experience, but in the added 
 postulate that this conception is valid beyond the 
 
THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 present consciousness. How is this postulate to be 
 satisfied unless by assuming an actual world-con- 
 sciousness ? 
 
 Let us sum up the conditions to which we have 
 here subjected our theory of reality. External real- 
 ity was to be postulated, not given ; existent for us 
 because we willed it to be. To a portion of our con- 
 scious states we ascribed a validity beyond the pres- 
 ent. This ascription of validity was to constitute 
 our whole knowledge of the external world ; for ex- 
 ample, our belief in our own past and future states, 
 in our neighbor's existence, and in the existence of 
 space, of matter, and of inotion. Such an external 
 reality was always conceived as more or less com- 
 pletely the counterpart of our idea of it, and hence, 
 as in nature, like the facts of our consciousness. 
 The idea that we at any moment form of the real- 
 ity beyond ourselves was the expression of the effort 
 to reduce to unity the present sense-data and the 
 present conception of our own past experience. This 
 reduction to unity took place in certain forms. Thus 
 we conceived the external reality as in space and in 
 time, and, in the second place, as in causal relation 
 to ourselves. The conception of causal relations 
 thus projected into the external reality becomes, 
 when completed, the conception of a completely 
 united and uniform whole of facts. We conceived 
 the external reality as subject to fixed laws of se- 
 quence, certainly existent, even though, in our lim- 
 ited experience, they be undiscoverable. As subject 
 to such laws the external reality was a whole, pos- 
 sessing organic unity. But the external reality was 
 
IDEALISM. 369 
 
 also conceived as being real for consciousness and 
 real only for consciousness. The external reality, 
 being an organic whole, must therefore be conceived 
 as the object of an absolute experience, to which all 
 facts are known, and for which all facts are subject 
 to universal law. But there thus has arisen an ob- 
 scurity in our theory of reality. The real is to be 
 only for consciousness. Consciousness, however, is 
 popularly thought as existent in our fellow-beings. 
 And yet the postulated reality is to be an organic 
 whole, containing series of facts that to these beings 
 are known only as possible, not as actual, experiences. 
 We are then in this position. To complete our 
 theory, we " want a hero." Not, to be sure, a Don 
 Juan, but a hypothetical subject of the " possible 
 experiences." This hypothetical subject we have pos- 
 tulated only as a hypothesis. That is, its existence 
 is not yet seen to be a necessary result even of the 
 postulate that there is an external reality. One can 
 form other hypotheses. But this hypothesis has the 
 advantage of being simple and adequate. Moreover, 
 to assume a consciousness for which the "possible 
 experiences " are present facts, is to do no more than 
 our theory seems to need ; whereas any other hypoth- 
 esis (Berkeley's theological hypothesis, for example, 
 in its original form) seems to assume more than 
 is so far demanded by our theoretical conception 
 of reality. For the sake then of expressing one as- 
 pect of our fundamental postulate, we suggest what 
 of course we have not yet proven, that all the con- 
 ceived " possible experiences " are actual in a Con- 
 sciousness of which we so far suppose nothing but 
 
 24 
 
370 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 that it knows these experiences, or knows facts corre- 
 sponding in number and in other relations to these 
 experiences. Thus our idealistic doctrine in this its 
 first form is explained and defended. 
 
 IV. 
 
 But all this hypothesis needs the deeper confirma- 
 tion that we are here seeking for our philosophic 
 doctrines. How is any such idealism to be estab- 
 lished ? And then, if established, how is this notion 
 of a passionless eternal thought to be transformed 
 into anything that can have a religious value ? What 
 we have advanced as hypothesis, expressing the pos- 
 tulates of popular thought, is to receive such ad- 
 ditions and such foundation as shall fit it to rank 
 as a reasonable philosophic theory of reality. So 
 far it has been a wish of ours, and we have not even 
 shown that it is a pious wish. Can we make of this 
 All-Knower a religiously interesting Spirit? And 
 what shall we do with his still vag-ue relation to the 
 
 o 
 
 single conscious lives that are to get truth by agree- 
 ing with him ? If he is not in deepest truth a power 
 that makes them, then so far there is a strange, dark, 
 inexplicable necessity, determining somehow their 
 harmony with him. Plainly, though we find it best 
 to approach our doctrine by this road, we have not 
 yet reached the heart of the mystery. 
 
 There is one haunting thought that now must be 
 permitted to come for a time out of its hiding- 
 place and to confront us. It says : " All this postu- 
 lating how vain and worthless, this hope for a proof 
 
IDEALISM. 371 
 
 of your doctrine how absurd, when your very hy- 
 pothesis shuts up your human thought as it were in 
 a cage. As you state the relation of the Universal 
 Consciousness in which exists the physical world, 
 and the individual consciousness of the particular 
 thinker, you make indeed the truth of this individ- 
 ual thought dependent on its agreement with that 
 all-seeing thought, but as you so far utterly separate 
 the individual thought from the all-seeing thought, 
 you make impossible any sort of transition from one 
 to the other. This individual can never go out of 
 himself, to meet that Infinite thought, and to see if 
 he agrees with it. You put the model all-embracing 
 thought M in a relation to the poor human thought 
 A, in which no transfer of thought really takes place, 
 but still you give to h the command that it shall 
 copy M. Then you postulate that which is by your 
 hypothesis unknowable, namely, that this correspond- 
 ence has been attained, and this empty postulate you 
 call a philosophy. After all, say what you will of 
 the beauty and nobility and courage of postulates, 
 all this seems a rather wearisome business. For 
 the postulates appear the vainest of all things when 
 viewed in the light of the very theory that they are 
 to establish." 
 
 This objection is a common -sense one, and formid- 
 able. But, like all philosophic skepticism, rightly 
 understood it will be our best friend. Possibly, in- 
 deed, we shall have to complete somehow our notion 
 of the relation of the individual minds to the all-em- 
 bracing mind ; but meanwhile let us take the objec- 
 tion in its worst form. What does it lead to when 
 
372 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 carried to its fullest extent ? It leads to absolute 
 skepticism. It says : " Perhaps then, after all, the 
 relations of our individual thought are such that 
 there is possible for us no foundation whatever for 
 our postulates. They are all in the air. Everything 
 is doubtful. We may be in error everywhere. Cer- 
 tainty about the real world beyond is unattainable." 
 At this point then we are face to face with the utter- 
 most theoretical skepticism. What shall we do with 
 it ? Why, just what we did with ethical skepticism 
 in an earlier chapter. We must receive it in a 
 friendly spirit, and must find out what it means and 
 assumes. It will, in fact, transform this far-off ex- 
 ternal world of the postulates into a true world of 
 Spiritual Life. 
 
 One thing this skepticism implies, one thing so 
 simple as generally to escape notice among the as- 
 sumptions of our thought. It implies that we can be 
 in error about an external world. Therefore even 
 this extreme skepticism assumes that there is a differ- 
 ence between true and false statements about nature. 
 But now what is involved in saying that a statement 
 is either true or false ? To affirm, to deny, to doubt, 
 all imply a real distinction between truth and error ; 
 all three then involve in common the assumption 
 that there is such a distinction. That which is in- 
 volved alike both in the truth and in the falsity of 
 a statement must itself be certainly true, and cannot 
 be doubted. But what is this assumption implied in 
 the very assertion that a statement about an external 
 world is or may be false? This inquiry we must 
 make if we are to understand our own skepticism. 
 
IDEALISM. 373 
 
 If we begin this inquiry, we are met at once by a 
 very vexatious paradox. There seems to be an as- 
 pect in which all sincere judgments are true. Let 
 us remember the fable of the knights and the shield. 
 Each accused the other of lying. To each the oth- 
 er's account seemed deliberate falsehood. Yet each 
 spoke the truth. Only neither expressed himself 
 fully. Each should have said, " The shield as it ap- 
 pears from my side is golden " or " is silver." But 
 each left out the qualification. Each said the shield, 
 simply. And hence the battle. 
 
 But this commonplace about the knights and the 
 shield begins to worry us, when we reflect upon it, 
 by becoming altogether too general in scope. Do 
 we, in fact, ever make sincere assertions about things 
 save as they appear to us ? If I say, " Sugar is pleas- 
 ant to the taste," and my neighbor says, " Sugar is 
 hateful to the taste," is this a conflict of veracity ? 
 May we not both of us be sincere and truthful in 
 what we say ? And are color-blind men lying when 
 they say that there is no difference in color between 
 strawberries and the leaves of the strawberry plant 
 when seen in certain lights ? But why is it not just 
 so with all the rest of the things that people say ? 
 If you are sincere in what you say, are you not al- 
 ways in your assertions simply relating how your 
 ideas appear to you and are grouped ? If you say 
 that nothing happens without a cause, do you not 
 mean that what you conceive by the word cause is 
 conceived by you as in connection with every event 
 that you now have in mind ? If you say that a 
 straight line is the shortest distance between two 
 
374 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 points, do you not mean that what you now conceive 
 under the name straight line agrees with what you 
 now mean by shortest distance ? Very well then, 
 how can there be any direct opposition between two 
 sincere statements ? Your neighbor says that Dar- 
 winism is absurd. You say that Darwinism is true. 
 Where now is in fact the controversy ? He says 
 that he has two ideas in mind ; namely, an idea of 
 what he chooses to call Darwinism, and an idea of 
 what he chooses to call absurdity. He says that 
 these two ideas agree, just as the knight said that 
 his shield (i. e. the shield as seen by him) was silver. 
 You say that your idea of Darwinism agrees with 
 your idea of truth, as the other knight said that the 
 shield as seen by him was golden. Why fight about 
 it ? Thus all statements appear to be narratives of 
 what goes on in our own minds. If they are sincere, 
 if we mean them, who shall doubt that they are all 
 true ? Can any of us make assertions that are more 
 than clear accounts of how we put our own ideas 
 together? Why may not the thief before the judge 
 sincerely say : " O judge, my idea of what I call 
 chicken-stealing agrees with my idea of what I call 
 virtue " And the judge may truthfully reply : " O 
 rascal, my idea of what I call your chicken-stealing 
 agrees with my idea of what I call detestable petty 
 larceny." Are these two opinions really opposed, so 
 that one is true, the other erroneous? Are these 
 not rather different aspects of the universe ? What 
 is truth, moral or physical ? Is not every investiga- 
 tion, every argument, every story, every anticipation, 
 every axiom, every delusion, every creed, every de- 
 
IDEALISM. 375 
 
 nial, just a mere expression of a present union of 
 ideas in somebody ? Where do two assertions meet 
 on common ground, so that one can be really true, 
 the other really false ? Have different judgments, 
 in different minds or made at different times, any 
 real common object at all? If they have not, how 
 can there be any truth or falsity at all ? 
 
 This paradox is wild enough if you look at it 
 fairly. And yet many thinkers actually have main- 
 tained it under various disguises as the doctrine of 
 what is called the Total Relativity of Truth. Hav- 
 ing himself passed through and long tried to hold 
 and to rationalize this doctrine of Relativity, the 
 author has some right to say something in opposition 
 to it. What he has to say can be very briefly put. 
 In its paradoxical form as above stated, the doctrine 
 may be made plausible, and is a suggestive paradox, 
 but it is certainly meaningless. If there is no real 
 distinction between truth and error, then the state- 
 ment that there is such a difference is not really false, 
 but only seemingly false. And then in truth there 
 is the distinction once more. Try as you will, you 
 come not beyond the fatal circle. If it is wrong to 
 say that there is Absolute Truth, then the statement 
 that there is absolute truth is itself false. Is it how- 
 ever false only relatively, or is it false absolutely ? 
 If it is false only relatively, then it is not false abso- 
 lutely. Hence the statement that it is false abso- 
 lutely is itself false. But false absolutely, or false 
 relatively ? And thus you must at last come to some 
 statement that is absolutely false or absolutely true, 
 or else the infinite regress into which you are driven 
 
376 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 makes the very distinction between absolute and rel- 
 ative truth lose all its meaning, and your doctrine of 
 total Relativity will also lose meaning. " No abso- 
 lute truth exists," can you say this if you want to ? 
 At least you must add, " No absolute truth exists 
 save this truth itself, that no absolute truth exists." 
 Otherwise your statement has no sense. But if you 
 admit this truth, then there is in fact an absolute 
 distinction between truth and error. 
 
 And when we here talk of an " absolute " distinc- 
 tion between truth and error, we mean merely a 
 "real" distinction between truth and error. And 
 this real distinction the fiercest partisan of relativ- 
 ity admits ; for does he not after all argue for rela- 
 tivity against " absolutists," holding that he is really 
 right, and they really wrong. 
 
 Yet, sure though we feel of the distinction, the 
 paradox and its plausibility remain. How have 
 different judgments, made at different times, any 
 real common object at all? If they have none, 
 then where is the postulated distinction of truth and 
 error ? What shall we do with our paradox ? In 
 what sense can a private opinion of one man be a 
 genuine error ? There must be such a thing as real 
 genuine error, or else even our very skepticism fails 
 to have the least sense, and we fall back into the 
 utterly irrational chaos of not being able with truth 
 to say whether we doubt that we are doubting. But 
 yet how shall we explain the possibility of error ? 
 For here is an unique and fundamental postulate. 
 
 The next chapter shall be devoted to a more special 
 and detailed study of this problem. But already 
 
IDEALISM. 377 
 
 we shall venture to suggest our solution. It is one 
 that needs possibly some little consideration, and the 
 reader will pardon us if we already state it, although 
 we shall repeat it in another form hereafter. In 
 fact, it is a critical matter for our whole discussion. 
 Here, in fact, will be the point where we shall pass 
 from idealism as a bare hypothesis, expressing pos- 
 tulates, to idealism as a philosophic doctrine, rest- 
 ing upon the deepest possible foundation, namely, 
 on the very difference between truth and error itself. 
 Our logical problem will become for us a treasure- 
 house of ideal truth. But just now we make only a 
 suggestion, to which as yet we can compel no agree- 
 ment. 
 
 When one says even the perfectly commonplace 
 thing that not all assertions are equally true, that is, 
 that not all of them agree with the objects with which 
 they mean to agree, he really makes an assumption 
 upon which all thinking, all controversy, all the 
 postulates that we previously studied, all science, all 
 morality depend ; and, as we maintain, this assump- 
 tion is : That the agreement or the disagreement 
 of his judgments with their intended objects exists 
 and has meaning for an actual thought, a con- 
 sciousness, to which both these related terms are 
 present, namely, both the judgment and the object 
 wherewith it is to agree. So that, if my thought 
 has objects outside of it with which it can agree or 
 disagree, those 'objects and that agreement can have 
 meaning, can be possible, only if there is a thought 
 that includes both my thought and the object where- 
 with my thought is to agree. This inclusive thought 
 
378 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 must be related to my thought and its objects, as 
 my thought is related to the various partial thoughts 
 that it includes and reduces to unity in any one of 
 my complex assertions. For only by some such 
 unity as this can this higher thought compare my 
 judgment with its object, and so constitute the 
 relation that is implied in the truth or in the error 
 of my thought. So, in the commonplace assump- 
 tion that a statement of mine can agree or can fail 
 to agree with its real object, when this object is 
 wholly outside my thought, in this assumption, with- 
 out which you can make no rational statement, is 
 contained implicitly the assumption that all reality, 
 spiritual and material, is present in its true nature 
 to an all-embracing, intelligent thought, of which 
 mine is simply one subordinate part or element. 
 In truth, as we shall come to see, regarded in itself, 
 my mind can be concerned only with its own ideas. 
 That is the view of all so-called subjective idealism. 
 But if my mind can be concerned only with its own 
 ideas, then sincerity and truth are identical, truth 
 and error will be alike impossible. What I talk 
 about will be my ideas ; their objects will be them- 
 selves other ideas of mine, and meaning only these 
 ideas when I make assertions, I cannot fail to make 
 correct assertions about these, the objects that I 
 mean. But thus controversy, progress towards 
 truth, failure to get truth, error, refutation, yes, 
 doubt itself, will all cease to have any meaning 
 whatsoever. But if my thought is related to a 
 higher thought, even as the parts of one of my 
 thoughts are related to the whole thought, then 
 
IDEALISM. 379 
 
 truth and error, as objective truth and objective 
 error, are possible, since my thought and its object, 
 both as I think this object and as it is, are together 
 in the universal thought, of which they form ele- 
 ments, and in which they live and move and have 
 their being. As my thoughts have a unity more or 
 less complete in themselves, so all thoughts and ob- 
 jects must be postulated as in unity in that thought 
 for which is the whole universe. As I can say to 
 myself with solely subjective truth, .This line that 
 I mentally picture is in truth shorter for me than 
 that, and to say otherwise is to speak falsely ; even 
 so my statement, All straight lines are in all cases 
 shortest lines between their extremities, is true ob- 
 jectively, and its contradictory false only in case 
 both the world of possible straight lines and iny 
 thoughts about this world are known to a higher 
 thought, are in fact members of a higher thought, 
 which, comparing what I cannot compare, making 
 a synthesis of what is to me separate, unifying what 
 is for me diverse, finds my thought really true or 
 false. 
 
 This is the barest outline of a proof by which, in 
 the next chapter, we shall try to reach the position 
 which some call absolute or objective idealism. We 
 shall find this theory as just set forth a necessary 
 assumption, which we shall make because we want 
 to think clearly, and because we find nothing else 
 that even suggests an answer to the critical questions 
 that trouble us as to the nature of thought. We 
 shall not substitute this conception of reality for the 
 scientific conception. On the contrary, this concep- 
 
380 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tion will merely undertake, presupposing the scien- 
 tific spirit, to include the scientific conception of 
 the world in one that will, as a whole, better satisfy 
 the needs of this scientific spirit itself. Our theory 
 will give us no a priori account of facts of expe- 
 rience, but a theory of that which makes experience, 
 as a whole, possible. This theory, which we offer as 
 the one rational account of the nature of truth, is 
 the doctrine that the world is in and for a thought, 
 all-embracing, all-knowing, universal, for which are 
 all relations and all truth, a thought that estimates 
 perfectly our imperfect and halting thoughts, a 
 thought in which and for which are we all. No 
 other view, as we shall affirm, offers any chance of 
 a philosophy, nor any hope of even a rational sci- 
 entific notion of things. 
 
 The reader may be impatient to see, in detail, the 
 argument by which we undertake to establish such a 
 thesis as the foregoing. Of that argument he shall 
 get enough in another chapter. But we ask him to 
 wait yet a moment, while we hint to him the conse- 
 quences, for our religious theory, that will flow from 
 our hypothesis when we have got it more certainly 
 in our minds. 
 
 The ambiguous relation of the conscious individ- 
 uals to the universal thought in the foregoing first 
 statement of our idealism, will be decided in the 
 sense of their inclusion, as elements, in the universal 
 thought. They will indeed not become " things in 
 the dream " of any other person than themselves, 
 but their whole reality, just exactly as it is in them, 
 will be found to be but a fragment of a higher 
 
IDEALISM. 381 
 
 reality. This reality will be no Power, nor will it 
 produce the individuals by dreaming of them, but 
 it will complete the existence that in them, as sep- 
 arate beings, has no rational completeness. This 
 will be our first result. 
 
 Then will follow other thoughts. In so far as 
 there is any objective truth in moral conceptions, 
 this truth is eternally known to this all-embracing 
 thought. If there be moral or immoral acts, they 
 are forever known and judged in and by this all- 
 embracing conscious thought. And thus we shall 
 have found Job's longed-for, perfect, all -knowing 
 judge. " He knoweth the way that I take." Here 
 is an absolute estimate, objectively present in the 
 world, an estimate of all your good and evil deeds. 
 You are a part of the universal life. Your thoughts 
 are parts of the whole. Your acts form an element 
 in the universe that the great Judge knows. All of 
 you then is known and justly estimated by the ab- 
 solute thought that embraces all possible truth, and 
 for whom are all relations, present, past, and future 
 of all possible beings, acts, and thoughts in all places. 
 If there be any virtue, this virtue is known to the 
 infinite thought of the universe. If there be any 
 vice, that vice is estimated, in all its infinite base- 
 ness, by the infinite consciousness. Inasmuch as ye 
 do good unto the least of these, ye do it with the 
 universal consciousness as onlooker; your work is 
 all accomplished in the presence of the Absolute. 
 
 With this truth before us, we shall be ready to 
 leave unsolved our problems about this or that 
 Power, about this or that future state, about the 
 
382 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 fallen angels, or about the historical justification of 
 God's ways. The world of Divine Life will be in 
 deepest truth not a Power at all, but the Infinite 
 Knowing One, for whom are all the powers, but who 
 is above them all, beyond them all, no striving 
 good principle that cannot get realized in a wicked 
 world, but an absolute Judge that perfectly estimates 
 the world. In the contemplation of this truth we 
 may find a religious comfort. 
 
 And then, by all this, we shall make the postu- 
 lates of our previous chapter appear in a new light. 
 The postulates, we said, express the conditions 
 under which we are determined to do our work. 
 They are expressions of the spirit of courageous 
 devotion to the highest. They find and can find no 
 perfect verification in experience. They dwell in 
 part on the unseen. But they do not resist verifi- 
 cation, if any can be offered from a higher source. 
 But this, our new doctrine, if we truly get to it, 
 will offer them their higher verification. Their 
 office will not thereby be vacated or abolished. 
 They will forever remain the maxims of our work. 
 But they will no longer be just leaps in the dark. 
 We shall see that when science assumes rationality, 
 and religion assumes goodness, as at the heart of 
 things, they have neither of them acted vainly. We 
 shall then have reason to go on assuming both, and 
 to regulate our lives accordingly. Faith of some 
 sort will continue to be our meat and drink ; but it 
 will be faith with a philosophical foundation. 
 
 The reader will pardon us for having detained 
 him so long in the study of idealism as a bare postu- 
 
IDEALISM. 383 
 
 late, when we have a more serious doctrine behind. 
 The inveterate prejudices and misunderstandings to 
 which idealistic theories fall prey, furnish our excuse 
 for trying to reconcile ourselves to an imperfect form 
 of idealism as a mere postulate, before going on to 
 set forth an absolute idealism as a demonstrable 
 theory. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 
 
 On ne sert dignement la philosophie qu'avec le m&ne feu qu'on sent 
 pour une maitresse. ROUSSEAU, Nouvelle Heloise. 
 
 WE have before us our theorem, and an outline 
 of its proof. We are here to expand this argument. 
 We have some notion of the magnitude of the is- 
 sues that are at stake. We had found ourselves 
 baffled in our search for a certainty by numerous 
 difficulties. We had found only one way remaining 
 so far quite clear. That was the way of postulat- 
 ing what the moral consciousness seems to demand 
 about the world beyond experience. For many 
 thinkers since Kant, that way has seemed in fact 
 the only one. They live in a world of action. 
 " Doubt," they say, " clouds all theory. One must 
 act as if the world were the supporter of our moral 
 demands. One must have faith. One must make 
 the grand effort, one must risk all for the sake of 
 the great prize. If the world is against us, still we 
 will not admit the fact until we are crushed. If the 
 cold reality cares naught for our moral efforts, so be 
 it when we come to know the fact, but meanwhile 
 we will act as if legions of angels were ready to sup- 
 port our demand for whatever not our selfish inter- 
 est, but the great interest of the Good, requires." 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 385 
 
 Such is the view of the men whose religion is founded 
 upon a Postulate. 
 
 We, too, felt that such faith is religious. We 
 were willing to accept it, if nothing better could be 
 found. But we were not content with it. Life has 
 its unheroic days, when mere postulates fail us. At 
 such times we grow weary of toiling, evil seems ac- 
 tually triumphant, and, worse than all, the sense 
 that there really is any perfect goodness yet unat- 
 tained, that there is any worth or reason in our 
 fight for goodness, seems to desert us. And then it 
 will indeed be well if we can get for ourselves some- 
 thing more and better than mere postulates. If we 
 cannot, we shall not seek to hide the fact. Better 
 eternal despondency than a deliberate lie about our 
 deepest thoughts and their meaning. If we are not 
 honest, at least in our philosophy, then are we wholly 
 base. To try once more is not dishonest. 
 
 So we did make the effort, and, in the last chap- 
 ter, we sketched a result that seemed nearly within 
 our reach. An unexpected result this, because it 
 springs from the very heart of skepticism itself. 
 We doubted to the last extremity. We let every- 
 thing go, and then all of a sudden we seemed to find 
 that we could not lose one priceless treasure, try as 
 we would. Our wildest doubt assumed this, namely, 
 that error is possible. And so our wildest doubt as- 
 sumed the actual existence of those conditions that 
 make error possible. The conditions that determine 
 the logical possibility of error must themselves be 
 absolute truth, that was the treasure that remained 
 to us amid all our doubts. And how rich that treas- 
 
 25 
 
386 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ure is, we dimly saw in the last discussion. That 
 dim insight we must now try to make clearer. Per- 
 haps our previous discussion has shown us that the 
 effort is worth making. 
 
 Yet of one thing the reader shall be warned. The 
 path that we travel is hereabouts very thorny and 
 stony. It is a path of difficult philosophical inves- 
 tigation. Nobody ought to follow it who does not 
 desire to. We hope that the reader will skip the 
 whole of this chapter unless he wants to find even 
 more of dullness than the rest of this sleepy^ book 
 has discovered to him. For us, too, the arid way 
 would seem hard, were it not for the precious prize 
 at the end of it. 
 
 I. 
 
 The story of the following investigation shall first 
 be very briefly told. The author had long sought, es- 
 pecially in the discussions of Kant's " Kritik," and 
 in the books of the post-Kantians, for help in see- 
 ing the ultimate principles that lie at the basis of 
 knowledge. He had found the old and well-known 
 troubles. Experience of itself can give no certainty 
 ^about general principles. We must therefore, said 
 Kant, bring our own principles with us to experi- 
 ence. We know then of causation, because causa- 
 tion is a fundamental principle of our thought, 
 whereby we set our experience to rights. And so 
 long as we think, we shall think into experience the 
 connection of cause and effect, which otherwise would 
 not be there. But hereupon the questions arose that 
 have so often been asked of Kant and the Kantians. 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF EREOR. . 38T 
 
 Why just these principles and no others ? " That 
 is inexplicable," replies Kant. Very well, then, 
 suppose we give up applying to experience those ar- 
 bitrary principles of ours. Suppose we choose to 
 stop thinking of experience as causally connected. 
 What then ? " But you cannot stop," says Kant, 
 " Your thought, being what it is, must follow this 
 one fashion forever." Nay, we reply, how knowest 
 thou that, Master ? Why may not our thought get 
 a new fashion some day ? And then what is now 
 a necessary principle, for example, that every event 
 has a cause, would become unnecessary or even non- 
 sensical. Do we then know a priori that our a 
 priori principles must always remain such ? If so, 
 how come we by this new knowledge ? 
 
 So Kant leaves us still uncertain about any fun- 
 damental principles upon which a sure knowledge 
 of the world can be founded. 
 
 Let us, then, examine a little deeper. Are there 
 any certain judgments possible at all? If one is 
 skeptical in a thorough - going way, as the author 
 tried to be, he is apt to reach, through' an effort to 
 revise Kant's view, a position something like the fol- 
 lowing, a provisional position of course, but one 
 that results from the effort to accept nothing with- 
 out criticism : " Kant's result is that our judgments 
 about the real world are founded on an union of 
 thought and sense, thought giving the appearance of 
 necessity to our judgment, sense giving the material. 
 The necessity of any judgment amounts then only to 
 what may be summed up in the words : So the pres- 
 ent union of thought and sense makes things ap- 
 
388 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 pear. If either thought or sense altered its charac- 
 Iter, truth would alter. Hence every sincere judg- 
 j ment is indeed true for the moment in which it is 
 I made, but not necessarily true for other moments. 
 / We only postulate that it is true for other moments." 
 ! " And so," to continue this view, " it is only by 
 I means of postulates that our thought even seems to 
 have any unity from moment to moment. We live 
 in the present. If our thought has other truth or 
 falsity than this, we do not know it. Past and fu- 
 ture exist not for this present. They are only pos- 
 tulated. Save as postulated, they have no present 
 meaning." 
 
 When he held and expressed this view, the author 
 is free to admit that he was not always clear whether 
 he ought to call it the doctrine of the relativity of 
 truth or not. It might have avoided the absurdities 
 of total relativity by taking form as a doctrine that 
 the present moment's judgment is really true or 
 false, for a real past and future, but that we, being 
 limited to present moments, can never compare our 
 judgments with reality to find whether our judg- 
 ments are true or false. But although this inter- 
 pretation is possible, this view often did express it- 
 self for the author as the doctrine of the total rela- 
 tivity of truth. The latter doctrine to be sure has 
 no real meaning, but the author used with many 
 others to fancy that it had. 
 
 To apply the view to the case of causal relations. 
 " We continually postulate," the author used to 
 point out, " we demand, without being able to prove 
 it, that nature in future shall be uniform." So, 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 389 
 
 carrying out this thought, the author used to say : 
 " In fact future nature is not given to us, just as the 
 past is not given to us. Sense-data and thought 
 unite at every instant afresh to form a new judgment 
 and a new postulate. Only in the present has any 
 judgment evident validity. And our postulate of 
 causal relation is just a way of looking at this world 
 of conceived past and future data. Such postulates 
 avoid being absurd efforts to regulate independent 
 facts of sense, because, and only because, we have in 
 experience no complete series of facts of sense at all, 
 only from moment to moment single facts, about 
 which we make single judgments. All the rest we 
 must postulate or else do without them." Thus one 
 reaches a skepticism as nearly complete as is pos- 
 sible to any one with earnest activity of thought in 
 him. From moment to moment one can be sure of 
 each moment. All else is postulate. 
 
 From the depths of this imperfectly defined skep- 
 ticism, which seemed to him provisionally the only 
 view he could adopt, the author escaped only by ask- 
 ing the one question more : "If everything beyond 
 the present is doubtful, then how can even that doubt 
 be possible ? " With this question that bare relativ- 
 ity of the present moment is given up. What are 
 the conditions that make doubt logically intelligible ? 
 These conditions really transcend the present mo- 
 ment. Plainly doubt implies that the statement 
 doubted may be false. So here we have at least one 
 supposed general truth, namely, " All but the im- 
 mediate content of the present moment's judgment, 
 being doubtful, we may be in error about it." But 
 
390 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 what then is an error? This becomes at once a 
 problem of exciting interest. Attacking it, the au- 
 thor was led through the wilderness of the following 
 argument. 
 
 II. 
 
 Yet before we undertake this special examination 
 of the nature of error, the reader must pardon us 
 for adding yet another explanatory word. The diffi- 
 culty of the whole discussion will lie in the fact that 
 we shall be studying the possibility of the plainest 
 and most familiar of commonplaces. Common sense 
 hates to do such things, because common sense thinks 
 that the whole matter is sure from the outset. Com- 
 mon sense is willing to ask whether God exists, but 
 unwilling to inquire how it is possible that there can 
 exist an error about anything. But foreseeing that 
 something is to follow from all this, we must beg 
 common sense to be patient. We have not the 
 shadow of doubt ourselves about the possibility of 
 error. That is the steadfast rock on which we build. 
 Our inquiry, ultra-skeptical as it may at moments 
 seem, is into the question : How is the error possi- 
 ble ? Or, in other words : What is an error ? Now 
 there can be little doubt that common sense is not 
 ready with any general answer to such a question. 
 Error is a word with many senses. By error we 
 often mean just a statement that arouses our antipa- 
 thy. Yet we all admit upon reflection, that our an- 
 tipathy can neither make nor be used to define real 
 error. Adam Smith declares, with common sense on 
 his side, in his " Theory of the Moral Sentiments," l 
 i Part L, sect, i., chap, iii., near the beginning. 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 391 
 
 that : "To approve or disapprove of the opinions of 
 others is acknowledged, by everybody, to mean no 
 more than to observe their agreement or disagree- 
 ment with our own." Yet no one would accept as a 
 definition of error the statement that : Error is any 
 opinion that I personally do not like. Error has 
 thus a very puzzling character. For common sense 
 will readily admit that if a statement is erroneous, 
 it must appear erroneous to every " right mind " that 
 is in possession of the facts. Hence the personal 
 taste of one man is not enough to define it. Else 
 there might be as many sorts of error as there are 
 minds. It is only the " right mind " whose personal 
 taste shall decide what is an error in any particular 
 case. But what then is a normal mind ? Who is the 
 right-minded judge ? There seems to be danger that 
 common sense shall run at this point into an infinite 
 regress. I say : That opinion is an error. What 
 do I mean ? Do I mean that I do not like that 
 opinion ? Nay, I mean more. I mean that I ought 
 not to like or to accept it. Why plight I not? Be- 
 cause the ideally right-minded person would not, 
 seeing the given facts, hold that opinion about them. 
 But who is the ideally right-minded person ? Well, 
 common sense may answer, It is my ideal person, 
 the right-minded man as I conceive him. But why 
 is my ideal the true ideal ? Because I like it ? 
 Nay, because, to the ideal judge, that kind of mind 
 would seem the ideal. But who is the ideal judge ? 
 And so common sense is driven from point to point, 
 unable to get to anything definite. 
 
 So much, then, to show in general that common 
 
392 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 sense does not know what an error is, and needs 
 more light upon the subject. Let common sense not 
 disturb us, then, in our further search, by the con- 
 stant and indignant protest that error must some- 
 how exist, and that doubt on that subject is nonsense. 
 Nobody has any doubts on that subject. We ask 
 only how error exists and how it can exist. 
 
 For the rest, what follows is not any effort to 
 demonstrate in fair and orderly array, from any one 
 principle or axiom, what must be the nature of er- 
 ror, but to use every and any device that may offer 
 itself, general analysis, special example, comparison 
 and contrast of cases, anything that shall lead us 
 to the insight into what an error is and implies. 
 For at last, immediate insight must decide. 
 
 We shall study our problem thus. We shall 
 take either some accepted definition of error, or 
 some special class of cases, and we shall ask : How 
 is error in that case, or in accordance with that defi- 
 nition, possible ? Since error plainly is possible in 
 some way, we sh^Jl have only to inquire : What are 
 the logical conditions that make it possible ? We 
 shall take up the ordinary suppositions that com- 
 mon sense seems to make about what here deter- 
 mines the possibility of error. We shall show that 
 these suppositions are inadequate. Then the result 
 will be that, on the ordinary suppositions, error 
 would be impossible. But that result would be 
 absurd, if these were the only possible suppositions. 
 Hence the ordinary suppositions must somehow be 
 supplemented. When, therefore, we seem to say in 
 the following that error is impossible, we shall mean 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 393 
 
 only, impossible under the ordinary suppositions of 
 common sense. What supplement we need to these 
 suppositions, our argument will show us. In sum 
 we shall find the state of the case to be this : Com- 
 mon sense regards an assertion as true or as false 
 apart from any other assertion or thought, and solely 
 in reference^ to its own object. For common sense 
 each judgment, as a separate creation, stands out 
 alone, looking at its object, and trying to agree with 
 it. If it succeeds, we have truth. If the judgment 
 fails, we have error. But, as we shall find, this view 
 of common sense is unintelligible. A judgment can- 
 not have an object and fail to agree therewith, un- 
 less this judgment is part of an organism of thought. 
 Alone, as a separate fact, a judgment has no intelli- 
 gible object beyond itself. And therefore the pre- 
 suppositions of common sense must be supplemented 
 or else abandoned. Either then there is no error, 
 or else judgments are true or false only in reference 
 jto a higher inclusive thought, which they presuppose, 
 and which must, in th<TTast analysis, be assumed as 
 Infinite and all-inclusive. This result we shall reach 
 by no mystical insight, by no revelation, nor yet by 
 any mere postulate such as we used in former dis- 
 cussions, but by a simple, dry analysis of the mean- 
 ing of our own thought. 
 
 The most formidable opponent of our argument 
 will be, after all, however, not common sense, but 
 that thought mentioned in the last chapter, the 
 thought that may try to content itself with some- 
 what plausible jargon, and to say that : " There is 
 no real difference between truth and error at all, 
 
394 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 only a kind of opinion or consensus of men about 
 a conventional distinction between what they choose 
 to call truth and what they choose to call error" 
 This view, as the author has confessed, he once tried 
 to hold. Still this meaningless doctrine of relativ- 
 ity is not the same as the view that contents itself 
 with the postulates before discussed. That view 
 might take, and for the author at one time did take, 
 the possible and intelligible form thus expressible : 
 " Truth and error, though really distinguishable, 
 are for us distinguished only through our postu- 
 lates, in so far as relates to past and future time*' 
 Such views, while not denying that there is real 
 truth, despair of the attainability for us of more than 
 momentary truth. But the doctrine of Total Rela- 
 tivity, this view above expressed, differs from gen- 
 uine skepticism. It tries to put even skepticism to 
 rest, by declaring the opinion, that there is error, to 
 be itself an error. This is not merely a moderate 
 expression of human limitations, but jargon, and 
 therefore formidable, because jargon is always unan- 
 swerable. When the famous Cretan declared all 
 statements made by Cretans to be in all cases lies, 
 his declaration was hard to refute, because it was 
 such honest - seeming nonsense. Even so with the 
 statement that declares the very existence of error 
 to be an erroneously believed fancy. No consensus 
 of men can make an error erroneous. We can only 
 find or commit an error, not create it. When we 
 commit an error, we say what was an error already. 
 If our skeptical view in previous chapters seemed to 
 regard truth and error as mere objects of our postu- 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 895 
 
 lates, that was only because, to our skepticism, the 
 real truth, the real error, about any real past and 
 future, seemed beyond our reach, so that we had 
 to content ourselves with postulates. But that real 
 error exists is absolutely indubitable. 
 
 This being the case, it is evident that even the 
 most thorough-going skepticism is full of assump- 
 tions. If I say, " There may be no money in that 
 purse yonder," I assume the existence of the purse 
 yonder in order to make just that particular doubt 
 possible. Of course, however, just that doubt may 
 be rendered meaningless by the discovery of the 
 actual non-existence of that particular purse. If 
 there is no purse yonder, then it is nonsensical either 
 to affirm or to deny that it contains money. And 
 so if the purse of which I speak is an hallucination 
 of mine, then the doubt about whether, as an actu- 
 ally existent purse, it has money in it, is deprived 
 of sense. My real error in that case would lie in 
 supposing the purse itself to exist. If, however, I 
 abandon the first doubt, and go on to doubt the real 
 existence of the purse, I equally assume a room, or 
 some other environment, or at all events the universe, 
 as existent, in order to give sense to my question 
 whether the purse has any being in this environment 
 or in this universe. But if I go yet further, and 
 doubt whether there is any universe at all outside of 
 my thought, what does my doubt yet mean ? If it 
 is to be a doubt with any real sense, it must be a 
 doubt still with an object before it. It seems then 
 to imply an assumed order of being, in which there 
 are at least two elements, my lonely thought about 
 
396 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 an universe, and an empty environment of this 
 thought, in which there is, in fact, no universe, 
 But this empty environment, whose nature is such 
 that my thought does wrong to suppose it to be an 
 universe, what is that ? Surely if the doubt is to 
 have meaning, this idea needs further examination. 
 The absolute skepticism is thus full of assumptions. 
 The first European thinker who seems to have 
 discussed our present problem was Plato, in a too- 
 much-neglected passage of the " Thesetetus," 1 where 
 Socrates, replying to the second definition of knowl- 
 edge given by Theaetetus, namely, knowledge is 
 True Opinion, answers that his great difficulty has 
 often been to see how any opinion can possibly be 
 false. The conclusion reached by Plato is no very 
 definite one, but the discussion is deeply suggestive. 
 And we cannot do better here than to pray that the 
 shade of the mighty Greek may deign to save us 
 now in our distress, and to show us the true nature 
 of error. 
 
 HI. 
 
 Logicians are agreed that single ideas, thoughts 
 viewed apart from judgments, are neither true nor 
 false. Only a judgment can be false. And if a 
 reasoning process is" said "tirHbe^Talsepthe real error 
 lies still in an actual or suppressed assertion. __A_ 
 fallacy is a false assertion that a certain conclusion 
 follows from certain premises. EMLLj^utherefae 
 generally defined as a judgmentJJiak_^^ 
 with itsjobjectT In the^erro^oias judgment, suK~ 
 
 1 Plato, Th. t p. 187 sqq. 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 397 
 
 ject and predicate are so combined as, jin jbhe^object, 
 the corresponding elements are not combine^. And 
 thus the judgment comes to be false. Now, in this 
 definition, nothing is doubtful or obscure save the 
 one thing, namely, the assumed relation between the 
 judgment and its object. The definition assumes as 
 quite clear that a judgment has an object, wherewith 
 it can agree or not agree. And what is meant by 
 the agreement would not be obscure, if we could see 
 what is meant by the object, and by the possession of 
 this object implied in the pronoun its. What then 
 is meant by its object ? The difficulties involved in 
 this phrase begin to appear as soon as you look 
 closer. First then the object of the assertion is as 
 such supposed to be neither the subject nor the pred- 
 icate thereof. It is external to the judgment. It 
 has a nature of its own. Furthermore, not all judg- 
 ments have the same object, so that objects are very 
 numerous. But from the infinity of real or of pos- 
 sible objects the judgment somehow picks out its 
 own. Thus then for a judgment to have an object^ 
 there must be something about the judgment that 
 shows what one of the external objects that are be- 
 yon (TTtself this judgment does pick out^ as jits own. 
 But this something that gives the judgment its ob- 
 ject can only be the intention wherewith the judg- 
 ment is accompanied. A judgment has as object 
 only whatjt intends to have as object.. It has to 
 conform only to that to which it wants to conform. 
 But the essence of an intention is the knowledge of 
 what one intends. One can, for instance, intend a 
 deed or any of its consequences only in so far as he 
 
398 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 foresees them. I cannot be said to intend the acci- 
 dental or the remote or even the immediate conse- 
 quences of anything that I do, unless I foresaw that 
 they would follow ; and this is true however much 
 the lawyers and judges may find it practically neces- 
 sary to hold me responsible for these consequences. 
 Even so we all find it practically useful to regard 
 one of our fellows as in error in case his assertions, 
 as we understand them, seem to us to lead to conse- 
 quences that we do not approve. But our criticisms 
 of his opinions, just like legal judgments of his acts, 
 are not intended to be exact. Common sense will 
 admit that, unless a man is thinking of the object of 
 which I suppose him to be thinking, he makes no 
 real error by merely failing to agree with the object 
 that I have in mind. If the knights in the fable 
 judge each other to be wrong, that is because each 
 knight takes the other's shield to be identical with 
 the shield as he himself has it in mind. In fact 
 neither of them is in error, unless his assertion is 
 false for the shield as he intended to make it his 
 object. 
 
 St> then judgments err only by disagreeing with 
 their intended objects, and they can intend an object 
 only in so far forth as this object is known to thg 
 thought that makes tiie judgment. Such, it would 
 seem, is the consequence of the common-sense view. 
 But in this case a judgment can be in error only 
 if it is knowingly in error. That also, as it seems, 
 follows from the common-sense suppositions. Or, if 
 we will have it in syllogistic form : 
 
 Everything intended is something known. The 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 399 
 
 object even of an erroneous judgment is intended. 
 .'. The object even of an error is something known. 
 
 Or: Only what is known can be erred about. 
 Nor can we yet be content with what common sense 
 will at once reply, namely, that our syllogism uses 
 known ambiguously, and that the object of an erro- 
 neous judgment is known enough to constitute it the 
 object, and not enough to prevent the error about it. 
 This must no doubt be the fact, but it is not of itself 
 clear ; on the contrary, just here is the problem. As 
 common sense conceives the matter, the object of a 
 judgment is not as such the whole outside world of 
 common sense, with all its intimate interdependence 
 of facts, with all its unity in the midst of diversity. 
 On the contrary, the object of any judgment is just 
 that portion of the then conceived world, just that 
 fragment, that aspect, that element of a supposed 
 reality, which is seized upon for the purposes of just 
 this judgment. Only such a momentarily grasped 
 fragment of the truth can possibly be present in any 
 one moment of thought as the object of a single as- 
 sertion. Now it is hard to say how within this arbi- 
 trarily chosen fragment itself there can still be room 
 for the partial knowledge that is sufficient to give to 
 the judgment its object, but insufficient to secure to 
 the judgment its accuracy. If I aim at a mark with 
 my gun, I can fail to hit it, because choosing and 
 hitting a mark are totally distinct acts. But, in the 
 judgment, choosing and knowing the object seem in- 
 separable. No doubt somehow our difficulty is solu- 
 ble, but we are here trying first to show that it is a 
 difficulty. 
 
400 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 To illustrate here by a familiar case, when we 
 speak of things that are solely matters of personal 
 preference, such as the pleasure of a sleigh-ride, the 
 taste of olives, or the comfort of a given room, and 
 when we only try to tell how these things appear to 
 us, then plainly our judgments, if sincere, cannot be 
 in error. As these things are to us, so they are. 
 We are their measure. To doubt our truthfulness 
 in these cases is to doubt after the fashion of the 
 student who wondered whether the star that the as- 
 tronomers call Uranus may not be something else 
 after all, and not really Uranus. Surely science does 
 not progress very far or run into great danger of 
 error so long as it employs itself in discovering such 
 occult mysteries as the names of the stars. But our 
 present question is, How do judgments that can be 
 and that are erroneous differ in nature from these 
 that cannot be erroneous ? If astronomers would be 
 equally right in case they should agree to call Ura- 
 nus Humpty Dumpty, why are not all judgments 
 equally favored ? Since the judgment chooses its 
 own object, and has it only in so far as it chooses it, 
 how can it be in that partial relation to its object 
 which is implied in the supposition of an erroneous 
 assertion ? 
 
 Yet again, to illustrate the difficulty in another 
 aspect, we can note that not only is error impossible 
 about the perfectly well-known, but that error is 
 equally impossible, save in the form of direct self- 
 contradiction, about what is absolutely unknown. 
 Spite of the religious awe of some people in pres- 
 ence of the Unknowable, it is safe to say, somewhat 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 401 
 
 irreverently, that about a really Unknowable nobody 
 could make any sincere and self -consistent assertions 
 that could be errors. For self-consistent assertions 
 about the Unknowable would of necessity be mean- 
 ingless. And being meaningless, they could not well 
 be false. For instance, oiie could indeed not say 
 that the Unknowable contemplates war with France, 
 or makes sunspots, or will be the next Presidential 
 candidate, because that would be contradicting one's 
 self. For if the Unknowable did any of these things, 
 it would no longer be the Unknowable, but would 
 become either the known or the discoverable. But 
 avoid such self - contradiction, and you cannot err 
 about the Unknowable. For the Unknowable is sim- 
 ply our old friend Abracadabra, a word that has no 
 meaning, and by hypothesis never can get any. So 
 if I say that the Unknowable dines in vacuo with 
 the chimera, or is Humpty Dumpty, I talk nonsense, 
 and am therefore unable to make a mistake. Non- 
 sense is error only when it involves self-contradiction. 
 Avoid that, and nonsense cannot blunder, having no 
 object outside of itself with which it must agree. 
 But all this illustrates from the other side our diffi- 
 culty. Is not the object of a judgment, in so far as 
 it is unknown to that judgment, like the Unknowa- 
 bles for that judgment ? To be in error about the 
 application of a symbol, you must have a symbol that 
 symbolizes something. But in so far as the thing 
 symbolized is not known through the symbol, how 
 is it symbolized by that symbol? Is it not, like the 
 Unknowable, once for all out of the thought, so that 
 one cannot just then be thinking about it at all, and 
 
 26 
 
402 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 so cannot, in this thought at least, be making blun- 
 ders about it ? But in so far as the thing symbolized 
 is, through the symbol, in one's thought, why is it 
 not known, and so correctly judged ? All this in- 
 volves that old question of the nature of symbols. 
 They are to mean for us more than we know that 
 they mean. How can that be ? No doubt all that 
 is really possible, but how ? 
 
 IV. 
 
 We follow our difficulty into another department. 
 Let us attempt a sort of provisional psychological 
 description of a judgment as a state of mind. So 
 regarded, a judgment is simply a fact that occurs in 
 somebody's thought. If we try to describe it as an 
 occurrence, without asking whence it came, we shall 
 perhaps find in it three elements, elements which 
 are in some fashion described in Ueberweg's well- 
 known definition of a judgment as the " Conscious- 
 ness about the objective validity of a subjective 
 union of ideas." Our interpretation of them shall be 
 this : The elements are : The Subject, with the ac- 
 companying shade of curiosity about it ; the Pred- 
 icate, with the accompanying sense of its worth in 
 satisfying a part of our curiosity about the subject ; 
 and the Sense of Dependence, whereby we feel the 
 value of this act to lie, not in itself, but in its agree- 
 ment with a vaguely felt Beyond, that stands out 
 there as Object. 
 
 Now this analysis of the elements of a judgment is 
 no explanation of our difficulties ; and in fact for 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 403 
 
 the moment only embarrasses us more. But the na- 
 ture of the difficulty may come home to us somewhat 
 more clearly, if we try to follow the thread of this 
 analysis a little further. Even if it is a very imper- 
 fect account, it may serve to lead us up to the true 
 insight that we seek into the nature of error. Let 
 us make the analysis a little more detailed. 
 
 In its typical form then, the judgment as a mental 
 state seems to us to begin with a relatively incom- 
 plete or unstable or disconnected mass of conscious- 
 ness, which we have called the Subject, as it first be- 
 gins to be present to us. This subject-idea is at- 
 tended by some degree of effort, namely, of atten- 
 tion, whose tendency is to complete this incomplete 
 subject by bringing it into closer connection with 
 more familiar mental life. This more familiar life is 
 represented by the predicate-idea. If the effort is 
 successful, the subject has new elements united to it, 
 assumes in consciousness a defmiteness, a coherency 
 with other states, a familiarity, which it lacked at the 
 outset of the act of judgment ; and this coherency it 
 gets through its union with the predicate. All this 
 is accompanied further by what one for short may 
 call a sense of dependence. The judgment feels it- 
 self not alone, but looks to a somewhat indefinite ob- 
 ject as the model after which the present union of 
 ideas is to be fashioned. And in this way we ex- 
 plain how the judgment is, in those words of Ueber- 
 weg's definition, " the consciousness about the objec- 
 tive validity of a subjective union of ideas." 
 
 Ny rn fl m^ro nnmplnti'oxLpf subject-idea through 
 the addition of a predicate-idea, the judgment is sim- 
 
404 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ply a mental phenomenon, having interest only to 
 the person that experiences it, and to a psychologist. 
 But as true or as false the judgment must be viewed 
 in respect to the indefinite object of what we have 
 called the sense of dependence, whereby the judg- 
 ment is accompanied. Seldom in any ordinary judg- 
 ment does this object become perfectly full and 
 clear ; for to make it so would often require many, 
 perhaps an infinite, series of judgments. Yet, for the 
 one judgment, the object, whether full and clear or 
 not, exists as object only in so far forth as the sense 
 of dependence has defined it. And the judgment is 
 true or false only with reference to this undefined ob- 
 ject. The intention to agree with the object is con- 
 tained in the sense jy(L dependence upon the object^ 
 and remains for this judgment incomplete, like the 
 object itself. Somewhat vaguely this single actTin- 
 tends to agree with this vague object. 
 
 Such being the case, how can the judgment, as 
 thus described, fairly be called false ? As mere psy- 
 chological combination of ideas it is neither true nor 
 false. As accompanied by the sense of dependence 
 upon an object, it would be false if it disagreed with 
 its imperfectly defined object. But, as described, 
 the only object that the judgment has is this imper- 
 fectly defined one. With this, in so far as it is for 
 the moment defined, the judgment must needs agree. 
 In so far as it is not defined, it is however not object 
 for this judgment at all, but for some other one. 
 What the imperfect sense of dependence would fur- 
 ther imply if it existed in a complete instead of in 
 an incomplete state, nobody can tell, any more than 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 405 
 
 one can tell what towns would grow up by a given 
 rain-pool, if it were no pool, but a great lake. The 
 object of a single judgment, being what it is, namely, 
 a vaguely defined object, present to this judgment, is 
 just what it is for this judgment, and the judgment 
 seems once for all to be true, in case it is sincere. 
 
 Some one may here at once answer that we neg- 
 lect in this description the close interdependence of 
 various judgments. Thought, some one may say, is 
 an organic unity. Separated from all else but its 
 own incompletely defined object, a single judgment 
 cannot be erroneous. Only in the organic unity of 
 a series of judgments, having a common object, is 
 the error of one of them possible. We reply that 
 all this will turn out to be just our result. But the 
 usual supposition at the outset is that any judgment 
 has by itself its own object, so that thereby alone, 
 apart from other judgments, it stands or falls. And 
 thus far we have tried to show that this natural sup- 
 position leads us into difficulty. We cannot see 
 how a single sincere judgment should possibly fail 
 to agree with its own chosen object. But enough of 
 our problem in general. We must consider certain 
 classes of errors more in detail. Let us see how, in 
 these special classes of cases, we shall succeed in ver- 
 ifying the natural presupposition of common sense, 
 which regards error as possible only when our object 
 is not wholly present to mind, and which assumes 
 that a judgment can have an object that is yet only 
 partially present to mind. In choosing the classes of 
 cases, we shall first follow common sense as to their 
 definition. We shall take just the assumptions of 
 
406 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 daily life, and shall show that they lead us into diffi- 
 culty. We are not for the first bound to explain 
 why these assumptions are made. That common 
 sense makes them is enough. 
 
 But let the reader remember : The whole value of 
 our argument lies in its perfect generality. How- 
 ever much we dwell on particular classes of errors, 
 we care nothing for the proof that just those errors 
 are inexplicable, but only for the fact that they il- 
 lustrate how, without some entirely new hypothesis, 
 absolutely all error becomes impossible. This or 
 that class of judgments may be one in which all the 
 judgments are relative, but the total relativity of 
 our thought implies an incomprehensible and contra- 
 dictory state of things. Any hypothesis about error 
 that makes total relativity the only admissible view, 
 must therefore give place to some new hypothesis. 
 And our illustrations in the following are intended 
 to show that just what constitutes the difficulty in 
 respect of these illustrations, makes the existence of 
 any error inexplicable without some new hypothesis. 
 
 V. 
 
 The class of errors that we shall first take seems, 
 to common sense, common enough. It is the class 
 known as errors about our neighbor's states of mind. 
 Let us then, for argument's sake, assume without 
 proof that our neighbors do exist. For we are not 
 here concerned to answer Solipsism, but merely to 
 exemplify the difficulties about the nature of error. 
 If our neighbors did not exist, then the nature of 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 407 
 
 the error that would lie in saying that they do exist 
 would present almost exactly the same difficulties. 
 We prefer, however, to begin with the common-sense 
 assumption about ourselves and our neighbors as 
 separate individuals, and to ask how error can then 
 arise in judging of our neighbors' minds. 
 
 In the first place then : Who is my neighbor ? 
 Surely, on the assumptions that we all make, and 
 that we made all through the ethical part of our dis- 
 cussion, he is no one of my thoughts, nor is any part 
 of him ever any part of my thought. He is not my 
 object, but, in Professor Clifford's phrase, an " eject," 
 wholly outside of my ideas. He is no " thing in my 
 dream," just as I am not in his dream. 
 
 Yet I make judgments about him, and he makes 
 them about me. And when I make judgments about 
 him, I do so by having in my thought some set of my 
 own ideas that, although not himself, do yet, as I 
 say, represent him. A kind of dummy, a symbol, a 
 graven image of my own thought's creation, a phan- 
 tom of mine, stands there in me as the representa- 
 tive of his mind ; and all I say about my neighbor's 
 inner life refers directly to this representative. The 
 Scottish philosophy has had much to say to the world 
 about what it calls direct or presentative, as opposed 
 to representative, knowledge of objects. But surely 
 the most obstinate Scottish philosopher that ever ate 
 oatmeal cannot hold so tenaciously by his national 
 doctrine as to say that I have, according to common 
 sense, anything but a representative knowledge of 
 my 'neighbor's thoughts and feelings. That is the 
 only sort of knowledge that common sense will re- 
 
408 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 gard as possible to me, if so much as that is possible 
 But how I can know about this outside being is not 
 now our concern. We notice only that our difficulty 
 about error conies back to us in a new form. For 
 how can I err about my neighbor, since, for this com- 
 mon-sense view, he is not even partly in my thoughts ? 
 How can I intend that as the object of my thought 
 which never can be object for me at all ? 
 
 But not everybody will at once feel the force of 
 this question. We must be more explicit. Let us 
 take the now so familiar suggestion of our great hu- 
 morist about the six people that take part in every 
 conversation between two persons. If John and 
 Thomas are talking together, then the real John and 
 Thomas, their respective ideas of themselves, and 
 their ideas of each other, are all parties to the con- 
 versation. Let us consider four of these persons, 
 namely, the real John, the real Thomas, John as 
 Thomas conceives him, and Thomas as John con- 
 ceives him. When John judges, of whom does he 
 think? Plainly of that which can be an object to 
 his thoughts, namely, of his Thomas. About whom 
 then can he err ? About his Thomas ? No, for he 
 knows him too well. His conception of Thomas is 
 his conception, and what he asserts it to be, that it 
 is for him. About the real Thomas ? No, for it 
 should seem, according to common sense, that he has 
 nothing to do with the real Thomas in his thought, 
 since that Thomas never becomes any part of his 
 thought at all. u But," says one, " there must be 
 some fallacy here, since we are sure that John can 
 err about the real Thomas." Indeed he can, say 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 409 
 
 we ; but ours is not this fallacy. Common sense has 
 made it. Common sense has said : " Thomas never 
 is in John's thought, and yet John can blunder 
 about Thomas." How shall we unravel the knot ? 
 
 One way suggests itself. Mayhap we have been 
 too narrow in our definition of object. Common 
 sense surely insists that objects are outside of our 
 thought. If, then, I have a judgment, and another 
 being sees both my judgment and some outside ob- 
 ject that was not in my thought, and sees how that 
 thought is unlike the object in some critical respect, 
 this being could say that my assertion was an error. 
 So then with John and Thomas. .If Thomas could 
 know John's thoughts about him, then Thomas could 
 possibly see John's error. That is what is meant 
 by the error in John's thought. 
 
 But mere disagreement of a thought with any ran- 
 dom object does not make the thought erroneous. 
 The judgment must disagree with its chosen object. 
 If John never has Thomas in thought at all, how 
 can John choose the real Thomas as his object ? If 
 I judge about a penholder that is in this room, and 
 if the next room is in all respects like this, save for 
 a penholder in it, with which my assertion does not 
 agree, who, looking at that penholder in that other 
 room, can say that my judgment is false ? For I 
 meant not that penholder when I spoke, but this 
 one. I knew perhaps nothing about that one, had 
 it not in mind, and so could not err about it. Even 
 so, suppose that outside of John there is a real 
 Thomas, similar, as it happens, to John's ideal 
 Thomas, but lacking some thought or affection that 
 
410 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 John attributes to his ideal Thomas. Does that 
 make John's notion an error ? No, for he spoke and 
 could speak only of his ideal Thomas. The real 
 Thomas was the other room, that he knew not of, 
 the other side of the shield, that he never could qon- 
 ceive. His Thomas was his phantom Thomas. This 
 phantom it is that he judges and thinks about, and 
 his thoughts may have their own consistency or in- 
 consistency. But with the real other person they 
 have nothing to do. The real other is not his ob- 
 ject, and how can he err about what is not object 
 for him ? 
 
 Absurd, indeed, some one will reply to us. John 
 and Thomas have to deal with representative phan- 
 toms of each other, to be sure ; but that only makes 
 each more apt to err about the real other. And the 
 test that they can err is a very simple one. Suppose 
 a spectator, a third person, to whom John and 
 Thomas were both somehow directly present, so that 
 he as it were included both of them. Then John's 
 judgment of his phantom Thomas would be by this 
 spectator at once compared with the real Thomas, 
 and even so would Thomas's judgment of John be 
 treated. If now John's phantom Thomas agreed 
 with the real Thomas, then John's ideas would be 
 declared in so far truthful ; otherwise they would be 
 erroneous. And this explains what is meant by 
 John's power to err about Thomas. 
 
 The explanation is fair enough for its own pur- 
 pose, and we shall need it again before long. But 
 just now we cannot be content with it. For what 
 we want to know is not what the judgment of a 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 411 
 
 third thinker would be in case these two were some- 
 how not independent beings at all, but things in 
 this third being's thought. For we have started out 
 with the supposition of common sense that John 
 and Thomas are not dreams or thoughts of some 
 higher third being, but that they are independent 
 beings by themselves. Our supposition may have 
 to be given up hereafter, but for the present we 
 want to hold fast to it. And so John's judgment, 
 which we had supposed to be about the independ- 
 ently existing Thomas, has now turned out to be 
 only a judgment about John's idea of Thomas. But 
 judgments are false only in case they disagree with 
 their intended objects. What, however, is the ob- 
 ject of John's judgment when he thinks about 
 Thomas ? Not the real Thomas, who could not pos- 
 sibly be an object in another man's thoughts. John's 
 real object being an ideal Thomas, he cannot, if sin- 
 cere, and if fully conscious of what he means by 
 Thomas, fail to agree in his statements with his own 
 ideal. In short, on this our original supposition, 
 John and Thomas are independent entities, each of 
 which cannot possibly enter in real person into the 
 thoughts of the other. Each may be somehow rep- 
 resented in the other's thoughts by a phantom, and 
 only this phantom can be intended by the other 
 when he judges about the first. For unless one talks 
 nonsense, it should seem as if one could mean only 
 what one has in mind. 
 
 Thus, like the characters in a certain Bab ballad, 
 real John, real Thomas, the people in this simple 
 tale, are total strangers to each other. You might 
 
412 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 as well ask a blind man to make true or false judg- 
 ments about the real effects of certain combinations 
 of colors, as to ask either John or Thomas, defined 
 as common sense defines them, to make any judg- 
 ments about each other. Common sense will assert 
 that a blind man can learn and repeat verbally cor- 
 rect statements about color, or verbally false state- 
 ments about color, but, according to the common- 
 sense view, in no case can he err about color-ideas 
 as such, which are never present to him. You will 
 be quite ready to say that a dog can make mistakes 
 about the odors of the numberless tracks on the 
 highway. You will assure us, however, that you 
 cannot make mistakes about them because these 
 odors do not exist for you. According to the com- 
 mon-sense view, a mathematician can make blunders 
 in demonstrating the properties of equations. A 
 Bushman cannot, for he can have no ideas correspond- 
 ing to equations. But how then can John or Thomas 
 make errors about each other, when neither is more 
 present to the other than is color to the blind man, 
 the odor of the tracks on the highway to the dog's 
 master, or the idea of an equation to a Bushman? 
 Here common sense forsakes us, assuring us that 
 there is such error, but refusing to define it. 
 
 The inconsistency involved in all this common- 
 sense view, and the consequences of the inconsistency, 
 will appear yet better with yet further illustration. 
 A dream is false in so far as it contains the judgment 
 that such and such things exist apart from us ; but 
 at least in so far as we merely assert in our dreams 
 about the objects as we conceive them, we make true 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 413 
 
 assertions. But is not our actual life of assertions 
 about actual fellow-beings much like a dream to 
 which there should happen to correspond some real 
 scene or event in the world ? Such correspondence 
 would not make the dream really " true," nor yet 
 false. It would be a coincidence, remarkable for an 
 outside observer, but none the less would the dreamer 
 be thinking in his dream not about external objects, 
 but about the things in his dream. But is not our 
 supposed Thomas so and only so in the thought of 
 John as he would be if John chanced to dream of 
 a Thomas that was, to an external spectator, like the 
 real one ? Is not then the phantom Thomas, John's 
 only direct object, actually a thing in John's thought? 
 Is then the independent Thomas an object for John 
 in any sense ? 
 
 Yet again. Let us suppose that two men are shut 
 up, each in a closed room by himself, and for his 
 whole life ; and let us suppose that by a lantern con- 
 trivance each of them is able at times to produce on 
 the wall of the other's room a series of pictures. 
 But neither of them can ever know what pictures he 
 produces in the other's room, and neither can know 
 anything of the other's room, as such, but only of 
 the pictures. Let the two remain forever in this re- 
 lation. One of them, A, sees on his wall pictures, 
 which resemble more or less what he has seen in his 
 own room at other times. Yet he perceives these to 
 be only pictures, and he supposes them to represent 
 what goes on in another room, which he conceives as 
 like his own. He is interested, he examines the phe- 
 nomena, he predicts their future changes, he passes 
 
414 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 judgment upon them. He may, if you like to con- 
 tinue the hypothesis, find some way of affecting 
 them, by himself acting in a way mysterious to him- 
 self so as to produce changes in B's actual room, 
 which again affect the pictures that the real B pro- 
 duces in A's room. Thus A might hold what he 
 would call communication with his phantom room. 
 Even so, B lives with pictures before him that are 
 produced from A's room. Now one more supposi- 
 tion, namely, that A and B have absolutely no other 
 means of communication, that both are shut up alto- 
 gether and always have been, that neither has any 
 objects before him but his own thoughts and the 
 changing pictures on the wall of his room. In this 
 case what difference does it make whether or no the 
 pictures in A's room are actually like the things 
 that could be seen in B's room ? Will that make 
 A's judgments either true or false? Even if A, 
 acting by means that he himself cannot understand, 
 is able to control the pictures on his wall by some 
 alteration that he unconsciously produces in B's 
 room and its pictures, still A cannot be said to have 
 any knowledge of the real B and his room at all. 
 And, for the same reason, A cannot make mistakes 
 about the real room of B, for he will never even 
 think of that real room. He will, like a man in a 
 dream, think and be able to think only of the pic- 
 tures on his wall. And when he refers them to an 
 outside cause, he does not mean by this cause the real 
 B and his real room, for he has never dreamed of the 
 real B, but only of the pictures and of his own inter- 
 pretation of them. He can therefore make no false 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 415 
 
 judgments about B's room, any more than a Bushman 
 can make false judgments about the integral calculus. 
 
 If to our present world there does correspond a 
 second world somewhere off in space, a world exactly 
 like this, where just the same events at every instant 
 do actually take place, still the judgments that we 
 make about our world are not actually true or false 
 with reference to that world, for we mean this world, 
 not that one, when we judge. Why are not John's 
 Thomas and the real Thomas related like this world 
 and that second world in distant space ? Why are 
 not both like the relation of A's conceived phantom 
 room and B's real room ? Nothing of either real 
 room is ever present to the other. Each prisoner 
 can make true or false judgments if at all, then, 
 only about the pictures on his wall ; but neither 
 has even the suggestion that could lead him to make 
 a blunder about the other's, real room, of which he 
 has and can have not the faintest idea. 
 
 One reason why we fail to see at once this fact 
 lies in the constant tendency to regard the matter 
 from the point of view of a third person, instead of 
 from the point of view that we still implicitly attrib- 
 ute to A and B themselves. If A could get outside 
 of his room once and see B's room, then he could 
 say : " My picture was a good one," or the reverse. 
 But, in the supposed case, he not only never sees B's 
 room, but he never sees anything but his own pic- 
 tures, never gets out of his room at all for any pur- 
 pose. Hence, his sole objects of assertion being his 
 pictures, he is innocent of any power to err about 
 B's room as it is in itself, even as the man born blind 
 
416 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 is innocent of any power to err about the relations 
 of colors. 
 
 Now this relation of A and B, as they were sup- 
 posed to dwell in their perpetual imprisonment, is 
 essentially like the relation that we previously pos- 
 tulated between two independent subjects. If I can- 
 not have you in my thought at all, but only a picture 
 produced by you, I am in respect to you like A con- 
 fined to the pictures produced from B's room. How- 
 ever much I may fancy that I am talking of you, I 
 am really talking about my idea of you, which for 
 me can have no relation whatever to the real you. 
 And so John and Thomas remain shut up in their 
 prisons. Each thinks of his phantom of the other. 
 Only a third person, who included them both, who 
 in fact treated them as, in the Faust-Epilogue, the 
 Pater Seraphicus treats the selige Kndbzn (Er 
 nimmt sie in sich, says, the stage direction) only 
 such an inclusive thought could compare the phan- 
 toms with the real, and only in him, not in them- 
 selves, would John and Thomas have any ideas of 
 each other at all, true or false. 
 
 This result is foreign to our every-day thought, be- 
 cause this every-day thought really makes innocent 
 use of two contradictory views of the relations of 
 conscious beings. On the one hand we regard them 
 as utterly remote from one another, as what Pro- 
 fessor Clifford called ejects ; and then we speak of 
 them as if the thoughts of one could as such become 
 thoughts of the other, or even as if one of them 
 could as an independent being still become object 
 in the thought of the other. No wonder that, with 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 417 
 
 such contradictory assumptions as to the nature of 
 our relations to our neighbors, we find it very easy 
 to make absurd statements about the meaning of 
 error. The contradiction of common sense has in 
 fact just here much to do with the ethical illusion 
 that we called the illusion of selfishness. To clear 
 up this point will be useful to us, therefore, in more 
 ways than one. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Disappointed once more in our efforts to under- 
 stand how error is possible, we turn to another class 
 of cases, which lie in a direction where, at least for 
 this once, all will surely be plain. Errors about 
 matters of fact or experience are certainly clear 
 enough in nature. And as this class of errors is 
 practically most important, the subtleties of our pre- 
 vious investigation may be dismissed with light heart 
 so soon as we have gotten rid of the few little ques- 
 tions that will now beset us. It is to be noted that 
 all errors about material objects, about the laws 
 of nature, about history, and about the future, are 
 alike errors about our actual or possible experiences. 
 We expect or postulate an experience that at the 
 given time, or under the given conditions, turns out 
 to be other than it was postulated or expected to be. 
 Now since our experiences not now present are objec- 
 tive facts, and capable of clear definition, it would 
 seem clear that error concerning them is an easily 
 comprehensible thing. 
 
 But alas ! again we are disappointed. That er- 
 rors in matters of experience are common enough is 
 
 27 
 
418 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 indubitable, but equally evident becomes the diffi- 
 culty of defining what they are and how they are 
 possible. Take the case of error about an expected 
 future. What do we mean by a future time? How 
 do we identify a particular time ? Both these ques- 
 tions plunge us into the sea of problems about the 
 nature of time itself. When I say, Thus and so 
 will it be at such and such a future moment, I pos- 
 tulate certain realities not now given to my con- 
 sciousness. And singular realities they are. For 
 they have now no existence at all. Yet I postulate 
 that I can err about them. This their non-existence 
 is a peculiar kind of non-existence, and requires me 
 to make just such and such affirmations about it. 
 If I fail to correspond to the true nature of this 
 non-existent reality, I make an error ; and it is pos- 
 tulated not merely that my present statement will 
 in that case hereafter turn out false or become false, 
 but also that it is now false, is at this moment an 
 error, even though the reality with which it is to 
 agree is centuries off in the future. But this is not 
 all the difficulty. I postulate also that an error in 
 prediction can be discovered when the time comes 
 by the failure of the prediction to verify itself. I 
 postulate then that I can look back and say : Thus 
 and thus I predicted about this moment, and thus 
 and thus it has come to pass, and this event con- 
 tradicts that expectation. But can I in fact ever 
 accomplish this comparison at all ? And is the com- 
 parison very easily intelligible ? For when the event 
 comes to pass, the expectation no longer exists. The 
 two thoughts, namely, expectation and actual expe- 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 419 
 
 rience, are separate thoughts, far apart in time. 
 How can I bring them together to compare them, so 
 as to see if they have the same object ? It will not 
 do to appeal to memory for the purpose ; for the 
 same question would recur about the memory in its 
 relation to the original thought. How can a past 
 thought, being past, be compared to a present thought 
 to see whether they stand related ? The past thought 
 lived in itself, had its own ideas of what it then 
 called future, and its own interpretation thereof. 
 How can you show, or intelligently affirm, that the 
 conception which the past expectation had of its 
 future moment is so identical with the conception 
 which this present thought has of this present mo- 
 ment, as to make these two conceived moments one 
 and the same ? Here in short we have supposed two 
 different ideas, one of an expected future, the other 
 of an experienced present, and we have supposed 
 the two ideas to be widely separated in time, and by 
 hypothesis they are not together in one consciousness 
 at all. Now how can one say that in fact they relate 
 to the same moment at all ? How is it intelligible 
 to say that they do ? How, in fine, can a not-given 
 future be a real object of any thought; and how, 
 when it is once the object thereof, can any subse- 
 quent moment be identified with this object ? 
 
 A present thought and a past thought are in fact 
 separate, even as were John and Thomas. Each 
 one means the object that it thinks. How can they 
 have a common object ? Are they not once for all 
 different thoughts, each with its own intent ? But 
 in order to render intelligible the existence of error 
 
420 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 about matters of fact, we must make the unintelligi- 
 ble assumption, so it would seem, that these two dif- 
 ferent thoughts have the same intent, and are but 
 one. And such is the difficulty that we find in our 
 second great class of cases. 
 
 VH. 
 
 So much for the problem, both in general and in 
 some particular instances. But now may not the 
 reader insist, after all, that there can be in this wise 
 no errors whatever ? Contradictory as it seems, have 
 we not, after all, put our judgments into a position 
 whence escape for us is impossible ? If every judg- 
 ment is thus by its nature bound up in a closed cir- 
 cle of thought, with no outlook, can any one come 
 afterwards and give it an external object ? Perhaps, 
 then, there is a way out of our difficulty by frankly 
 saying that our thoughts may be neither truths nor 
 errors beyond themselves, but just occurrences, with 
 a meaning wholly subjective. 
 
 We desire the reader to try to realize this view of 
 total relativity once more in the form in which, with 
 all its inherent absurdities, it now comes back to us 
 for the last time. It says, " Every judgment, A is 
 B, in fact does agree and can agree only with its 
 own object, which is present in mind when it is made. 
 With no external object can it agree or fail to agree. 
 It stands alone, with its own object. It has neither 
 truth nor error beyond itself. It fulfills all its inten- 
 tions, and is true, if it agrees with what was present 
 to it when it was thought. Only in this sense is 
 there any truth or falsity possible for our thought." 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 421 
 
 But once more, this inviting way out of the diffi- 
 culty needs only to be tried to reveal its own contra- 
 dictions. The thought that says, " No judgment is 
 true beyond itself," is that thought true beyond it- 
 self or not ? If it is true beyond itself, then we have 
 the possibility of other truth than the merely subjec- 
 tive or relative truth. If it is false, then equally we 
 have objective falsity. If it is neither true nor false, 
 then the doctrine of relativity has not been affirmed 
 at all as a truth. One sets up an idea of a world of 
 separate, disorganized thoughts, and then says, " Each 
 of them deals only with its own object, and they have 
 no unity that could make them true or false." But 
 still this world that one thus sets up must be the 
 true world. Else is there no meaning in the doc- 
 trine of relativity. Twist as one will, one gets not 
 out of the whirlpool of thought. Error must be real, 
 and yet, as common sense arranges these judgments 
 and their relations to one another, error cannot be 
 real. There is so far no escape. 
 
 The perfectly general character of the argument 
 must be understood. One might escape it if it ap- 
 plied to any one class of errors only. Then one 
 would say : " In fact, the class of cases in question 
 may be cases that exclude the possibility of both 
 truth and error." But no, that cannot be urged 
 against us, for our argument applies equally to all 
 possible errors. In short, either no error at all is 
 possible, or else there must be possible an infinite 
 mass of error. For the possibilities of thought being 
 infinite, either all thought is excluded once for all 
 from the possibility of error, or else to every possi- 
 
422 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ble truth there can be opposed an infinite mass of 
 error. All this infinite mass is at stake upon the 
 issue of our investigation. Total relativity, or else 
 an infinite possibility of truth and error ; that is 
 the alternative before us. And total relativity of 
 thought involves self-contradiction. 
 
 Every way but one has been tried to lead us out 
 of our difficulty. Shall we now give up the whole 
 matter, and say that error plainly exists, but baffles 
 definition ? This way may please most people, but 
 the critical philosophy knows of no unanswerable 
 problem affecting the work of thought in itself con- 
 sidered. Here we need only patience and reflection, 
 and we are sure to be some day rewarded. And in- 
 deed our solution is not far off, but very nigh us. 
 We have indicated it all along. To explain how 
 one could be in error about his neighbor's thoughts, 
 we suggested the case where John and Thomas 
 should be present to a third thinker whose thought 
 should include them both. We objected to this sug- 
 gestion that thus the natural presupposition that John 
 and Thomas are separate self-existent beings would 
 be contradicted. But on this natural presupposition 
 neither of these two subjects could become object to 
 the other at all, and error would here be impossible. 
 Suppose then that we drop the natural presuppo- 
 sition, and say that John and Thomas are both actu- 
 ally present to and included in a third and higher 
 thought. To explain the possibility of error about 
 matters of fact seemed hard, because of the natural 
 postulate that time is a pure succession of separate 
 moments, so that the future is now as future non-ex- 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 423 
 
 istent, and so that judgments about the future lack 
 rjeal objects, capable of identification. Let us then 
 drop this natural postulate, and declare time once 
 for all present in all its moments to an universal 
 all-inclusive thought. And to sum up, let us over- 
 come all our difficulties by declaring that all the 
 many Beyonds, which single significant judgments 
 seem vaguely and separately to postulate, are pres- 
 ent as fully realized intended objects to the unity 
 of an all-inclusive, absolutely clear, universal, and 
 conscious thought, of which all judgments, true or 
 false, are but fragments, the whole being at once 
 Absolute Truth and Absolute Knowledge. Then all 
 our puzzles will disappear at a stroke, and error will 
 be possible, because any one finite thought, viewed 
 in relation to its own intent, may or may not be seen 
 by this higher thought as successful and adequate in 
 this intent. 
 
 How this absolute thought is to be related to in- 
 dividual thoughts, we can in general very simply de- 
 fine. When one says : " This color now before me 
 is red, and to say that it is blue would be to make a 
 blunder," one represents an including consciousness. 
 One includes in one's present thought three distinct 
 elements, and has them present in the unity of a sin- 
 gle moment of insight. These elements are, first, 
 the perception of red ; secondly, the reflective judg- 
 ment whose object is this perception, and whose 
 agreement with the object constitutes its own truth; 
 and, thirdly, the erroneous reflection, TJiis is blue, 
 which is in the same thought compared with the per- 
 ception and rejected as error. Now, viewed as sep- 
 
424 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 arate acts of thought, apart from the unity of an in- 
 cluding thought, these three elements would give rise 
 to the same puzzles that we have been considering. 
 It is their presence in a higher and inclusive thought 
 that makes their relations plain. Even so we must 
 conceive the relation of John's thought to the united 
 total of thought that includes him and Thomas. 
 Real John and his phantom Thomas, real Thomas 
 and his phantom John, are all present as elements in 
 the including consciousness, which completes the in- 
 complete intentions of both the individuals, con- 
 stitutes their true relations, and gives the thought 
 of each about the other whatever of truth or of 
 [error it possesses. In short, error becomes possible 
 as one moment or element in a higher truth, that 
 is, in a consciousness that makes the error a part of 
 itself, while recognizing it as error. 
 
 So far then we propose this as a possible solution 
 for our puzzles. But now we may insist upon it as 
 the only possible solution. Either there is no such 
 thing as error, which statement is a fiat self -contra- 
 diction, or else there is an infinite unity of conscious 
 i thought to which is present all possible truth. For 
 suppose that there is error. Then there must be an 
 infinite mass of error possible. If error is possible 
 at all, then as many errors are possible as you please, 
 since, to every truth, an indefinite mass of error may 
 be opposed. Nor is this mere possibility enough. 
 An error is possible for us when we are able to make 
 a false judgment. But in order that the judgment 
 should be false when made, it must have been false 
 before it was made. An error is possible only when 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 425 
 
 the judgment in which the error is to be expressed 
 always was false. Error, if possible, is then eter- 
 nally actual. Each error so possible implies a judg- 
 ment whose intended object is beyond itself, and is 
 also the object of the corresponding true judgment. 
 But two judgments cannot have the same object save 
 as they are both present to one thought. For as 
 separate thoughts they would have separate sub- 
 jects, predicates, intentions, and objects, even as we 
 have previously seen in detail. So that every error 
 implies a thought that includes it and the corre- 
 sponding truth in the unity of one thought with the 
 object of both of them. Only as present to an in- 
 cluding thought are they either true or false. Thus 
 then we are driven to assume an infinite thought, 
 judging truth and error. But that this infinite 
 thought must also be a rational unity, not a mere 
 aggregate of truths, is evident from the fact that 
 error is possible not only as to objects, but as to the 
 relations of objects, so that all the possible relations 
 of all the objects in space, in time, or in the world 
 of the barely possible, must also be present to the 
 all-including thought. And to know all relations at 
 once is to know them in absolute rational unity, as 
 forming in their wholeness one single thought. 
 
 What, then., is an .error J?. An error, we reply, is 
 an incomplete thought, that to a higher thought, 
 which includes it and its intended object, is known 
 as having failed in the purpose that it more or less 
 clearly had, and that is fully realized in this higher 
 thought. And without such higher inclusive thought, 
 an assertion has no external object, and is no error. 
 
426 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 If our argument were a Platonic dialogue, there 
 would be hereabouts an interruption from some im- 
 patient Thrasymachus or Callicles or Polus, who 
 would have been watching us, threatening and mut- 
 tering, during all of the latter part of our discussion. 
 At last, perhaps, o-uorpei^as kavrov a>o-7Tp Orjptov, he 
 would spring upon us, and would say : " Why, you 
 nonsense-mongers, have you not bethought you of 
 the alternative that represents the reality in this 
 question of yours ? Namely, an error is an error, 
 neither to the thought that thinks it, nor of necessity 
 to any higher inclusive thought, but only to a possi- 
 ble critical thought that should undertake afterwards 
 to compare it with its object. An error is a thought 
 such that if a critical thought did come and compare 
 it with its object, it would be seen to be false. And 
 it has an object for such a critical thought. This 
 critical thought need not be real and actually include 
 it, but may be only a possible judge of its truth. 
 Hence your Infinite all-knower is no reality, only a 
 logical possibility ; and your insight amounts to this, 
 that if all were known to an all-knower, he would 
 judge error to be mistaken. And so error is what 
 he would perceive to be error. What does all that 
 amount to but worthless tautology?" 
 
 This argument of our Thrasymachus is the only 
 outwardly plausible objection that we fear to the 
 foregoing analysis, because it is the only objection 
 that fully expresses the old-established view of com- 
 mon sense about such problems. Though common 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 427 
 
 sense never formulates our present difficulty, com- 
 mon sense still dimly feels that to some possible 
 (not actual) judge of truth, appeal is made when 
 we say that a thing is false not merely for us, but 
 in very truth. And this possible judge of common 
 sense we have now unhesitatingly declared to be an 
 Infinite Actuality, absolutely necessary to constitute 
 the relation of truth and error. Without it there 
 is for our view no truth or error conceivable. The 
 words, This is true, or This is false, mean nothing, 
 we declare, unless there is the inclusive thought for 
 which the truth is true, the falsehood false. No 
 barely possible judge, who would see the error if he 
 were there, will do for us. He must be there, this 
 judge, to constitute the error. Without him nothing 
 but total subjectivity would be possible ; and thought 
 would then become purely a pathological phenome- 
 non, an occurrence without truthfulness or falsity, 
 an occurrence that would interest anybody if it 
 could be observed; but that, unfortunately, being 
 only a momentary phantom, could not be observed 
 at all from without, but must be dimly felt from 
 within. Our thought needs the Infinite Thought in 
 order that it may get, through this Infinite judge, 
 the privilege of being so much as even an error. 
 
 This, it will be said, is but reassertion. But how 
 do we maintain this view against our Thrasymachus ? 
 Our answer is only a repetition of things that we 
 have already had to say, in the argument for what 
 we here reassert. If the judgment existed alone, 
 without the inclusive thought to judge it, then, as it 
 existed alone, it either had an object, or had none. 
 
428 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 But if it had none, it was no error. If it had one, 
 then either it knew what its object actually was, or it 
 did not know what its object was, or it partially knew 
 and partially did not know what its object actually 
 was. In the first case the judgment must have been 
 an identical one, like the judgment A pain is a pain. 
 Such a judgment knows its own object, therefore can- 
 not fail to agree with it, and cannot be an error. If 
 the judgment knew not its own object at all, then it 
 had no meaning, and so could not have failed to agree 
 with the object that it had not. If, however, this 
 separate judgment knew its object enough to intend 
 just that object, but not enough to insure agreement 
 with it, all our difficulties return. The possible 
 judge cannot give the judgment its complete object 
 until he becomes its actual judge. Yet as fair judge 
 he must then give it the object that it already had 
 without him. Meanwhile, however, the judgment re- 
 mains in the unintelligible attitude previously stud- 
 ied at length. It is somehow possessed of just the 
 object it intends, but yet does not know in reality 
 what it does intend, else it would avoid error. Its 
 object, in so far as unknown to it, is no object for 
 it ; and yet only in so far as the object is thus un- 
 known can it be erred about. What helps in all 
 this the barely possible judge? The actual judge 
 must *be there ; and for him the incomplete intention 
 must be complete. He knows what is really this 
 judgment's object, for he knows what is imperfectly 
 meant in it. He knows the dream, and the inter- 
 pretation thereof. He knows both the goal and the 
 way thither. But all this is, to the separate judgment 
 as such, a mystery. 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 429 
 
 In fact, the separate judgments, waiting for the 
 possible judge to test them, are like a foolish man 
 wandering in a wood, who is asked whether he has 
 lost his way. " I may have lost it," he answers. 
 "But whither are you going?" "That I cannot 
 tell ? " " Have you no goal ? " "I may have, but 
 I have 110 notion what it is." " What then do you 
 mean ByTsaying that you may have lost the way to 
 this place that you are not seeking ? For you seem 
 to be seeking no place ; how then can you have lost 
 the way thither?" "I mean that some possible 
 other man, who was wise enough to find whither I 
 am trying to go, might possibly, in his wisdom, also 
 perceive that I am not on the way to that place. So 
 I may be going away from my chosen goal, although 
 I am unaware what goal it is that I have chosen." 
 Such a demented man as this would fairly repre- 
 sent the meaningless claim of the separate judgment, 
 either to truthfulness, or to the chance of error. 
 
 In short, though the partial thought may be, as 
 such, unconscious of its own aim, it can be so uncon- 
 scious only in case it is contained in a total thought 
 as one moment thereof. 
 
 It will be seen that wherever we have dealt in the 
 previous argument with the possibility of error as a 
 mere possibility, we have had to use the result of the 
 previous chapter concerning the nature of possibil- 
 ity itself. The idea of the barely possible, in which 
 there is no actuality, is an empty idea. If anything 
 is possible, then, when we say so, we postulate some- 
 thing as actually existent in order to constitute this 
 possibility. The conditions of possible error must 
 
430 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 be actual. Bare possibility is blank nothingness. If 
 the nature of error necessarily and with perfect gen- 
 erality demands certain conditions, then these con- 
 ditions are as eternal as the erroneousness of error 
 itself is eternal. And thus the inclusive thought, 
 which constitutes the error, must be postulated as 
 existent. 
 
 So, finally, let one try to affirm that the infinite 
 content of the all-including mind does not exist, and 
 that the foregoing idealism is a mere illusion of ours. 
 He will find that he is involved in a circle from 
 which there is no escape. For let him return to the 
 position of total relativity and so say : " The infi- 
 nite thought is unreal for me, and hence you are 
 wrong." But then also he admits that we are right, 
 for in affirming this infinite we affirm, according to 
 this doctrine of total relativity itself, something that 
 is just as true as it seems to us to be true. The op- 
 posing argument is thus at each moment of its prog- 
 ress involved in a contradiction. Or again, let him 
 insist that our doctrine is not only relatively, but 
 really false. Then however he will fail to show us 
 what this real falsity is. In fact he says what all our 
 previous examination shows to mean, this, namely, 
 that an infinite thought does exist, and does expe- 
 rience the truth, and compares our thought with the 
 truth, and then observes this thought of ours to be 
 false, that is, it discovers that itself is non-existent. 
 Whoever likes this result may hold it if he can. 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 431 
 
 IX. 
 
 Now that our argument is completed as an inves- 
 tigation, let us review it in another way. We started 
 from the fact of Error. That there is error is in- 
 dubitable. What is, however, an error ? The sub- 
 stance of our whole reasoning about the nature of 
 error amounted to the result that in and of itself 
 alone, no single judgment is or can be an error. 
 Only as actually included in a higher thought, that 
 gives to the first its completed object, and compares 
 it therewith, is the first thought an error. It re- 
 mains otherwise a mere mental fragment, a torso, a 
 piece of drift-wood, neither true nor false, objectless, 
 no complete act of thought at all. But the higher 
 thought must include the opposed truth, to which 
 the error is compared in that higher thought. The 
 higher thought is the whole truth, of which the error 
 is by itself an incomplete fragment. 
 
 Now, as we saw with this as a starting-point, there 
 is no stopping-place short of an Infinite Thought. 
 The possibilities of error are infinite. Infinite then 
 must be the inclusive thought. Here is this stick, 
 this brickbat, this snow-flake : there is an infinite 
 mass of error possible about any one of them, and 
 notice, not merely possible is it, but actual. All the 
 infinite series of blunders that you could make about 
 them not only would be blunders, but in very truth 
 now are blunders, though you personally could never 
 commit them all. You cannot in fact make, a truth 
 or a falsehood by your thought. You only find one. 
 From all eternity that truth was true, that falsehood 
 
432 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 false. Very well then, that infinite thought must 
 somehow have had all that in it from the beginning. 
 If a man doubts it, let him answer our previous dif- 
 ficulties. Let him show us how he can make an 
 error save through the presence of an actual inclu- 
 sive thought for which the error always was error 
 and never became such at all. If he can do that, 
 let him try. We should willingly accept the result 
 if he could show it to us. But he cannot. We 
 have rambled over those barren hills already too 
 long. Save for Thought there is no truth, no error. 
 Save for inclusive Thought, there is no truth, no 
 error, in separate thoughts. Separate thoughts as 
 such cannot then know or have the distinction be- 
 tween their own truth and their own falsity in them- 
 selves, and apart from the inclusive thought. There 
 is then nothing of truth or of error to be found in 
 the world of separate thoughts as such. All the 
 thoughts are therefore in the last analysis actually 
 true or false, only for the all-including Thought, the 
 I Infinite. 
 
 We could have reached the same result had we 
 set out from the problem, What is Truth? We 
 chose not to do so because our skepticism had the 
 placid answer ready : " No matter what truth is, for 
 very likely there is little or no truth at all to be had. 
 Why trouble one's mind to define what a fairy or a 
 brownie is ? " " Very well, then," we said to our 
 skepticism, " if that is thy play, we know a move that 
 thou thinkest not of. We will not ask thee of truth, 
 if thou thinkest there is none. We will ask thee of 
 error, wherein thou revelest." And our skepticism 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. ' 433 
 
 very cheerfully, if somewhat incoherently, answers, 
 that, " if there be little or no truth here below, there 
 is at least any amount of error, which as skeptics we 
 have all been detecting ever since we first went to 
 school." " We thank thee for that word, oh friend, 
 but now, what is an error?" Blessed be Socrates 
 for that question. Upon that rock philosophy can, 
 if it wants, build we know not yet how much. 
 
 It is enough for the moment to sum up the truth 
 that we have found. It is this : " All reality must 
 be present to the Unity of the Infinite Thought." 
 There is no chance of escape. For all reality is re- 
 ality because true judgments can be made about it. 
 And all reality, for the same reason, can be the ob- 
 ject of false judgments. Therefore, since the false 
 and the true judgments are all true or false as pres- 
 ent to the infinite thought, along with their objects, 
 no reality can escape. You and I and all of us, all 
 good, all evil, all truth, all falsehood, all things ac- 
 tual and possible, exist as they exist, and are known 
 for what they are, in and to the absolute thought ; 
 are therefore all judged as to their real character at 
 this everlasting throne of judgment. 
 
 This we have found to be true, because we tried 
 to doubt everything. We shall try to expound in 
 the coming chapter the religious value of the concep- 
 tion. We can however at once see this in it : The 
 Infinite Thought must, knowing all truth, include also 
 a knowledge of all wills, and of their conflict. For 
 him all this conflict, and all the other facts of the 
 moral world, take place. He then must know the 
 outcome of the conflict, that Moral Insight of our 
 
 28 
 
434 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 first book. In him then we have the Judge of our 
 ideals, and the Judge of our conduct. He must know 
 the exact value of the Good Will, which for him, 
 like all other possible truth, must be an actually re- 
 alized Fact. And so we cannot pause with a simply 
 theoretical idealism. Our doctrine is practical too. 
 We have found not only an infinite Seer of physical 
 facts, but an infinite Seer of the Good as well as of 
 the Evil. He knows what we have and what we 
 lack. In looking for goodness we are in no wise 
 looking for what the real world does not contain. 
 
 This, we say, we have found as a truth, because 
 we tried to doubt everything. We have taken the 
 wings of the morning, and we have fled ; but be- 
 hold, we are in the midst of the Spirit. Truly the 
 words that some people have thought so fantastic 
 ought henceforth to be put in the text-.books as com- 
 monplaces of logical analysis : - 
 
 I " They reckon ill that leave me out ; 
 When me they fly, I am the wings, 
 I am the doubter and the doubt." 
 
 Everything finite we can doubt, but not the Infinite. 
 (That eludes even our skepticism. The wold-build- 
 ers, and the theodicies that were to justify them, we 
 | could well doubt. The apologetic devices wearied 
 us. All the ontologies of the realistic schools were 
 just pictures, that we could accept or reject as we 
 'chose by means of postulates. We tried to escape 
 them all. We forsook all those gods that were yet 
 
 no gods ; but here we have found something that 
 abides, and waxes not old, something in which there 
 
 / is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. No 
 
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 435 
 
 power it is to be resisted, no plan-maker to Le foiled 
 by fallen angels, nothing finite, nothing striving, 
 seeking, losing, altering, growing weary ; the All- 
 Enfolder it is, and we know its name. Not Heart, 
 nor Love, though these also are in it and of it ; 
 Thought it is, and all things are for Thought, and in 
 it we live and move. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 
 
 If them betake thyself to the ever-living and abiding Truth, the de- 
 sertion or death of a friend shall not make thee sad. Imitation of 
 Christ. 
 
 Cum contra sapiens, quatenus ut talis consideratur, vix animo mo- 
 vetur, sed sui et Dei et rerum aeterna quadam necessitate conscius, 
 nunquam esse desinit, sed semper vera animi acquiescentia potitur. 
 SPINOZA, Ethica. 
 
 WE are in a new world of Divine Life. The dark 
 world of the powers has passed away from our 
 thought. Here is the Eternal, for which all these 
 powers exist, in which they dwell. Here we are in 
 the presence of the Ideal Judge who knows all Good 
 and Evil. From the other side the world as we ap- 
 proached it had seemed so restless, so disheartening, 
 so deaf. The world of our postulates was a brighter 
 one only because we determined to make it so. But 
 there was something lonesome in the thought that 
 the postulates got, as answer from the real world, 
 only their own echo, and not always that. Their 
 world was rather their own creation than an exter- 
 nal something that gave them independent support. 
 Sometimes there seemed to be nothing solid that 
 could echo back anything at all. Now we seem to 
 look upon a truth that satisfies indeed no selfish 
 longings of ours, no whims of theological tradition, 
 
THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 437 
 
 no demands of our personal narrow lives. We shall 
 
 not learn in this way who is first in the kingdom of 
 
 heaven, nor how the dead are raised, nor any answer 
 
 to any other special demand of any set of men. We 
 
 \ learn, however, this at least : All truth is known to 
 
 \ One Thought, and that Infinite. What does that 
 
 imply ? Let us see. 
 
 I. 
 
 Our argument is somewhat near to the thought 
 that partially satisfied St. Augustine when he found 
 it in his Plato. That there should be a truth at all 
 implies, we have seen, that there should be an Infi- 
 nite Truth, known to an Infinite Thought ; or, in 
 other words, that all is for thought, and without 
 thought is nothing that is. We also are a part of 
 this infinite thought. We know not yet more of the 
 nature of this thought, save that it must be eternal, 
 all-embracing, and One. What then shall we be 
 able further to say about it? 
 
 To answer would be to expound a system of phi- 
 losophy. But we must limit ourselves here to the 
 necessary. And so, for the first, we shall try to 
 point out what this ideal and infinite life of thought 
 that we have found as the eternal truth of things 
 cannot be expected to accomplish for the purposes 
 of our religion, and then to consider what we may 
 nevertheless dare to hope from it. 
 
 It cannot be expected to furnish us an a priori 
 knowledge of any fact of experience, of any particu- 
 lar law of nature, of the destiny of any one finite be- 
 ing. All that remains just as dark as it was before. 
 
438 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 We neither rejoice in this result, nor lament it. No- 
 body who wanders into the ideal world may expect 
 to find it ordered for his individual advantage ; nor 
 need he try to find there good investments for his 
 money. The Infinite does not wait for his individ- 
 ual approval ; although morally speaking he may do 
 well to get the approval of the Infinite. The Infi- 
 nite was not elected to office by his vote, and he 
 may not impeach it for disregard of his humble pe- 
 titions for good things, nor threaten it with want of 
 confidence because it does not secure passage for his 
 private bills. In so far as to say this is to condemn 
 the Real, we unhesitatingly do so. But then, as we 
 saw in our ethical discussion, the moral insight is not 
 so much concerned with private bills, as with certain 
 greater matters. If the moral insight wants relig- 
 ious support, possibly the failure of all these per- 
 sonal concerns of ours to find any hint of response 
 from the Absolute, may not render impossible the 
 ethical undertakings of the human spirit. If as in- 
 dividuals we must hear the dreadful words from the 
 spirit of nature : Du gleichst dem Geist den du 
 begreifst, nicJit mir ; still it is possible that with a 
 higher insight, looking upon this same spirit in its 
 eternal and inmost nature, we may yet come with 
 full reason at last to say : ErJiabner Geist, du gabst 
 mir, gabst mir alles, warum ich bat. For there are 
 demands and demands. Man, as lover, demands suc- 
 cess in love, and the course of the world may thwart 
 him ; as toiler, he demands for himself personal im- 
 mortality, and the course of the world may care 
 naught for his individual life ; as bereaved, as 
 
THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 439 
 
 mourner over his dead, he may demand for his loved 
 ones also this immortality, and the course of the 
 world may leave the fate of all his loved ones mys- 
 terious forever ; as lover of mankind, he may de- 
 mand an infinite future of blessed progress for his 
 race, and the law of the dissipation of energy may 
 give him the only discoverable physical answer to 
 his demand ; as just man, he may cry aloud that evil 
 shall cease from among men, and the wicked may 
 still laugh in triumph unpunished. And yet for all 
 this he may find some higher compensation. Agnos- 
 tic as he will remain about all the powers of this 
 world, about the outcome of all finite processes, he 
 will take comfort in the assurance that an Infinite 
 Reason is above all and through all, embracing 
 everything, judging everything, infallible, perfect. 
 To this Thought he may look up, saying : " Thou 
 All-Knowing One seest us, what we are, and how we 
 strive. Thou knowest our frame, and rememberest 
 that we are as dust. In thy perfection is our Ideal. 
 That thou art, is enough for our moral comfort. 
 That thou knowest our evil and our good, that gives 
 us our support in our little striving for the good. 
 Not worthless would we be in thy sight ; not of the 
 vile, the base, the devilish party in the warfare of 
 this world. Thou that judgest shalt say that we, 
 even in our poor individual lives, are better than 
 naught. Thou shalt know that in our weakness and 
 blindness, in our pain and sorrow, in our little days, 
 in our dark world, ignorant as to the future, con- 
 fused with many doubts, beset with endless tempta- 
 tions, full of dread, of hesitation, of sloth, we yet 
 
~f440 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 sought, such as we were, to be in our own fashion 
 like thee ; to know the truth as thou knowest it, to 
 be full of higher life as thou art full, to be above 
 strife as thou art above it, to be of one Spirit as 
 thou art One, to be perfect as thou art perfect. This 
 thou shalt see in us, and this record shall be eternal, 
 like our knowledge. In thee what we vaguely aim 
 to conceive is clear light. In thee the peace that we 
 strive to find is experienced. And when we try to do 
 right, we know that thou seest both our striving and 
 our successes and our failures. And herein we have 
 comfort. We perish, but thou endurest. Ours is 
 not thy eternity. But in thy eternity we would be 
 remembered, not as rebels against the good, but as 
 doers of the good ; not as blots on the face of this 
 part of thy infinite reality, but as healthy leaves that 
 flourished for a time on the branches of the eternal 
 tree of life, and that have fallen, though not into 
 forgetfulness. For to thee nothing is forgotten." 
 
 This thought, of the Judge that never ceases to 
 think of us and of all things, never changes, never 
 mistakes, and that knows the Good simply because 
 that Good is an element of the Truth perhaps this 
 can sustain us when all else fails. Nothing but this 
 may be certain ; but this, if it be not all that some 
 people have sought, may be a help to us. This Re- 
 ligion may have no such hot little fires on its altars 
 i as we at first longed for ; but then it is a very old 
 objection to the stars to say that they bake us no 
 bread, and only glitter up there in the dark to be 
 looked at. Yet even the stars are worth something 
 to us. 
 
THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 441 
 
 II. 
 
 But if we leave these limitations of our view, and 
 pass to its positive religious value, our first sense is 
 one of joy and freedom to find that our long sought 
 ideal of a perfect unity of life is here attained. Let 
 us look away for a moment from our finite existence, 
 with its doubts and its problems, to the conception 
 of that infinite life. In that life is all truth, fully 
 present in the unity of one eternal moment. The 
 world is no mass of separate facts, stuck one to an- 
 other in an external way, but, for the infinite, each 
 fact is what it is only by reason of its place in the 
 infinite unity. The world of life is then what we 
 desired it to be, an organic total ; and the individ- 
 ual selves are drops in this ocean of the absolute 
 truth. 
 
 Thus then, seen in the light of this our result, 
 the human tasks that we sketched in our ethical 
 discussion find their place in the objective world. 
 Now, and in fact for the first time, we can see what 
 we were really trying to accomplish through our 
 ideal. We were trying in a practical way to real- 
 ize what we now perceive to be the fullness of the 
 life of God. So that the one highest activity, in 
 which all human activities were to join, is known to 
 us now as the progressive realization by men of the \ 
 eternal life of an Infinite Spirit. So whereas we 
 formerly had to say to men : Devote yourselves to 
 art, to science, to the state, or to any like work that 
 does tend to organize your lives into one life, we 
 may now substitute one absolute expression for all 
 
442 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 those accidental expressions, and may say : Devote & 
 yourselves to losing your lives in the divine life. 
 For all these special aims that we have mentioned 
 are but means of accomplishing the knowledge of 
 the fullness of the truth. And Truth is God. 
 
 Now this precept is no barren abstraction. It 
 means to take hold of every act of life, however 
 humble and simple. " Where art thou, O man ? " 
 our ideal says to us. " Art thou not in God ? To 
 whom dost thou speak? With whom dost thou walk? 
 What life is this in whose midst thou livest ? What 
 are all these things that thou seemest to touch? 
 Whose is all this beauty that thou enjoyest in art, 
 this unity that thou seekest to produce in thy state, 
 this truth that thou pursuest in thy thought ? All 
 this is in God and of God. Thou hast never seen, 
 or heard, or touched, or handled, or loved anything 
 but God. Know this truth, and thy life must be 
 transformed to thee in all its significance. Serve 
 the whole God, not the irrationally separate part 
 that thy delusions have made thee suppose to be an 
 independent thing. Live out thy life in its full 
 meaning ; for behold, it is God's life." * 
 
 So, as it seems, the best that we could have wished 
 from the purely moral side is attained. The Di- 
 vine Thought it is that actually accomplishes what 
 we imperfectly sought to attain, when we defined 
 for ourselves Duty. In the Divine Thought is per- 
 fectly and finally realized the Moral Insight and the^ 
 Universal Will of our ethical discussion. And this 
 insight and will are not realized as by some Power, 
 that then should set about to accomplish their ful- 
 
THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 443 
 
 fillment externally. But in the infinite, where all is 
 eternally complete, the insight is both present and 
 fulfilled ; the universal will gets what it seeks. 
 There is no lack there, nor hesitation, nor striving, 
 nor doubt, nor weariness ; but all is eternally per- 
 fect triumph. 
 
 Now this, though it sounds mystical enough to 
 our untrained common sense, is no mere poetry of 
 thought. It is the direct philosophical outcome of 
 what we have found by a purely logical process. 
 The driest thought, the simplest fragment of ration- 
 ality, involves this absolute, infinite, and perfect 
 thought. And this it involves because it involves 
 the possibility of .error, and because, as separate from 
 the infinite, this possibility of error in a single thought 
 becomes unintelligible and contradictory. We did 
 all that we could to escape this conclusion. We 
 wandered in the thickets of confusion and contra- 
 diction, until there was no chance of finding there a 
 further pathway. And then we turned to see, and 
 behold, God was in this place, though we had known 
 it not. The genuine God that we thus found was no 
 incomplete, struggling God, whom we might pity in 
 his conflict with evil, but the all-embracing thought, 
 in which the truth is eternally finished. And this 
 God it is that we now see as the complete realization ^r 
 of our own ideal, as of all worthy ideals. 
 
 For consider if you will this element in our con- 
 ception of this Thought. Can this infinite know it- 
 self as imperfect, or as not possessing some object 
 that it knows to be good ? This is impossible, and 
 doubly so. Not only does the conception of an In- 
 
444 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 finite, in which and for which are all things, wholly 
 exclude the possibility of any good thing beyond 
 the Infinite itself, but also in still another way does 
 the same truth appear. For if you suppose that this 
 infinite thought desires some perfection G, that it 
 has not, then either it is right in supposing this per- 
 fection to be truly desirable, or it is wrong. In 
 either case the previous argument of Chapter XI. 
 shows us that the truth or the falsity of this judg- 
 ment of desire about G must exist as known truth 
 or falsity for a higher thought, which, including the 
 thought that desires, and itself actually having this 
 desired good thing, compares the desired object with 
 the conception of the thought that desires it, and 
 judges of them both. Above the desire, then, must 
 in every case exist the satisfaction of the desire in a 
 higher thought. So that for the Infinite there can 
 be no unsatisfied desire. Unsatisfied desire exists 
 only in the finite beings, not in the inclusive Infinite. 
 The world then, as a whole, is and must be ab- 
 solutely good, since the infinite thought must know 
 what is desirable, and knowing it, must have present 
 in itself the true objects of desire. The existence 
 of any amount of pain or of other evil, of crime or 
 of baseness in the world as we see it, is, thus viewed, 
 no evidence against the absolute goodness of things, 
 rather a guaranty thereof. For all evil viewed ex- 
 ternally is just an evidence to us finite beings that 
 there exists something desirable, which we have not, 
 and which we just now cannot get. However stub- 
 born this evil is for us, that has naught to do with 
 the perfection of the Infinite. For the infinite did 
 
THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 445 
 
 not make this evil, but the evil, together with the 
 making of it, which indeed was also in its separate- 
 ness evil, all this is a phenomenon for the infinite 
 thought, which, in knowing this evil, merely knows 
 the absolute desirableness of that which it also pos- 
 sesses, namely, the absolutely good. 
 
 We have used here an argument that could not be 
 used in our study of the " World of Doubt." When 
 we there thought evil to be possible for the world as 
 a whole, we conceived that a being who knew all the 
 world would yet desire something better. But what 
 would this imply ? It implies that this being would 
 desire a state of things different from the existing 
 one, and would do so believing that state to be better 
 than the existing one. But would he truly know 
 this desired state to be better, or would he only hope 
 so ? Who truly knows the value of a state save the 
 one that possesses it ? Knowledge is of the present. 
 Therefore this being would not really know the bet- 
 ter state, unless it were already actual for him. But 
 in that case he would include not only the present 
 world, but the perfect world, and his total state 
 could not be one of discontent. So the other alter- 
 native remains. Our supposed being would only 
 hope the desired state to be better than what was 
 real already for him. But would his hope be a true 
 one ? If so, then it could only be true in case this 
 perfection is already realized in a higher thought. 
 For the Infinite then the question, " Is there any- 
 thing better than what exists ? " must be nonsense. 
 For him the actual and the possible fall together in 
 one truth ; and this one truth cannot be evil. 
 
446 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 On another side, our conception gives us religious 
 support. The imperfection of the purely moral view 
 lay in part in the fact that there was an inner incom- 
 pleteness about the very definition of our ideal, as 
 well as a doubt about its attainability. This inner 
 incompleteness must however be removed in and for 
 the Infinite Mind. In dealing with the work of life, 
 we came to a point where we said, thus far we can 
 see our way, but beyond that our ideal remains in- 
 complete. We must have faith, so we implied, that 
 if we attained so much of the ideal social condi- 
 tion, the way from that point onward would become 
 clear. But now we see why the way would of neces- 
 sity become clear to one whose knowledge of life 
 were broad enough and deep enough. For in the 
 Infinite that includes all life, that rests above all 
 finite strife in the absolute attainment of the ideal, 
 there can be no incompleteness, no torso of an ideal, 
 but a perfect knowledge of what is most excellent. 
 Those faint foreshadowings of a perfect life that art 
 and science and social work show to us, must be for 
 the Infinite no faint foreshadowings, but absolute 
 certainty and perfect clearness. Hence by our re- 
 ligious doctrine we get not merely the assurance that 
 such ideals as we have are realized for the Infinite ; 
 but, better than this, we get our first full assurance 
 that our incomplete ideals have an actual completion 
 as ideals. For we thus get our first full assurance 
 that there is in the highest sense any definite ideal 
 at all. Pessimism, as we have seen, implies either 
 doubt about what the ideal state is, or unavoidable 
 lack of that state. And the Infinite can be no Pes- 
 simist in either sense. 
 
THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 447 
 
 The religious comfort that a man can get from 
 contemplating all this truth is indeed very different 
 from the consolation of the separate individual as 
 such that many people want their religion to give 
 them. And this very fact furnishes us a good test 
 of moral sincerity. The religious comfort that we 
 find is no comfort save to the truly religious spirit in 
 us. It says to us : " You that have declared youf 
 willingness to serve moral ideals because they are 
 such, does this help you to know, not of a goodly 
 place where you personally and individually shall 
 live without tears forever as a reward for your ser- 
 vices, but of an eternal Judge that respects in no 
 whit your person, before whom and in whom you are 
 quite open and perfectly known, who now and for 
 all eternity sees your good and your evil, and esti- 
 mates you with absolute justice ? This blaze of in- 
 finite light in which you stand, does it cheer you ? 
 If it does, then you are glad to learn that above all 
 your struggles there is the eternal Victory, amid all 
 your doubts there is the eternal Insight, and that 
 your highest triumph, your highest conception, is 
 just an atom of the infinite truth that all the time is 
 there. But if all this is true of you, then you do love 
 the ideal for its own sake. Then it is not your tri- 
 umph that you seek, but the triumph of the Highest. 
 And so it is that you rejoice to learn how this that is 
 best in the world not only will triumph, but always 
 has triumphed, since, as you now learn, for God the 
 highest good is thus a matter of direct experience." 
 
 The writer remembers well, how some years since, 
 while all this doctrine seemed to him shrouded in 
 
448 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 doubt, he heard a very thoughtful and pious friend 
 maintain that the greatest comfort to be got from a 
 belief in God is the sense that however much the 
 world may misjudge us, however much even our best 
 and closest friends may misunderstand us, there is 
 one perfect all-knowing Thought that comprehends 
 us far better than we comprehend ourselves. Good- 
 ness is, in that thought, estimated at its full worth. 
 Nothing is hidden from the Judge. And what we 
 are, He knoweth it altogether. The present view 
 seems to the author to meet the conditions that his 
 friend here had in mind. Theism as a doctrine that 
 there is a big power that fights and beats down 
 other powers in the service of the good, is open to all 
 the objections before suggested. This warrior, why 
 does he not win? This slayer of evil things, this 
 binder of Satan, who boasts that all things will yet 
 be put under his feet, has he not had all eternity 
 in which to put all things under his feet, and has 
 he done it yet ? He may be indeed good, but some- 
 how disaster seems to pursue him. Religious com- 
 fort in contemplating him you can have if you be- 
 lieve in him, but always you feel that this comfort is 
 shadowed by the old doubt ; is he after all what we 
 want him to be, the victorious ruler of the world ? 
 But if we leave the eternally doubtful contemplation 
 of the world as a heap of powers, and come to the 
 deeper truth of the world as Thought, then these 
 doubts must disappear. 
 
 Yet to show that this is true, we must dwell upon 
 doubts a little longer, and must compare our present 
 view of the solution of the problem of evil with the 
 views condemned in Chap. VIII. 
 
THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 449 
 
 III. 
 
 So far we have come in joyful contemplation of 
 the Divine Truth. But now is there not a serpent 
 in this Eden also ? We have been talking of the in- 
 finite goodness ; but after all, what shall we still say 
 of that finite " partial evil "of life? We seem to 
 have somehow proved a priori that it must be " uni- 
 versal good." For, as we have said, in the Infinite 
 Life of our ideal there can be no imperfection. This, 
 we have said, is the demonstration that we missed 
 all through our study of the world of the Powers. 
 Since we approached that world from without, and 
 never felt the pulse of its heart's blood, we had noth- 
 ing but doubt after doubt when we contemplated the 
 evil that seemed to be in it. Our efforts to explain 
 evil seemed hollow and worthless. There might be 
 some deeper truth involved in these efforts ; but we 
 knew it not. Well, are we right in declaring that we 
 have altogether overcome our difficulty now ? Ap- 
 parently we are as far as ever from seeing how the 
 partial evil can be the universal good ; we only 
 show, from the conception of the infinite itself, that 
 the partial evil must be the universal good. God 
 must see how ; and we know this because we know 
 of God. More than this we seem to be unable to 
 suggest. 
 
 But will this do ? Have we not forgotten one ter- 
 
 . rible consequence of our doctrine ? The partial evil 
 
 is universal good, is it? There is no evil? All 
 
 apparent imperfection is an illusion of our partial 
 
 view ? So then where is the chance to be in a free 
 
450 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 way and of our own choice better than we otherwise 
 in truth should be ? Is not the arm that is raised 
 to strike down wickedness paralyzed by the very 
 thought that was to give it divine strength ? This 
 evil that I fight here in this finite world is a delu- 
 sion. So then, why fight it ? If I do good works, 
 the world is infinitely good and perfect. If I seem 
 to do evil works, the world is in truth no worse. 
 Seeming good is not better than -seeming evil, for if 
 it were, then the seeming evil would be a real defect 
 in God, in whose life is everything. If I have never 
 loved aught but God, even so I have never hated 
 aught but God. It is all alike. God does not need 
 just me. Or rather I may say, in so far as he needs 
 me to complete his infinite truth, he already has me 
 from all eternity. I have nothing to do with the 
 business, save to contemplate in dizzy indolence the 
 whirling misty masses of seeming evil, and to say 
 with a sort of amused reverence that they look very 
 ill and opaque to me, but that of course God sees 
 through them clearly enough somehow. The mist is 
 in truth crystalline water, and he has so quick a 
 sense as to look beyond the drops as easily as if they 
 were in the calm unity of a mountain lake. And 
 so, my religion is simply a contemplation of God's 
 wisdom, but otherwise an idle amusement. 
 
 So says the man who sees only this superficial 
 view of our doctrine. In so far as, standing once 
 more outside of some evil thing, we say : " That 
 thing yonder looks bad, but God must see it to be 
 good," we do indeed remain indolent, and our relig- 
 ion simply means a sort of stoical indifference to the 
 
THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 451 
 
 apparent distinction of good and evil. This is in 
 fact the proper practical attitude of even the most 
 earnest man in the presence of evil that he cannot 
 understand and cannot affect. In such matters we 
 must indeed be content with the passive knowledge. 
 Death and the unavoidable pains of life, the down- 
 fall of cherished plans, all the cruelty of fate, we 
 must learn to look at as things to us opaque, but to 
 God, who knows them fully, somehow clear and ra- 
 tional. So regarding them, we must aim to get to 
 the stage of stoical indifference about them. They 
 are to us the accidents of existence. We have no 
 business to murmur about them, since we see that 
 God, experiencing them, somehow must experience 
 them as elements in an absolutely perfect life. For 
 God we regard not as the mysterious power who 
 made them, and who then may have been limited to 
 the use of imperfect means, but as the absolute 
 thought that knows them ; so that, however inexpli- 
 cable they must now be to us, they are in themselves 
 nothing that God vainly wishes to have otherwise, 
 but they are organically joined with the rest of the 
 glorious Whole. 
 
 Such is indeed the only present word for us finite 
 minds about many of the shadows of seeming evil 
 that we have to behold in the world of the appar- 
 ently external facts. Such however is not the last 
 word for us about the only evil that has any imme- 
 diate moral significance, namely, the evil that we see, 
 not as an external, shadowy mist, but as a present 
 fact, experienced in us. Here it is that the objector 
 just mentioned seems really formidable to us. But 
 
452 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 just here it is that we find the answer to him. For 
 in the world of our own acts we have a wondrous ex- 
 perience. We realize evil, we fight it, and, at the 
 same time, we realize our fragment of the perfect 
 divine life in the moment itself of struggling with 
 the evil. And in this wondrous experience lies the 
 whole solution of the ancient problem of the existence 
 of moral evil. For instance, I find in myself a self- 
 ish impulse, trying to destroy the moral insight. 
 Now of this evil impulse I do not say, looking at it 
 objectively : " It is somehow a part of the universal 
 good ; " but, in the moment of moral action I make 
 it, even in the very moment of its sinfulness, a part 
 of my good consciousness, in overcoming it. The 
 moral insight condemns the evil that it experiences ; 
 and in condemning and conquering this evil it forms 
 and is, together with the evil, the organic total that 
 constitutes the good will. Only through this inner 
 victory over the evil that is experienced as a con- 
 quered tendency does the good will have its being. 
 Now since the perfect life of God must have the ab- 
 solutely good will, therefore it also must be conscious 
 of such a victory. Thus the solution of our diffi- 
 culty begins to appear. And thus we reap a new 
 religious fruit from our ethical doctrine, to whose 
 main principles we must once more here refer the 
 reader. 
 
 t When I experience the victory of the moral in- 
 sight over the bad will, I experience in one indivis- 
 ible moment both the partial evil of the selfish im- 
 pulse (which in itself as a separate fact would be 
 wholly bad) and the universal good of the moral 
 
THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 453 
 
 victory, which has its existence only in the over- 
 whelming of the evil. So, in the good act, I experi- 
 ence the good as my evil lost in goodness, as a rebel- 
 lion against the good conquered in the moment of its 
 birth, as a peace that arises in the midst of this tri- 
 umphant conflict, as a satisfaction that lives in this 
 restless activity of inner warfare. This child of inner 
 strife is the good, and the only moral good, we know. 
 
 What I here have present in me when I do a good 
 act is an element of God's life. / here directly ex- 
 perience how the partial moral evil is universal 
 good ; for so it is a relatively universal good in me 
 when, overcoming myself, I choose the universal 
 will. The bad impulse is still in me, but is defeated. 
 In the choice against evil is the very life of goodness, 
 which would be a pale, stupid abstraction otherwise. 
 Even so, to take another view, in the overcoming of 
 our separateness as individuals lies, as we saw in the 
 previous book, our sense of the worth of the univer- 
 sal life. And what we here experience in the single 
 moment of time, and in the narrowness of our finite 
 lives, God must experience, and eternally. In our 
 single good acts we have thus the specimen of the 
 eternal realization of goodness. 
 
 But now how simple becomes the answer to that 
 terrible suggestion of a moment since ! How simple 
 also the solution of the problem of evil ! u If I want 
 to do evil, I cannot," said the objector ; " for God 
 the perfect one includes me with the rest, and so 
 cannot in his perfection be hurt by me. Let me do 
 what I will, my act can only seem bad, and cannot 
 be bad. All evil is illusion, hence there is no moral 
 difference in action possible." 
 
454 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 " Eight indeed," we answer, " but also wrong, be- 
 cause half the truth. The half kills, the whole gives 
 life. Why canst thou not do any absolute evil ? Be- 
 cause thy evil intent, which, in its separateness, 
 would be unmixed evil, thy selfish will, thy struggle 
 against the moral insight, this evil will of thine is no 
 lonesome fact in the world, but is an element in the 
 organic life of God. In him thy evil impulse forms 
 part of a total good will, as the evil impulse of the 
 good man forms an element in his realization of 
 goodness. In God thy separateness is destroyed, 
 and with it thy sin as evil. For good will in the in- 
 finite is what the good man finds the good will to be 
 in himself, namely, the organic total whose truth is 
 the discovery of the evil. Therefore is God's life 
 perfect, because it includes not only the knowledge 
 of thy finite wicked will, but the insight into its truth 
 as a moment in the real universal will. 
 
 If then thou wert good, thou wouldst be good by 
 including the evil impulse in a realization of its 
 evil, and in an acceptance of the higher insight. If 
 thou art evil, then in thyself, as separate being, thou 
 art condemned, and just because thy separate evil 
 is condemned, therefore is the total life of God, that 
 includes thee with thy condemnation and with the 
 triumph over thee, good. 
 
 This is the ground for the solution of the problem. 
 To go more into detail : Evil is for us of two classes : 
 the external seeming evil, such as death, pain, or 
 weakness of character; and internal evil, namely the 
 bad will itself. Because we know so little, there- 
 fore we can never tell whether those externally seen 
 
THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 455 
 
 seeming evils are blessings in disguise, or expressions 
 of some wicked diabolical will-power at work about 
 us. Somehow then, we never know exactly how, 
 these seeming great evils must be in God universal 
 good. But with regard to the only evil that we know 
 as an inward experience, and so as a certain reality, 
 namely, the Evil Will, we know both the existence of 
 that, and its true relation to universal goodness, be- 
 cause and only because we experience both of them 
 first through the moral insight, and then in the good 
 act. Goodness having its very life in the insight 
 and in its exercise, has as its elements the evil im- 
 pulse and its correction. The evil will as such may 
 either be conquered in our personal experience, and 
 then we are ourselves good ; or it may be conquered 
 dot in our thought considered as a separate thought, 
 but in the total thought to which ours is so related, 
 as our single evil and good thoughts are related to 
 the whole of us. The wicked man is no example of 
 God's delight in wickedness, just as the evil impulse 
 that is an element in the good man's goodness, and 
 a very real element too, is no proof that the good 
 man delights in evil. As the evil impulse is to the 
 good man, so is the evil will of the wicked man to 
 the life of God, in which he is an element. And 
 just because the evil will is the only evil that we are 
 sure of, this explanation is enough. 
 
 Thus the distinction between good and evil re- 
 mains as clear as ever. Our difficulty about the 
 matter is removed, not by any barren external the- 
 odicy, such as were the forms of guess-work that we 
 criticised in a previous chapter, but by a plain reflec- 
 
456 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tion on the moral experience itself. Goodness as a 
 moral experience is for us the overcoming of experi- 
 enced evil ; and in the eternal life of God the reali- 
 zation of goodness must have the same sort of or- 
 ganic relation to evil as it has in us. Goodness is 
 not mere innocence, but realized insight. To the 
 wicked man we say : God is good because in think- 
 ing thee he damns thy evil impulse and overwhelms 
 it in a higher thought of which thou art a part. And 
 in so far as thy will is truly evil, thou art in God 
 just as the evil is in the good man ; thou art known 
 only to be condemned and overcome. That is thy 
 blessed mission ; and this mission of evil such as 
 thine is indeed an eternal one. So that both things 
 are true. The world is wholly good, and thou, such 
 as thou individually art, mayest be damnably evil if 
 so thou desirest. 
 
 We do not say then that evil must exist to set the 
 good off by way of external contrast. That view we 
 long since justly rejected. We say only that the 
 evil will is a conquered element in the good will, and 
 is as such necessary to goodness. Our conception of 
 the absolute unity of God's life, and that conception 
 alone, enables us to apply this thought here. No 
 form of dualistic Theism has any chance to apply 
 this, the only satisfactory theodicy. If God were 
 conceived as external to his creatures, as a power 
 that made them beyond himself, the hopeless prob- 
 lems and the unworthy subterfuges of the older the- 
 odicies would come back to torment us. As it is, 
 the solution of the problem of evil is given us in the 
 directest and yet in the most unexpected way. 
 
THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 457 
 
 Let us compare this solution with others. Evil, 
 said one thought, before expounded, is an illusion of 
 the partial view, as the shapelessness of the frag- 
 ment of a statue is no disproof of the real beauty of 
 the whole. We replied in a previous chapter to this 
 notion, by saying that evil seems so positive an ele- 
 ment in the world as to make very hard this concep- 
 tion of the partial evil as good universally in the 
 aesthetic sense in which shapelessness of parts may 
 coexist with a total beauty of the statue. For the 
 fragment of the statue is merely an indifferent bit of 
 stone without character. But the evil in the world 
 seems in positive crying opposition to all goodness. 
 Yet now, in the moral experience, we have found a 
 wholly different relation of evil part to good whole. 
 JMjLgood act is good just because of the evil that 
 exists in it as conquered element. Without the evil 
 moment actual in it, the total act could be at best 
 innocent, not good. It is good by reason of its 
 structure. That structure includes the evil will, but 
 so includes it that the whole act is good. Even so, 
 as we declare, God's life includes, in the organic 
 total of one conscious eternal instant, all life, and 
 so all goodness and evil. To say that God is never- 
 theless perfectly good is to say, not that God is 
 innocent, knowing of no evil whatever, and includ- 
 ing none ; but that he so includes the evil will in 
 the structure of his good will, as the good man, in 
 one indivisible moment, includes his evil will in his 
 good will ; and that God is good only because he 
 does so. 
 
 Again, to pass to another explanation, it has been 
 
458 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 said that evil exists in the world as a means to good- 
 ness. We objected to this that it puts the evil and 
 the good first in separate beings, in separate acts or 
 moments, and then makes the attainment of the good 
 result dependent on the prior attainment of the sep- 
 arate and independently present evil. Now all that 
 explanation could only explain and justify the acts 
 of a finite Power, which, not yet possessing a given 
 good thing, seeks it through the mediation of some 
 evil. In no wise can this explanation apply to God 
 as infinite. He is no finite Power, nor does he make 
 or get things external to himself. Hence he cannot 
 be said to use means for the attainment of ends. 
 But our explanation does not make evil a means to 
 get the separate end, goodness. We say that the con- 
 nection is one of organic part with organic whole ; 
 that goodness has its life only in the instant of the 
 discovery and inner overcoming of the evil will ; and 
 that therefore any life is good in which the evil will 
 is present only as overcome, and so as lost in the 
 good will. We appeal to the moral experience to il- 
 lustrate how, when we do good, the evil will is pres- 
 ent as a real fact in us, which yet does not make us 
 as a whole bad, but just because it is present as an 
 overcome element, is, even for that very reason, nec- 
 essary to make us good. And we go on to say that 
 even so in God the evil will of all who sin is pres- 
 ent, a real fact in the Divine Life, no illusion in so 
 far as one sees that it exists in God and nowhere 
 else, but for that very reason an element, and a nec- 
 essary element, in the total goodness of the Univer- 
 sal Will, which, realized in God, is related to the 
 
THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 459 
 
 wills of the sinners as the wills of the good men are 
 related to their evil impulses. 
 
 The explanation that evil is needed to contrast 
 with goodness has already been mentioned. 
 
 Evil therefore, as a supposed real fact, separate 
 from goodness, and a totally independent entity, is 
 and must be an illusion. The objections to this 
 view that we previously urged in Chapter VIII. were 
 all applicable to the world of powers, which we 
 viewed and had to view externally. God's life, 
 viewed internally, as philosophy must view it, is not 
 subject to these criticisms. And the moral experi- 
 ence has taught us how we are to explain the exist- 
 ence of the only partial evil that we clearly know to 
 be even a partial evil, namely, the evil will. The ex- 
 planation is that the good act has its existence and 
 life in the transcending of experienced present evil. 
 This evil must not be an external evil, beyond the 
 good will, but must be experienced in the same indi- 
 visible moment in which it is transcended. That 
 this wondrous union is possible, we simply find as 
 fact in the moral experience. No genuine moral good- 
 ness is possible save in the midst of such inner war- 
 fare. The absence of the evil impulse leaves naught 
 but innocence or instinct, morally insipid and color- 
 less. Goodness is this organism of struggling ele- 
 ments. Now, as we declare, in the infinite and united 
 thought of God this unity of goodness is eternally 
 present. God's life is this infinite rest, not apart 
 from but in the endless strife, as in substance Hera- 
 clitus so well and originally taught. 
 
460 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The problem of the existence of evil thus treated 
 as our limits allow, we must return to a study of the 
 visible world. That we formerly refused to find re- 
 ligious comfort in that world, depended upon our 
 previous manner of approaching it. It was, so 
 approached, the world of doubt; but now it may 
 prove no longer disheartening, so that we may be 
 able to get in it a concrete hold of useful truth. We 
 must briefly sketch the process of return. Our Infi- 
 nite, once known, is known not as an abstraction, 
 but as an immediately actual object of knowledge. 
 His then is this visible world ; and, knowing the 
 fact, we return cheerfully and courageously among 
 the facts that before seemed dead externalities, to 
 find his truth in them. For our general belief in the 
 infinite rationality of things is useless to supersede 
 any jot or tittle of careful scientific study of the com- 
 mon world of experience. Be this aspect of the mat- 
 ter well understood. Some older forms of idealism 
 have looked coldly on experience. Ours does not. 
 To us, if you want to realize your ideal you must 
 know the means, you must study applied ethics as 
 well as the ideal itself ; and only from science, from 
 hard, dry, careful collection and collaboration of 
 facts, from cautious generalizations, from endless ex- 
 periments, observations, calculations, can mankind 
 hope to learn the means of realizing their ideals.^ 
 Yet more, only from exact science can you get the 
 best concrete examples of that unity of conception, f 
 that mastery of complex details, that exhaustive per- 
 
THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 461 
 
 faction of insight, that we must attribute in an infi- 
 nitely complete form to our all - embracing Ideal 
 Thought, now that we have got it before us as our 
 Ideal. That all facts and relations of facts should 
 appear in one moment of insight to the all-knowing 
 thought is our postulate, and, as we have shown, it is 
 no mere postulate, but a necessary and absolute prin- 
 ciple of philosophy. We must go to exact science to 
 find illustrations of how all this can be in particular 
 cases realized. As the equation of a curve expresses 
 in one thought all the properties of the curve, as the 
 law of a physical process includes all the cases of 
 that process under any of the supposed conditions, 
 as a function of a variable may be the sum of a long 
 series of quantities, each one of which is a derived 
 function of the first multiplied by a particular coeffi- 
 cient, so that the one function is the united expres- 
 sion of the numerous separate functions : even in 
 such wise must the Infinite thought comprehend in 
 some supreme highest unity all the facts and rela- 
 tions of facts that are in the world of truth. For 
 us then the highest achievements of science are the 
 dim shadow of the perfection of the infinite thought. 
 And to science, accordingly, we must go, not for the 
 invention, but for the intellectual illustration of our 
 ideal. And science we must treat as absolute mis- * 
 tress of her own domain. Of the world as a whole, 
 of the eternal as such, of infinite past time, of the 
 inner truth of things, science pretends to tell and 
 can tell nothing. Nor does science invent, nor yet 
 can she prove, her own postulates, as we previously 
 defined them. But in the application of her postu- 
 
462 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 lates to the facts, in the discovery of particular laws, 
 science is almighty. To doubt her capacity as high- 
 est judge in this field is flagrant contempt of court. 
 Science is just the Infinite Thought as far as it is 
 yet by us realized in the facts of nature. A priori 
 we can realize nothing about finite facts, save that 
 they must be capable of rational comprehension. 
 We know that the Infinite thinks them, and this is 
 all that we know about them. What they are, ex- 
 perience must tell us. 
 
 Such then are some of the restrictions imposed 
 upon our thought. We must now consider more 
 carefully how we must treat the scientific postulates 
 that were our only comfort in studying reality before 
 we reached our present insight. 
 
 When we postulated that the world must in the 
 best sense satisfy our fundamental intellectual needs, 
 we assumed what is necessary for science, but what 
 science itself does not satisfactorily explain. Have 
 we now reached any foundation for this theoretical 
 postulate ? We have in fact reached one. The pos- 
 tulate of science amounts to this, that the real con- 
 nections among facts must be such as would be ra- 
 tionally comprehensible if they were known. But 
 we have found in fact that all facts not only must 
 be rationally comprehensible, but are rationally com- 
 prehended, in and by the one Divine Mind. The 
 postulate of science expresses therefore in part and 
 as a mere assumption, what we now know as a whole, 
 and as a result of demonstration. The unity of the 
 Divine Thought implies that all facts, if we knew 
 them well enough, would appear rationally interde- 
 
THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 463 
 
 pendent, reducible to unity, a total of realities ex- 
 pressible as one truth. Just as in the one concept of 
 the nature of number is implied all the infinite series 
 of properties that a complete Theory of Numbers 
 would develop, so in the one concept of the universe, 
 which constitutes the Divine Mind, all the facts of 
 all possible experience are comprehended and are re- 
 duced to perfect unity. There must be then in fact a 
 universal formula. What this formula is we do not 
 see, and just because we do not see it, we have to 
 look here and there in experience for any traces of 
 the unity and rational connection of facts. Nor can 
 we ever be sure that a connection surmised by us is 
 the really rational connection of things. A law dis- 
 covered by us is only our attempt to imitate the Di- 
 vine Thought. Our attempt may in a given case 
 fail; our induction may be mistaken. But the 
 foundation of our inductive processes is the thought 
 that, since the real world is a perfectly rational and 
 united body of truth, that hypothesis which reduces 
 to relatively rational unity the greatest number of 
 facts is more apt to represent the truth of things 
 than any hypothesis of less scope, and of less rational 
 significance. Just because this natural dualism with 
 which we set out is a blunder, just because in fact 
 the world is not rent in twain by our arbitrary dis- 
 tinction of object and subject, but is in deepest truth 
 one united world, a single thought ; therefore it is 
 that when we consider those facts which we have 
 from moment to moment to regard as external, we 
 can be assured that there is a certain and not an 
 arbitrary basis for our views about them. The vis- 
 
464 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ible world becomes again hard reality, which we ex- 
 perience and try to comprehend, just because we 
 know that in itself this world is once for all compre- 
 hended. 
 
 Practically then, in dealing with the world of con- 
 crete facts, we must be realistic. It is our duty, for 
 humanity's sake, to study and to believe in this ex- 
 ternal world, to have faith in the great postulates of 
 common sense, to use all the things of the world. 
 But the basis of this faith common sense can never 
 find. And we have found it in the Absolute. 
 
 V. 
 
 Have we then discovered that something of infi- 
 nite religious worth of which we went in quest ? Or 
 can we say that our life is in vain in such a world ? 
 Truly our religious longing has met with a genuine 
 response, but it was not such a response as we at 
 first expected, nor such as most systems appear to 
 desire. Personal needs and hopes apart, most men 
 who make systems to satisfy the impersonal religious 
 longing, seek to prove that the world as a whole 
 progresses towards goodness, so that, in the great 
 consummation of this progress, evil shall certainly 
 and finally disappear, leaving the world as innocent 
 and insipid as in the days of Eden. Now we have 
 found a thought that makes this concept of progress 
 not only wholly inapplicable to the world of the in- 
 finite life, but wholly superfluous. If, as we insisted 
 above, moral goodness is not the absence, but the or- 
 ganic subordination, of the evil will, its overthrow in 
 
THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 465 
 
 the good will, in which it is still actually present 
 as subdued, then, whenever the world contains any 
 moral goodness, it also, and for that very reason, 
 contains, in its organic unity, moral evil. The 
 world is morally good in spite of the evil will, and 
 yet because of the evil will, since, as every moral ex- 
 perience shows us, the good will is just this trium- 
 phant rest in strife above the evil will. Therefore 
 we have no sympathy with those who expect the fu- 
 ture " salvation " of the world as a whole in time 
 through any all - pervading process. The only de- 
 struction of moral evil that ever takes place or can 
 take place is the transcendence of the evil will by 
 the good will in the very moment of the life of the 
 evil will. If moral evil were to be, as the older 
 systems often expect, absolutely destroyed, and the 
 world so freed therefrom that the evil will was totally 
 forgotten, then what remained would be no moral 
 good any more, only the laziness of an infinitely va- 
 cant life. Not indeed to set off the good by any ex- 
 ternal contrast, but to constitute a moment in the or- 
 ganic unity of the good act, is this evil in the world. 
 And the whole vast trouble about understanding its 
 presence arises because we usually separate it from 
 the very unity with goodness in which we find it 
 whenever we consciously do right ourselves. Then 
 when so separated, as we separated it in a former 
 chapter, moral evil, viewed as an external opaque 
 fact, is inexplicable, disheartening, horrible. Only 
 when we do right ourselves do we practically get the 
 solution of the problem. Only the moral man knows 
 how and why evil exists. For in him the evil will 
 
 30 
 
466 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 is an essential element of his goodness. The conflicts 
 of morality are and must be eternal. 
 
 Our present explanation of evil in the world is, 
 we have seen, the only one that can both give us 
 the absolute religious comfort, and save us from the 
 terrible moral paralysis involved in destroying, for 
 the Infinite, the distinction between good and evil. 
 The moral experience itself contains the miracle of 
 this solution in the simplest and clearest shape. 
 And it relieves us of any need to long for an abso- 
 lute peace. For in it the distinction of good and 
 evil is the sharpest, the significance of the strife is 
 the most vivid, at the very instant when, in the strife, 
 the evil will, present and real still, is yet conquered 
 by the good will, and so lost in the universal good- 
 ness of the total good act. The distinction of good 
 will and evil will becomes thus the greatest possible ; 
 and yet only through the reality of this distinction in 
 the unity of the moral life is goodness present and 
 triumphant. Progress in this world as a whole is 
 therefore simply not needed. The good is eternally 
 gained even in and through the evil. How far the 
 actual process of evolution may in our part of the 
 universe extend is a matter for empirical science. 
 
 But our own ideal of human life as a " progres- 
 sive realization of the good," what of that ? The 
 answer is obvious. The good will that is in us as a 
 temporal fact, not being yet fully realized or trium- 
 phant in us as we are in ourselves as mere finite be- 
 ings, must aim at complete expression of itself in 
 time and in us, and through us in those whom we 
 seem to influence. For oulyJ/n_$Q~-#eekiny to per- 
 
THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 467 
 
 feet us in whom it exists, is this good will in us good 
 at all. In so far as we, viewed abstractly, in our 
 separateness from God, are good, we then do indeed 
 try to realize that life of God in which we are all 
 the time an element. For us this is progress. This 
 progress is the form taken temporarily in us by the 
 good will. But for God this is no real progress. 
 Therefore is it indeed true that the moral insight in 
 us must lead us to aim at progress in goodness, just 
 as, on the other side, the rational element in us leads 
 us to aim at progress in knowledge. But, meanwhile, 
 our moral progress and our rational progress, mere 
 minor facts happening at a moment of time, are but 
 insignificant elements in the infinite life in which, as 
 a whole, there is and can^ be no progress, but only 
 an infinite variety of the forms of the good will and 
 of the higher knowledge. 
 
 And so consciousness has given us in concrete 
 form solutions of our two deepest philosophic prob- 
 lems. The possibility of error, necessitating an in- 
 clusive thought, is illustrated for us by our own con- 
 scious thought, which can include true and false ele- 
 ments in the unity of one clear and true thought at 
 any moment. And the possibility and necessity of 
 moral evil, demanding a real distinction between 
 good and evil, a hateful opposition that seems at first 
 sight fatal to our religious need for the supremacy 
 of goodness in the united world, is illustrated for us 
 in a way that solves this whole trouble, namely, in 
 the unity of the conscious moral act. There at the 
 one moment are good and evil, warring, implacable, 
 yet united in the present momentary triumph of the 
 
468 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 good will. A world in which this strife, this vic- 
 tory, this absolute rest above the real strife and in 
 the midst of the real strife, is the supreme fact, is 
 the perfect world that religion needs. It is a world 
 of the true Life of God. 
 
 VI. 
 
 And our insight appeals not only to our general 
 religious needs. It comes with its truth home to the 
 individual man. It demands that we consider what 
 our individual life is really worth when it is lived in 
 the presence of this Infinite Judge. O man, what 
 is this thy daily life ! Thou livest for the applause 
 or in fear of the blame of thy neighbors. An unkind 
 word cuts thee to the quick. A little public favor, 
 or the approving word of a friend, is worth half thy 
 soul to thee. And all the while thou knowest not 
 that One infinitely greater than multitudes of neigh- 
 bors is here, not above thee only, nor afar in the 
 heavens, but pervading thy every thought. And that 
 all-pervading Thought judges thee as these neigh- 
 bors never can. Myriads of their blunders about 
 thee are as nothing to an atom of this infinite Truth. 
 That rain-drop yonder in the sunshine is not more 
 filled with the light, than are all the most hidden re- 
 cesses of thy heart filled with that Infinite Presence. 
 No one of us is more famous than his neighbor ; for 
 no one is known save by God, and to him all alike 
 are known. To be sure, to know this is the same 
 as understanding rightly, that thou art in truth what 
 thou art. All truth is truth because it is known by 
 
THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 469 
 
 a conscious Thought : therefore whatsoever thou art, 
 whether it is consciously or unconsciously existent in 
 thee, is known to the all-seeing Universal Conscious- 
 ness. But commonplace as this seems to the philos- 
 opher, is it not more than a mere commonplace to 
 thee, if thou lovest genuine righteousness ? For is it 
 not something to feel that thy life is, all of it, in 
 God and for God ? No one else knows thee. Alone 
 thou wanderest in a dead world, save for this Pres- 
 ence. These other men, how can they know thee ? 
 They love thee or scorn thee or hate thee, but none 
 of them love or scorn or hate thee for what thou art. 
 Whatever they hold of thee, it is an accident. If 
 they knew more of thee, doubtless they would think 
 otherwise of thee. Do they love thee ? Then they 
 know thee not well enough, nor do they see thy 
 meanness and thy vileness, thy selfishness and thy 
 jealousy and thy malice. If they saw these, surely 
 they would hate thee. But do they hate thee ? 
 Then thou callest them unjust. Doubtless they are 
 so. Some chance word of thine, a careless look or 
 gesture, an accident of fortune, a trifling fault, these 
 they have remembered ; and therefore do they hate 
 thee. If they knew better things of thee, perhaps 
 they would love thee. 
 
 Thus contradictory is thy life with them. And yet 
 thou must labor that the good may triumph near 
 thee by thy effort. Now in all this work who shall 
 be thy true friend ? Whose appr^v^l shall ^tip.nnr. 
 age thee ? Thy neighbor's ? Nay, but it is thy duty 
 always to suspect thy neighbor's opinion of thee. 
 He is a corrupt judge, or at best an ignorant judge. 
 
470 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 He sees not thy heart. He is a respecter of persons. 
 He is too often a bundle of whims. If he also pro- 
 fesses to be trying to serve righteousness, it is thy 
 duty to have ready faith in his good intent, if that 
 be possible for thee ; but by all means doubt his 
 wisdom about thee, and thine about him. If he 
 praises thee for thy righteousness, listen not willingly 
 to his praise. It will deceive thee. He will most 
 praise thee when thou inwardly art not righteous. 
 If he blames thee for evil, let it warn thee ; for if 
 he is not right now, he doubtless soon will be. But 
 take it not too much to heart. He is ignorant of 
 thee. He talks of thee as he might talk of the other 
 side of the moon, unless indeed he talks of thee just 
 as man in general, and not as to thy particular acts. 
 Trust him not in all these things. Realize his needs 
 as thou canst, strive to aid hint in being righteous, 
 use him as an instrument for the extension of good- 
 ness ; but trust not his judgment of thee. Who 
 then is, as the true judge of thy worth, thy only per- 
 fect friend ? 
 
 The Divine Thought. There is the opinion of 
 thee to which thou canst look up. To be sure it is 
 revealed to thee only in thy consciousness of what 
 righteousness is and of what truth is. Nowhere else 
 hast thou a guide that can do more for thee than to 
 help to quicken thy insight. But, then, thy relig- 
 ious comfort is to be, not that the moral law is thun- 
 dered down from mountain - tops as if some vast 
 town-crier were talking, but that when thou seekest 
 to do right, the Infinite all-seeing One knows and 
 approves thee. If thou lovest righteousness for its 
 
THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 471 
 
 own sake, then this will comfort thee. If not, if 
 thou seekest sugar-plums, seek them not in the home 
 of the Infinite. Go among thy fellow-men and be a 
 successful hypocrite and charlatan, and thou shalt 
 have gaping and wonderment and sugar - plums 
 enough. 
 
 Herein then lies the invitation of the Infinite to 
 us, that it is, and that it knows us. No deeper sanc- 
 tion is there for true righteousness than this knowl- 
 edge that one is serving the Eternal. Yet when we 
 say all this, are we simply doing that which we spoke 
 of in the opening chapter of this work ? Are we 
 but offering snow to appease the religious hunger ? 
 Is this doctrine too cold, too abstract, too far-off ? 
 Cold and abstract and far-off is indeed the proof of 
 it. But that was philosophy. That was not the re- 
 ligious aspect of our doctrine, but only the prepara- 
 tion for showing the religious aspect of philosophy. 
 Is the doctrine itself, however, once gained, so re- 
 mote from the natural religious emotion ? What 
 does a man want when he looks to the world for re^ 
 ligious support ? Does he want such applause as\ 
 blind crowds give men, such flattery as designing! 
 people shower upon them, such sympathy as even the 
 cherished but prejudiced ]ove of one's nearest friends 
 pours out for him ? Nay, if he seeks merely this, 
 is he quite unselfishly righteous ? Can he not get 
 all that if he wants it, wholly apart from religion ? 
 And if he looks for reward, can he not get that also 
 otherwise ? But what his true devotion to the moral 
 law ardently desires is not to be alone. Approval! 
 for what really deserves approval he needs, approval 
 
472 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 from one who truly knows him. Well, our doctrine 
 says that he gets it. Just as deep, as full, as rich, ' 
 as true approval as expresses the full worth of his ( 
 act, this he has for all eternity from the Infinite. 
 To feed upon that truth is to eat something better j 
 than snow, but as pure as the driven snow. To love \ 
 that truth is to love God. 
 
 We spoke in the former book of the boundless 
 magnitude of human life as it impresses itself upon 
 one who first gains the moral insight. To many 
 this first devotion to human life seems itself enough 
 for a religion. But then one goes beyond this point, 
 and says that human life has, after all, very much 
 that is base and petty in it. Here is not the ideal. 
 " Would that there were a higher life ! To that we 
 would devote ourselves. We will serve humanity, 
 but how can we worship it?" Such is the thought 
 of many an ardent soul that seeks no personal re- 
 wards in serving the good, but that does seek some 
 great Eeality that shall surely be worthy of service. 
 To such, our religious insight points out this higher 
 reality. You that have been willing to devote your- 
 selves to humanity, here is a Life greater in infinite 
 degree than humanity. And now is it not a help to 
 know that truly to serve humanity is just the same 
 as to serve this Infinite ? For whatever had seemed 
 disheartening in the baseness and weakness of man 
 loses its discouraging darkness now that all is trans- 
 figured in this Infinite light. 
 
 Let us then be encouraged in our work by this 
 great Truth. But let us not spend too much time 
 in merely contemplating this Truth. We, whose 
 
THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 473 
 
 lives are to be lived injpl, it is not good that we 
 should brood over even an infinite Thought. For in 
 our finite minds it will soon become petty, unless we 
 realize it chiefly through our acts. Let us then go 
 about our business. For every man has business; 
 and desire, such as they are. 
 
 As we turn away then for the time from our con- 
 templation, we have one last word yet as to these 
 practical consequences of our view. If the reader 
 follows us at all in our argument, we want him also 
 to follow us into the practical application of it to 
 life. To work for the extension of the moral insight 
 is, we have said, the chief present duty of man in so- 
 ciety. All else is preparation for this work, or else 
 is an anticipation of the higher stage when, if we 
 ever grow up to that level, we shall have our further 
 work to do in the light of the insight itself. But 
 this chief present work of ours, this extension of the 
 moral insight, is best furthered by devotion to our 
 individual vocations, coupled with strict loyalty to 
 the relations upon which society is founded. The 
 work thus set before us demands the sacrifice of 
 many ideal emotional experiences to the service of 
 the Highest. Our comfort however in it all must be 
 that the Highest is there above us, forget it as we 
 may. If the reader accepts all this, then with us 
 he has the assurance that, whatever becomes of the 
 old creeds in the present religious crisis, the founda- 
 tions of genuinely religious faith are sure. 
 
 Whenever we must pause again in our work for 
 religious support, and whenever we are worn out 
 with the jargon of the schools, we can rest once 
 
474 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 more for a time in this contemplation of the Eternal 
 Truth. Hie breve plangitur. But not so is it in 
 God's life. Our problems may be hard, but there 
 all is solved. Our lives may be poor and contempt- 
 ible, but there all is wealth and fullness of worth. 
 Our efforts may often prove vain, but there naught 
 exists that is vanity. For the imperfection of the 
 finite is but the fragment of the Infinite Whole 
 where there is no true imperfection. Is it not a Re- 
 ligion to feel this ? And we shall then turn from 
 such a contemplation once again as we do now, to 
 look with fresher courage at this boundless, tossing 
 sea of human life about us. This is not itself the 
 Divine, but over it all God's winds are blowing. 
 And to our eyes it is boundless. Let us go down 
 into this great sea and toil, fearing no storm, but 
 seeking to find there treasures that shall be copies, 
 however faint, of that which is Eternal. 
 
EPILOGUE. 
 
 YET some reader, to whom, as to the author, phil- 
 osophic questions are directly matters of vocation, 
 may possibly linger. To him are due one or two 
 statements more, to set at rest certain of his doubts 
 about our meaning. Perhaps he will ask the very 
 natural, yet, after all, not very fruitful, question, 
 " Is the foregoing theory of things Theism or Pan- 
 theism? Has it been your purpose to defend the 
 essential portions of the older Theistic doctrines, or 
 to alter them in favor of some newer faith ? " This 
 question expresses a difficulty that some plain people\ 
 must feel when they read, not merely this book, but( 
 also many recent discussions. There are writers who 
 have undertaken to defend Theism, and who have ac- 
 tually in all sincerity argued for the necessity of the 
 Universal Thought. The plain people have reason 
 to suspect such of trying to substitute for the " God 
 of our Fathers" something else, to be called by the 
 same name, and so to be passed off for the same 
 thing. We therefore answer very plainly that we 
 desire to do nothing of the sort. If in the foregoing 
 we have on occasion used the word God, no reader 
 is obliged to suppose that our idea agrees with his 
 idea, for we have fully explained what our idea 
 means. We repeat : As my thought at any time, 
 and however engaged, combines several fragmentary 
 
476 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 thoughts into the unity of one conscious moment, so, 
 we affirm, does the Universal Thought combine the 
 thoughts of all of us into an absolute unity of 
 thought, together with all the objects and all the 
 thoughts about these objects that are, or have been, 
 or will be, or can be, in the Universe. This Uni- 
 versal Thought is what we have ventured, for the 
 sake of convenience, to call God. It is not the God 
 of very much of the traditional theology. It is the 
 /God of the idealistic tradition from Plato down- 
 | wards. Our proof for it is wholly different from 
 those baseless figments of the apologetic books, the 
 design - argument, and the general argument from 
 causality. Since Kant, those arguments must be 
 abandoned by all critical philosophers, and we have 
 indicated something of their weakness. They have 
 been aptly compared to mediaeval artillery on a 
 modern battle-field. We accept the comparison. 
 Kant gave to modern philosophy new instruments, 
 and these it is our duty to apply as we can to the 
 old questions that the whole history of thought has 
 been trying to understand. Our special proof for 
 the existence of an Universal Thought has been 
 based, in the foregoing, upon an analysis of the na- 
 ture of truth and error as necessary conceptions. We 
 do not regard the Universal Thought as in any com- 
 monly recognized sense a Creator. A creator would 
 be finite, and his existence would have to be learned 
 from experience. The Universal Thought is infinite, 
 and its existence is proved independently of experi- 
 ence. For the rest, we have insisted that experience 
 furnishes no evidence of single creative powers that 
 
EPILOGUE. 477 
 
 are at once unlimited and good. We have however 
 shown how all the Powers that be exist as necessary- 
 facts in the Infinite Thought, and how, apart from 
 this thought, nothing is that is. Such is our concep- 
 tion. It is no new one in philosophy. We have tried 
 with no small labor, and after teflious doubting, to 
 make it our own. We have independently given 
 our own reasons for it. And we have asserted that 
 here is an object of infinite religious worth. 
 
 And now we must add that we are quite indiffer-i 
 ent whether anybody calls all this Theism or Pan-] 
 theism. It differs from the commoner traditional 
 forms of both. Both usually consider God as a 
 Power, and either leave him off on one side to push 
 things occasionally, or to set them going at the out- 
 set, or else identify him with his products. The for- 
 mer way of conceiving God is never more than half- 
 philosophic. The latter way is apt to degenerate 
 into wholly poetical rhapsodies. We take neither 
 of these ways. For us Causation is a very subordi- 
 nate idea in philosophy. It expresses only one form 
 of the rational unity of things, and that an imper- 
 fect form. The world of the Powers is not yet an 
 universe. Thought must be truer than Power, com- 
 prehending all the Powers, and much more besides, 
 in its infinite unity. God as Power would be noth- 
 ing, or finite. God as Thought can be and is all in 
 all. And if this is philosophy, traditional Theism 
 can do what it wishes to do about the matter. 
 
 In short, the present doctrine is the doctrine that 
 in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was 
 with God, and the Word was God. So far, said St. 
 
478 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Augustine, Plato had gone. So far we have gone. 
 Beyond that, said St. Augustine, the truth was not 
 revealed to human wisdom, but only to humble faith. 
 Beyond that, with the rational consequences that we 
 have been able to draw from it in the foregoing, we 
 are frankly agnostic. If any man knows more about 
 the Powers in the world than science has found out 
 by patient examination of the facts, let him rejoice 
 in his knowledge. We are not in possession of such 
 knowledge. We believe in the Conservation of the 
 physical forces, in the Law of Evolution as it is at 
 present and for a limited past time found to express 
 the facts of nature, and in the fact of the Dissipation 
 of Energy. All this we believe as the scientifically 
 probable view, and we do so on the authority of cer- 
 tain students of physical science, who, having exam- 
 ined the facts, seem to agree upon so much as capa- 
 ble of popular exposition. We believe in such other 
 results of science as are known to us. But beyond 
 this nothing as to the Powers in the world is clear to 
 us. We know nothing about individual immortal- 
 ity, nothing about any endless future progress of our 
 species, nothing about the certainty that what men 
 call from without goodness must empirically triumph 
 just here in this little world about us. All that is 
 dark. We know only that the highest Truth is al- 
 ready attained from all eternity in the Infinite 
 Thought, and that in and for that Thought the vic- 
 tory that overcometh the world is once for all won. 
 Whatever happens to our poor selves, we know that 
 the Whole is perfect. And this knowledge gives 
 us peace. We know that our moral Vindicator liv- 
 
EPILOGUE. 479 
 
 eth, and that in his sight all the good that we do is 
 not labor lost. 
 
 Yet the purpose of these chapters is not to give 
 at any point a mere negation, even when we speak 
 of the traditional theology. We do not want to ex- 
 aggerate our quarrel with anybody. If thinkers who 
 accept some traditional form of theology find truth 
 or help in our doctrine, we shall be glad. After 
 all, the religious interest wants, not so much this or 
 that view about some man's special creed, but a 
 foundation for the faith that somehow righteousness 
 is in deepest truth triumphant in the world. If there 
 is no proof, then, as we said in Chapter IX., we must 
 resort to the Postulates. If we can get proof, so 
 much the better. 
 
 Thus, however, we have suggested to ourselves an- 
 other question. These Postulates of Chapter IX., 
 what has become of them now ? Are they wholly 
 lost in our insight ? No indeed. They remain just 
 what they were, rational forms of our activity, not 
 perfect in their rationality, but constantly valuable 
 to us in our work. The scientific postulates are not 
 superseded, but rather only strengthened, by the 
 insight into the ultimate rationality of things. They 
 become now the assurance that there must be a ra- 
 tional solution to every scientific problem, and that 
 the simplest solution, being the most rational, is the 
 most probable, in case it is actually adequate to all 
 the facts. Just as before, it remains true of us 
 finite beings that our finite external world is at each 
 instant the product of our activity, working with the 
 postulates, upon the material of our sensations. And 
 
480 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 that activity remains as before the proper object of a 
 moral judgment. Only now we see that the highest 
 form of our activity is likely to be the one most con- 
 forming to the truth. What remains true of the 
 scientific postulates, remains true of the religious 
 postulates. They are not superseded. For what they 
 can still do for us is to insist that our idea of the In- 
 finite shall not remain a cold, barren abstraction, 
 but that we shall appeal to our experience for evi- 
 dence of what is truly highest and best, and that we 
 shall then say : " The highest conceptions that I get 
 from experience of what goodness and beauty are, 
 the noblest life that I can imagine, the completest 
 blessedness that I can think of, all these things are 
 but faint suggestions of a truth that is infinitely re- 
 alized in the Divine, that knows all truth. What- 
 ever perfection there is suggested in these things, 
 that He must fully know and experience." There- 
 fore the religious postulates can accompany us every- 
 where, making all our experience appear to us as an 
 ever-fresh lesson concerning the mind of God. 
 
 The postulates, then, we retain, with the insight. 
 We abandon, however, the use of these postulates 
 to demonstrate further special articles of faith as 
 to supernatural powers or events of any sort. We 
 know of no miracle save the Infinite himself. And 
 so we have no interest in many of the forms of pop- 
 ular idealism. To prove that this world is the home 
 of a Spiritual Life, many good people have been and 
 are concerned to prove that certain phenomena which 
 we see about us are in and of themselves direct evi- 
 dences of the spiritual nature of things. To such 
 
EPILOGUE. 481 
 
 persons a Spirit that is not constantly producing 
 noteworthy effects, and so getting himself into the 
 newspapers, would seem unreal. Therefore, to such 
 persons Religious Idealism depends for its life and 
 warmth upon the vividness and the impressiveness 
 of these phenomenal indications of the action of the 
 great Spirit. Such persons, if they have given up 
 traditional superstitions, still find their delight in 
 dwelling on the mystery of " vital force," on the oc- 
 currence of all sorts of wonderful things, on the the- 
 ories of occult powers, or of ethereal essences. To 
 them one of the best evidences of the spiritual na- 
 ture of things is the inability of the biologist to 
 tell us under what conditions life could be produced 
 from dead matter. The mysterious nature of ner- 
 vous action, the influence of the mind upon the 
 body, and, above all, the occurrence of certain 
 strange emotional experiences in us, such as the vis- 
 ions of mystics, these are to them the main proof 
 that the world is divine and is full of spiritual life. 
 We do not sympathize with this method of idealism. 
 We respect its good intentions, but we are unwilling 
 to look upon it as rationally significant. For us it 
 makes absolutely no difference in our faith about 
 the ultimate spiritual nature of things, whether the 
 world that we see makes our hair stand on end or 
 not, or whether the biologists ever come to succeed 
 in making living matter or not. That we can make 
 a fire, does not prove the world less divine. Nor 
 would the truth of things be less spiritual, if we 
 could also manufacture not only protoplasm, but 
 whole whales or Shakespeares in our laboratories. 
 
 31 
 
482 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 If we could do so, materialism as a philosophical 
 doctrine would remain just as absurd as it now is. 
 Genuine idealism, like the foregoing, is utterly care- 
 less whether this or that particular surprising thing 
 appears in the phenomenal world, since it once for 
 all knows that the Whole is divine, an eternal sur- 
 prise. It seeks no confirmation from the laborato- 
 ries ; but only for illustrations of rationality ; nor 
 for its own part does it venture to dictate to the 
 special workers in science what they shall find. It 
 is not forced to beg Nature to contain some occult 
 agency, some vague ethereal essence, or some myste- 
 rious and wondrous visible being, whose presence 
 shall be a guaranty to the gaping onlooker that 
 there exists an Ideal. All this mendicant idealism 
 our view rejects as unworthy of any clear-headed 
 thinker. It says, " Look at the facts as they are. 
 Study them as experience gives them. Know them 
 in their naked commonplace reality. But know also 
 that the Ideal Divine Life dwells in them and 
 throughout their whole boundless realm." 
 
 In Plato's " Parmenides," the young Socrates 
 confesses that he sometimes hesitates to say that 
 there is an Idea for everything, even for mud. He 
 is rebuked for this fear that men may laugh at him. 
 He is told that mud also is rational. Even so we 
 must fear nobody's laughter in such a matter. We 
 must see the Divine everywhere. And therefore we 
 must not be going about faithlessly looking for some- 
 thing that shall be wondrous enough to force us to 
 say " Here is God." 
 
EPILOGUE. 483 
 
 And now, last of all, as the writer bids farewell 
 to this single lingering fellow-student, he cannot re- 
 frain from suggesting to so patient a friend one lit- 
 tle thought more concerning the proof that has been 
 given for the doctrine of these later pages of our 
 discussion. " Possibly it is all false," the fellow- 
 student may say. " This fair picture of a Truth that 
 is also Goodness, may be but another illusion." Be 
 it so, dear friend, if we have said nothing to con- 
 vince thee. Perchance all this our later argument 
 is illusion. Only remember : If it is Error, then, 
 as we have shown thee, it is Error because and only 
 because the Infinite knows it to be such. Apart 
 from that knowledge, our thought would be no error. 
 At least, then, the Infinite knows what we have at- 
 tributed to it. If it rejects our ideal, then doubtless 
 there is something imperfect, not about the Infinite, 
 but about our Ideal. And so at worst we are like 
 a child who has come to the palace of the King on 
 the day of his wedding, bearing roses as a gift to 
 grace the feast. For the child, waiting innocently 
 to see whether the King will not appear and praise 
 the welcome flowers, grows at last weary with watch- 
 ing all day and with listening to harsh words outside 
 the palace gate, amid the jostling crowd. And so 
 in the evening it falls fast asleep beneath the great 
 dark walls, unseen and forgotten ; and the wither- 
 ing roses by and by fall from its lap, and are scat- 
 tered by the wind into the dusty highway, there to 
 be trodden under foot and destroyed. Yet all that 
 happens only because there are infinitely fairer 
 
484 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 treasures within the palace than the ignorant child 
 could bring. The King knows of this, yes, and of 
 ten thousand other proffered gifts of loyal subjects. 
 But he needs them not. Rather are all things from 
 eternity his own, 
 
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