LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Class \ By HORATIO W. DRESSER The Power of Silence. New Edition, revised and enlarged. 12. The Perfect Whole. 12 ... In Search of a Soul. 12 . . Voices of Hope. 12 .... Voices of Freedom. 12 Education and the Philosophical Ideal. The Heart of It. 16 . Living by the Spirit. 16 . The Christ Ideal. 16 . A Book of Secrets. 12 ... Man and the Divine Order. 12 . Health and the Inner Life. 12 . The Philosophy of the Spirit. 12 . net $1.35 1.25 1.25 1.25 1.25 12 1.25 75 75 net .75 net i.oo net i. 60 net 1.35 The Philosophy of the Spirit A Study of the Spiritual Nature of Man and the Presence of God, with a Supplementary Essay on the Logic of Hegel By Horatio W. Dresser, Ph.D. (Harv.) Author of " Living by the Spirit," " Man and the Divine Order," OF THE UNIVERSITY or G. P. Putnam's Sons New York and London fmfcfcerbocfter press 1908 tiENEHAt COPYRIGHT, 1908 BY HORATIO WILLIS DRESSER. TTbe ftnicfccrbocbcr prceg, 1Acw A 1 ^ or THE UNIVERSITY PREFACE THERE is a tradition that certain subjects are sacred and can never become matters of scientific inquiry. One of these ineffable subjects is the relationship of God to man in the highest ranges of human experience, particularly in those beatific moments when, in expec- tant solitude or social worship, the soul communes with the Father. But in these self-conscious days psycho- logy has been triumphantly carried into all fields, and if psychological descriptions have sometimes been irreverent it is a question, not of retreat, but of the analysis which affords the most appreciative descrip- tion. The success which has attended the psychology of religion shows that very much is to be gained by undertaking an account of the higher experiences of men. What must be said in behalf of the sacred or ineffable may be added when science has achieved its utmost. In the following pages I have ventured to mediate between science and religion by endeavour- ing to be appreciatively true to the everlasting realities of the religious life while taking account of and passing beyond the results attained by modern psychology. If no subject should more deeply inspire our reverence than that of the presence of God, none is more worthy of our thought. Accordingly I offer what I believe to be a contribution to the study of problems which pertain to a field midway between the philosophy of religion and constructive idealism. Advocates of various points of view may meet in this common 180695 IV Preface field to study questions that are rightfully prior to the development of their special views. Each may make such qualification as he will, but all must be concerned with the issues here shown to be funda- mental. The point from which all men must start is experience. The point on which they may all eventually agree is in the description of experience on its subjective side. What lies beyond will long be matter of dispute, for some will maintain that experience brings us into direct relation with a higher order of being, while others will insist that it is merely a question of human analysis and of the values which analytic thought assigns. The experience which is said to give direct evidence of the presence of God is only one of a number in this regard. Hence in the following discussions I have begun farther back, with the facts of universally verifiable experience, before considering the special case. I have pointed out that to understand the living flux of experience we must study the immediate side of our nature in general. Having directed attention to the immediate elements of all experience, I under- take a fresh analysis of the factors that may rightfully be supposed to enter into the experience of the divine presence, always reserving room for that which may lie beyond psychological description. The various factors well in hand, and certain misapprehensions removed, it becomes possible to assess theories, such as mysticism, which have been brought forward in explanation of the divine presence. Mysticism, al- though rejected, is treated more appreciatively than by most critics. It becomes clear that whether or not an experience be said to reveal the divine presence it is first a question of the theory of human nature implied, Preface v and the interpretation put upon immediate experience in general. The volume begins with an illustration drawn from universal experience which gives the clue to the entire discussion of the idea and presence of God, and outlines the problems, allied interests, and methods. The second chapter formulates a conception of Spirit, de- fined in essentially philosophical terms as implying the unity of the divine selfhood and the orderly proceeding forth of the divine creative activity. The third chapter is a justification of the critical or human point of view, in contrast with the dogmas which condemn inquiries such as the present investigation. The interest of the fourth chapter is wholly practical and relates to the ideal attitude to be maintained by those who are seeking the realities of the eternal life. The subse- quent chapters undertake to establish the relationship of God to the natural world and to the commonplace by considering various hypotheses in regard to peculiar faculties, special gifts, authoritative intuitions, de- cisive feelings, and religious emotions. The result is not that the presence of God is reduced to the common- place but that many considerations are brought into view which devotees of special sides of our nature neglect. No faculty or experience is found that is solely authoritative, yet all considerations in question point forward to the discussion of the last chapter in which they are treated as phases of the witness of the Spirit. The discussion of immediate experience centres about the life of feeling, and the theories analysed and rejected are mainly those in which one-sided emphasis is placed upon human sentiency. Hence other phases of human nature, together with the VI Preface implied theories, are passed by with briefer reference. That is to say, there are doctrines founded on the supposition that the life of feeling, intuition, or a mysterious "God-sense," is mystically continuous with the life of man. These doctrines are briefly classifiable as immediatisms, and they are character- ised by disparagement of the human intellect and of rationalism in all its forms. In contrast with this gen- eral procedure, there is another conception of human experience which starts with the presupposition that man is a many-sided being. From this point of view there is contiguous relationship between God and man without mystical union, conjunction without identity of selfhood. That is, God is present to man's nature not merely on the side of feeling but man is able to apprehend the divinely real and true through reason. Furthermore, the volitional reaction, the effect on man's conduct, should be taken into account. But to establish this richer conception of human nature and human experience is to vindicate the rights of the intellect, hence to show that there must be rational interpretation of the presence of God. It is this conception of the manifold character of human respon- siveness which points the way to the present dis- cussion. The book is polemical only so far as mystical or merely empirical immediatisms are concerned: it is constructive in terms of an idealistic study of the entire problem of immediacy. The central problem is further suggested by the questions often raised, namely, Is man's first duty to obey that which is first in experience his instincts, emotions, impulses, leadings or should he endeavour to improve on experience of all types? Is there any spontaneous prompting that is directly authoritative? Preface vii Granted that man has departed from nature and devised ways of his own, is there a way of escape from the conflicts which ensue between original promptings and conventional systems? Granted modern criticism, with its self -consciousness and the truths it has brought to light, how shall we escape from the paralysis of agnosticism into the life of productive belief? Plainly, these issues must be wrestled with afresh in our day, for it is a day when men are sent back to experience with new conviction. The method of solution would appear to be to test each conception to the full for what it may be practically worth, then compare the results in terms of ultimate standards and the pro- foundest philosophic systems. For merely practical considerations are not all-sufficient. The great systems are by no means dead. The life has not departed from the church and the other great institutions. The central clue will be found through a new adjustment between the systems of authority and the revelations of the modern spirit. In accordance with the practical methods of the day, the conception of God 'defined as immanent Spirit is here tested in the light of its direct bearings on human experience. But experience is shown to be unmeaning unless it have real relation to a higher order of existence corresponding to the values assigned by enlightened self-consciousness. In contrast, then, with those who regard religion as "the conservation of values" to borrow Hoff ding's phrase the spiritual life is here regarded as actually revealing superior existences. In contrast with naturalism, the attempt is made to relate the natural with the spiritual. The start is made with the results of the critical philosophy steadily in mind, and the argument keeps close to those results. viii Preface Nevertheless, the main purpose is to direct attention rather to the Spirit than to the human limitations which might sceptically be taken to exclude the Spirit. Hence the constructive doctrine assimilates an element from empiricism without agreeing with the mystic, or other devotees of the life of feeling. In the last analysis, the problem of immediacy is the same wher- ever found, and if the main argument be conclusive it will be plain that one must assimilate the realities of immediate experience while passing beyond all empiri- cism by undertaking a thorough idealistic reconstruc- tion of experience. Hence the volume closes with suggestions of a system which is here treated merely as an implication. The book as a whole involves some changes in method as compared with earlier volumes. Having published several volumes of essays, written at various times and not in the order published, in the present book I have undertaken a systematic development of the main interest throughout^ namely, the relationship of the immanent Spirit to man. That interest was involved in too many issues in the preceding volumes. Here it is disengaged from special topics and considered without reference to the practical mysticism with which the writer's teaching has been erroneously identified by the public. Were there space to make the distinctions clear, it would be plain that the philosophy of this book is radically different from therapeutic mysticism in all its forms. Such mysticism "involves acceptance of the ideas of God, human nature, and immediate experience here rejected in favour of the idealistic view above mentioned. The earlier volumes, because they dealt with practical interests Preface ix were supposed to be merely practical, hence they have been hastily classified under the head of various new doctrines. The present discussion shows that the main interest is decidedly idealistic. As matter of fact, the present doctrine has been developed without reference to, or even criticism of, current popular beliefs, but as a result of technical studies begun long before the earlier books were written. The cul- minating study was a comparison between modern empiricism, as expressed in such works as Professor James's The Varieties of Religious Experience, and the logic of Hegel. The decisive issues are embodied in Chapter XI, which is a summary of studies in the concept of immediacy carried on a number of years ago in the logical seminary at Harvard. Out of these re- searches, in which I had the benefit of the constructive criticism of Professor Royce, grew the problem of the relationship of immediate experience to the religious and idealistic interests of the earlier volumes. Hence the study of the presence of God is regarded as typical of a general logical problem. The study has been made as untechnical as possible so as to be verifiable in terms of common human experience. Nevertheless, the conception of immediate experience is the writer's point of departure from the merely practical to the technically philosophical. Hence the chapter on immediacy is supplemented by an essay on the logic of Hegel in which the decisive analysis is found. Readers whose interests are pre- vailingly practical may omit Chapter XI and the Supplementary Essay, and yet find all that is required for practical purposes. But it is just this assumption that truth is true enough if it serves us "for practical x Preface purposes" to which this book takes most emphatic exception. It was precisely because one believed in the value of fundamental principles that this long investigation seemed worth while. That investigation was twofold for many years, and the essentially practical branch of it has been developed in the pre- ceding volumes: the present work marks a departure inasmuch as the technical, constructive clue is pub- lished in the same volume with the practical analysis. The Supplementary Essay belongs with Chapter XI, and should not be regarded as the conclusion of the book. The problem is stated less technically in the first seventeen sections, and the main problem in regard to irrationality is discussed, with certain references to pragmatism, in Sec. 126 and the sections following. Sections 37-63, 68-77, 89-108, may be omitted by those who do not care for dialectic detail. The con- clusions of the Essay point forward to constructive idealism. That is, one believes, with Hegel, that it is the third or reconstructive moment of thought which makes clear the truly real. Neither sentiency nor reason is proved all-sufficient. Reason is dependent on the immediacies of experience, hence cannot create its items out of its own pure selfhood; while mere experience never takes us beyond the realm of appear- ances. One believes more firmly than ever in spon- taneity, receptivity, guidance, intuition, and the rich values of the religious life; but one turns to Hegel, who teaches a man how to interpret immediate experi- ence fundamentally, rather than to those who disparage one side of our nature (the rational) while imperfectly mediating the other (the element of sentiency) . Hegel Preface xi is not the prejudiced rationalist he is supposed to be, but the most faithful to the concrete of the great philosophers. Well might devotees of the modern pragmatic movement take their clues from him, in- stead of giving up the ideals of metaphysics before they have even reckoned with the great systems. CAMBRIDGE, MASS. January, 1908. CONTENTS CHAPTBR PAGE I. THE SCOPE OF THE INQUIRY i II. THE DEFINITION OF THE SPIRIT ... 31 III. THE STARTING-POINT . . . -57 IV. THE ETERNAL TYPE OF LIFE ... 76 V. THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL . . 102 VI. THE CHANNELS OF THE SPIRIT . . .128 VII. THE IMMEDIACY OF THE SPIRIT . . .154 VIII. THE VALUE OF INTUITION . . .178 IX. A STUDY OF THE EMOTIONS . . . 199 X. THE VALUE OF FEELING .... 232 XI. THE IMPORT OF IMMEDIACY . . . 240 XII. AN ESTIMATE OF MYSTICISM . . . 272 XIII. GUIDANCE ...... 296 XIV. THE PLACE OF FAITH . . . .328 XV. THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT . . . 349 xiv Contents SUPPLEMENTARY ESSAY PAGE FOREWORD . 3 8 7 THE ELEMENT OF IRRATIONALITY IN THE HEGELIAN DIALECTIC ... 393 INDEX 539 The Philosophy of the Spirit THE UNIVERSITY THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SPIRIT CHAPTER I THE SCOPE OF THE INQUIRY ONE of the most deeply suggestive events in nature is the reawakening of life in the spring-time, with the sense of fresh beauty and newness of being which it brings, as though spring had never arrived before. The same landscape lies around us, the same grass-plots and flower-beds are there. Once more the familiar changes take place, from early March with its pro- mising winds to the sunny skies and budding life of April and the wondrous green beauty of May. Once again the birds arrive, to make the heart glad and awaken us with their morning song. Again the beau- ties of late spring blend with the customary scenes of early summer. Everywhere regularity reigns. Yet it is not nature's orderliness which then impresses us but the new life astir in things. No mere reference to what nature was yesterday, last year, or the year before, can explain this miracle. The great fact is the presence of life, life, that perennial power which annuls time, transforms the familiar into the new, and compels ancient nature to be born again. The same miracle is wrought in the human heart. 2 The Philosophy of the Spirit A true friend never ages. There is neither time nor space where love abides. When the heart speaks, however many times it may have uttered the identical words, or prompted the same act of gracious service, it is as if love had never expressed itself before. The variations of love's familiar themes constantly sur- prise us by their novelty. The entire world is trans- formed at love's bidding. If we are ever in danger of servitude to the dull routine of our natural existence, it is love that saves us. In a single hour the prosaic details of ordinary life take on a new beauty. The ugliest environment may thus be transfigured and the most difficult task made sacred. Consciously or unconsciously, it is love that sends us forth anew when we seek truth, beauty, or goodness. We may cherish the belief that some other prompting will send us as far and as high. But take love away, remove us from those who encourage, inspire, and sympathise, and we discover that love is the great essential. Love grows with the years and it is not the sudden upheavals of passion which genuinely transfigure the world for us. Love has the power to assimilate all moments unto her- self so that we live in an eternal present. Most of all when we love, when we are loved, do we know God. If "God is love," we have in deepest truth the secret of this everlasting wonder, this constant renewal of that which otherwise were old. The entire universe, nature with its varied forms and types of life, the human world with its struggles and achievements, may be said to be each moment created anew by the Love which imbues it. More memorable still is the reawakening of faith within us after a period of doubt and struggle. There are times when we are immersed in circumstance and The Scope of the Inquiry 3 can make no headway. We are overwhelmed by limitations, beset by obstacles, and victory seems impossible. Whatever happens, we are constantly made aware that we are decidedly human. Moreover, there are arguments without number to convince us of our finitude. Yet even when the prospect is dark- est, when all convictions appear to be shattered, a new light gleams across the mind. That which a moment before seemed to be insuperable limitation now proves to be the essential condition of a new life. The point of view is suddenly shifted from the besetting cir- cumstance which made belief impossible to the power which creates the circumstance. The outlook is en- larged beyond all description, mind and heart alike experience a new impetus. The dull facts which in our agnosticism we insisted upon are still there, but clothed with meaning, instinct with philosophic sug- gestiveness. Nothing surpasses the transfiguring might of the new conviction which now inspires the mind. It is this greatest of miracles in the universe of beings and things, in the human mind and heart, which I shall consider in the ensuing discussions. Life itself in whatever form is a miracle. Fatigued beyond all apparent power of recovery, downcast beyond all visible hope, we lie down to rest presently to awaken into the fresh vigour of being. The fact of being, the gift of life, is basal. Our thought takes its clue from thence only to find that the fact surpasses the de- scription. Such being the case, it would seem well to give life freer play through us with the hope that it may write its own description. And what more fitting symbol of the imbuing Presence could be found than this same renewal of life within and without? 4 The Philosophy of the Spirit It has too long been customary to speak of God as static, fixed, immutable. We have been told again and again that "God created the heavens and the earth," as if that were all He ever could do. We have heard times enough that God is inscrutable, that "His ways are past finding out." It is an ex- ceedingly familiar thought, that God is so far tran- scendent that to define is to limit Him. To be sure, so much is said nowadays about God defined as imma- nent, as active in if not identical with all forms of energy, that we are in danger of passing to the other extreme and indulging in a new pantheism, as if God were the mere substance of nature. But we have not heard enough about God as Spirit, viewed as going forth from His own plenitude in forms of perennially creative life, brooding over the face of the waters, and leading His children along the varied pathways of the soul. Thus regarded, God is essentially dynamic, achieving; it is life, movement, growth, that reveals Him. When one seriously pauses to reflect, it is plain that the presence of life is what chiefly leads the mind to conceive of God. The God of life is in reality the true God. The idea of God as manifested through all modes and forms of life is intermediate between the old-time deism and modern pantheism. This intermediate conception need not at present be complicated by the problems of the infinite and the transcendent. It is concerned for the moment with God as found in action, yet is not limited by the consideration of what is taking place to-day. God is thus conceived as ever- present, as fully active at one point or in one time as at any other. The great consideration is the mean- ing of His presence at all times and in all places. Hence The Scope of the Inquiry 5 attention is directed to the thought of God anew. For it is neither a question of the " far-off divine event " nor of the mere deeds accomplished in the near-by present, but of the Power which ever accomplishes. To dwell upon the remote event is to forget that God is even now giving of His life. To be alone concerned with the things done is to be subservient to the time- spirit, hence to lose sight of all save circumstance. But to dwell in thought with the Power that works in all who labour, lives in all who love, is to begin to know what the Spirit is. It is no doubt audacious to speak in behalf of the Spirit. We have grown so accustomed in these cau- tious days to speak of the deed that has been wrought, omitting all mention of the actuating principle, that an apology seems almost to be needed when one ventures to speak of God. Yet even the most negli- gent do not hesitate to assume enough knowledge to declare that God is "inscrutable," " unknowable," or beyond all definition. It is far more modest to consider the actual achievements of the Spirit that is, to accept the miracle of life as an earnest of the reality of God. Moreover, the miracle is confessedly accepted as symbolical. It is not claimed that the Spirit is absolute. A recent writer has said that "when you make a thing absolute, far from empha- sising its nature, you remove its nature." It is seriously to be questioned whether those who so freely use the adjectives "absolute," "inscrutable," and the like, have even a vague idea of the meaning intended to be conveyed. To say what one means is to be definite, concrete, to indicate details, not to indulge in generalities. When one ceases to apply epithets which theoretically remove the divine nature from all 6 The Philosophy of the Spirit further consideration, one is surprised to find what a wealth of concrete clues men already possess. If in due course it seriously becomes a question of absolute Being, it is because the concrete clues logically lead to the conception. It is plain that the idea of the divine presence has been greatly neglected. We have heard so much about the relativities of knowledge, the merely human conditions and factors, that many have lost the power to believe. The same theorists who insist upon human relativities declare that God is "unknowable." Thus the same doctrine brings man too near and puts God afar. But the true God is discoverable amidst the limitations, if at all. The human factors well in hand, it is opportune to consider the reality which is made known through them. The doubts which perplexed men for a season were profitable, but mere doubts are of little value till their positive content be made ex- plicit. The considerations which make for a philo- sophy of Spirit are already at hand, already in the minds of the people, otherwise it would indeed be audacious to undertake the development of such a philosophy. In fact it is the awakening of the mind into freshness of conviction, even amidst the deadening sense of relativity, that may be set down as evidence that the Spirit exists. At the outset we may regard the quickening life of nature, the ever-fresh welling up of love in the human heart, as typical of the relationship of God to the world. The more precise definition of the term "Spirit" may he postponed, together with the discussion of the critical issues which the conception involves. Our first need is to approach the conception of God from the immediate point of view which regards Him as The Scope of the Inquiry 7 the Father achieving a purpose. Our clues are taken, not from speculative needs implying a demand for a formally correct conception, but from essentially human interests pointing forward to a concrete idea of God's efficiency. We are first to learn, or endeavour to learn, what God is doing, then from this concrete consideration pass to the question of the essential nature of God. Our motive throughout is to direct interest afresh to the ever-living God of the human heart and of progressive achievements, in contrast with the agnostic argument which has steadily re- moved God from human ken. There are two general sources of the agnosticism which for several decades has made it difficult for men to declare their positive faith in God, the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant and the philosophy of evolution. Kant's analysis of human reason withdrew the interest from what may be denominated the divine factors and placed it upon the essentially human factors of all our experience and thought. Our own rational constructive power was thus seen to be the central agency. The conception of God, together with the lesser conceptions of the world as a complete system and the human soul as a real being, unitary and immortal, thus became "ideals of pure reason" rather than ideas which implied positive knowledge of the existence of their objects. To be sure, Kant restored the higher objects of belief in his ethical philosophy that is, as postulates of practical reason. Thus, as he himself said, he did "away with knowledge to make room for faith." But the fashion in philo- sophy was set by his conclusions in regard to pure reason. It seemed poor consolation to restore the conceptions of God, freedom, and immortality as ob- 8 The Philosophy of the Spirit jects of faith, as opposed to objects of knowledge. The attempt to prove the existence of God in the old- time ontological way not only ceased with Kant, but it became difficult even to believe in God in the former fashion. Hence increasing attention was given to the limitations of human knowledge, the study of human nature regarded as relatively independent. Likewise with the philosophy of evolution. Al- though God was not left wholly out of account, the new philosophy gave rise to a tendency which has since become a habit, namely, to dwell upon the factors of heredity, natural selection, and environment, or to bestow emphasis upon such principles as "the sur- vival of the fittest," the law of "use and disuse." Hence the old-time theories of design gave place to theories of nature in which little or nothing was said about purpose save so far as the mere struggle for existence was concerned. Instead of indulging in the mere generality, "God created the world," men began to show how existing forms of life came into being through the gradual transformation of that which pre-existed. Thus the idea of God fell more and more into the background, and it became customary to describe what happened without reference to its ulti- mate cause. Once more, then, interest was directed to relative factors, as opposed to divine agency. Herbert Spencer with his negative conception of the " Unknowable, " and Huxley with his agnosticism, furthered the growth of this evolutionary relativism. Again, the new or higher criticism has steadily led to withdrawal of emphasis from supposed supernatural and divine factors, and to the placing of it upon essen- tially human conditions. So much stress has been placed upon environmental influences, the variations The Scope of the Inquiry g and imperfections of texts, the hindrances of language, of psychological conditions, and of human nature generally, that it has become impossible to believe in the Bible as the literal word of God. The gain has been enormous so far as actual knowledge of the Bible is concerned, and from the point of view of acquaint- ance with human nature and the natural development of religious consciousness. But except for the pro- founder scholars it has made belief in the direct power of God extremely difficult. And even for scholars it has been difficult if not impossible to reconcile the conception of God as Father with the idea of God as the immanent agency of natural evolution. Meanwhile those who have "preserved the faith" are the less critical people who cling to the simplicity of belief in authoritative revelation. Such people not only unqualifiedly condemn the critical philosophy and scientific agnosticism, but discard the higher criticism of the Bible. In the midst of those who point out that the idea of God is essentially man's creation, they have the courage to speak "from God's point of view." If their assumption in thus speaking in behalf of God appears to be great, their humility is greater, inasmuch as they place so little stress upon their own thought and minimise themselves in their zeal. One cannot agree with these people. It is impossible to take a backward step when man has once begun to think. Nevertheless there is truth in these contentions. Undoubtedly it is possible to make too much of the merely human self and its powers of thought. The result of the interaction between the critical philosophy and orthodoxy has been gradual recog- nition of the truth in both points of view. God has IP The Philosophy of the Spirit been restored to His place as creator, or rather has been given a worthy place for the first time. It is now per- fectly consistent to be at once a theist and a believer in the gradual development of all organic forms. Many problems of the higher criticism are far from being settled^ but the extreme views are surely doomed, for they assumed too much and excluded more. One may assimilate the results of such criticism, yet still regard the world, the travail of the human soul, from "the point of view of God." For the emphasis has been changed and a new view of human nature has taken the place of the one in which only the divine factors in religious experience were considered. There is nothing to fear, when the limitations of human lan- guage and thought are dwelt upon. The philosophy of Spirit wins its triumphs precisely by virtue of these relativities. Without submitting our beliefs to critical investigation we could hardly have continued to believe. The point of view of these discussions is not an eclectic or harmonising standpoint, but one which involves a reconstruction of the conception of God, and a new criticism of psychological and other human factors. Nor does it imply a naive return to the re- ligious conceptions of man's childhood. It is first of all sympathetic, so far as the real objects of re- ligious belief are concerned. But the point of view will also prove to be progressively critical and recon- structive. It is frankly an outgrowth of modern thought. Such thought involves the gradual en- largement of our ideas of God to meet the needs of the scientific conception of nature. It shows that we may well proceed as far as the philosophy of evolution carries us and still insist that the idea of God has place, The Scope of the Inquiry n especially as the most important questions concerning the origin of life, the transition from the inorganic to the organic kingdom, the transition from matter to mind, and the questions that relate to the origin of species still remain to be answered. After all, it is rather a question of the continuous manifestation of Spirit, the continuous origin of life, than of the oc- casional divine activities which were once deemed interventions. If modern criticism alters our know- ledge of human nature, so much the more must we modify our conception of the relationship of God to man. If we now know in some measure how God works through nature, we also know something about His mode of activity within men. Hence there is no reason to close the account when we have merely enumerated and described the finite factors. There are truths in the naive conception of God as Father that are as important as this new knowledge of human nature. If one is unable to reconcile the enlarged conception of the God of natural evolution with the more childlike thought of the Father to whom one prays, the resource is not to banish the naive belief, but to bear the two conceptions along side by side. Some have done this for years. They have continued to address prayers to the Father who "heareth in secret," while philosophically arguing for a decidedly different first principle as an eternal Ground. To bear the two conceptions in mind to the end may well be to discover that there is no incom- patibility. Likewise with the more mystical idea of God, on the one hand, and the negative criticism which undertakes to show that there is no object behind the mystic experience except the poetic or picturesque symbols 12 The Philosophy of the Spirit in which the mystic clothes his vision. The critic may be as severe as he likes and reduce the experience of the presence of God to a mere blank. Such criticism is profitable because it clears the air, relieves mysticism of its misconceptions and exaggerations. But it by no means proves the unreality of the vision. The light it throws is upon the human factors, the type of mediation which the mystic makes, his mode of symbolic reconstruction. The immediate religious experience still remains to be investigated. It re- mains even after the religious psychologist has ana- lysed the experience and made clear its conditions and its laws so far as he is able to discern them. The prime difficulty with such criticism, whatever the subject under consideration, is that it believes the account to be complete when everything has been said that at present can be said about spiritual experience, divine revelation, or the idea of God, regarded from the merely human side. But the fact that I in my finitude am unable explicitly to state all that God's presence means to me is no reason for re- jecting the rest. Our human philosophy must fail somewhere, precisely because it is human and attempts to state, as best man may, the reality and significance of his experience. If God was also present in that experience the philosopher could hardly expect to describe everything that occurred. There is no reason for falling back upon a sense of mystery. But there is ground for the plea that one must make allowances for factors that are more than human. One could hardly expect to know and describe the divine nature through and through. No one is able to enumerate all of God's purposes, or tell how and when they are to be realised. Possibly God has access to man in The Scope of the Inquiry 13 ways which even the psychologists and the critics of the Bible have been unable to discover. Modesty as well as reason constrains us to state what we dis- cover on the finite side, and leave abundant room for what may exist on the divine part. What we know is the experience of the presence of God, or the revelation from God, after it has made its impression upon man, not what took place before man felt the divine presence. It is perfectly legitimate to dwell upon the human result. But it is equally legitimate to speak reverently and modestly from "the point of view of God," to dwell poetically, ap- preciatively, on the Godward side. This in the end involves less assumption, for whose universe is this? Who is manifested in nature? Who is re- vealed in the soul of man? What is man that he should rear himself into supreme prominence in the world ? Say if you will that it is merely an hypothesis that God exists. There is surely room for differences of terms. If to you the notion of the immediate presence of the Spirit is superfluous, you nevertheless have in mind a rival hypothesis the test of which will be its rational applicability. Now, that is all that a con- ception of God as efficient Spirit claims to be at the outset. Its validity will be the power of this idea to explain events not adequately accounted for by the conception of an absentee God, or the notion of a God accepted half-heartedly as existent only in our reason. Moreover, even as an ideal of pure reason, the con- ception of God as immanent Spirit might have a distinct advantage over previous conceptions, an advantage which could be discovered only through actual use ; and the pragmatic efficiency might well 14 The Philosophy of the Spirit lead to rational belief. Let us agree, then, to test the conception for whatever it may be worth. One arrives at the conception somewhat as follows: We awaken to philosophic thought to find ourselves carried on from day to day amidst a series of events which we briefly denominate "experience." No man knows whence he came in a merely matter-of-fact sense of the word. No one knows why the universe came to be. The significant consideration is that we find ourselves existing, philosophising in a world which was here before we thought, which we accept as what it proves to be, and upon whose structure we reflect. Finding ourselves thus engaged we conclude to do well what we have somehow begun. Life is a gift, we are constrained to live; we cannot help feeling, thinking, acting. It is plain that as thus constrained we belong to a somewhat call it a power, a law. For although we frequently please ourselves with the fond conceit that we have much to do with our life, it is plain that what is within our power is mainly the ability to react, to respond in some manner, already largely determined, in the presence of this wonderful gift called "life." Having said as much as we please about man in his intellectual might, the last word is to be said in behalf of the power or experience that constrains him. We might denominate this strange constraining power "fate," but that would be to emphasise the stern relentlessness of life at the expense of other con- siderations. We might call it "law," but that term chiefly implies the existence of mechanical or other forces which act in accordance with law. Shall we then denominate it "power"? That would be to em- phasise the deeds wrought, the suffering by the way, the hard conditions of survival. There is a gentler The Scope of the Inquiry 15 side to life, a love, spirit, or beauty. If " all's love, yet all 's law," there is still need of a term expressive of wisdom, purpose, or that which gives unity and meaning to the system which thus exemplifies law. Our reason, dwelling upon the facts of nature, with its hard struggles, its warring forces, and its cruel laws, leads to one conception. Our heart, dwelling upon more human considerations, leads to another view. The one conception is relatively impersonal, the other decidedly personal. The question is, how to unite the two. The supreme power or reality would appear to be no less highly organised than a self, and a ne- cessity of thought leads us to use the term "self" even after we discover that, as applied to God, the conception is founded on knowledge of human nature. We are led to the conception of a divine personality both by a study of man's inner life and by the dis- covery of unity, system, purpose in the cosmos. When it is a question of an adequate conception of the power or love that constrains us we are led to adopt such a term as "Spirit," a term which is expressive of both the divine reason and the divine will. And if God be Spirit, we may appropriately speak of the universe as in reality spiritual, and of our own experience as a gift of the Spirit. We might indeed have been less ambitious and called the ultimate somewhat that owns and uses us simply "x. " We might have denominated it "life" and con- cluded to rest content with mere descriptions of the way in which life acts. Better still, we could have used the now frequently employed term "pure ex- perience. " But this seems too vague, as if indifferently inclusive of both finite experience and the experience of this higher power. We need a term which suggests 1 6 The Philosophy of the Spirit the hovering nearness of that which guides even while it carries forward. Whatever the term employed, it is given a certain significance by the facts and laws which thoughtful men discover. Life, for example, takes a certain course through us, moves with regularity, with observable rhythms, sequences, and eventuations. We did not choose that course. We have accepted and are undertaking to describe it that we may the better adapt ourselves to and understand it. Let us agree to make an account of it which shall be as nearly adequate as possible. If the facts are too numerous to lend themselves to our most comprehensive formulas, let us state that our formulas include thus much and that there is still thus much more. Having admitted that our formulas are faulty, that it is a question of a Reality that is more than our poor words can compass, we may resolve to be persistently true to this its elusiveness while still remaining faithful to our logically defined concepts. Our formulas may thus serve to suggest our ignorance or to systematise our knowledge, as the case may be. Whatever the point of emphasis, it is incumbent upon us not to forget what lies beyond the fences which we speculatively rear. If our fences hedge in they also shut out. Life itself is poured in and around all. It is significant that the element which most eludes us when it is a question of positive knowledge and accurate description, is precisely the one to which we most persistently cling despite its elusiveness. The certain divine something which gives to life its august sense repeatedly reappears in our thought, though by every device known to scepticism we assail it. It is a certain added element which must be ap- The Scope of the Inquiry 17 predated rather than described. Now, the critics seize upon this our inability to say what we would, this persistence in clinging to a belief, and call it dogmatism or superstition. These critics have so won attention that it has become a habit to spend a large measure of time endeavouring to refute them. But one may make concessions to the critic without limiting the data to the considerations which come into his view. In order to establish idealism, for example, one must meet the objections of the materialist. Yet the prime consideration is the nature of the experience and the reasoning which compel us to be idealists. One must have the courage of one's idealistic convictions even though the critic be unconvinced. Likewise one should have the courage to speak as if from "the point of view of God, " even though the mere mention of such a point of view affright the critic who fails to see what is thereby meant. When we venture to speak for the Spirit, it is not alone a question of what we do not say, when we end in mere poetic suggest iveness, but of what we do say. Now, as we shall see later, the term "Spirit" is pe- culiarly fitting in this connection. If ambiguous, the term nevertheless has positive content. Whatever the vicissitudes which await us, therefore, the undertaking on which we embark is in behalf of the Spirit. That is, this term is one which we choose as representative of the universal element which men characterise differently but which they mean when they speak of the Power or Life which owns and uses them. We are confessedly developing a philosophy, making an in- terpretation. The first essential is precisely this won- drous quickening Life which men adore in the perennial spring and in the recurrent miracles of the human 1 8 The Philosophy of the Spirit heart. Inasmuch as we are sharers of its life, observers of its beauty, we may freely make use of the facts of its universal presence, and make the best account we can of its gifts. It is not fitting to contest the terms or dispute the formulas until we have characterised the renewing Presence and considered whether our account be loyal to it. If it is by the Spirit that we live, by it we must think and make good our thoughts. Hence in what follows we shall place the first stress on the witness of the Spirit within the mind, heart, and conduct of man. We assume at the outset, then, the existence of a world and finite selves having experience of or within that world. The traditional mode of investigating and accounting for such experience would be to start with the facts of consciousness, analyse them into their elements and their logical references ; and then proceed with the development of a closely reasoned system. There would first be a conception of experience, then of the world, and in due course of its ultimate Ground. The present method begins with experience, regarded as primarily an activity, and proceeds to an evaluation of certain of its factors in relation to a conception of the Spirit. We reserve for later consideration the analytical demonstration of the conception of reality here adopted. If the conception prove effective as here employed, its effectiveness will already be an argument in its favour. That is to say, idealistic analysis is apt to begin with the development of those references within con- sciousness which point to the existence of a world of things and a world of selves, the difficulty being to emerge from the realm of one's own selfhood into a world of other beings. The present study starts with experience as found, and implying certain evaluations, UNIVERSITY) i^Phe Scope of the Inquiry 19 and looks upward to God rather than outward upon the world. Trie first appeal is to that latent evidence within us which points beyond mere belief to a philo- sophy, evidence which until we. find the constructive clue appears to be susceptible of numerous interpre- tations. That is, the same considerations make for disbelief or for faith according to the way we view them. There are times when we seem to be incapable of performing intellectual synthesis. But those are the periods when our wealth has increased faster than our powers of generalisation. The resource is, rest, time for assimilation, for those marvellous syntheses of which the mind is capable when left to its spon- taneous devices. There is a richness in these gradually developed syntheses which analytical thought can scarcely equal. Experience seemingly makes its own synthesis within us, and constructs into the totality of a new insight data which appeared to be utterly inconsistent. To awaken into a vision of wholeness where we once saw only fragments is to begin to have a philosophy of Spirit. If we were to consider the witness of the Spirit at large our undertaking would involve a philosophy of history, a reinterpretation of the facts of natural evolution, and an idealistic interpretation of the uni- verse as a whole. Another branch of the philosophy of Spirit would be distinctively ethical. Again, a philo- sophy of the Spirit is also a philosophy of religion, and as such implies a criticism of other philosophies of religion. The present inquiry is chiefly limited to the inner life that is, to a study of the higher nature of man regarded from a point of view farther back than the point where the philosophy of religion and philo- sophical idealism begin to diverge. That is to say, 20 The Philosophy of the Spirit there are certain prior questions which should be con- sidered before one may rightfully claim that the be- ginning of a philosophy of experience is fundamental. The theoretical study of religion is apt to begin with the promulgation of certain long-cherished beliefs which have been zealously guarded from the attacks of scientific criticism, while philosophical idealism frequently begins with an antagonism with respect to religious beliefs that is quite out of place. Philosophy and religion are not wholly separable. At the be- ginning and at the end, at least, they are closely united; and each suffers if not put into clear relation with the other. The prior questions which relate to both are at once practical and logical. It is with one of these problems in logic and in practical life that the present volume is concerned. The prior question might be stated thus: What is the nature of the immediate element in practical life, in religious experience, and in human thought as a whole? That is, what stands first in authority in human experience; is it feeling, emotion, intuition, reason, a certain type of life, a special mode of thought? What is the order of reality and truth in religious expe- rience and thought, judged in the light of philosophical values? With what does human thought begin when it undertakes to meet life reflectively and to start with that which is appropriately first? What faculty or power is authoritative in these estimates of practical life, religious experience, and in philosophical considerations? Shall the immediate element be expressed in terms of mere experience that is, shall it be merely descriptive, impressionistic ; or, is there a point of view alike faithful to immediate experience as man apprehends it and to the demands which constructive reason imposes? The Scope of the Inquiry 21 However the question be stated, it is plain that, prior to an analytical study of human experience with a view to the development of a philosophical system, every thinker should first consider the rights of that which is first, or immediate, in contrast with that which is sec- ondary, or mediate. Just as in practical life a man is sure to be governed by his conclusions in regard to the relative worth of certain " faculties" for example, conscience, so in religious and philosophical matters very much depends on the estimate put upon the phase of human experience accepted as supreme over the rest. The arbitrary, imperious man in practical life is, tacitly at least, a believer in the primacy of the will, while the cool-headed, judicious person chooses an intellectual- ism. Running through human life and human thought there is an unescapable contrast between will and intel- lect, feeling and understanding, spirit and reason, spirit and form. Usually a practical belief or philosophy takes its rise without previous examination of these. This book undertakes to make good the deficiency by directing attention to the neglected issues. The close relationship of the religious and the philosophical topics considered is due to the fact that the immediacy of religious experience furnishes the best illustration of immediacy in general. Whatever one's conclusions may be with regard to the so-called higher nature of man viewed in relation to the experience of the presence of God, those conclusions are sure to be profoundly in- fluential alike in the subsequent philosophy of religion adopted and in the type of constructive rationalism chosen. Psychologically stated, the problem is this: What are the constituents of the higher nature of man? If said to consist of a power of immediate feeling, direct 22 The Philosophy of the Spirit apprehension, or appreciative intuition, what is the character of the implied immediacy, the firstness, or original relationship? If said to be the spirit in man, what is spirit? If described in purely empirical terms, what is the relation of such higher experience to reason ? Out of the psychological description would naturally grow a new evaluation of feeling, emotion, and intuition. A further question would be, How far does the psycho- logical description of higher experience point the way to a theory of its reality ? Prior to the question of the nature of conscience and the reality of mystic experience there is, for example, the larger question, Is there within man a "faculty" for the immediate apprehension of the Spirit? Is there a " voice of God in the soul of man " ? If so, what are the conditions of activity of this faculty? Is it universal or a gift bestowed on but few? If not, through what types of experience does man apprehend the divine presence? Granted primary forms of expe- rience, types of guidance, what relation does immediate insight or experience bear to subsequent experience and critical thought? Is immediacy of experience or sentiment universally primary in reality and author- ity? What place should be assigned to emotion and feeling in a philosophy of the Spirit? These are some of the questions. Then there are the problems already hinted at which grow out of the comparison of facts with ideals, experiences which are precisely de- scribable and those which we appreciatively character- ise as we are able, in symbolic language and figures of speech. These interests lead to the more funda- mental question, Is there a real order of higher powers or beings corresponding to these /alues and figures of speech? Granted a theory of immediate experience, The Scope of the Inquiry 23 it will then be possible to treat mysticism afresh, and consider in what terms, whether theistic or pantheistic, immediate religious experience can best be interpreted. In terms of logic, our question is, What relation does the immediate element in experience bear to the thought which formulates it, which prepares the way for a theory of knowledge and of reality? It is first a ques- tion of the starting-point of thought, what thought must assume in order to make headway; and then of the method to be employed in dealing with data accepted as immediate. When man looks abroad over the face of nature or into the world of mind, what stands first in order of reality, or at least in the order of thought? Does the philosopher evolve an abstract starting-point out of his own brain, pronounce it rational, then impose it on the world as a genuine account of the universe? Or, does he begin with experience, with all its irrationality, then progressively develop its rationality? Is the logical process purely formal, or does the logician deal with the actual subject-matter of human experience ? What, in general, is the concept of the immediate, psychically and otherwise regarded? In the present inquiry the study of the immediacy of religious experience is taken as a type of the general logical problem. The question once defined, the next problem is, What method shall be pursued? If one is interested to evaluate human experience afresh, one must keep close to experience and avoid technical subtleties. On the other hand, one cannot be exact without being tech- nical. The most promising course would appear to be this, to begin with actual, verifiable life, then introduce technicalities only so far as necessary for precision. Modern pragmatism, with its emphasis on the work- 24 The Philosophy of the Spirit ability of human conceptions, supplies the first method ; Hegel, whose Logic includes the pragmatic method, yet passes far beyond it, has examined the immediate with the thoroughness requisite for constructive purposes. The Supplementary Essay, appended to this volume, contains a study of the immediate element from the point of view of the Hegelian logic. However our subject be formulated in advance, the central consideration is the interest with which one approaches facts and laws as familiar to some as the coming of spring. For it is the spirit of approach, as much as the subjects considered, that is to be our guide. One can hardly hope to say anything wholly new to those who have lived with the great poets, essayists, and seers, and with the Gospels. Each of us had evidence of the existence of the Spirit. The soul's own revelations, understood, are far more significant than any descriptions which other men may give. Unless we already bore within us the evidence for the great realities here to be considered, what is said would signify little. Yet it is precisely the new way of characterising old experiences which for many con- stitutes the revelation of the Spirit. The Spirit making the world anew is no doubt the real revelation. The Spirit never pauses, and the great miracle is not so much what it leaves with us as what it is while it pulsates through us and achieves its work. Since it is the Spirit alone that giveth life, we may well reflect on the conditions under which the life is given, and learn the better to apprehend the Spirit's presence. It is possible to outline in a few words a theory of the Spirit and of adaptation to its guiding presence. Hence the question arises, Why undertake this elab- orate investigation, why complicate the situation by The Scope of the Inquiry 25 raising critical issues? The answer is that, while simplicity is the key-note, thoroughness of thought tested by depth of experience is required to discover and rest upon a simple philosophic basis. If, for example, we agree that the Spirit is made known through experience, through life, that it pursues a certain course and the art of life consists in adjusting our conduct to its promptings, the question at once arises, What are those promptings, how are they to be discriminated, whither do they lead? Much de- pends upon our answer, and the answer cannot at first be simple. In this field more than in any other it is the life that avails; a mere theory of the Spirit is but one point. Granted a certain degree of spiritual consciousness, it is a question both of the development of that consciousness through increasing spirituality and the growth of understanding through the study of its laws and conditions. Moreover, all sides of our nature must be satisfied, and people have tried to be spiritual by maiming themselves. If a doubt be raised, if critical issues come to the fore, and too great emphasis be put upon the relativity of knowledge, the doubts must be resolved in the completes t fashion. It is one of the most im- portant considerations in the spiritual life this es- timation of the sceptical or self-conscious period through which man passes in his transition from un- critical faith to the manhood of spiritual thought. Many are in this intermediate stage at present. They are down under circumstance, immersed in the rela- tivities, confronted with unruly facts. For them there is no return to the unthinking stage of the world. Having begun to think, the only resource is to think thoroughly, courageously. 26 The Philosophy of the Spirit Then, too, there are certain great problems of the spiritual life which many of us have tried to put aside in part unsolved. There is the long, long problem of the relationship between intuition and the paradox- productive understanding. If we crucify the intellect we have no peace. If we rear paradoxes they haunt us. Persist as we may that spiritual things must be spiritually discerned, we know that reason is divine too, that our faith is unstable until we can give convincing reasons in terms of well-systematised facts. Again, it matters greatly what theory we hold in re- gard to the way in which God is made known, that is, what part of our nature is fundamental or most spirit- ual. For we exclude or invite communion with the Spirit according as our theory of human nature varies, to say nothing of the variations caused by different theological conceptions. Insist as we may that the spiritual life, the presence of the Spirit, is wholly an affair of "feeling" which should be accepted precisely as it comes, the undeniable fact is that from first to last our conduct, our attitude, and our emotions are profoundly affected by what we believe, by our first principles. We may even be unaware that we possess any first principles. But if so, there is all the more reason why we should awaken to the fact, and learn that when we seemed to be entirely free from the intel- lect we were steadily making use of its processes. Yet, again, there is the persistent problem of the relationship between the individual and the universal, that is to say, the place of man with respect to the Spirit. On the one hand, we find the individual dis- paraged and the Spirit so greatly emphasised that some form of absolutism or pantheism is the result. Again, we find that man is belittled for the sake of exalting The Scope of the Inquiry 27 God as a person. Man's sinful nature is so greatly enlarged upon that the finite self supposably is capable of nothing except error and sin. On the other hand, so much is made of the finite self that the opposite ex- treme is the result. Apparently the Spirit is nothing to us without persons, yet persons may obscure the Spirit. The question therefore rises, What allowances must be made for the personal equation? Shall we seek, the Spirit directly or through persons? Is God to be found in solitude or amidst society? If we must lose self in order to find God, what becomes of our self- hood, why are we disparate individuals? Once more, there is the question of the relationship between the natural and the spiritual, the temporal and the eternal. If men have not raised artificial bar- riers between the natural and the spiritual, they have often erred in their emphasis upon the one or the other. Plainly, a philosophy of Spirit must be concerned with this partly solved problem, and its relation to practical life cannot be ignored. We cannot sweep away all dis- tinctions between the natural and the spiritual any more than we can dispense with all distinctions between good and evil. The question is, Where shall the line be drawn? In a sense all these questions are one and the same, namely, What shall we do with the self, in all its pride, its independence, its assertiveness, its waywardness, and its doubts, yet with all its innocence, its virtue, and its ability? A philosophy of Spirit would indeed be simple with the self removed, but the self well, that is the whole problem. How to set the self aside is one half of the question, how to join it with the Spirit is the other half. We could believe, have faith, make headway, if it were not for the self. But we 28 The Philosophy of the Spirit cannot long ignore or disparage the self. If its facility for getting in the way constitutes the great difficulty, so that all our friction, all ennui, all distrust, pessimism, misery, is chargeable to the self, it is nevertheless this same self which gives us the direct clue to the divine nature. We may build up the self to our undoing or our sanctification according as we regard it. At any rate there is no vicarious philosophising possible here. He who would know God must find Him through his doubts, his conflicts, and his tribulations, or fail to discover Him in the profounder sense. A philosophy of Spirit may be simple, but truth is not easily won, and the truth concerning the Spirit may well engage a man as long as he shall have power to think. Meanwhile our surest clue is discoverable through the preservation of spontaneity. Since the Spirit is a renewing presence, coming in its own way, with its own high purposes to fulfil, our part at its best is un- doubtedly to do that " lowly listening" which invites " the right word," to maintain an attitude of ever- ready receptivity. This willingness to follow wherever the Spirit leads is all the more incumbent upon us in this age inasmuch as we have indulged in individualism without limit and taken up an enormously active mode of life. If we are to have a philosophy of Spirit we must possess the Spirit, live by it. To possess it we must first let it possess us. To live by it we should await its leading, give untrammelled expression to its revelations. The Spirit, in other words, must write its own philosophy in our minds and hearts. On the feminine side of our nature we cannot be too open, too willing and responsive, when it is a question of the com- ing of the Spirit. To maintain in advance that we know the ways of the Spirit or that we can regulate its The Scope of the Inquiry 29 influences upon us is to exclude its presence and in- trude individual thought. To watch it as it comes, noting every detail, formulating every law, would be to find that it had eluded us. When it breathes upon us it is time for humility, for reverent acceptance, not a time to ask questions or give place to doubts. If the message of to-day seemingly contradict the message of yesterday or last year, accept it no less reverently and learn the deeper consistency which the Spirit's own future revelations shall make known. The Spirit quickens whom it will and when it will. The Spirit is the supreme fact let this be recognised first and last. Having pleased ourselves with the fancy that we have much to do with life, it is time to know that it is the Spirit which works, the Spirit that lives in us and gives us wisdom, love, and power. If we have been taking credit to ourselves, thinking, speaking, and acting as if the life and light within us were our own, then let us cease to make these claims, and bow the head in reverential acknowledgment of the life that is ours only by divine gift. All life, all power, all wis- dom, is such a gift; all thinking and all philosophy, too, that is, all spiritual philosophy that is true and carries the weight of eternal reality. Therefore if we are to possess a philosophy of Spirit we must gather our data here and there as the Spirit unfolds its laws within us, as it illu- mines our pathway. By thus preserving an essentially receptive attitude we shall be able in large measure to strike at the root of what I have called the real prob- lem, namely, the relation of the finite self to the Spirit. In spontaneous obedience the self is seen at its best, or may soon become its best, for only by being ready to follow shall man receive that illumination without which all his endeavours to wrest from the Spirit its 30 The Philosophy of the Spirit secrets shall come to naught. Not until one no longer cares either to wrestle or to spy shall that central message be given. To receive the message is indeed to see that the Spirit is a renewing presence, for in a moment's insight all the universe is transformed, all the facts are made beautiful and significant. CHAPTER II THE DEFINITION OF THE SPIRIT ONE of the profoundest conclusions at which the human mind has arrived is the conviction that the uni- verse is a manifestation of Spirit. From the dawn of speculation in India to the present time, in the works of the systematic philosophers, as well as in the sacred literatures of all ages and nations, this has been a pre- vailing conception. No one can claim the idea as original. Yet, because of the wide extent of the con- ception, it contains so much philosophic wealth that seers and thinkers who hold sharply divergent views lay equal claim to it. In the case of Hindoo specula- tion it implies spiritual pantheism, and in the Western world is often synonymous with various forms of mysti- cism. It might be supposed to involve the rejection of all forms of constructive rationalism, yet it might well be the central conception in a system of critical idealism. For some it is a merely practical term. Others who in general accept a theory of Spirit in its relation to the universe at large would find it extremely difficult, if questioned, to apply this general philosophy to the problems of daily conduct. Some would question the value of an attempt to define what they mean by the Spirit. To define is to limit, it is repeatedly said. Do we not all know in a general way what it means to live by the Spirit? To insist upon a more explicit statement would be to put 31 32 The Philosophy of the Spirit the Spirit far from us, to become painfully aware how far short of the ideal our conduct falls. Moreover, the Spirit must be spiritually discerned, and intellectual statements are futile. To these and all similar objections the sufficient reply is that any fundamental statement with respect to the Spirit implies a rival philosophy, over against which we may place the splendid results of those who have endeavoured to make their beliefs explicit. If the Spirit can be discerned only through "spiritual intuition," we may well develop the full wealth of such intuition. If the results of critical idealism point to a philosophy of Spirit as their fulfilment, let us have the full benefit of these rich gifts of human reason. Having once accepted the conclusion that the universe is a manifestation of Spirit, any scepticism with regard to what is knowable is doubt of the Spirit itself. As little as we may positively know about the Spirit, we may at least increase our knowledge indirectly by accepting the idea in all seriousness and by acquiring more knowledge about the world. If Spirit be in deepest truth the ultimate reality, it is as surely the final basis of reason as of the ineffable ex- periences on which devotees of mysticism place em- phasis. It may well be that Spirit is reason itself. At any rate, the statement that the universe is a manifestation of Spirit is a rational proposition, and as such is capable of rational examination. If there are rival philosophies of Spirit, only by their rational comparison may we hope to decide between them. If to define be to limit, the limitations relate to, hence throw light upon, the nature of Spirit. If there be a special "faculty" for the immediate apprehension of Spirit, it must make good its right as supremely The Definition of the Spirit 33 authoritative when reason has done its utmost through the analysis of ordinary mental processes. It is worth while, then, to undertake at least in a general way to determine the meanings for which the term "Spirit" shall stand in our investigation. It is one of the richest words in our philosophic speech. Sometimes it is used as a synonym for the term God; again it refers primarily to the human soul. Now it is employed as if signifying a union of God and man, and now it is a collective term for the growing life of humanity. Again, the term is connected with other conceptions; hence we hear of the "world-spirit," the "time-spirit," of the spirit which achieves through human history, as if there were a life by itself, resident in the world, neither God nor man. Then there is the spirit of nature, the moral spirit, and the social spirit; the spirit of any specific undertaking, its underlying incentive, the carrying power which makes it a success. There is also the spirit in contrast with the letter or form, the spirit versus reason. In a more psychological sense, there is the life of spiritual "feeling," the spirit of good fellowship and cheer. People claim in a fa- miliar way to be "led" or "moved" by the Spirit. But, again, the Spirit is said to be the "Holy Ghost," making its presence known in a less familiar way by a supernal law, overshadowing the minds and hearts of men as if by a miracle. Etymologically the term "spirit" refers to primitive notions regarding the air as the breath of life, hence as the vital principle mediating between soul and body. Originally taken to be a corporeal thing, but invisible, the spirit was in course of time regarded as a portion of the divine life breathed into man. Thus in its transformed meaning it was deemed immaterial, until 34 The Philosophy of the Spirit in due course it was practically identified with the personality, then with the third person of the trinity. At large, the term covers almost anything that ani- mates or is animated, from a liquid to a disembodied soul, and from an evil genius to the noblest inspiration. It is only in a restricted philosophic sense that the word has value. In its theological signification the term is denned in Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy with reference to the highest energy of a self-conscious being in the sphere of moral and religious experience. " Spirit is conceived as an entity in religious thought only when it is identified with the highest activity of a self-conscious personality. In this sense perdurable individuality is predicated of it. The definition dis- tinguishes spirit from soul, the highest activity of which is in the moral and religious sphere. Spirit is a term of energy, and when applied to God involves the idea of divine energising in the work of organising and sustaining the higher manifestations of life." 1 Thus in Dr. W. N. Clarke's Outline of Christian Theology one finds the following comprehensive definition; "God is the Personal Spirit, perfectly good, who in holy love creates, sustains, and orders all." 2 In a systematic philosophical sense the term has been given precise and elaborate usage by Hegel. In the first place, spirit is the very essence of man; "it is by virtue of his being spirit that man is man." God is " the centre which gives life and quickening to all things, and which animates and preserves in ex- istence all the various forms of being." 3 More speci- fically, Spirit is the third or highest manifestation of 1 ii-, 5 8 3- 2 P- 66 - 3 Philos. of Religion, Eng. trans, i., 2. The Definition of the Spirit 35 God: God goes forth into objectivity and attains fulness of expression as Spirit. The Absolute Spirit is God not merely as He essentially is in Himself, but as He is after He has gone forth into manifestation and is conceived in terms of his objectivity. Nature, finite spirit, the world of consciousness, of intelligence, and of will, are embodiments of the divine Idea, but they are . . . special modes of the appear- ance of the Idea, forms in which the Idea has not yet [become] Absolute Spirit. . . . Spirit is regarded as the power or force of these worlds, as producing them out of itself, and out of them producing itself. . . . Spirit, in so far as it is the Spirit of God, is not a spirit beyond the stars, beyond the world. On the contrary, God is present, omnipresent, and exists as Spirit in all spirits. God is a living God who is acting and working. 1 Among the derived meanings of the general term we may for purposes of convenience distinguish the following: (i) the finite spirit, man, the soul, resident in the flesh or discarnate, that is, the individual, per- sonal spirit; (2) the impersonal spirit, that is, any principle, force or activity working through history or through the world at large but not yet acknowledged as divine; and (3) God, the supreme Spirit, conceived in personal terms by theology, and impersonally by philosophy as the ultimate efficiency of the world, the highest embodiment of the divine Idea. That is> the term may be said to imply a definite selfhood in the finite sense, a bond of union in an impersonal sense, and a universal life-giving Personality. In the first sense of the word as thus employed, the future state of man is often thought of, as if man Op. cit., pp. 26, 33 36 The Philosophy of the Spirit were to become a spirit when he ceases to be a being of flesh and blood. A vague notion is prevalent that man is at once a soul and a spirit. In defence of this view Dr. Clarke refers to scriptural teaching as in- dicating that the spirit is the highest in man the organ of divine life and com- munion with God, the seat of the divine indwelling; while the soul is the seat of the natural human life, where dwell and act the naturally used faculties of the conscious being. It is commonly held that the soul, being thus intermediate between the body and the spirit, is the seat of personality; so that man is a soul, but has a body and a spirit. 1 But, on the whole, he concludes that the scriptural usage implies that "soul" and "spirit" are names for the same element in man viewed in different relations. The non-bodily part of man may be viewed in its relation to God, or in its relation to the life that it is living in the body and on the earth. On the one hand, it may be viewed as coming from God, akin to God, adapted to communion with God, and capable of His indwelling; and in this highest relation it is usually called spirit. . . . It is not that the lower faculties constitute the soul and the higher the spirit, but that the entire non-bodily part bears one name as inhabiting the body and related to the present world, and the other as kindred to God and capable of fellowship with him. The term "spirit," then, is used in a eulogistic sense, or with reference to man's higher nature, but the same selfhood is meant. That this is the more rational view will be made clear in subsequent chapters. We shall use the terms "spirit" (spelled with a small letter), "soul," and "self" synonymously, under- standing by them the unitary finite personality. We Op. cit., p. 183. The Definition of the Spirit 37 shall ordinarily employ the more philosophical term " self, " and understand by it not only man's present selfhood, with its natural and social relationships, but the moral and religious potentialities of a future life, and the power to commune with God. In case of the second group of meanings, it is prefer- able to state precisely what we have in mind. If we mean the power active in natural evolution and eternally conserved, it is better to employ the term "energy." If we mean humanity in a collective sense, there are serviceable terms, such as " social consciousness," "the achievements of history," or "factors of moral evolution." When we refer to the spiritual as opposed to the intellectual element in human life, we may use the term "religious con- sciousness, ' ' or employ psychological terms, such as feeling, emotion, or sentiment. By "the spirit," as opposed to the "form," one usually means the moral or religious values, the intuitive or appreciative ele- ment. In each case there would be an advantage in stating the explicit meaning in question. The term Spirit, capitalised, might then be used as a synonym for the expression "God in action." It would be a question, therefore, of the animating or purposive Power in all its modes of manifestation, on the one hand; and of the various facts, events, achievements in nature, in human history, and in the soul of man, which give evidence of the presence of the Spirit, on the other. When natural forces, historical influences, human powers, attitudes, and principles are relatively in question, specific terms might well be employed to designate the particular factor. When the power of God is distinctively in question, the term Spirit may be intelligibly employed. 38 The Philosophy of the Spirit It is doubtful if people seriously believe in the real existence of a separate "world-spirit" for each planet, or a distinct Weltgeist which assumes successive his- torical attitudes. This term, like a number of others referred to above, is a figure of speech. The real meaning is no doubt expressed by the larger term, Spirit, regarded as the efficient cosmic agency or cause of all world-life. In the expression " the spirit of the time" there also appears to be a reference to the divine agency. The " Over-soul, " of Emerson, is another term for this added factor, which is so hard for men to name but which they cannot omit when they seek to be loyal to all that human experience reveals. All these tacit references to the power of God may be said to point to the meaning which we here give to the term Spirit. Nevertheless it is somewhat arbitrary to limit the term Spirit to the explicit power of God, for the word stands for partly unknown factors and its ambiguities are often extremely convenient. The spirit in man is precisely that side of his nature in which no sharp lines can be drawn between the human and the divine. Whatever it is that works through the world, or through humanity, and accomplishes that which we are unable to assign to specific individuals is designated "the spirit." In religion it is that which is most mysterious, farthest removed from what we commonly know as law. A distinctively "spiritual" point of view is one which holds great value for man until he is asked to state in what respect it is distinctive. That which is spiritual is partly that which lies beyond the realm of the precisely definable. To persist in robbing the term of its ambiguities would be to leave us without resource. The Definition of the Spirit 39 Moreover, there is profound meaning beneath the ambiguities. For the term implies both the conception of essence and the notion of union. By the spirit of a thing we commonly mean its essence, that without which our faulty definitions were indeed prosaic. To discern spiritually is in very truth to apprehend the heart, appreciate the soul. On the other hand, that which is spiritual is that which harmonises, unifies, brings into sympathy even where sympathy is ap- parently impossible. It is when men work together, transcending their mere finitude, that the attainments of the social spirit are achieved. We commonly think of no higher kind of union than one that is spiritual. It is difficult to define the term just because we mean something partly human, partly divine. Restricting the term "self," however, to man, let us endeavour to state the deeper meanings of Spirit from the essentially God- ward side. Spirit, let us say, is the central life, the inmost activity which goes forth from the Godhead, the world- will which manifests the divine purpose. But as thus constituting the central life of things, Spirit is also a principle of union into a dynamic system, a system exhibiting development. Hence the Spirit may be characterised (i) as unifying the life of the world, or of all worlds, making the uni- verse one system; (2) as uniting man with man through- out all history, in various phases of social evolution; and (3) as the principle of union between God and individual man in religious and other experience. The essence, the bond of union, is one and the same; the forms are many and diverse. Although many terms may be used to characterise the various forms of man- ifestation, the principle which makes them possible is Spirit, and that is precisely what Spirit is. When we 40 The Philosophy of the Spirit are unable to discover how far the activity in a given phase of life is human, how far divine, there is a highly instructive reason; neither factor can be described or formulated by itself. In our inability to characterise the Spirit as we would there is implied a profound knowledge of the relationship of God and man. It is the province of a philosophy of Spirit to render this knowledge explicit. By declaring that God is Spirit one means, then, more than when he says God is love or God is wisdom. Spirit is the divine essence which we denominate now will or love, now reason or wisdom; in Spirit the divine love and wisdom are inseparable. 1 The Spirit in us is the love or wisdom which makes possible yet surpasses our own, environs our hearts and minds. It is the power that underlies all finite power and renders our individual activities possible. It is the progressively manifested principle in which "we live and move and have our being." It is the creative or productively refashioning, brooding, up-building, sustaining life of the natural universe and of the human world. It gives life and power to form, yet is itself more than the mani- festing forms which it imbues. Hence Spirit must bear witness to Spirit, for its ineffable essence cannot be comprehended in terms of form alone. Thus the hu- man meanings of the word refer to the divine conception as that which gives them significance. God is Spirit, and they who worship in deepest truth not only under- stand that the universe is a revelation of God, hence spiritual, but also adore in heart, in response of soul to soul, of soul to God. All forms and definitions are inadequate, yet it is possible to make appreciative allowance for that which we cannot wholly describe. > Swedenborg, The Divine Love and Wisdom. The Definition of the Spirit 4 1 If the Spirit appear to be essentially impersonal, it is nevertheless through the Spirit that God becomes personal to and for the individual soul. It might appear that the term "spirit" is after all a mere expression of worth or value, without ulterior reference. No doubt some will still prefer so to regard it, or will permit the ambiguities to remain. Others may deem the term purely eulogistic or gratuitous. To a materialist the term doubtless seems entirely super- fluous. But for those who take it seriously it is plain that the idea of God as Spirit is a very workable concep- tion. That is, Spirit is known through what it accom- plishes, by what it is now doing, together with the responses aroused within the human heart. Spirit is God made concrete. Thus conceived, Spirit may be said to possess both cosmological and human significance. Re- garded as a cosmological power, Spirit is the creative life which proceeds from the Godhead as the orderly, continuously active, centralising life of the natural universe. Spirit is the essence, the uniting ground of all physical forces, all modes of physical life, the ulti- mately efficient energy of all natural evolution. That is, Spirit is the universal power, while natural energy in its various forms is the cosmological phase which Spirit assumes. Spirit is not the mere sum of all nat- ural energy, and should not be identified with the total- ity of physical modes of motion. For Spirit has other modes of manifesting itself. Spirit is also the central principle in mental life, in moral and religious experi- ence. Spirit is in an intimate way not only the essence but the uniting principle in all human experience, both natural and social, both in the world of conscience and in the domain of ordinary thought. It is the moving or quickening power which will not permit us to rest, 42 The Philosophy of the Spirit but ever sends us forward in pursuit of the perfect. Hence the life of .the Spirit is inwrought with all human suffering and achievement. As expressive of the di- vine love and the divine wisdom, its guidance may be characterised as perfect in wisdom and complete in love. Thus regarded it is the ultimate life at work in human society, in the eternal quest for the beautiful, the true, and the good. Regarded as the divine essence, the Spirit is expressive of God's nature at the beginning of all productive activity. Regarded as the uniting power the Spirit is the life that achieves, arrives. In any event the Spirit is rather the hidden agency than the external forms which every one may gaze upon. Thus one must understand the sense in which the term is employed. The term is essentially dynamic in character. To say that the universe is a manifestation of Spirit is therefore to speak of the divine nature from the point of view of its activity. Whatever the nature or being of God, regarded in the most transcendent sense, as infinite, eternal, or immutable, God is best known by us through His creative expression in and through the universe. If this sel "-expression be the activity of the divine will, the embodiment of the divine love, we may well speak of the Spirit as will or love, while we regard the divine reason or intelligence as the stable ground of this eternal forthgoing. However we express it, the result is the same. We know the divine reason through the divine love, and the divine love through the divine reason. The Spirit is the life and love, the heart and mind of God, and this great universe of ours is the perpetual revelation of the divine mind and heart. In setting aside the question of the transcendent side The Definition of the Spirit 43 of the divine nature in favour of the concrete concep- tion of God as Spirit, one does not mean that an idea of God regarded as absolute is impossible, but simply that by applying negative terms, such as "inscrutable," men have speculatively put God afar. By emphasising the practical aspect of the life of the Spirit with us, one means to point the way to better understanding of the divine transcendency. Before we can give to the con- ception of the Absolute its positive content, a new attitude is called for both as regards the surpassing per- fection of the divine love and wisdom and with respect to the factors of human life which have been supposed to involve such limitations that we could scarcely know God. We have assumed too much, both with regard to God and with respect to man. The changed atti- tude calls for recognition of the Spirit as revealed within us in ways which surpass the critical philosophy of human relativity. When we begin to acknowledge that we do not know human nature so well as we thought, we shall be ready to readjust our life for the coming of the Spirit. Experience shall reveal that which in the fmitude of our reason we deemed impos- sible. The transcendency of God is precisely this surpassing love and wisdom of the Spirit which untrammelled human experience reveals. It is ex- perience which prepares the way for thought. Hence one points out that, having so emphasised the finite factors that we have become impotent, the lesson of the hour is obedience, and withal self-abandonment. We have so dwelt upon the facts of self-consciousness that we are like those who are unable to see the wood because of the trees. The great need is to withdraw the self from all interference that we may let the Spirit be made manifest through us. As difficult as it may 44 The Philosophy of the Spirit be to do this, after we have so long dwelt upon our lim- itations, we advance a step when we realise that we must make allowances in our thinking for the God-ward point of view, for the coming of the Spirit through channels of its own seeking. Only through this hu- mility can we expect to solve a problem which eludes our acutest analysis while we claim to know so much about God. For we have been blinding our eyes to the glory of the Spirit revealed all about us. The Spirit has been achieving its ends while we saw only the frag- mentary means. The evidence which we have steadily rejected is now to be the source of our illumination. The real situation has been the same all along. The illusion lay in the interference of our own thought. If it be asked, What right have you thus to speak of Spirit? Where is this Spirit which you say imbues and renews all things? the reply is that we take the clue from human experience, then interpret the uni- verse in terms of this clue. But is not this an instance of "the pathetic fallacy," namely, the projection of human sentiment into nature? It may indeed seem so to those who do not take their starting-point from the witness of the Spirit. We have already admitted that for some the idea is perfectly gratuitous. But for others a certain inner experience is said to afford a direct clue to the ultimate reality of life. Hence we begin by appealing first to experience. The pragmatic value of the doctrine is found in the fact that it is more workable as a conception of experience than one in which the idea of Spirit is omitted. Say, if you will, that man in his spiritual zeal reads his own experience into the world and sees what is not there. One points out that it is primarily a question of adequacy of ex- planation. If you can account for experience by ref- The Definition of the Spirit 45 erence to your own sentiments, well and good; do not attribute these sentiments to the universe. But if it be a fact of experience that a certain type of conscious- ness stands out above others and brings belief in a renewing presence, be loyal to that presence and to the thoughts which belief in it inspires. Were it not for the experience the philosophy would surely never arise. There are people who profess no interest in anything that is not mundane. For them a philosophy of Spirit has no meaning. But there are those who insist that for them this world of things is unintelligible unless it be regarded as a manifestation of Spirit. The evidences they give are no doubt in the first instance personal and subjective. That is, they relate how they have been guided by " the inner light," how faith has sprung up within them, how tenderly the Father has cared for them in His all-seeing wisdom and His perfect love. Ask them to prove that God was really present and they have little to say. But approach them sympathetically and they will reveal an impressive conviction that the Father guides and sustains them. The question, then, is, What type of life shall be deemed conclusive? Shall those who have discerned a spiritual element in their experience estimate all life by the gifts of the physical senses, or shall they take their clue from the presence of this spiritual element? Shall you and I interpret what we take to be spiritual experience by the fact that such experience is given us in the flesh, or shall we in- terpret the life of the flesh by the light which shines from within ? In the present discussion the die is cast in favour of the acceptance of spiritual experience as central in au- thority, central as a clue, conclusive in the face of all doubts. And the practical approach to the conclusion 46 The Philosophy of the Spirit is here chosen because it is in workaday experience that the conviction is realised. Merely from the point of view of such experience, life is more satisfactory, more genuinely successful, if we act on the belief that the Spirit is really present with us, actually achieving purposes through us. If we believe in God in practice even when we are intellectually distressed by doubts, let us take our practical life more in earnest and de- velop its implications. If the witness of the Spirit is more real for us in the last analysis than aught else, let us take our clue from this most significant fact. Evidently we have lived better than we know. Let us now know what we live by. We submit that one of the most remarkable facts in human life is the triumph within it of a renewing Spirit. Nothing is more common than complaints about life. We hear that it is a burden, a "grind." We find people immersed in its prosaic details, ready to give up hope, almost completely discouraged. Yet everywhere we find them starting forward with the most remarkable new impetus. Life is far more than our prosaic accounts of it ever express. When we seem to be weakest we presently become strongest as if by miracle. Even as the darkness becomes intolerable the light appears. It is a universal confession that in moments of supreme distress, fear, doubt, or weakness, the presence and love of God became most near. When we were enveloped by fear, when we doubted and seemed utterly weak, we were somehow only partly ourselves. The conviction is strong that in the renew- ing presence of the Father's love an element is added which affects all the rest. It is this wholeness, this totality, which gives the clue. Doubt as we may, we conclude that the fault lay in our fragmentary view. The Definition of the Spirit 47 Finite existence seems to be essentially a life of frag- ments. The Spirit gives wholes, inspires confidence, brings peace. It upsets all calculations and achieves the impossible through us. We believe because we must. It is well, therefore, to give place to our objections, to accord them a full hearing from the start. For it is by dialectic analysis of precisely such objections that one discovers the deeper truths of the Spirit. It is par- ticularly important to distinguish between subjective factors which we may have attributed to nature, and nature as revealed in the glory of objective existence in space and time. No doubt the idea of the Spirit is profoundly subjective and human in origin. Without a certain experience which man takes to be funda- mental, he would not think of conceiving of the world as a manifestation of Spirit. But when once the con- ception has been applied to the universe it should be defended in objective terms, and freed from all pa- thetic fallacies. To say that the universe is a manifestation of Spirit does not, as the conception is here employed, signify that the universe is in any sense a shadow, a series of filmy pictures or visions, portrayed on a background of the imagination. The universe here in question is no dream, no illusion springing from our ignorance, not an unsubstantial pageant which clearer light may dispel. By the term "universe" employed in its largest sense is here meant the total eternal universe, the divine order. That order includes the heavens and the earth, and the possible future abodes of the soul, as well as the present world. This fair world of ours might disappear and yet the divine order would conceivably remain. Worlds may come and go, but 48 The Philosophy of the Spirit the universe is ever here. In this total or eternal sense, the universe exists in order and degree, from the most objective, least important, or most epheme- ral manifestation of Spirit to the most significant or permanent. Everything that exists reveals the Spirit. Everything has its place, its meaning, its life. But there may be vast differences in the worths or values of the various orders and degrees, according to the level of manifestation, the degree of reality and life. In part, the world of the Spirit is just this solidly sub- stantial world of ours, with its vast mountain ranges, its huge seas, and its cataclysmic activities. These are very real and nothing should be said in disparage- ment of their reality, as perceived or experienced from the level of our physical life. But there are higher, more significant manifestations of Spirit. From the level of some future form of experience this solid world of ours may look unsubstantial in the extreme. But let us frankly recognise its present reality. While, then, the present philosophy of Spirit is idealistic, it is not idealistic in the sense in which the term is popularly misunderstood. The world of the Spirit's manifestation is not "in" the mind of man, is not a mere representation of finite consciousness, but a real cosmos of beings and things. Not, then, by some mystic self-absorption into superconsciousness are we to discover the world of Spirit, but by opening our eyes, looking abroad over the fields, meeting the stern realities of our physical existence. Visions await us, too, and there is reality in the mystic's insight. But unless we begin by acknowledging the realities of this natural world and adjusting ourselves to them, we are not likely to proceed far into the land of in- telligible visions. It is modern science which tells us The Definition of the Spirit 49 what nature is, not the vision of the seer who beholds it as a subjective panorama passing before him. The seer is perhaps an authority in his own domain, but his domain is not nature. On the other hand, it may well be that an illumina- tion in the world of "cosmic consciousness" gives us the clue to the ultimate interpretation of nature. It is probable that many of us are idealists because of some experience of a spiritual type, not merely because we have reasoned ourselves into idealism by an analysis of consciousness or through the refutation of ma- terialism. Having found the spiritual clue we may begin at the beginning and study nature, develop a system of idealism. The essential is to possess the central clue. By the Spirit we mean an unqualifiedly universal presence, a wisdom that is for all. Spirit is neither a vague, formless somewhat, nor an agent of special favours. If the Spirit be seemingly partial, it is merely that it may presently be revealed in the universal fulness of its glory. If it apparently transcend all forms, so that no particular form may be ascribed to it, nevertheless it is the form-giving power whereby all beings and things subsist in one system. It is not a power sent forth at random, not a capricious will, but the mind and life of God in purposive action. If it creates anew, there is nevertheless a central ideal in these its renewing activities. For the nature of God, whence the Spirit springs, is orderly, definite, the height of all organisation and unity. If, then, we would understand any aspect of the great universe of manifestation, we should start aright by recognising that the divine order, the eternal cosmos of which, nature is merely a part, is founded upon the 50 The Philosophy of the Spirit order and beauty, the love and wisdom of God. Could we see the whole universe at once, we should behold its eternal order and beauty. We experience or behold fragments of that great whole. Absorbed in our thought of the fragments, we are oblivious of the whole. It seems impossible to rise to the point of view of the great totality. But the conception of Spirit enables the mind to grasp as a process what it cannot compre- hend either as a creative plan or as an achieved result. In deepest truth, the perfect whole is just this tem- porally wrought revelation of the divine love and wisdom extended through the vast aeons of eternity. At any given moment, the Spirit's achievements are, if you please, perfect; for the given moment is a fresh revelation, a new achievement, exemplifying an aspect of the everlasting reality of which it is the life, the creative efficiency. If we could enter fully enough into the revelation of the moment, we should undoubt- edly find illimitable perfection there. At any rate, we need not search anywhere else than in the living moment for the wisdom and perfection of God. Carrying as we do the life of the Spirit with us, we may cherish in memory the Spirit's past achievements and gradually build in thought a philosophic structure more worthy of this perpetual beauty. We may thus make our conception more precise. For note that we have two clues. First, there is the idea of the achiev- ing Spirit. Second, there is the world, ever wrought upon anew, with fresh human accomplishments. The laws of nature are also laws of Spirit. The Spirit works through us no less precisely. If men of science have discovered nature's laws by careful analysis of nature's ways, the hidden laws of the inner life can no doubt be apprehended by equally careful analysis. The Definition of the Spirit 51 We insist that Spirit is not a life or power by itself, as if it acted outside of nature's forces. It is not describable as identical with the inner life of man. It is rather the underlying, centralising activity within all powers. In nature we behold the visible results of the Spirit's activity. In the inner world we appre- hend its presence more directly. Hence the more closely we enter the realities of the inner life the more intimately may we know the life of the Spirit. Not that Spirit is the cause and human life the effect, but that Spirit is the guiding principle. The spiritual life of man is the accompaniment of that guiding life. We are apt to regard the human phase of life by itself, hence we theoretically put the Spirit far from us. But when we once clearly see that the way to understand our life is to view it as grounded in Spirit, we also find ourselves in possession of the most definite sort of clue for the interpretation of the relationship of Spirit to our world. To become aware of the point where we stand, to know our position in the world of reality, is not merely to attain self- consciousness but to view life in the light of that which makes its existence possible. Every moment of feeling, volition, or thought is a clue to the presence of the Spirit, if we regard that moment in its truth. If no moment be cut off from the Spirit, the under- standing of all moments gives us an orderly clue to the total life of the Spirit with us. Plainly some mo- ments are more authoritative than others. The laws of some of our experiences we understand far better than the laws of others. In part our life is enveloped in mystery where no laws are yet seen. But the known is still the clue to the unknown. If we live in part by clear understanding and in part by faith, at any 52 The Philosophy of the Spirit rate our total life is carried forward by one ascending reality whose meaning with us we are ever grasping more and more clearly. It hardly seems profitable to attempt to assign a motive for the manifestation of the Spirit in the world. There may never have been a beginning of such mani- festation. The universe may well be the eternal expression, outpouring, externalisation of the Spirit. At any rate it is not conceivable apart from the divine consciousness. Not, I insist, that it is " in "that consciousness, not that it is like a dream or vision, but that it exists for, is present to, manifests the mind of God. That mind may be in a measure unlike our own, hence its objects may not be in any sense remote but possessed as one whole. But the conception of an all-inclusive consciousness at least suggests the intimacy of relationship between God and His universe. Since the universe exists, we may safely assume that it fulfils the divine nature. Since you and I exist as dwellers in this divine universe, we may with equal assurance assume that we meet some need in the life of God. Whether or not we or any other beings save God have had a life without beginning in the past, here we are, members one of another in the great universe which reveals the majesty and wisdom, the beauty and love of God. If God sends His life forth in manifestation, so that the universe is an expression of His mind and heart, so do we in a measure manifest our minds in a world of thought and conduct. We may say with T. H. Green that the Spirit " reproduces itself " in us. Before the mind or thought of God the entire cosmos is represented. So much of the great universe as my life has compassed exists for me as my reproduction, The Definition of the Spirit 53 my living object of thought. Before me, as I con- template, there passes as in a panorama the daily round of nature, the successive mutations of the week, the seasons, and the years. More within than before the mind there also passes the panorama of thought and will which is contributed to by the conduct of my fellows, and expresses my own interior life. To this extent all finite minds may be said to be alike. But if the Spirit's self-reproduction within and before us is also purposive, so that each occupies a relatively distinct place in the total spiritual cosmos, it may be said that in each the universe is not only beheld from an individual point of view but that through this ex- perience somewhat is added to the divine life. This being so, the highest function of the finite self may be this individual participation in the drama of the Spirit, this eternal outpouring of the love and wisdom of God. Yet we must not symbolise the universe of divine self-revelation in a purely passive way, as if God were a mere observer of a play. The very life of the drama, the life of nature in all the fury of the storm as well as in the gradual changes of organic evolution, is also a part of the life of God. Our conception of the universe as the manifestation of Spirit will be incomplete unless we regard the Spirit as each moment proceeding forth afresh. The creative life of the Spirit is the involution which precedes all evolution. The Spirit not only creates that is, directs and completes, through all the gradations of form, but also sustains, vivifies, renews. One moment is thus as vitally significant as another. In the seeming passivity of the rock and the massive constancy of the mountains, the sustaining life is as truly present. The Spirit is above all active, a life, a moving principle. 54 The Philosophy of the Spirit So in man's case it is the thought of life, life, that makes the conception complete. If on the universal side man is a participant in the self -manifest at ion of God, on the individual side he passes through a con- crete experience which is essentially an affair of con- duct. Otherwise the divine purpose could not be fulfilled within him. Man is related both to the Spirit and to the Spirit's universe at large, and to the cosmos of human life in particular. It is not enough merely to reproduce or represent the universe " for the glory of God." It does not suffice merely to realise the presence of God in a contemplative sense. Unless we carry that presence in our hearts and make it known to our fellowmen it is not yet thoroughly real. The proof of its reality is found not merely in our daily thoughts but most of all in the deeds we do. The Spirit is given us to manifest. For that is its essence, it manifests, accomplishes, lives. The idea that the universe is a manifestation of Spirit is accordingly one which the mind can grasp only through gradual realisation. Those who are familiar with idealistic arguments will find it easier to begin this realisation in earnest, for they will already possess what may be called the mental data that is, the considerations which show why and how we live a mental life, and apprehend the world through con- sciousness. The spiritual element is added when we realise in earnest that the reproduction of the universe within us is not merely the representation of the world of nature but literally the manifestation, the living presence of God in all His love and majesty. The great thought must be regarded in a multiplicity of ways before we really begin to comprehend it. For there is the universal manifestation and the individual, The Definition of the Spirit 55 both the eternal divine ground of the total cosmos beyond power of comprehension in its fulness, and God the Father. The one conception is more philo- sophical that is, it is the fruition of a long attempt to think the universe as the objectification of its eternal Ground, while the other is more religious, is more the outgrowth of sentiment or worship, the uplift of the heart in prayer and praise. Fortunate are we if we detect the underlying unity between serving God with the heart while we worship and while we serve, and thinking about God as the basic reality of all this wondrous cosmos spread around. If we have made any speculative or other separation between these two ways of serving and studying, our thought will be marred through and through. The Spirit is a whole, a unity, and will not be divided. It is indeed a unity amidst variety and the source of all variety, indeed of varieties and contrasts so great that it taxes our faith to the utmost to reconcile them. But the Spirit is essentially one. Essentially one must our life be if we would in large measure realise the true reality of the Spirit. I say "realise" the presence of the Spirit, because I am unable to sunder the experience from the thought, the life from the reason. The world is a manifestation of Spirit for you and for me. When you have let this great idea so take hold of your thought that you are able to relate every moment of your existence to the Spirit, and make no exception, not even in the case of passion, then indeed you are ready to turn to % the universe of your fellows and the world of nature, "red in tooth and claw, " and see the love of God therein. And finally there is the yet greater thought that, call it what we may, attribute life to whatever 56 The Philosophy of the Spirit source we may, relatively speaking, it is the Spirit that lives in all, does the work, achieves the supreme purpose. CHAPTER III THE STARTING-POINT A COMPLETE philosophy of Spirit would, we have seen, include an interpretation of all natural evolution from the point of view of its ultimate sources and ends, a philosophy of history, moral life, and religion, as well as a systematically reasoned idealism. But at present we are concerned with a less comprehensive inquiry. That is, since there is a primary witness of the Spirit in the human soul, we turn first to that and seek its reality and meaning. Conceived as the guiding principle in the inner life of man, the Spirit may be regarded as even now achieving an end, as an activity accomplishing a purpose. The first question therefore is, What is the Spirit accomplishing through us? How is its activity related to our activity? How are its ends related to our purposes? To begin the inquiry at this point is in a sense to start at the highest level, where it is in large part a question of the Spirit which " blow*eth where it listeth," and in this the highest province of our life "it doth not yet appear what we shall be. " Yet by proposing to approach the Spirit through consideration of the spiritual life of man, we are taking the direct pathway to its reality. For, in the last analysis, we evaluate external reality, we appreciate the beauty and goodness of things in terms of inner experience. If the Spirit possesses us in the inner world in such wise that we speak and act better than we know, we shall in due 57 58 The Philosophy of the Spirit time discern the universal clue by pursuing the mean- ings of this interior revelation. The truth that the world is a manifestation of Spirit has special signifi- cance in reference to the world of our inner life. There, in miniature, the great Spirit is present. He who truly apprehends that presence may indeed find God in the universe at large. Before we develop this principle it is well, however, to note that there are at least three points of view which have been maintained with respect to the re- lationship of God and man. There is, (i) the au- thoritative biblical point of view, the theory that God is directly known only through the complete and final revelation of Himself in the Hebrew and Greek Testa- ments. In behalf of this position it is maintained that the human intellect is incapable of apprehending God directly, or of attaining to the level of divine thought through the use of reason. Hence it was necessary that a verbal revelation should be made, and that God should be incarnated in the flesh in the unique person of Jesus Christ. In pursuance of this point of view it is further contended that man of himself can do nothing, but that salvation is by divine grace. Hence it would be futile to undertake a study of the higher nature of man with the hope of finding out things divine. The only standard of appeal is to the revealed word. (2) From a sharply opposed point of view it is maintained that man is the efficient agent, that God is essentially each man's idea of Him, and that so-called revelation is a record of human thoughts. In the light of this self-laudatory humanistic point of view so much emphasis is placed upon the relativity of human knowledge that it becomes practically impossible to believe in the direct agency of God. But (3) there is The Starting-Point 59 a third point of view which in a measure includes both of these positions. From this point of view God is primary and supreme, the absolute Being without whom none of us would exist, yet man is an agent of divine power and life. God is regarded as really present to all men, and active in all, hence as revealing Himself universally, yet account must ever be taken of the instrumentalities through which the Spirit is made known. From this point of view no exclusive propo- sitions are insisted upon. The truths of human reason are the same as those of divine revelation. Both through the scriptures and through a study of human nature God may be found. Mere human reason would be incompetent to discover the infinite perfection of the divine nature; but there is in reality no merely human reason, since the mind of man is not separated from the mind of God. This does not imply that all ideas are equally true, but that the standards are not merely those of authoritative revelation. It involves no disparagement of the Christian scriptures, surely none of the surpassingly spiritual life of the Master. But neither does it disparage other scriptures, teachings, and philosophies. The final standard of appeal is to enlightened reason. In endeavouring to choose between these hypotheses one is greatly aided by the fact that, whatever the accepted authority, very much depends upon the point of view of approach, the judgments whereby the authority is accepted. To accept the strictly biblical point of view would apparently be to throw human judgment out of account, as if individual experience and thought had nothing to do with the matter. Yet analysis of such acceptance shows that the more per- sistently we attempt to centre the authority elsewhere OP THE /ERS/TY 60 The Philosophy of the Spirit the more do we implicitly confess that inner experience is the first measure of all authority. Only by remain- ing entirely uninformed and wholly uncritical can one in these days maintain the merely authoritative position. It is reasonable to start with a proposition which may be sustained to the end, for example the pro- position that the Spirit, universally revealed, is every- where made known by its own evidence and in the light of the experience and the thought by which its evidence is accepted. It then becomes plain that, however special or authoritative its utterances are judged to be, it is the universal verification which proves them true. The instruments which were seemingly chosen as special agents of authoritative utterances are not thereby proved the less divine, but humanity is given its rights with respect to the Spirit. The teachings of the Master are not underestimated, but proper recog- nition is given to the conditions of their acceptance. With reference to the argument by which the au- thoritative point of view is maintained, Sabatier says: " All reasoning of this kind avowedly or tacitly implies on the part of the thinking subject a declaration of incompetence, and as a consequence a conscious or unconscious act of abdication." 1 The alternative position is that in which the mind asserts its autonomy. "To say that the mind is autonomous is not to hold that it is not subject to law; it is to say that it finds the supreme norm of its ideas and acts not outside of itself, but within itself, in its very constitution. It is to say that the consent of the mind to itself is the prime con- dition and foundation of all certitude." 2 Religions of Authority and the Religion. of the Spirit, Eng. trans., p. xvi. *Op. cit., p. xvi. The Starting-Point 61 As matter of fact, no one ever accepts a thing as real or a proposition as true, except on the basis of individual judgment. The reference to experience may be implicit and the judgment thoroughly con- cealed, but the reference and the judgment are in- evitably there.. The degree of acceptance or rejection depends on the degree of understanding. Experience comes first, then the inferences to which it gives oc- casion, and finally, the accepted principle of interpre- tation. Deny as we may the right of private judgment, we act in accordance with it whenever we accept a teacher or a doctrine, however authoritative. Lose the self as we may in the thought of "the point of view of God, " the self is still actively judging, so deeply convinced of the verity of its own experience that on the mere basis of that experience it dares to speak for God. The man who totally rejects the idea of the presence of Spirit, who explains the idea as the "pathetic fallacy" of a weak sentimentalist, no more positively emphasises personal experience and the judgments founded upon it than the one who ignores that experience altogether and assumes to speak for God. The human equation is simply unescapable. The ultimate basis of acceptance of spiritual author- ity is the presence in us of the witness of the Spirit, namely, as Hegel puts it, the religious content shows itself in the spirit itself, that Spirit manifests itself in Spirit, and in fact in this my spirit . . . this faith has its source, its root in my deepest personal being . . . it is what is most pe- culiarly my own, and as such is inseparable from the consciousness of pure Spirit . . . what is to be of value to me must have its verification in my own spirit, and in order that I may believe I must have the witness 62 The Philosophy of the Spirit of my spirit. It may indeed come to me from without, but any such external origin is a matter of indifference; if it is to be valid, this validity can only build itself up upon the foundation of all truth, in the witness of the Spirit. 1 Every man may be classified in the light of his judg- ments with respect to the witness of the Spirit. Argue as you will to convince a man of spiritual verities, until he has had direct evidence of such verities, which he either accepts as strongly probable or conclusive, all your reasoning counts for naught. You might as well eulogise the beauty and the ineffable joys of love for the benefit of one whose heart has never been deeply touched. As much or as little credit as we appear to bestow upon others or upon ourselves by passing such judgments, we are constrained to classify all men as either quickened or unquickened. Those who for a time have dwelt in an ideal region respond, when you narrate your experiences, and those who have not dwelt there give no answering sign. Spirit either bears witness to Spirit, or it does not. If it fail to respond, all communication is by means of the letter. If there be a quickening response, there is a standard by which to estimate the reality and worth of the ex- periences in question. Whether the experiences possess the reality and authority which seem to belong to them is of course another matter. But actual reference to human re- lationships is sufficient to show that men constantly fall back upon what for them is the sole ultimate test, namely, individual experience. If two men are of the same faith, if they have both experienced "a change J Philos, ofRel, Eng. traji, i., 43. The Starting-Point 63 of heart," communication is easy. The hints they give may appear to relate to a supposed miraculous power by whose efficacy they have been converted. But these signs are not the less significant from the point of view of human judgments. The acceptance of a revelation, a bible or teacher, as authoritative, implies, for example, a series of previous judgments in regard to the divine "plan" as manifested in the giving of revelations, the possi- bility that man is able to receive and impart unspoiled such authoritative pronouncements, that there is but one sacred text, which has been preserved intact, and that we have not only the very words of God but the words of those whose lives and teachings are portrayed in the biblical narrative. On whose authority does one make these judgments? On that of* biblical scholars? Relatively speaking it may be so. But ultimately these judgments mean that we accept our own estimates of the integrity of these men, that we believe in the power of man to be an untrammelled agent of "the Holy Spirit"; and how could we venture to make all these judgments unless we had already accepted the witness of the Spirit? Martineau ex- presses himself very strongly on this point. He insists that "Second-hand belief, assented to at the dictation of an initiated expert, without personal response of thought and reverence in myself, has no more tincture of religion in it than any other lesson learned by rote. MI Generally speaking, the more deeply concealed the tacit acceptance of objective authority the easier it is for people to believe on the basis of such acceptance. A naive faith is founded on total unawareness that *The Seat pf Authority in Religion, p. vi. 64 The Philosophy of the Spirit personal experience and thought have anything to do with the acceptance of the Bible as the word of God. It is easy for those who have never learned to think to delegate all the rights of judgment to priest or church, without knowing that they have thereby committed themselves to" inconsistency. The vested authorities jealously guard the privileges bestowed upon them, and it has been by sheer struggle on the part of a few that modern criticism has at last shown where the seat of authority in religion really lies. The emphasis was put upon the letter up to the last possible limit. The unquestioned authority of institutions depended upon this emphasis. For as soon as men see that experience comes first, in time, and stands first in authority, the fate of external authority is sealed. It is not surprising that the decay of external au- thority seems for the moment to be the death of religion. Yet modern criticism merely brings to the fore the judgments which men have made on inner authority from the dawn of theology, of belief in holy scriptures and in a divinely instituted church. Students of such criticism need only awaken to knowledge of the powers they have long employed to see that the real situation is in no wise changed. No revelation ever created truth, any more than the truth that four is the sum of two and two was the invention of the man who first learned to add. The men who have most deeply believed in themselves are the ones who have most profoundly believed in and made known the presence of God. It is the universal evidence of the existence of religious consciousness which has convinced mankind. When we discover that the Bible has a thousand meanings for as many persons it is no doubt bewilder- ing, for in our unquestioning faith we had supposed The Starting-Point 65 it held but one. But when we meet any one of the thousand persons and compare experiences until we penetrate beneath the letter we find it possible to agree on important points. We then turn to the Bible, as to any other record of experience, with the illuminating insight that the real revelation is the common or universal experience out of which psalms and bibles grow. Interpretations inevitably differ. Manifold il- lusions centre about the creeds of men, creeds sunder men and are occasions for hatred; it is the Spirit that unites, that inspires love. When unanimity seems impossible, from the point of view of belief or interpretation, there is one resource that is unfailing. Men may dispute as they will, profess with their lips what they may; but when it is a question of character, of the kind of life they lead, they come into possession of a standard. Appearances may be deceptive here, too. But more and more we hear men confessing that this is the true test. We know very well in our hearts that this is the standard by which we are sooner or later to be estimated. When we are wholly honest with ourselves we apply this standard. When we earnestly seek to advance it is with the desire that above all else we may lead better lives. To live the life, achieve the type this is our highest aspiration, this is the incentive which brings men together to study the relationship of the Spirit to human life. But the mere acceptance of this standard implies that, wittingly or unwittingly, we admit the supremacy of our human insight. Sabatier holds that the Gospel, in its very principle, implied the abrogation of religions of authority, and inaugurated as a fact the 66 The Philosophy of the Spirit religion of the Spirit. The religious relation which it instituted between God and man was not determined by the necessary mediation of a priest, nor by the obligatory letter of a law, but by the inner bond of love, by the con- sciousness of a filial relation between child and father. Thus the centre of gravity of the religious life was changed from without to within, from the institution to the con- science. . . . What guide, what support, what strength did Jesus give to his disciples? Not one other than the Spirit of his Father, which abode in him and would abide in them. He promised it without a single exception to all who would ask the Father for it. 1 Without fear, then, that we are either placing too much stress on the inner life or departing from the teachings of Jesus, we may freely and fully accept the witness of the Spirit in the individual guise in which it is directly made known. It may well be that we at once pass to the conclusion that the Spirit itself is far more real than this witness within us, that we place more reliance on social than on private con- sciousness, that we turn with new admiration to the Bible, to the church and the Master. But if so we now judge without misconception, we never leave the human equation out of account. It may be that we exclaim in deepest humility, It is not I who achieved, but a wonder was wrought within me. The assent on our part, the victory of the will, the triumph over circumstance, may well seem secondary in our eyes. But the point is that the co-operative attainment wherein the union of the human will with the Spirit is made known is for us the test of all spiritual truth and conduct. We have travelled a certain distance along the pathway of the soul, we have attained a 1 Op. cit, pp. 283, 298. The Starting-Point 67 certain level of development. From this level, some things are already behind us, some are before; we un- derstand a few great laws, we have glimpses of a few ideals. What we understand clearly we grasp with a power of conviction similar to that which arises when we learn once for all that two and two make four. We know that these principles will hold under all con- ditions. The present level of development thus in- volves a certain permanent possession, an attitude or outlook upon the world. The statements just made seem for the moment in conflict. For, in Chapter I we maintained that man failed to find the Spirit because he placed such em- phasis on the limitations of human nature, and now we point out that man always accepts anything divine on the authority of his own judgment. But we are still calling attention to the witness of the Spirit. We have had that witness with us all along, and on ( the basis of it we have passed judgments. But we have ignored this inner witness to a considerable extent and apparently accepted divine revelation on the basis of some external authority, as if our human judgments had nothing to do with such acceptance. The critics have called attention to the fact that only on our own authority do we ever accept anything. This being so, it is well to look to the sources of authority within. Had the Spirit not resided there we would never have known it as revealed in a book. The inner witness is primary in reality and in authority. Having accepted it uncritically we may now accept it in all its fulness. A certain mode of life has always accompanied that acceptance. By leading that life more seriously we may become the instrument of greater revelations. Since everything centres about the point which the 68 The Philosophy of the Spirit Spirit has now achieved in the life of each of us, the prime need is for a more intimate acquaintance with the laws and conditions of the Spirit's progressive presence. The reality, I say, is here, "the kingdom is at hand," it is within and around every human soul. If by any theological or other device we have put the Spirit far from us, as if it spoke ages ago, then ceased to reveal itself, we must first remove this speculative barrier. This does not mean that revela- tions and prophets are unnecessary, but that these acquaint us with realities which we already possess. The response we are called upon to make is not to cleave to the distant manifestation of the Spirit, but to prove our faith by turning to the Spirit and living in accordance with it to-day. As little inclined as we may be to raise personal experience to the centre of thought, that is what we really have done all along. Nothing is so real for us as this present moment of experience, say what you will about the realities of the past or those that are far distant. No soul is so real for you as your own. You are a soul, looking forth upon the world of your own conscious experience. In present actuality or in memory, everything that constitutes the universe for you is related to you, this present soul. Now, where do you stand, how clearly do you see the way? What opportunities lie open before you? The extent to which individual experience can be trusted is not yet in question. For the moment, we point out that the starting-point of a philosophy of Spirit is found through the analysis of self-conscious- ness. To arrive at years of discretion in the philosophic sense is to be able not only to evaluate present ex- perience, but on the basis of such evaluation to see why The Starting-Point 69 authority has been delegated to institutions, why external authority has so often been reckoned above internal. One sees, for example, that there is a path- way of the Spirit. It is a question what that course is and how man takes it. The answer at any given period of the world's history depends upon the de- gree of reflective self -consciousness attained. For instance, there is a period of innocence when the soul receives remarkable first impressions and gives expression to spontaneous works of genius. Then there is the transition to manhood with its new ex- periences, hence new thoughts and questionings, doubts and conflicts, criticism and agnosticism. Or this period may be described as the one in which man tries to be something of and by himself, in which he asserts his independence. Hence this becomes the period of darkness known as evil. The majority remain so long in this transitional stage that to them the exist- ence of evil becomes the great mystery. But all through the ages there have been those who have entered a third period, an epoch of enlightenment in which there are relatively few mysteries. Such men not only see why human life begins as it does and passes through the stage of darkness and struggle, but they see the outcome, see the hand of God where other men behold only the malicious works of man's hands. These men live, as it were, in the realm of causes, grasp the implied principles and discern the lessons which human life teaches. They cannot be really troubled over the problem of evil, since they plainly see its origin, perceive the love and purpose of God. What gives them concern is man in his ignorance and sin, the difficulty of making plain even in slight measure the truths' of the divine vision. 70 The Philosophy of the Spirit Such men have usually been seers, prophets, poets, who were unable to state in scientifically precise lan- guage the realities they beheld. Hence they have symbolised the divine vision. Hence the literature of allegory, the religious poems and sacred books of the ages. Hence, too, the misunderstandings of men who mistook the symbol for the Spirit, hence the misunder- standings which cling about our own Bible. If we are to succeed where others have failed we must in each case put ourselves in the position of those who have the witness of the Spirit and sometimes bear imperfect testimony. We shall follow a safe clue if we recollect that the man of the Spirit does not first speculate, then produce a dogmatic doctrine or alle- gorical poem, but writes as he does because he has first had experiences which so far possessed him that he could hardly have done otherwise. He does not start to prove the existence of God because of some theoretic need, but writes his essay or sings his hymn because God lives, moves, stirs within him. Pos- sessing the eternal verities as first-hand gifts, his characterisation is necessarily at second-hand. The confidence he displays is not the mere assurance of reason, that is, not dependent on the force of his argu- ment, but springs from the everlasting possession. It is this power behind, this overmastering sense of reality, which gives his writing such force and compels others to believe. There are various degrees of insight and inspiration, hence varying degrees of convincing literature. One seer's writings may carry conviction because of the beauty and directness of his figures, his poetic symbols, while another is able to scrutinise his experience so carefully that nearly all traces of the original vision The Starting- Point 7 1 are absorbed into his highly rational account. The seer may also become the philosopher, eliminate all mysticism, and propound a philosophy of Spirit. But the point is that the philosophy springs from the spiritual consciousness, not that the conception of the Spirit is a merely logical need. The merely speculative philosopher proceeds from an analytically defined basis to a clearly wrought formal or logical conception. But the philosopher of the Spirit begins with experience, and carries along an element which may never wholly yield to precise analysis. This accompanying element which gives life to the whole is precisely that element which is known through the witness of the Spirit. Hence in our investigation of the Spirit's course in human life we have as sources the Bible and other religious and poetic literature, the literature of criticism and philosophy, and personal experience with its corroborative testimony, its inner witness, and its individuality. For many, the Bible will always stand first in authority. For others, the realities of personal experience will rank first, the Bible and other sacred literature will be confirmatory. Some will start with the divine point of view, some with the human. In any case the authority is partly that of personal ex- perience, however high the origin attributed to the revelations of which it is the channel. We shall do right, then, if we give primary allegiance to the direct testimony of the soul, the first-hand experiences of those who dwell nearest the Spirit. For, originally, there is but one source and that is the Spirit. If the medium be so transparent that the Spirit shines through, mayhap the spoken or written word will be for us "the word of God." But let us not confuse that which is primary with that which is secondary. 72 The Philosophy of the Spirit The form is not the Spirit, nor is it wholly equal to it. The form is by and for and from the Spirit, through it the Spirit is made complete. The more nearly ade- quate the form the more directly it will send us to the Spirit which imbues it. The Spirit is the essential. If, then, we are to overcome the agnosticism of the age and prepare the way for a renewing revelation of the Spirit we must meet modern criticism on its own ground. That criticism has centred about the con- ditions and factors of human nature. It has em- phasised the relativity of human knowledge, and pointed out that the direct object of experience is man's own consciousness. As opposed to unscrutinised belief in objective authority it has pointed out that man accepts all reality and all authority on the basis of individual judgment. All this has come to stay. It is impossible to ignore it. To find the way back again to reality constructive thought must assimilate these results, not pass by or reject them. Hence we must give modern criticism the fullest recognition. But, reserving the right of more careful interpretation, we may well pass from the point of view of human relativity to that of the realities which that relativity makes known. Criticism tends to reduce life to the dullest prose by introducing minute self -consciousness and by directing attention to the way in which the mind works. The result is a doctrine concerning the ma- chinery of human existence, to the neglect of its pro- ductions. But the machinery is only a means to an end. Mere consciousness of the way in which the mind works is of small value, while self-consciousness may be a positive hindrance. Nevertheless only through self -consciousness shall the truth be known. The Starting-Point 73 The ideal is not only to understand how the machinery is constructed but to master it, and mastery comes through the highest use. Those only are likely to understand the function of criticism who have at times been in danger of becoming a slave to it. If we have lived too much with the critics, the resource is to live with the poets, the artists, and musicians. We also lose besetting self-consciousness by returning to nature and by associating with children. When spontaneity returns we may rightly estimate the period of enslaving criticism through which we have passed. Only through fluctuation, contrast, criticism, and through dialectic is the truth finally discoverable, not through first thoughts simply. It is difficult enough to discover the exact facts of life, and one is ready to become unduly critical for the sake of discovering them. But priceless as facts are they are not the only possessions of value. Fortunate are we if in the pur- suit of facts we are inspired by the thought of the Spirit. Persuaded that the fruits of the Spirit are love and peace and wisdom, that the Spirit is more than the mechanism of its manifestation, we may well settle down to the most prosaic analysis of its instrumen- talities. If through man there is a Life, moving towards the achievement of certain purposes, accompanying this Life there is a life of thought. It is out of this thought that a philosophy of the Spirit grows. The starting-point is this Life, with its reproduction in human thought, and no philosophy of the Spirit is adequate which fails to take account of both the Life and the thought. If in the endeavour to take account of both the Spirit and the consciousness which accompanies its presence we lose sight now of the Spirit and now of the 74 The Philosophy of the Spirit conditions of its presence, the reconstructive clue is found in the fact that the Spirit, not the letter, is the real revelation. The resource, therefore, is to return in spontaneous receptivity to the Life that ever moves forward within. The Life is the carrying power, while the dialectic of thought properly follows and makes explicit the Life. Practically speaking, our whole problem is one of adjustment to this advancing Life; theoretically, it is a question of the interpretation of the Life. However we put it, then, the Life stands first. There may be human defects without limit to make allowances for; the crucial point is that the Spirit is present, despite the imperfections of its in- strument. Here is the starting-point of our philo- sophy. This is the point we insist upon. Beginning with that, insisting upon the witness of the Spirit, we may trustfully pass through the fires of the severest criticism, confident that the dearest reality will be unharmed. That it is one thing to start with the Spirit and another to say indubitably what is real, what true, in the inner life, will become more and more clear as we proceed. It may seem clear, for example, that the Spirit is revealed through intuition, yet our investi- gation of the nature of intuition will show how difficult it is to discover the intuitively revealed certainties of the Spirit. It is plain that the Spirit is apprehen- sible through emotion, yet we must analyse the emo- tions in the most careful sort of way to learn how far they may be trusted. Our study of the various chan- nels of the Spirit may lead us so far afield into mere relativities that we shall appear to have made no headway. Yet, once more, such is the pathway of the Spirit. Criticism must do its utmost, then give The Starting- Point 75 us the opportunity to reconstruct if we can. The dialectic through which our investigation is compelled to pass is precisely the philosophic exercise which leads unmistakably to the truth. We must doubt in order to know, there is no other sure way. Thus to be fore- warned is to be prepared to lose sight of the wood for the trees, yet with an unfailing constancy of hope, inasmuch as we possess the witness of the Spirit. CHAPTER IV THE ETERNAL TYPE OF LIFE IN the foregoing discussions we were chiefly con- cerned with preliminary definitions of the Spirit, regarded as God in action, manifested in the total universe, and typified by the renewing life of nature We endeavoured in some measure to view human life from above, as if from the standpoint of the Spirit, manifesting its love and wisdom through the pro- gressive achievements of men. While it seemed difficult thus to transcend human experience, we found reason to believe that even our limited know- ledge is knowledge of the presence of the Spirit. We found it possible to unify ambiguous and apparently inconsistent meanings of the term Spirit by restricting the term in its primary significance to the concrete life of God regarded as at once the eternal essence and the uniting power. Thus regarded, we began to look for clues to the purposes of the Spirit, not in the re- moter precincts of the infinitude of God, but in the near-by events of the world, and in the actual ex- periences of men. We placed the Spirit first and all modes of apprehension, description, or expression in the second place. This led to emphasis on the kind of life man lives, the witness of the Spirit in the in- dividual case. Such emphasis seems to imply the superiority of personal experience over authoritative revelation. Yet we shall find increasing evidence that individual experience is rather the starting-point 76 The Eternal Type of Life 77 than the goal of spiritual thought, hence that the test of authority is not merely individual. Pursuing the clues of practical life first, therefore, we may now consider the attitude which one may best maintain while seeking the eternal verities. This attitude we may characterise in terms of an ideal of the Eternal Type of Life. That is, it is not primarily a question of time, of the present or remote activity of the Spirit, but of understanding of the eternal con- ditions and laws of spiritual existence. To begin wherever we are, however situated, to live for the eternal values, is the best way to adapt our conduct to the presence of the Spirit and to grow in knowledge of the conditions under which it is manifested. First in importance is the ideal which lifts the mind to the level of universal consciousness, then comes the ap- preciative reconstruction of the facts and principles implied. If the ideal attitude be partly a product of the Spirit, it is also in part the result of adaptation to the details of everyday existence. In the latter sense the attitude is rightfully a subject for precise analysis. Here you are, for example, engaged in your daily labour and so far absorbed that there is no centre of reserve- power, no ideal outlook. For the time you are simply your organism, working. All your life flows into one channel and your thoughts are also concentrated there. Now, concentration is no doubt of great value, but the question is, are you swept along by the flood-tide of your energy, or are you occupied in your little world of successful work while living above it in a larger world of eternal idealism? Upon this distinction much depends. For the way one works is indicative of the end for which life is believed to exist. If life be consistent, instead of being a 78 The Philosophy of the Spirit perpetual compromise with circumstance, there would appear to be one ultimate principle of such consistency, that is, the ideal of life in and for the ends that are permanently worth while. To learn to live for these high ends we must repeatedly ask, Am I putting emphasis on the appropriate place? Am I seeking the real essence of life, or dwelling upon appearances? To live for the eternal verities means that, whereas experience was once a single stream in which we were confusedly immersed, it is now twofold and we move with an upper current of life, from the view-point of which we behold the life below. It is this relative transcendence of routine conditions, while still taking advantage of them, which best accords with the in- terests of the present inquiry. The prime consideration is the new consciousness apprehended when we cross the line, as it were, between this our mundane realm and the higher order of eternal values, and behold the familiar scenes of natural life in a different light. To contrast the eternal and the temporal is perhaps to suggest various historic attempts to realise a Utopian type of life, and the critic may ask, What have we in these enlightened days to do with other- world schemes? In order to avoid all misconception, it is well to say a word or two in justification of the point of view. As members of a physical world-order we are compelled to devote most of our thought, our deeds of kindness and love, to mundane things. This is of course right and natural, for man's first privilege is to lead a thoroughly natural life. There has been a vigorous reaction from the old-time notion that natural exist- ence is simply meant to fit man for heavenly abodes. The thoughtful man of to-day believes that natural ends are to a large extent ends in themselves, and The Eternal Type of Life 79 therefore need not be connected with ulterior purposes. Physical exercise, for example, is an end in itself; so is the enjoyment of natural existence and the earthly interests that comport with true manhood and woman- hood. If a happy earthly home, where love abides, be not an end in itself, it would be difficult to find such an end. In family life ideals attain a legitimate goal, whatever other purposes such life may subserve. Man not only has a right to be genuinely natural before he is spiritual, but it might almost be said that this is the only sure way: the spiritual life must have its roots deep within the soil of a reasonable earthly existence. Natural ends may, however, fulfil more than tem- poral purposes. If heaven be not a place but a state, attainable by righteous conduct, the way to win it is to live any life well in which the participant finds himself rightfully engaged. Heaven may as truly be founded upon things natural as upon things singled out as spiritual. Heaven begins with the discovery of that which is eternal. Yet this discovery is merely an awakening to realities which reside in the living present. Really to know the present and to live in it is heaven. Thus the acceptance of the standard for which we are pleading, namely, conduct as a test of belief and a clue to reality, tends to centre interest upon this present life. Man has laboured for so many centuries for the right to be natural that he may well complain when devotees of the supernatural insist that our life below is but a beginning for a life above. One sometimes looks back to the golden days of Greece as to a time when it was really possible to lead a natural life, unharassed by doctrines in regard to sin, the devil, and the implied supernatural scheme of salvation. 8o The Philosophy of the Spirit Yet one may as readily err in emphasis on our natural existence as in stress upon the one-sided idea of heaven which once prevailed. It was no doubt a joy to be merely natural in the days before man began to be self-consciously subjective. But having once attained self-consciousness there is no turning back. If the early Christians were preternaturally unworldly, the time is at hand to be natural Christians. To lead a merely natural life may mean that we are self- satisfied in our physical contentment. If we pine for the care-free days of old, when individual self- realisation was the ideal, we have now the inspiration of the ideals of self-sacrifice, service, and love which came in with Christianity. If it was once easy to be natural, it may now be said to be a virtue, one that enlists all our powers, as we throw off the restraints of an artificial society and look out over the fair fields of our earthly environment in intelligent adoration. It is one of the ends we may well put before us as most worth while, this endeavour to regain nature, but a nature transfigured by the nobler ideals of our modern time. In this discussion we are not, then, advocating an other-world scheme. Our plea for the eternal type of life is above all a plea for a principle of life which shows man how to live more wisely and happily in this natural world, with greater enjoyment of nature's beauty and closer kinship with natural conditions. There is something at fault in any mode of conduct which unfits man to live this natural life. If we cease to take interest in earthly things, the truth probably is that we are not yet rightfully through with them, that we are trying to outwit our own spiritual evolu- tion. To be spiritual, let us now say unqualifiedly, The Eternal Type of Life 81 is first of all to be natural, normal, physically and mentally equipped to live this splendid earthly exist- ence of ours, and enthusiastic in our love for it. On the other hand, since we are children of the eter- nal Spirit we should hardly expect to be genuinely natural beings except by taking constant account of what we are as eternal souls. A broadly inclusive eternal type of life fits us equally well for life here and beyond. Or, rather, there is no "here" and no "be- yond"; for it is primarily a question of present states, laws, and conditions. We are never in a position truly to enjoy even the most subordinate phases of our natural life while we are immersed in the fluctuations and relativities of sensuous existence. Nor may we become genuinely spiritual while we sunder the spiritual from the natural. We truly live so far as we discover ends, apprehend laws, cleave to values, worths, ideals. If we begin here below to comprehend laws, purposes, and verities, no future experience can ever take us wholly by surprise. To begin to seek essences, abiding realities, is already to become members of an eternal order of existence. Thus the eternal type of life is one of philosophic independence of circumstance. Just as one lives in thought in an ideal world, while engaged in daily toil, so from week to week, from year to year, one may live in remembrance of the kingdom which cannot pass away. When friends pass from our sight, and the great questions in regard to the future life become vital issues for us, the central query is likely to be, ShallVe recognise our friends in that far-off world? If we could have assurance of this we would be content. But how can this assurance be more directly gained than by considering how we truly know our friends 82 The Philosophy of the Spirit while here? For it may well be that the basis of knowledge and recognition is everywhere the same. It is plain that merely external signs do not carry us very far. Why are we drawn to some people and repelled by others? What is the real principle of friendship? Were we to begin with the person with whom we are in closest affinity and with this friendship as a centre describe all our relationships in terms of spiritual nearness or harmony of character, we might arrange a scale of real values. The closer the inner ties the less possible it would be to describe the friend- ship in terms of physical appearance. The truest friendship is a companionship of souls founded on reality, not on appearance. The more remote the acquaintance the more it is a question of external characteristics. It is conceivable that the same relationship will hold in the future, that those who are nearest in this natural existence are the friends whom we will most readily recognise, namely, by that subtle tie that binds soul with soul. If so, we have assurance at the point where we wish it most, in regard to those we love. To these we shall most directly be drawn, and we shall be least likely to recognise those whom we knew least from the point of view of character. If this be the true principle, it is plainly not an affair of space and time. The friend whom we have scarcely known a year may already be nearer than the person whom we have constantly been associated with for a life-time. One often seems to be as near a friend who is many miles away as if the friend were present in the same room, so close is the union of heart and mind. When the friend is absent it is sometimes easier to dissociate the personality from the usual objective signs and apprehend the inner bond. This The Eternal Type of Life 83 recognition of the inner affinity may be typical of the non-spatial recognitions of the future life. If we already know our friends by their spiritual quality we are already judging by standards that obtain both in the fleshly life and beyond. In any case it is not primarily a question of that which transiently pertains to a person. If, then, you would know your friends in the future, live in recognition of that which is most deeply char- acteristic of them here and now. It is possible really to know two or three people in the course of one's life-time. The relationship that holds where love deeply abides is typical of all our best social ties. For example, you have been drawn to a little group of people at what proves to be a fitting time. What most attracted you was nothing merely external. You were attracted by inner needs and spiritual states. You have many interests and ideals in common, and you discern this implicitly long before the ties of sympathy are made explicit through mutual service. Here, again, is one who seeks your aid in the solution of a problem of the inner life. Why you were chosen can hardly be told. But it transpires that you once had experiences which throw light on this person's problem, and you understand your experiences uncommonly well. The further you compare notes the more points you discover in common, until finally you become fast friends: whatever the other does, you know the signs, apprehend the inner meaning. Again, you are prompted to go to some one in need and later discover a particular fitness in the prompting. Of many of these deeper relationships we are merely able to say that they began. But whether or not we are able to explain them, their occurrence is the great fact. It is 84 The Philosophy of the Spirit not necessary to look for anything occult in them; the ties that thus bind, the attracting powers that operate, are as natural as the forces of physical passion. Yet their very naturalness is an earnest of the eternal. Hence we may regard the higher friendships as typical of the superior relationships of the soul in general. Whether our friends are absent from the body or absent merely because they are not in the same house or country, there is a sweet community of soul, a sense of priceless possession which bespeaks that which is eternal. The nearer in affinity the less difference it makes, from one point of view, whether or not our friends are present with us. To say farewell to an emotional friend is perhaps to be emotionally torn asunder, or to be miserable so long as the loved one is absent; but emotional friendships are scarcely to be taken as standards. If the friendship has risen above the emotional level there is no such rude tearing apart. When the dear one leaves for the distant town or country, he is still here; for the tie is an interior one, the friendship is one of peace and rest. One would fain continue to be by the loved one's side. But dis- tance does not mean separation, and the reunion brings no inward excitement. It is the outer or emotional man who becomes excited. What the soul calls love is far above ordinary emotion. Again, there is the joy of doing things together. The immediate work at hand for each may be widely different. One may be the mother's work of caring for the children and presiding over the home, while the other is the father's labour of providing for the daily bread. The work of each may necessitate their physical separation during the day. Yet all along there is a consciousness that each is working for the The Eternal Type of Life 85 same end, namely, the larger welfare of the soul and of the family. Now and then there is opportunity for a quiet evening together, for the comparison of notes regarding that which is most worth while. Cer- tain points will bear, for example, upon the realisation of ideals, the need of adjustment to the conditions of life as now found, yet of constant fidelity to interests which call for a higher social environment. Other points relate to the gro\vth of character in each, the faults to be eliminated, the energies to be quickened or transmuted. Again, it is a question of the amount of time to be apportioned to social life. All this may be said to pertain to the eternal life inasmuch as it relates to that which is spiritually worth while. Again, it is an instance of two friends who work at their art side by side, who pursue truth together, or labour in common in some form of social service. Most of the details considered may be temporal and trivial. Yet withal there is an underlying interest in ends that endure, an interest which gives life to all the rest. There is need of perspective; for example, of a larger view of beauty, truth, or goodness. The common details can hardly be seen in their true light without this larger vision of the eternal whole. To do things together is to express the inmost soul, and the soul is not content until the implied eternal principles have been brought into view. Or, it may be the relationship of one who has gained some understanding of the laws of life and of another who is eager to follow where the maturer soul leads. It matters not so much what the common interest is as the spirit in which the study is pursued. For the relationship of teacher and pupil may well be one of the noblest in human life. The one seeks above 86 The Philosophy of the Spirit all else to be the true friend, to be disinterested, eager to call out the other's best self and to find for that self the highest object of interest; while the pupil is no less eager to attain a high ideal, that is, to display that delightful confidence which enables the teacher to guide and instruct in the best way. Those who thus work together need not of course think of their united pursuit in eternal terms. Yet there is an advantage in doing so, for in the eternal ideal one sees the ideals both of self-realisation and of service fulfilled without conflict. To express oneself for the sake of the eternal values is at the same time to serve, for no one can give adequate expression to the self without manifesting the larger purpose for which the soul exists. Likewise to aid another to express the eternal values is the better to express oneself. Moreover, there is a fine quality in the eternal type of consciousness; the desires, hopes, aspirations are of another sort. It is no longer a question of mere self-control, of poise in self or merely mental composure. The eternal type of composure is not put on for the occasion, and one can hardly possess it without also possessing a deep-seated faith in the everlasting integrity of things. There is no longer any need to hold oneself in an attitude of calmness, since this sort of composure is a matter of habit. There is a sense of rest in a mode of life which gives peace, freedom from worry and strife. The sense of restraint which attended one's years of training has given place to an abandonment of self to that which is more than one's mere self. There is also an absence of intensity, there is no eagerness to hold an experience or a vision lest it cease without yielding its utmost blessing. For the The Eternal Type of Life 87 eternal experience remains, the divine vision continues why should one hold it? One now possesses the reality itself, and to possess is no longer to be under the necessity of holding or even affirming. This experience of rest in the eternal is well suggested by Amiel's sentence, "To possess God is the one thing needful. " That the experience is one which brings a sense of rest in a larger Reality is also expressed by the fact that one instinctively speaks of it as a gift. Whether this rest in the peace of eternity comes in solitary worship of the divine, or through the sweet communion of friendship, one regards the experience as coming by its own laws. The usual world is round about, the ordinary activities go on as usual, but somewhat is added another and more beautiful world. The test of the sanity of this experience lies in the fact that one has no desire to flee the world, to disparage natural reality: nature seems more real and human life more interesting. The higher experience is added, and nothing is taken away. It is as if one had never appreciated nature's beauty before, never seen the worth of human life. Realising that such experiences, together with the friendships they bring, the visions that unfold, are gifts of the Spirit, one's constant prayer is for guidance and power to permit these gifts to develop in their own way. For the great difficulty is that man so readily interferes, tries to coerce events according to his pri- vate desires, to possess things and people for himself. It requires constant vigilance to avoid this interfer- ence of the finite will. Not until we have repeatedly essayed our own way are we persuaded that there is a way of the Spirit where one can at best merely walk 88 The Philosophy of the Spirit in reverential listening, watching the play of the eternal tides. Sometimes a noble friendship is marred because the partners to it are unable or unwilling to let it develop in its own way. But this is true of much that is best in human life. Whether in friendship or not, our lesson is to permit the Spirit to develop within us according to its own laws, reveal its own gifts, and reveal them unto the end, without hindrance. When the gift is really ours we may philosophise as we will, learning whatever additional lesson our reason may teach. Here is the test of human patience, and here once more the eternal standard. It is important, then, to recognise that in beginning to attain the eternal type of life one crosses a line from the region where one seems to be merely poised in self to the realm where one rests in the' Spirit. In the realm of the mere self there is solicitude lest what one seeks elude pursuit. There is pushing and striving, there are manifold endeavours to outwit people. There is also a tendency to claim things or ideas as one's own, a desire for praise, a longing to have credit bestowed where it is due. But to enter the realm of the eternal values is to realise that whatever accords with the soul will come as a divine gift; hence that pressure, enterprise, is not only unnecessary and in- appropriate but a positive interference. A vast load of misplaced responsibility falls when one attains this stage. Everybody is welcomed and recognised as having place in the eternal kingdom, and there is no wish to crowd or to outwit. Truth is sure to prevail. Each man will be valued for what he is worth. Nothing can prevent the fulfilment of the eternal laws. Again, we have a clue to the eternal type of life The Eternal Type of Life 89 in the ideal occupations which some men pursue. It has long been recognised that to seek the beautiful, the true, and the good is to devote life to ends that are of worth in themselves. To dedicate life to one of these ends is already to live for that which is eternal, mayhap to live for it as well in this natural world as one could in any other sphere. That which is true, like the statement that two and two are four, is true in its own right, for angels and for men, throughout all time. The scholar has scarcely dedicated his life to truth until he eliminates time, until he is ready to follow as far and as long as truth may lead. To be in haste is to that extent not to love the truth, that is, when it is a question of learning the nature of things. But one naturally thinks rather of the artist, in the days "when art was still religion, " painting his picture, carving his statue, or building a great cathedral, not to win fame, nor to make as much money as possible, surely not to break any records in rapidity of con- struction, but to produce or construct as well as it could be done, however long it might take, whatever he might be paid for it, out of pure love for his art. The pursuit of beauty thus becomes typical of all quest for that which is eternal. It is a matter of ideals, not of circumstances. One conceives of an ideal attitude accompanying such work as the artist's, an attitude of peace and rest, of entire absorption and consecration, yet deeply related to life in this natural world, inas- much as the artist works with his hands and his pro- ductions are results of the most practical skill. Picture a company of lovers of the true, the beauti- ful, and the good, conferring at their leisure on the eternal principles of beauty, surrounded by works go The Philosophy of the Spirit of their own hands, now this one taking the lead, and now that, and you have a still better conception of the ideal of devotion to the eternal. Here is the poet, for example, who expresses in easy-flowing verse his appreciation of the beautiful, leading all to wonder at the power of his art to express what neither chisel nor brush could portray. Here is the painter, who draws aside a curtain and displays the latest product of his brush, and points out what he has striven to attain yet partly failed to express. Here is the man of science, who explains the discovery of an unsus- pected element, or his demonstration of a natural law, a demonstration which delights him as much as the painter's achievement delights the artist. There is also present an ethical philosopher who makes plain the relationship of beauty and goodness, and the aesthetic philosopher who proposes a theory of the apprehension of beauty. Then the musician steps to the piano and lifts his companions to a region where they apprehend an element of beauty which no other of its devotees could convey. Each lover of the beauti- ful must indeed confess the limitations of his art, yet somehow each knows what beauty is through these its varied manifestations. Each prefers his own art and admits his inability to understand all that tech- nically pertains to the others. Yet one and all ex- press the same principles, all are lovers of the same ideal, and all manifest a delightful remoteness from the sordid world of temporal life which bespeaks their devotion to the eternal. In other words, there are people who have attained the level of the universal, and when universal souls meet they utter the same great message in varied forms. There are few such souls in the world, for The Eternal Type of Life 91 the majority of men have not yet learned what is worth while. Sometimes they are mistakenly called "impersonal." Again they are misjudged as "im- practical." But they are the most truly personal of men, inasmuch as they see beyond and around the personal. And they alone are truly practical, for they labour for the things that endure. Some enter the universal region through the doorway of art that is, they produce before they understand. Others enter it by thinking out the great principles which alike underlie all beauty, all truth and goodness. Still others dwell in that ideal world only in part, for they hold the erroneous doctrine that an object can be beautiful without inspiring goodness and truth; or they cleave to truth as if beauty were a thing of the past, or goodness for children. Those who dwell there in full right know that the artist paints his picture, the sculptor carves his statue, the composer writes his symphony, the author his book, the poet his poem, by the same great principles. Granted that I am producing a genuine book, I already know by what delicate skill the painter develops his colour-scheme, or the musician the theme of his symphony. The iden- tity of principles may not appear at first sight. But every artist in so far as he is also philosopher sees this identity and expresses it in his own terms, from the point of view of his particular art. But there are also those who enter the eternal realm by the aid of others, and one can scarcely read Plato, for example, without catching the spirit of the universal region. The artist, the poet, musician, or philosopher is more likely to aid the mind to ascend to the eternal realm than the moralist or the minister ; for the devotee of the good is apt to preach too much. The devotee 92 The Philosophy of the Spirit of the inner life also readily errs by analysing too minutely, or by placing too much stress on emotion and various conditions which make his account of the spiritual life too subjective. That which truly lifts the mind to the abode of the eternal takes away the thought of conditions, subjectivities, and the like. Only when we move in the free atmosphere of the ideal are we truly there. Hence the artist has an advantage, for he paints for all time, carves his statue as an end in itself. The philosopher who dwells upon a point until there is nothing more that is worth while to say about it, also illustrates this freedom. To the uninitiated he is tiresome, to the one who understands he is enlightening because thorough. The listener would fain sit back in his chair with equal ease, equal forgetfulness of the lapse of time, as eager to attain mastery in a field that is worth while. But every genuine worker might lift others to the level of the eternal by dwelling on the ideal totality of his labour, instead of living in the prosaic details as they pass. The true, the beautiful, and the good are unlimited in scope and application. If a task be worth doing it is worthy of being reared into a fine art, an illuminative fact, a sermon. In the common walks of life, as well as in the studio and the labora- tory, one finds those who are thus aspiring. One finds them, for example, among those who are fond of work, for only those who greatly laboured ever entered the realm of the eternal. Time is of little moment to the man who is striving to do his work as well as it can be done, and the devotee of eternal ideals spares neither time nor labour. The eternal type of life is first of all a matter of experience. Certain contrasts enter into life, after a The Eternal Type of Life 93 time, certain phases of consciousness are differentiated from the rest, and one is aware that in these moments one lives a completer life. The theory or ideal of an eternal type of life does not induce the. life, but the life comes and the ideal insensibly takes shape. It becomes clear that a certain mode of life best accords with such experiences, and by giving heed to the con- ditions one learns to increase the experiences. The theory then follows as a matter of course. It. is clear, on the one hand, that there are higher factors at work, else there would not be this added sense of life, this unwonted presence which comes as a gift. It appears that if in deepest truth the soul already partakes of an eternal life as a divine gift it pertains to the eternal order. The existence of powers within the soul which make such experiences possible is also plain. There seem to be higher senses, higher powers of love and self-expression, a higher type of receptivity or spontaneity through which spiritual guidances come. All these require special inves- tigation, but for the moment we chronicle the mere appearance. The life that is demanded of us is not a life of ex- clusion from practical interests, but rather a life of relative detachment from mundane possessions and desires. A certain freedom from binding engagements, for example, best accords with this mode of life, es- pecially in the case of those who are engaged in creative work. One who has felt the sense of perennial freshness of the eternal life awakens into the new day eager for whatever it may bring by way of moral opportunity or spiritual benefit. Every belief is in a sense held in solution except the belief that the Spirit is present to guide the soul throughout the course of life. There 94 The Philosophy of the Spirit is a habit of pausing for leadings, to dedicate the soul afresh. There may be abundant plans for the present day and the ensuing weeks, but one is ready to put these aside. There are duties waiting to be performed, but the renewed prompting more surely leads the way to the fulfilment of these. The implication is that at each hour of the spiritual day there is an activity, a deed of love, a service for truth, more important than aught else. The de- sideratum is to learn what is for to-day. If we are not sufficiently alive to the spiritual purpose of the hour to perceive a distinct leading, the first requisite is belief that guidance is for us and will presently be revealed. Plainly, a certain expectant adaptation of life is imperative. We cannot serve two masters. One must become a single, unified, consistent self, ready to do the Father's will, go where the Spirit leads. One must be ready to yield all to possess all. That is, there are times when it is profitable to put oneself through certain tests. Is one willing to forego personal plans, hopes and pleasures, to sunder ties and relationships, mayhap leave the home-environment, and those who are nearest and dearest, even the one whom the heart loves most? That is a hard, hard question. But some ask it many times, as the years pass, and to ask is to discover how nearly ready one is to leave all for the Father. But to be ready is to discover that no such sundering of the heart's closest ties is required of us. These ties are already of the eternal, have come to abide. It is the secondary things which we must forego, not the primary, and the re- lationships of the heart are primary ties. It is pre- cisely that the primary relationships may be deepened that we offer ourselves to the Father. The Eternal Type of Life 95 To be eager to live more faithfully by the Spirit is to see that life must be simplified, hence that there is no longer time for many demands which society puts upon us; for instance, to write letters or make calls when there is nothing in particular to say. This does not mean that one will be drawn further from people who have no aim in life save to exist. On the contrary, one will be drawn nearer to all people, and human life in all its relationships will become more beautiful. The joys we are prompted to enter into will be more joyous, to work will be to labour with greater zest. There will be no time for mere superficiality or empty formality: the son of God must be mindful of his Father's business. In such a life there will be a delightful leisure com- bined with a productive activity that will fill the hour. That is, there must be time for receptivity, silence, rest, contemplation, profound reflectiveness; time for the intellect to make plain the implications of experi- ences already enjoyed, and for active study of present conditions and the laws of spiritual progress; and abundant room for the unexpected. But the moments, hours, and days of leisure will be mingled with days and hours of labour. It is astonishing how much time and energy are gained for repose and reflection when one ceases to worry, when one gives up the attempt to manage people. There is never a genuine reason for alleging that we have no time for repose and quiet study. It is a question not of time but of the mode of life we lead. Free yourself from the little interior frictions which work such mischief, give over the habit of anticipating unpleasant contingencies and planning far in advance, cease all effort to shape the world for 96 The Philosophy of the Spirit your own benefit, live a life of faith; and you will discover that there is abundant time both to do your work well, to accomplish more, and to step aside from the great on-rush and meditate as if time were naught. The more deeply and constantly one enters into the moments of unusual repose and freedom from care, the more steadily the eternal life will win its way into the mundane, so that one will live in both worlds at once. It is not, I repeat, the occasional composure which we put on because of imperative need, but the reserve power of the spiritual life which we may depend upon as a permanent possession. Poise is hardly poise unless it be matter of habit, and it is still ex- perimental until it be produced in us by the larger Life that possesses us. Having won the possession, fortunate are we if we adapt the conscious part of daily conduct to the conditions and laws of the coming of the Spirit. There are conflicts, to be sure, between the ideals and activities of the eternal type of life and the de- mands of ordinary existence; but were it not for these one could hardly realise the type. There are times, for instance, when the consciousness of eternal prin- ciples is so greatly quickened that one would gladly give every day and hour to the spontaneous play of thought. But it may be that the present duties are such that one can merely make a few notes and pass on to the given duty. Sometimes the change to the task at hand is indeed a rude one, and worldly life appears to be wholly out of accord with the eternal. But the conflict is not so great as it seems. For how could the law of faith ever be proved unless one were so situated as frequently to be compelled to undergo The Eternal Type of Life 97 its tests, to adjust oneself to practical needs such as earning a living? There is a strong temptation to condemn the world as selfish and materialistic, to renounce it in favour of solitude or ascetic simplicity. But one learns rather to judge by the relative values of the natural and the spiritual, and the cowardly ways of seeking the ideal life have been tried in the past and been rejected. To eliminate from life anything that makes it human is to that extent to deprive it of the Spirit. One might indeed buy temporary repose and freedom from annoyance, but the experiences which might thereby be gained would lack the social element. To achieve the simple life amidst the complexities of a mode of existence which seems to be fatal to it is in- deed to possess that simplicity which after all is a spiritual state, not an affair of circumstance. The conditions of life as we find it are not unfriendly, provided we have the courage to make the venture. The ideal world is just this present world seen in its eternal guise. There is no aspiration which we may not begin to realise even here. To place the first emphasis upon environment were to be disloyal to the Spirit. Not, then, in absence from pain and conflict does one find the larger realities of the Spirit, but in and through the travail of the soul. Not by running away does one truly escape from the situation which seems too hard, but by learning what the present situation really is and discerning the wisdom of it. We shall not always suffer, and never beyond what we are able to endure with spiritual benefit. To welcome the present conditions, to seek their beauty, and the evidences they contain of the divine love, is already 98 The Philosophy of the Spirit to win freedom in some measure. It matters much whether we regard the present merely as present or whether we take the long look ahead. The seemingly impossible problem which we bear about with us begins to be solved the moment we quietly regard it as implying the soul's immediate need. The un- yielding circumstance which we face day by day becomes plastic before us when we view it in the light of spiritual evolution. The present circumstance is not here through any chance occurrence, but through law. It bears immediate relation to the soul; our pathway lies through, not around it. There is a vast difference between subordination to circumstance and that commanding attitude in which we see that the Spirit makes circumstance. To be- lieve in the Spirit is to think and act in accord with it while it creates the living present. There are not two powers, as if some other being had created this natural world, while God had made the spiritual. The one ultimate power is God's life and love, the one universe is the eternal order. The ultimate ends for which all things exist are spiritual. Nothing in the natural world exists independently or apart from the spiritual. The continuous manifestation of spiritual life is essential to the continued existence of the nat- ural world. To grasp this and live by it, we must transfer our point of view from the merely natural to the spiritual. Then we shall be able to assign the forces of environ- ment to their proper . places in the light of the pur- poses which they subserve. The difficulty ordinarily is that while we are able to analyse the conditions of natural life, to introspect and study the phenomena of self-consciousness, we are unable to produce a The Eternal Type of Life 99 sufficiently large synthesis. The facts which we discover may indeed be true as far as they go, we may have before us the elements of daily life as the natural man sees it; but we lack the illuminating principle, the point of view of the Spirit. In other words, there is a truth of fact, and a truth of hope, or values. Men live less in a matter-of-fact world than they suspect. It is the scientific man rather than the man of common sense who really knows what a fact is. Our ambitions, ideals, hopes, are so inwrought with the routine facts of life that few of us possess the insight to draw the distinction. Our ideal world is insensibly taking shape amidst the world of prosaic details. We live upon hope to a very large extent; we possess beliefs without number for which we could give no reason, or only a poor reason. It seldom occurs to us to offer any reason, inasmuch as the world of our customary life, intermingled with its ideals, is our real world. Not until some one undertakes to reduce life to mere prose is there any reason to protest. That which is reducible to precise factual analysis is oftentimes the least important. Real life is known by experience; each man must possess in order to appreciate it. It is in part prose, but also in part poetry. Either the prose or the poetry alone is a fragment; the whole is knowable through experience, carefully interpreted. Man is what he would be as well as what he is. For the most of us the truth of hope is every whit as real as the truth of fact. Our conviction in regard to immortality, for example, is a truth of hope. Our conception of the soul is an ideal construction inwrought with manifold hopes. Asked to state precise evidences we are nonplussed. But we need not be concerned: ioo The Philosophy of* the Spirit the truths of values and ideals are the real truths of human life- The eternal type of life for which we are pleading is one which takes the conviction of the soul's im- mortality, the environing existence of a spiritual world, in utmost seriousness, and finds in our higher human experiences firm evidence of the quickening presence of the Spirit. The distinction between facts and ideals is not primarily between that which exists and that which does not, but is made because of the inadequacy of all merely descriptive language. The soul is too rich to be fully analysed, its immortality is verifiable by the immortal life itself. The life in quest for ideals is grounded both in facts and in hopes, and the total truth about such life must take account of both. The eternal ends beauty, truth, the good are realities in the ultimate order of being. It is because the eternal order exists that we give it place in our thought, not that we conceive of it because of speculative needs. It is because God lives that we believe in Him, not that we postulate the divine existence because of theoretic interests. God may indeed be a logical necessity, also; but He is first of all a necessary being. These, then, are a few hints in regard to an ideal attitude which each of us may endeavour to attain while we meet the usual conditions of existence. It is an attitude that is inspired by the frankest recog- nition both of the natural world of facts and the eter- nal world of hopes and values. For the lover of the beautiful, the true and the good, the ideal world is no less real, no less existent, than the visibly tangible world of nature. Indeed he passes from the one to the other and is aware of no break. The natural world The Eternal Type of Life 101 exists for ideals; it is the field wherein the ideals find their external expression. Directly out of this field grows the life that is eternal. He who is well grounded there is the one who most sanely and productively mounts to the skies. He is no dreamer. He has no baseless visions. Nor does he wander about in ab- straction, to the neglect of the common duties of life. He is no doubt absorbed in thought, but it is thought that is worth while. His life is characterised by that noble detachment which enables him to be very much alive in the natural world yet independent of it. His are the noblest friendships, and his the greatest oppor- tunities for service which human life affords. CHAPTER V THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL IN the preceding chapter we were concerned with some of the interests and tendencies which make for a more ideal type of life. We found reason to maintain the firmest belief in the truths of hope, since it is through such truths that man gradually transforms the actual into the heavenly, the temporal into the eternal. This insistence upon the truths of hope implies a distinction between the facts of life and the meanings or values assigned to them. These values are indeed assigned by human reason, but by those who bear the witness of the Spirit within them they are assigned not for speculative reasons but because the Spirit coming as a gift makes its presence known. Hence the essential is to see the facts and values in the right relation. In practical life, one is greatly aided by maintaining an attitude which is inspired by contemplation of these values while by no means neglecting the details which give them content. Such an attitude we characterised as embodying a new type, the eternal type of life. We found this to be a life of trust, of repose, not in self but in the Spirit, not in the passing moment but in the divine order. We found it to be also a life of quest for the true, the beautiful, and the good, commingled with the choicest friend- ships and the best sort of productivity. We might further characterise this attitude by reference to the process of thought of one who is en- 102 The Natural and the Spiritual 103 gaged in developing a philosophy of the Spirit. Here we are, already in possession of certain general prin- ciples. We have a working faith which we have not as yet fully developed. In brief it is this: the Spirit manifests itself in the world and reproduces itself in man, the Spirit pursues a certain course through us, and reveals its laws and purposes through the develop- ment of the soul. When a new situation presents itself we are not disconcerted, well knowing that it is a revelation of the same Spirit. We are not hurried, since all eternity is ours. We need not go elsewhere in quest for a clue. The new experience brings its own clue. It is the spiritual law which explains the temporal event. Let us then reflect, discern the law. If it be given us to-day to discern this law, we will gladly learn. If not, another day will be the better inasmuch as we are now for some reason unprepared. What you and I desire above all else is the development, steadily, day by day, of that calmly reflective life within us which shall eventually reveal the divine law. The mind's province is to relate the natural to the spiritual, see how the Spirit is working itself out in and through the given event. By thus regarding life as it passes, ever seeking the divine meaning, only secondarily concerned in the events themselves, one acquires in the course of time a sense of detachment, with deepening repose in the eternal order. Freedom from the life of sense is not attained by trying to escape from one's problem, but by seeking the univer- sal amidst the particular. One does not, then, mean detachment in the Oriental sense, but detachment through insight, through the light that is thrown upon life by the study of universal principles. The ideal is to reach a point where nothing that 104 The Philosophy of the Spirit happens shall seem obscure, where everything may be philosophically related with what has occurred before. It is this relating of event with event the discovery of types, uniformities, and illuminating contrasts which in due course brings the understanding that gives detachment from mere circumstance. In so far as the mind is thus illumined it becomes a life-giv- ing centre, so that other people gather round about to hear the law expounded, or to compare notes. By a further extension of this development we have the seer, the prophet, the sage. It is a question of large- ness of point of view, scope of thought, as well as depth of experience. The great teachers and leaders are those who dwell so near the original sources that they are able to aid others to seek the first-hand real- ities of the spiritual life. Another line of approach to the same end is found by considering the various attitudes which man has assumed towards the world, in contrast with which this faith in the eternal type of life stands out in large relief. For the present we may confine our attention to three of these attitudes. In the first the prevailing emphasis is put upon man . Having learned that the world is for us what we men- tally make it, certain theorists endeavour to make it what they happen to please by declaring that events shall yield to their will. If they pray to God it is to the God of their own caprice, who is supposed to change His plans to suit their convenience. Or, the point of view is expressed in some form of salvationism in accordance with which man seeks to save his soul for the sake of a promised reward of " bliss in heaven." This doctrine may assume a theosophic form and relate to the accumulated burdens of ' "Karma," which The Natural and the Spiritual 105 must be worked off in order to escape from the ne- cessity of a round of rebirths. Again, the tendency assumes a more romantic form and is on the whole highly entertaining in its lightly won idealism. Some- times it involves a complete denial of the nature of things, as if all law and order were established by human thought, and all man need do were to seek his own pleasure while defying the conditions of rest and good health. Emerson refers to people of this class when he insists that life is "invested with inevitable conditions which the unwise seek to dodge." For all who thus scorn the conditions of life in this natural world there is no lesson so effective as a rude awakening to the laws of natural prudence after an absurd at- tempt to outwit nature. In our day there are nu- merous theorists who by their folly are preparing to learn this lesson. Finally this tendency assumes the agnostic form already mentioned, that is, by em- phasising the factors of human nature and human thought in such wise that the realities lying beyond these relativities are lost to view. To this class be- long the devotees of pale values who have lost the power of belief in a real eternal order which fulfils the truths of hope. Over against all this philosophising is to be placed the great and sublime fact of the Nature of Things, the world-order which no man created, the provisions for earthly existence with which no human thought ever had the slightest thing to do. In the second stage of belief, man becomes pro- foundly reasonable, and instead of imposing his creed and his demands upon nature frankly admits the existence of a hard-and-fast world-order and seeks in all seriousness to discover what that world-order is. It is primarily a question of the sort of universe we io6 The Philosophy of the Spirit live in, what its laws and conditions are, that we may conform thought and conduct to the nature of things. In theoretical matters there is a desire to be thoroughly scientific, to eliminate prejudices and allow for all preconceptions, take into account the personal equa- tion. The scientific theory may assume the form of some sort of realism, or it may become constructively idealistic. In practical affairs it is a matter of ad- justment, the desire to learn the province of human will and activity, that man may know what is within his power. Ultimately the question becomes this What is the nature, scope and reality of consciousness? The profoundest interest is to discover an adequate Ground for the realities and events of the physical universe and the world of human conduct. The history of Western philosophy at its best is the record of man's endeavours to find such a Ground. There is nothing to say in objection to this philosophy as far as it goes. All sound philosophy begins with an attempt to describe and understand the nature of things. But philosophy is apt to end with an account of the natural order of things. There is much more than this to be accounted for in human experience. If man be more than a creature of passing desires, emotions and thoughts, if the universe be more than the stars and planets, the beings and things which we behold about us, the question arises, what is the total nature of things, not from the temporal point of view alone, but in the eternal order? Obviously, if the physical universe be merely part of an invisible, eternal order, if nature and man exist for eternal ends, we cannot understand either man or nature from a merely temporal, physical point of view. A philosophy of Spirit is essentially an interpretation of existence from The Natural and the Spiritual 107 this larger point of view. It is concerned with modes of life and ideals which are conceivably as well adapted to one sphere of existence as to another. Hence this point of view is not presently to be set aside because the centre of interest has changed. It implies the existence of an eternal order of realities and ideals, an order which is the permanent basis of the changing world of sense-experience. If the implications be sound, if this higher order of reality be the clue to all reality, there is every reason to ask, What is the ultimate nature of things? All this is implied in one of the great typical atti- tudes which men maintain toward the universe. 1 When we pause to reflect what manner of being man is, why 'he exists, what is permanent and genuinely worth while, we realise that it is not merely a question of the hard-and-fast world of things, but of the highest aspirations and beliefs of the soul. We do not or- dinarily question the validity of our belief in nature. Why should we not take in as good faith our belief in an invisible order in the heavens? It is surely an essential postulate of Christian faith. It may be said that we never question the existence of an invisible order round about us until some theorist or sceptic undertakes to reduce our belief to a system of values without objective correspondence. It is well to be forewarned against the inroads of the scepticism which undertakes to reduce all belief in an eternal spiritual world to a series of lifeless values, like a row of algebraic symbols. This re- duction does not spring from the distinction between the truth of fact and the truth of hope, but is in reality 1 I have discussed some of these larger world-conceptions in Man and the Divine Order, New York, 1903. io8 The Philosophy of the Spirit expressive of deep-lying scepticism in regard to the existence of anything save physical facts, and it con- ceals a profound disbelief even in the present existence of a soul. This disbelief in a real spiritual world is apt to arise through scepticism in regard to immor- tality. It is alleged that "immortality" is the earthly survival of our achievements, handed down through those whom we have helped to educate, or through the production of works of genius. If there be no im- mortality there is of course no "soul" in the popular sense of the word. What we denominate "soul" is a theoretic synthesis of certain persistent phases of consciousness which we single out and eulogise. That is, the soul is a convenient "fiction" of poetic thought. But if there be no soul there is no reason for the ex- istence of a real higher order of being. What man worships indeed has value for him, while he lives this physical life. But art, the pursuit of truth, the cere- monials of the church what are they other than just so many aesthetic or other values which are not to be taken too seriously? One may well attend mass, bring offerings to the virgin, adore the saints. It is a harmless delusion for the plain man to believe that these things really exist. But we who are enlightened would never think of taking them seriously. Heaven is just your hypothetical ideal realm, needed to com- plete the poetic picture of life, just as the conception of the devil fulfils a theoretic function. Likewise even in profound systems of philosophy the conception of God plays a prominent part which upon inspection proves to be merely formal. That is, the philosopher does not necessarily believe that just his God has being, but he has theoretic need of such a God in order to complete the logical structure of his system. The The Natural and the Spiritual 109 ultimate doubt is this doubt whether God exists. For, why may it not be that God is simply the expression of man's belief? Once doubt the existence of the soul, and it is an easy step to this last doubt. Now all this comes about, in the last analysis, in one of two ways. Either man has not the witness of the Spirit within him as a conscious possession, or he devotes so much care to the analysis of the evidences for the existence of physical reality that he has no time left for the investigation of the existence of higher grades of reality. Whatever the reason for neglect, we have precisely the same reason for the existence of invisible reality that we have for the exist- ence of the physical world. That is to say, on the evidence of our senses and the inferences founded upon their deliverances we believe in the existence of nature. We believe in nature partly because of unscrutinised experience, partly through reason, and partly because of practical faith. That is, there is a certain demand that nature shall be real, which underlies our longing for continued existence. Likewise we believe in a superior order of reality partly through experience, partly because our moral reason demands such belief, and partly as a matter of religious faith. Moral and religious conduct would be robbed of most of its zest without this belief. On the mere basis of conduct, that is, for pragmatic reasons, men are willing to ven- ture the assumption that the higher order is real. If belief in the existence of nature is a necessity of thought, belief in a superior order of being is no less so. The reason this is not at once plain is found in the fact that we devote most of our philosophic en- deavours to the interpretation of nature, to the neg- lect of the eternal order. no The Philosophy of the Spirit One should beware, then, of the sort of philosophising that regards the plain man pityingly and "the ever- lasting realities of religion" as so many pale con- ceptions, lifeless shades, survivals from the childhood of the world. It is of consequence to point out that our conceptions of the everlasting realities are in one sense ideal constructions of human reason. But the prime consideration is that enlightened reason would never have reared its structures out of thin air. It is no doubt an act of faith to believe in the real existence of the objects of spiritual idealism, after the devotees of the critical philosophy have made clear the results of their acute analysis. But such faith finds its jus- tification through the fact that it more completely accords with the data of human existence. If it be purely a pragmatic assumption, at first, in the end it has the support of constructive idealism. In the present investigation, we are taking in entire seriousness this belief in the existence of a real in- visible order of being with which the soul is in direct relation. That is to say, we start with the belief that there is a higher realm of being, a real world, a portion of the total universe, as real, yes, far more real than the world of physical objects about us. For the ulti- mately real universe is in truth the divine, eternal order, and the world of visible things is the most ob- jective portion of that universe. The starting-point is the divine order, the Spirit in its varied forms of manifestation, the cosmos of souls. Nature is second- ary, exists for the sake of the eternal. Unless we start with, postulate, assume the existence, and constantly take account of the eternal order in this large sense of the word, we will never be able to put the temporal order in its true light. Part of man's theoretical and The Natural and the Spiritual in practical difficulty all along is due to his failure to begin with this the truly universal world. If it seem remote from life as we ordinarily cognise it to speak of an eternal order of being, "invisible in the heavens," and if the question arise, How are we to know that this superior world is aught more than a mere postulate of our belief? the answer is the one already indicated. That is, we are to know it in the same way in which we know of the order and reality of the natural world, first by experience, then by rational reconstruction of the established facts and laws of carefully observed experience. The reality of nature is by no means obvious, although it seems so to the naive realist. We are far more directly aware of the reality of mind than that of matter. To start with the given facts of consciousness and thence to emerge into belief in an objective nature is not half so easy at it appears. Such emergence is necessary, in the first place, to account for certain persistent factors of consciousness. We need not seek new types of experience in order to find data which no less surely compel the mind to believe in a higher order of objectivity corresponding to man's moral and spiritual beliefs. The eternal kingdom is not far from us. We already dwell within it. The essential is to discover the attitude in which the real evidence may be discerned. One of the chief reasons why it is difficult to realise the nature of the eternal world is found in the fact that we import the terms of space and time, and try to think about the everlasting realities in the language of the things that perish. Let us reverse the order and begin with that which is eternal, remembering Swedenborg's insistent proposition, "The divine is ii2 The Philosophy of the Spirit not in space. " l Let us divest the mind of all thought of spatial forms and relationships, and endeavour to penetrate even beyond the ordinary figures of speech. To think of the being of God is not, then, to ask, " Where does He exist?" It is not even to declare, "God is here." For when we thus .characterise the divine being we limit our thought to the conditions of our natural existence. We should think rather of God as the central reality without which there would be neither a natural nor a spiritual world, neither spatial nor eternal existence; hence as the reality which is fundamental alike to the world of things and to the world of consciousness. As the central reality of all existence, God is of course the ultimate source of all power and life, and the fundamental ground of all substance and form. As the basis of our own mental, moral and spiritual existence, He is the central per- sonality, hence the eternal basis of all inner activity and thought, the constant principle of all thought and love. Hence we speak of Him as the divine wisdom and love, we call Him Father, declare that all men are His children. To apply such adjectives as "infinite" (in the popular sense), "omnipotent," "inscrutable," would be for the most part to permit our thought to run off into the vague and undefined. As already implied, God is nothing if not definite, the most highly organised of all beings. To put our thought in positive terms would be to speak more in this fashion : There is nothing beyond or outside of God, for it is not a question of without and within, but of the power that is active in this our universe. God is all the ultimate power there is; there is no hostile principle. It is a question of Divine Love and Wisdom, sec. 7. The Natural and the Spiritual 113 states, realities and conditions. When power is man- ifested, that power is of and from God, it reveals the purposes of God; whenever life is discovered, that life pertains to the divine life. In so far as there are pur- poses in the universe, these purposes are divine. When wisdom is made manifest, that wisdom would be im- possible without God. When love is displayed, that love is of Him who has been said to be love itself. Hence it is always some positive, definite clue that leads to the nature of God. To possess the essence of all such concrete realities, to be the actual source of the perma- nent states and conditions which we find in the total universe, is precisely what it means to be God. Surely it would be absurd to call this Being " inscrutable," or apply any similar negative term. The moment we depart from the clues of actual existence we depart from the reasons for believing that God exists. God is the Being whose eternal existence makes possible just this our world. This is of course very far from saying that we know the divine perfection in its entirety. But just the or- der, beauty, and wisdom which we do apprehend are parts of that perfection. In so far as you and I know somewhat about the permanent laws and conditions of the universe we are already partakers of that know- ledge wherewith God knows the universe of His own manifestation. We do not, when we think carefully, regard our real self as " a thing" existing in space. The largeness, the depth, the scope of the self is not the length, breadth, and thickness of space, but the extent of wisdom and other mental possessions. We well know that the more receptivity and readiness to do the Father's will we display the greater the extent to which God enters ii4 The Philosophy of the Spirit into us. Hence what we try to say when we say that God is "here" is that with the increase in love and wisdom on our part there is nothing to prevent the increase of the divine principle within us. All of God is "here" in this sense of the word. He is everywhere for those who think deeply and love truly; He is no- where for those who are absorbed in the thought of self, for those who hate. Yet God on His part is literally everywhere for all His children's sake, even in the hearts and minds of those who know Him not. Start, then, with the conception of God as the central reality, the eternal basis of all that lives and thinks, and regard Him as the abiding essence within and be- hind both the inner world of states and the world of things. Just as He is the ultimate principle of our thought and our love, so He is the reality manifested in all physical forms and modes of motion. Space, in other words, exists for the sake of God ; not that God is "in" space. To say that He "fills all space" is to think of Him as within a certain vague something, as if space were larger. It would be more accurate to say, All space is within Him; for, what is space if not the objective relationship of natural forms, that is to say, the system of outlines and connections, limitations and measured conditions of God's most external mode of manifestation ? We hardly gain a comprehensive view of the natural world as a whole until we regard it as revealing certain purposes. Whether or not the nat- ural world exists for God in the way it exists for us, namely, as a realm which appears to be wholly outside of us, at any rate our philosophical way of thinking of it is comparable to a vision, all of which is seen at once. To think, then, of God as fundamental to nature would The Natural and the Spiritual 115 be to start, as I have said, with the thought of God as eternal, non-spatial, as a mind, a being of love and wis- dom; then to behold as it were in a vision the divine Spirit going forth in creative activity, assuming definite directions and shape, let us say, by means of the ether, and out of this elemental natural energy or substance causing all forms and forces to appear. The point of view is all along that of the eternal thought which possesses and transcends the natural forms and modes of motion. The process of evolution is long because it is purposive, adequate, complete. All the details of a thousand million years are implied within a single aspect of an all-inclusive purpose. That purpose as such is eternal ; it does not begin or cease to be. Nor does it attain fulfilment in the temporal sense of the word. It is always being fulfilled. To say that once it did not exist would be equivalent to alleging that once God had no purpose. For the purpose is not a product of temporal thinking, like a plan which you and I decide upon in preference to some other plan of natural ex- istence. The purpose of God is the eternal expression of the being of God. Whether the world of nature ever had a beginning in the temporal sense is another matter. The main point is that the world of nature regarded as expressive of the divine purpose is one system, from the timeless point of view one whole. God is still superior to space and time. He is not down here subordinate to the world of His own manifested life. The reality which natural beings know through temporal and spatial details God knows as one world- order, progressively achieving a purpose. The cen- tral purpose is the eternal whole or unit; the various natural purposes, together with the forms and forces, the domains and orders, species and varieties implied, n6 The Philosophy of the Spirit constitute the details, the multiplicities which we know in terms of space and time. Still following the clue which the thought of the eter- nal reality of the universe suggests, we therefore repeat that the divine order is the total system of divine self- manifestation. The divine order includes not only nature, with all its meanings, but the moral and spirit- ual cosmos, whether in the natural world or the spirit- ual. The question What is the reality or purpose of nature? is one which can be truly answered only in terms of the divine order of which it is a part. That the moral order is part of the eternal system of things is especially clear from the fact that we are aware of the entire inadequateness of our natural existence to fulfil the moral ideal. We insist that there must be an eternal world in which justice shall be done at last. Of the moral world we may in fact say, it is eternal, not an affair of time. What we achieve is what counts ; not the time taken in achieving it. It is what we would be that avails, not what we have been. Nor would many of us be satisfied with a mundane immor- tality. The moral life must indeed go on working itself out here below. But the moral person is also of worth. The moral order would not be complete unless the individual's work should also be complete. The moral cosmos, let us say, exists wherever moral individuals exist. It is not a place, it is not in space. In a sense, it is in time, for moral beings are all about us achieving in the world of time. But the real moral relationship is the bond which is constituted by fellow- ship in the moral order. Likewise with what we may call the spiritual cosmos or heaven at large. Heaven is constituted of God and of all enlightened souls. So far as God is concerned heaven has no beginning; the The Natural and the Spiritual 117 eternal, divine order is its basis, its home. So far as we are concerned, it begins either with enlightenment or with righteous conduct, or with both. To reflect upon the laws and conditions of eternal life is to enter heaven from the point of view of truth, understanding ; to labour for the permanent good of others is to enter it with the heart, the will. Strictly speaking, we begin to enter heaven in earnest and to abide there when we not only display love, but when we see the meaning of life, apprehend the divine purpose of our existence. Just as the natural world exists in orders and degrees, from low r est to highest, so undoubtedly the spiritual world is graduated according to the state of develop- ment and enlightenment of those who belong to it. The basis of distinction is not temporal and spatial. It is not a question whether one is in the body or out of it, but of the stage of development attained. Some who are in the flesh may have advanced far beyond many who have cast it off. To begin to attain the spiritual life, to enter heaven, is unwittingly to ally oneself with all who belong to the same stage of attain- ment, wherever they are. Hence we should disabuse ourselves of the notion of spatial separateness, and put in its place the thought of spiritual nearness. It is the special merit of Swedenborg that he has strenuously insisted on a doctrine of degrees which is not primarily dependent on spatial considerations. There may well be other modes of manifestation of the spiritual life, conditions of which we do not even dream. I am not now concerned with the conditions which lie beyond, but with our relationships as souls to the central Personality within the divine order. To realise the realities of the eternal order means in some measure to begin to live a new mode of life, and it is in that mode nS The Philosophy of the Spirit of conduct that we are at present interested. To live for the eternal ideal is to be relatively free, unattached, to postpone nothing that is worth while to a future state, yet to understand far more truly the most trivial aspects of this our natural world. From first to last, the clue to this state of life is found in the life of the eternal Spirit, going forth from the Godhead and carry- ing forward all manifested life. The question of the source of the Spirit is of consequence. So is the ques- tion of the goal towards which the Spirit is moving. But the direct clue is the life of the Spirit just now; and the life that just now is, is eternal. It is what the Spirit achieves along the way that gives us opportunity for adjustment and co-operation. If we are eager to know what the present achievement is, to live in and for that, we are not likely to have room for thought of some far-off achievement. We found it difficult to break away from the limita- tions of time and space, and look down, as it were, from the central reality of things upon the world of nature. It is no less difficult to take the point of view of the achieving Spirit, instead of that of achieving man. But it is important to try to regard our human existence from the upper or divine side, that we may obtain the eternal perspective. From this vantage- point we may restate the principles and values of the spiritual life. We then see that the Spirit always works through some agency, does not function in the air. We realise that the spiritual life is a perpetual gift, the prime condition, the absolute essential. Granted the knowledge of this gift, we are in a position rightly to estimate the human and temporal factors. It is well, then, to habituate ourselves to the eternal point of view, to epter into it reflectively and consider in some The Natural and the Spiritual ng detail what its significance is. It is on account of this intellectual need that I speak first of the Spirit in the general, eternal sense, rather than of the specific guidances by which we apprehend it. Granted the life of the Spirit at large, granted that it is purposively present, it is of course to be expected that in the whole life of each soul God has an individual purpose. The eternal part is the established end or aim; the em- pirical part is the working out in the details of our own consciousness of the progressive steps of that purpose. The conclusive evidence for you and for me is the actual presence of divine guidance. We accustom ourselves to these principles in so far as we break away from the illusions implied in our ordinary speech, modes of thought, and conduct. We so readily speak of other people and of ourselves as if we were these fleshly forms that it requires much persistence to make the term "soul" mean anything real for us. Even then we are apt to speak as if man possessed a soul, or would become immortal at death. But if there be a soul at all man is that soul, now. If man was born a child of God, he is even now such a being. If to be immortal means to be without beginning or end in point of time, we are already immortal, howbeit this may not be the correct conception of the immortal life. At any rate, there is good reason to reconstruct our thought in so far as we have permitted it to be limited by temporal considerations. If men be already immortal souls now that is, such men as may have attained the level of conscious purposes they already dwell in the eternal world. This physical experience is then man's most external mode of existence. We are here to learn its degree of reality, its worth and place. It may well be that it is right for the most part 120 The Philosophy of the Spirit to live for natural ends. But even then such ends may be pursued in a manner worthy of spiritual beings. The significant distinctions, therefore, are not those by which we separate the natural from the spiritual, but those that relate to various types of human con- sciousness. It is possible to be sundered in conscious- ness, though not in fact, from God. It is possible to be absorbed in our natural existence so that there seems to be no other. It is possible, too, to be in a state so ignorant, so far removed from insight into the spiritual life, that existence appears to be a hopeless conflict between good and evil forces. But we must constantly distinguish between appearance and reality in the spiritual world. The world of the eternal order remains the same all along. It is a fatal mistake in our theory if we sunder anything in the natural world from its constant relationship with that which is spiritual. The habit of speaking of God as if He dwelt apart from the world, of referring to eternity as if we were sometime to " enter" it, and characterising the im- mortal life as it if were to begin in the future, is so strong that it requires the utmost persistence to over- come all sense of separateness. Out of this habit of making a separation in our thought has grown the notion that God works upon the world from outside, as if a divine act required no antecedent but could take form out of nothing, give shape to something in a mere void. The philosophy of evolution has accomplished a great deal towards the demolition of this artificial distinction, for it has taught us that all power is resident, concrete, that all changes occur in that which already exists. But this same philosophy came near giving rise to a still more artificial distinction by characterising The Natural and the Spiritual 121 natural evolution as if it were self-operative. Properly speaking, the philosophy of evolution has made room for the conception of the divine creative power re- garded as distributed all along the line from the lowest form of life to the highest. It has now become difficult to conceive of the divine life in its relation to nature in any other light than that of continuous creation. There may indeed be beginnings of new epochs, trans- itional stages and flowering periods when there is a more apparent display of the divine power. But if that life be not active all along the line, in minute degree, it is difficult to see how it could be present at all. There is need of constant reminder that when God creates He moves upon and through that which is here, alive, existent ; that when His providence is displayed it is made known amidst natural forces and laws, not in contravention of law; and that when He guides or inspires it is through the instrumentality of some en- lightened soul. But even this is not enough, for the event which we single out as illustrative of the divine activity is merely one in a series, in a system, every moment of which is also fraught with divine power. No moment, no event, is sundered from the divine life. The most commonplace experience is a revelation of the divine beauty, the divine justice, the divine love. If certain events stand out above others it is because of what went before, or because of some special significance which in our finitude we assign to it. We are most likely to sunder our conception of natural life from the idea of God when it is a question of the existence of evil. Indeed the fact of evil is to some the most absorbing fact of life, and God, if men- tioned at all, is put in a decidedly subordinate position. 122 The Philosophy of the Spirit But, once more, the idea of Spirit must be the starting- point, if we are to make philosophic headway. If God is the ground of the total universe, inner and outer, spiritual and natural, the power of evil is grounded in Him, too. If it be His life that is man- ifested through the forces of nature and reproduced in the moral consciousness of man, it is impossible to consider evil by itself. Granted that Spirit is the one ultimate, original power, it indubitably follows that there is no real hostile power, no other principle of life. God and the universe of His manifestation is all the universe there is. The logic of the situation is unmistakable. Nor is it possible to explain evil by resorting to the hypothesis that the world is an illusion, due to the waywardness or fall of the divine life from a state of reality or perfection; for we have already concluded that the manifestations of Spirit are real. The natural world is real, in its appropriate place. So are the forces which play upon man and arouse him to passion, so is the passion that is rampant within him. It is inevitably a question of the meaning that is assignable to the facts of evil when viewed in the light of the Life from which they cannot be sundered. Evil no doubt exists. On the other hand, the universe is sound, remains unhurt. The explanation of evil must, then, be found within the universe, that is, by reference to the mistaken deeds and misdirected energies of unenlightened man. However difficult it may be to develop this explanation in detail, the first need is to preserve the primary considerations, namely, the ultimacy of the Spirit, the essential divinity of man. Evil is nothing if not separateness, the endeavour of misguided man to be something by himself. In The Natural and the Spiritual 123 Hegelian terms, evil is the setting of the particular over against the universal. It is the assertion of one's mere finitude, the struggle of the individual will. But if there be no such separateness from the universal, if the individual cannot be understood apart from God, why should one expect to explain evil by itself? It is this speculatively assumed isolation of man and his evil deeds from God that causes a large part of the difficulty. If we are ever to solve the problem of evil, man must be regarded in the light of his relation- ship with God, with the divine power which he has misused, the promptings to which he has been untrue, and the results that are wrought within him morally because of his sin. Not even the worst evil deed that was ever wrought was accomplished apart from the presence of God. No such sundering is possible, whatever the appearances may be. The fact that God so manifests Himself through man as to grant him liberty to do what he will within narrowly as- signed limits by no means implies that man is sepa- rated in will from God ; and the very power man uses when he acts is of and from the Spirit. The moral cosmos is no doubt in part made possible by an ap- parent self-dependence of man, yet man even in his moment of greatest independence is fulfilling the purposes of just that cosmos. The struggle of the righteous with evil no more truly implies the love of God than the fact of evil itself. It is because God so loves man that He grants him the liberty to sin. We forget that even the devil the symbolical per- sonification of man's wilfulness is himself a fallen angel who, according to the book of Job, must report to the Father. It is impossible to state the existence of an evil power whose reality we can defend as in- 124 The Philosophy of the Spirit dependently evil. There is no independent reality, good or bad. Everything is related, everything has its existence on one eternal Ground, and the existence of evil is no exception. Whether we reduce evil to man's inner consciousness, subjectively minimise its reality and power, or objectify and personify it, the result is the same. To change its name, or classify it as illusory, is still to admit it as a fact, to be ex- plicated with other facts in the total system. If man sinned and fell, if evil be relatively human in origin* so that man is accountable for it, it is nevertheless true that God is in some sense finally accountable. Evil is for ever confined within limits and these are limits of the divine purpose. To be sure, in speaking thus positively we are tacitly accepting a monistic philosophy of the universe and ruling out pluralism, and this would seem to be to prejudge a fundamental issue. But monism is one of the assumptions of our philosophy of Spirit. We start with the assumption that Spirit is one. We also assume that the eternal universe of its manifestation is one. Whatever life or power man has he possesses because of his sonship; he has no independent life or power, either of will or of action, either of feeling or of thought. The problem of evil is but one aspect of the general question of man's relationship to God. We must grasp the general philosophy in order to solve the particular problem. If you would prove this, no longer hold up the fact of evil as a dark thing to be explicated by itself, a source of distress by day and a mystery by night. Begin with a closer study of your own life, its play of forces, its aspirations and gradual achievements. You know very well what you would be, and you wish The Natural and the Spiritual 125 to be judged by your ideals. Now turn to the people round about and regard them no less charitably. See whither they are tending, take the long look ahead. Move forward with the pulse of moral evolution. Refer once more to the witness of the Spirit. Cherish this witness as a faith until it becomes a reasoned philosophy. When you are able to look within upon the darkest moments of the soul's struggle, those in which you seem most surely the victim of an evil power, and behold the love of God within and behind the struggle, then you will be able in very truth to turn to the world at large and see the solution of the great problem. Had you not sundered certain instincts and passions from the divine love, you would never have known such struggles. You by no means declare that all these promptings are equally noble, that all the moments of your life have the same value in relation to the divine love. But now at last you behold the divine order which obtains within them, their relative value and authority. Hence the sometime duality of self gives place to its unity, the warfare between lower and higher ceases, and the divine purpose becomes the sole clue. Constantly do we need to remind ourselves, there- fore, that we possess no power or life, no instinct or prompting, wholly our own, merely human. We readily believe this in regard to our higher powers, we know that there is but one Love in which we are all sharers. But we should be as ready to acknowledge it in regard to every power that is within us. If we have sundered our own nature into an evil world and a spiritual, the probability is that we have as greatly excluded the thought of God from that part of our nature which we denominate evil as the old-time i26 The Philosophy of the Spirit theology excluded God from nature. Some traces still linger of the medieval belief that the body is vile and the material world evil. We must expurgate the last lingering suspicion of this doctrine. To exclude the idea of God from our thought of the flesh is to set the flesh apart as worthy of suppression. Long ago man learned that suppression is as disloyal to life as indulgence. But not yet has he fully learned that the true nature and life of the flesh is seen in expression, in activity, freedom. The clue to free expression of every bodily activity is found in the fact that every- thing God has created exists in order and degree. That is, every instinct, every force, has its place and its purpose. A given force, for example, is good when employed with respect to the end which it harmoniously fulfils in the light of its relative place in the kingdom or organism to which it belongs. Put it out of its place, use it in excess, and ill results follow. Hence it is once more the point of view of the whole which gives the clue. Nothing, no part, no power, is to be understood alone. Nothing is good alone. Nothing is rightly used when viewed or used out of organic relation. Hence it is that each man is likely to under- stand the play of forces at large in so far as he has gone in the righteous organisation of his own forces. As constantly do we need to remind ourselves that the Spirit is with us as a perpetual presence. For we are apt to flee to God in the hour of our peril only and forget Him at other times. The Spirit is not merely the guiding power which leads us through the darker places of life, but the sustaining presence without which our most lightsome hours would be impossible. We do not always know when the Spirit is most active within us, when it is most directly achieving its pur- The Natural and the Spiritual 127 poses through us. Hence there is all the more reason to base our philosophy on the perpetual presence. Hence there is every moment a good reason for re- ceptivity and readiness. If we are not then to assume any sundering of the natural from the spiritual, let us say that every moment of our natural life is made possible by the presence of the Spirit. A natural event is not an isolated oc- currence. The pulsations of the natural are the outer or visible manifestations of the rhythms of the Spirit. That the Spirit pursues a certain course, begins at a purposive point and moves systematically towards an ideal end, that the Spirit moves from within and modifies that which is without this is the prime consideration. Our part is to become more and more intimately aware of the inner rhythms, that we may take our clues from and move with them. This it is to discover the kingdom of God to which "all things shall be added," This it is to awaken into fulness of life, in keeping with the kingdom "which cometh without observation. " And this means far more than merely to become centred or adjusted within ourselves in an individual sense of the word. For it is the adjustment of the eternal type of life, which includes both the inner and the outer, both the individual and the social, both the temporal and that which knows no time. CHAPTER VI THE CHANNELS OF THE SPIRIT HAVING overcome some of the barriers by which man has theoretically sundered the Spirit from the world, we are ready to consider the question of the direct relationship of the Spirit to the human soul. As this important subject will concern us at length, we may first approach it from the point of view of man, leaving the God -ward side to come into the fore- ground gradually. That is, our first question is, How does man apprehend the Spirit, what form does the experience of communion assume? It might seem incumbent upon us to prove that the Spirit is really present, before we inquire into the nature of that presence. But this could not be done apart from a study of the experience in which man believes the Spirit to be present. The proof lies in the interpretation of religious and other experience. If such experience cannot be accounted for except by reference to a Being, for convenience denominated the Spirit, we have thus much evidence that such a Being exists. The proof lies in the use to which the conception is put. Again, it might be said that our inquiry should be- gin with a study of social observances, such as worship and prayer. But if worship possess meaning with reference to what is real it is real for the individual and the question then becomes, What is the inner experience known as worship? Again, prayer to be 128 The Channels of the Spirit 129 of genuine worth is an experience into which each individual enters, even when it is externally uttered by a clergyman or repeated by a congregation. What, then, is active within us when we pray, or when we participate in prayer? So with all other observances, the first question pertains to inner experience and human faculty. The evaluation of worship or of prayer belongs more specifically to the study of re- ligion. Here our problem is, Granted the belief that God is present in certain of our experiences, or is at least a real object of reference within religious ex- perience, what values shall be assigned to those powers within us which are most active in the communion of man with God? In one respect it seems inconsistent to ask what guise the presence of God assumes, after we have maintained that God is in everything and broken down the barriers by which He has been excluded. Without doubt the goal of our inquiry is the realisation of God in every thought and deed. But inasmuch as He has been theoretically separated from the world we must begin at the most favourable point and gradually realise the divine presence. Moreover, the belief prevails that His presence means a very special ex- perience. Indeed we are most apt to hold that the seers and prophets of the far past held direct com- munion with God, while we enjoy their inspiration at second hand, or only through the general experience of worship. Surely, there is evidence that, con- sciously speaking, some have dwelt much nearer God than others. There is a type of mind and life which seems especially adapted for communion with the divine. There have been enlightened men in all ages who believed in the direct presence and inspiration 130 The Philosophy of the Spirit of God, despite all arguments to the contrary. To these we naturally turn for light. Yet what was true in a past age may be true now. If some souls have been like great lights leading men on it is only that we may also enter consciously into he domain of the Spirit. The essential is a clue which we can so far follow that the entire universe of our experience shall be for us a revelation of the Spirit. We may therefore regard the moments of unusual realisation of the presence of God as particularly fruitful clues. We turn to these, not because the Spirit is absent from any phase of our experience, but because these experiences show us how to be receptive, how to follow where the Spirit leads. It is reasonable to believe that as the Spirit assumes higher and finer forms of manifestation, from the apparently lifeless rock to the living animal, from the slowly vibrating atmosphere to the vibrations of light and other motions in the ether, so in the inner world a point is reached where the Spirit is more immediately active. All men may be at least dimly aware of these finer, more interior manifestations of the Spirit, whatever they may call them. But while some mistake them for signs of physical life and some interpret them in ob- jective terms, there are men of a more subjective type. who are able more accurately to read the signs of direct presence and inspiration. This does not mean that some men are gifted while others are left without guidance, but that types differ, and just as men of science can more truly interpret the signs of a past geologic age than can the unlearned man, so the inwardly illumined man can best explain the conditions under which the Spirit is most directly known. The Channels of the Spirit 131 By the very term " Spirit " we most deeply mean a presence, a sustaining, guiding power, known above all by persons, implying a love that is unfailing, a wisdom that compasses every need. The conception moreover implies a sense of union, an experience which brings peace and rest, one that inspires faith. Again, we find that the life of the Spirit with us is progressive. We believe in being "born of the Spirit." We find also that the Spirit is essentially a gift, a somewhat to be cherished, a presence that is revealed in its own way, not a power to be controlled or used. In our life there are hours that stand out as more directly expressive of the Spirit's presence. Even the words in which we clothe our thought at such a time assume a tone of sacredness. For all these reasons it would seem justifiable to give special consideration to the experience known as the direct presence of God. A word of reminder is needed, however, before we proceed. It is not necessarily when we are actively conscious of the divine presence that the Spirit most fully possesses us. In our daily life, when we are absorbed in serving our fellows and have no time to be self-conscious, when we are doing a piece of work which engages our complete attention, we may be most truly inspired. Hence in the long run it may be that the everyday experiences will afford the surest clues. Plainly, we never know when we are most receptive. It is only in retrospect, in the light of the fruits of the Spirit that we discern the presence of a superior wisdom and power. Not even in the case of those who have specially devoted their lives to the realisation of the presence of God may we always find an entirely trustworthy clue. For, inasmuch as they are specialists, they are likely to over-estimate 132 The Philosophy of the Spirit the importance of their visions. Hence the mystic with his pantheistic tendencies may not be half so safe a guide as the man who has a moderate experience of what he believes to be the divine presence and is able to characterise it in temperate, rational terms. To some people it might seem the acme of human experience to be caught up into the seventh heaven in such wise that they could hardly tell whether they were in this world or some other. But some men who have had a single all-compelling illumination have been compelled to depend on that experience the remainder of their lives, and there are many possibili- ties of illusion and misconception when this is the case. If one cannot tell where one is the probability is that one's recollection of the experience will be extremely faulty. It would seem far more desirable to have the vision of glory trailed all along the way.. Possibly it were better still to have no visions. To confirm one's account of the divine presence one needs new experiences with which to compare it. He is indeed well prepared who has frequent consciousness of the presence of God. There is value in silence and meditation. As life is at present constituted one can hardly expect to make decided headway without observing special conditions. Yet it is forever true that the special experience, how- ever austere, is a means, not an end. If adverse conditions weigh us down, if people oppress us, it may be necessary to go away for a season in order to receive a new impetus. But eventually we must face pre- cisely those conditions and find God there, too. We must learn the meaning of the persistent atmospheres and win freedom from the oppressive persons. Like- wise if the pleasures of the world are too enticing, The Channels of the Spirit 133 these experiences must have their place and be ad- justed in relation to the spiritual ideal. Whatever we care more for than for the Spirit will intrude until we reckon with it. If to conquer the adverse con- dition it is necessary to absent ourselves from it, we must presently return. It is the more necessary to insist upon all this be- cause of the special methods and conditions on which various teachers have insisted. The carefully chosen condition may readily become a hindrance. No one has a monoply of the power of God. To insist upon one's own way is to intrude the self. The devoted parent who scarcely ever thinks of God may far more truly reveal Him than the theologian who thinks of little else, or the mystic who claims to "feel" the divine presence in a familiar way. You and I can realise the presence of God as truly, as fully, as any person, any saint or seer who ever lived upon this earth in any age or clime. To you and me no door whatever is closed. For it is not primarily a question of age or nation, or of environment. It is a question of earnestness, consecration, humility, willingness to follow wherever the Spirit may lead, readiness to live by the Spirit, to show by every thought and deed that one really believes in the love of God. We may well disabuse our minds of the notion that there is an experience peculiar to a few souls, an experi- ence which we can never have. There is no wall of sepa- ration between the genius, the saint, the seer, on the one hand ; and the so-called plain man, on the other. Human nature is the same the world over. There is likely to be more misconception to allow for in the case of the man who appears to be divinely favoured. If we adore him and put him in a category by himself we 134 The Philosophy of the Spirit erect an artificial barrier to our own detriment. He may indeed be a specialist from whom we may learn principles which pertain to one side of human nature. But when all allowances for mystical exaggeration are made what we have as remainder is a universal element which all men may possess. The intermediate man has an advantage over the genius and the plain man. For, as purveyor of the fruits of genius, he is able to comprehend both the genius and the supposed inferiority of the plain man. Making due allowances, he finds that as much misconception pertains to the one as to the other. There are so many respects in which the genius fails to understand himself that, when his message is plainly stated, it is found to con- tain little that is unusual. Some men of genius owe part of their reputation to the haze of obscurity which their own dulness creates. Know them intimately and you find them not only as human as other people, but at least as deficient in some of the commonest virtues. A man must, in the first place, care a great deal for himself to permit people to regard him as a genuis. It is entirely within a man's power to regulate the admiration of the public. It is one of the great tests of the spiritual life, this possession of something that the people want, on the one hand, and the temptation to allow oneself to be regarded as of some account, on the other. Time and again we see people who have so permitted themselves to be regarded as public personalities that they never do a genuine act, but are always posing as a learned genius, a divine artist, or a constant giver of sweet smiles. There are people who know these celebrated personalities so well that they could tear off the mask. These who are able to unmask are the intermediate The Channels of the Spirit 135 men. It is they who have opportunity really to know human nature and human truth. They seldom re- ceive the credit which is their due. If, for example, they have translated the wise sayings of a genius into intelligible speech they are regarded as mere instru- ments. But the man who can develop meaning out of a great poem, or translate into clear language the work of a great philosopher, may well be the really great man. All these reflections suggest that there might well be a reassessment of the relationships of great men and their interpreters. After all, the real genius is a modest man, of deep humility, greatly impressed by the scope of what his thought cannot yet adequately compass. He well knows that his life contains little that is not found in the plain man's experience, but that he has made utmost use of his opportunities while others were idle. The same is true in part of givers of so-called sacred literature, men of scant intelligence who intermingled the ridiculous with the sublime. Because of the sublime element the plain man deems the entire work inspired, and labours to bring meaning out of a confused metaphor or obscure passage. But the intermediate man, knowing human nature better, sees the weakness of the scribe and labels it as such. As matter of fact, that scripture is inspired which proves to be of high value when tested by human conduct and thought. The fact that a passage occurs in a sacred text in itself signifies nothing. Men have applied the belittling epithets "profane," "heathen," and "pagan" to so- called uninspired writings. But these epithets are no more justifiable than the term "barbarian" used more than two thousand years ago by the Greeks. Such terms put those who use them in an unenviable 136 The Philosophy of the Spirit light. He who would truly know the Spirit must rid his mind of such expressions, together with their implications. Some one has well said that the notion that God inspired only the seers and prophets of whom the Bible speaks is as narrow as would be the belief that the sun shines only in Palestine and nowhere else on the face of the earth. If the sun of God's love and wisdom shines for all, we must start with that as a universal premise and make sure that all our conclusions follow in accordance with it. On the other hand, we may indeed take our clues from the positive utterances of those who believed themselves specially chosen of God. If we seize upon the universal element and de- velop its implications we shall discover in due course that it is identical with the revelations of common sense. The homely conclusions at which the man of common sense modestly arrives, without any display, are the teachings which in the end rule the world. One could ask for no greater evidence of the truth of a profound doctrine than its acceptance by the plain man who should deem it in no way unusual but simply regard it as reasonable. The man of common sense is far more likely to be many-sided than the man who is admired as a genius. If we have theoretically removed some people be- yond the range of possibility on our part we have surely cast an illusion about them. The individual peculiarities of their experiences are indeed unique, but the significant portion of their teaching is universal. The important fact is not that the individuality of a man concealed a great truth, but that despite his personality a great truth was revealed. Temperament no doubt counts for very much, more than the above The Channels of the Spirit 137 statements would appear to imply. In case of the mystic, the seer and the prophet, temperament is even more consequential than in case of the philosopher. But if by emphasis upon temperament we exclude ourselves from the truths which men of various types make known, we thereby put the stress in the wrong place. That which is of importance is universal, and there are innumerable temperamental pathways to it. The genius has insights, but may not see their logical significance. The plain man possesses the evidence, but is unable as yet to rationalise it. But the inter- mediate man is the one who has the ability to combine the evidences. The philosopher of the Spirit consults both the inspired text and the " profane, " and finds the same truth in each. Knowing that truth is universal, he is unable to be a mere devotee of one sect or of one doctrine. He is more interested in tracing the con- firmations or variations of truth in all teachings. The moral for the plain man is, Begin where life is now active and collect the evidences, seek the universal elements. We maintain, then, that the realisation of the pres- ence of God which brings permanent satisfaction is founded on the philosophic recognition of God in everything, the realisation which grows out of the study of human life all along the line. Any book or deed, any person's life, will afford a revelation of the Spirit, if we have the eyes to read. If we approach a person with belittling preconceptions we shall find what we anticipate. If we regard all men as sons of God we shall be in the kingdom of heaven. "The kingdom cometh without observation." Hence our inquiry once more resolves itself into the witness of the Spirit. For example, whether or 138 The Philosophy of the Spirit not one sees that there is but one ultimate power in the universe, hence no final principle of evil, depends upon the presence or absence of the witness of the Spirit, that is, the interior evidences made known through individual experience and moral victory. The witness of the Spirit may come as a consciousness of divine guidance, the presence of "the inner light," or it may voice itself in creative work of various kinds ; hence it may be intimately related to individuality and genius. Again, it may be revealed as the divine love made triumphant through the transmutation of passion and brought into our consciousness through supreme moments of suffering. In the larger sense, to bear the witness of the Spirit means to possess the divine essence, the central insight which enables the mind to grasp the laws of travail of the soul and the progressive presence of God. Those who possess this essence are the truly independent people of the world. They do not first consult books or other sources of authority, then refer to the Spirit; they are not first children of their age, then exponents of it, nor need they wait till they have personally passed through all forms of spiritual experience. Bearing the witness of the Spirit within them they then find it in books and in the age; the essence they bear is the adequate clue to all truth and reality. A certain amount of ex- perience is required to develop this essence. Thought is needed to make it explicit. But, possessing the eternal clues, they are able to explain what is unin- telligible to other men. They are not disconcerted by anything that occurs, but are able to discern laws and even foresee results in the lives of people around them. The point of view is not that of human speculation, The Channels of the Spirit 139 starting from the meagre facts of finite consciousness and accounting for those facts in their own terms, but the point of view of the Spirit looking down upon finite life. The interest, the vantage-point has been so enlarged that only by thus regarding human ex- perience in the light of the Spirit is one able to be true to the experience. Hence it is that one insists so much upon the eternal type of life as a gift, the gift of interior friendship, spiritual love, quiet joy, calm, comprehensive insight. While each soul would bear witness to the Spirit in an individual way, and find others' accounts faulty, for example, the account here given, all would no doubt acknowledge the un- mistakable sense of superior reality, and the develop- ment according to ways of its own of the gift of the Spirit. Here is no doubt the truth in the old-time doctrine of the grace of God. Not that some souls are specially favoured, not that it is solely by the grace of God that you and I have glimpses of these holy principles, but that the divine grace is in some sense for all, the eternal type of life is for every one, and some have come to consciousness of the divine presence by which all souls are environed. If the divine presence means for one, or a few, what it is said to mean, all human beings are likewise related to it; the course of events in the eternal world is of the sort which tends to lead all men into consciousness of it. The least that can be said is that there are different interpretations of the spiritual life. If some interpret it from an exclusive, aristocratic point of view; if some reduce it to a system of lifeless values to which no eternal realities correspond, and whatever other alternatives there may be, at any rate the present 140 The Philosophy of the Spirit interpretation is one which begins with the reality of the eternal world, the purposive presence of the Spirit, as the supreme gift, the prime fact, and explains human experience with reference to that fact. This is a proposition to be defended, namely, that a real spiritual order not only exists in correspondence with our spiritual beliefs, but produces in us those beliefs. The foregoing is particularly significant in reference to the experience known as the immediate presence of God. The prevalent theories of that experience have mostly been reared in accordance with a one- sided view of human nature. Believing that certain texts are sacred men have argued that these texts must have been given by special providence. Holding that certain men were set apart as scribes they have contended that the scribes possessed a unique endow- ment. Even the mystic has been revered as somehow different from other men. But the philosopher of the Spirit must so far tear away the illusions as to see that even the calmest, most intellectual endeavour to carry out the conception of God regarded as present in all things is also a realisation of the divine presence. It is an entire misconception to exclude God from thought and assign His presence to the realm of emotion. It is a question of types of experience with the value belonging to each, and all types have their place. If we have excluded God from a part of our life and relegated Him to another, we are sure to leave Him out of a part of our thought. Likewise our life is affected by our theory. The ideal attitude is not one of exclusiveness, as if Sunday were the only "Lord's Day" and a certain building the only "house of God," but an attitude of detachment in which we seek to realise the eternal type of life. It is not a The Channels of the Spirit question of Sunday now and week-day to-morrow, but of constant worship of God in the heart, continuous endeavour to see God in everything. It is the in- tellectual power in us which gives stability, knowledge of God through experience ripened by thought that gives constancy. Hence we must be prepared to disagree with nearly all the accepted beliefs concerning the superiority of emotion. If we are to find God in everything, behold all this universe as a constantly renewed revelation of the Spirit, we may well expect to find the most profitable clues in regions where the divine has been excluded most. Do not misunderstand. One has nothing to say in disparagement of the pioneers of the Spirit, nor of the people who have been taken to be the special objects of God's choice. One may continue to believe in the superiority of the Bible and the surpassing beauty of the life of Jesus, together with such divine purposive- ness as these beliefs seem rightfully to imply. But the difficulty is that other books, other peoples and teachers have been disparaged in order to exalt these. The more we know about other sacred literatures the less able are we to sustain the special claims. If the Hebrews were a wonderful people, so were the ancient Hindoos and the surpassingly remarkable Greeks. If Jesus is in truth the master prophet it is because he stands out above a multitude, many of whom were revered in other lands as we revere our Christ. For the philosopher of the Spirit the prophet is one who sets an example for those who later seek to realise his type of thought and life. Such a pioneer was Aristotle in the field of science. There are respects in which it is extremely difficult to be original after Aristotle's time. But Aristotle was the first to mark out territory 142 The Philosophy of the Spirit which is now trodden by multitudes, and by men who come much nearer nature than he. Had Aristotle never been revered as an authority the growth of sci- ence would have been far more rapid. Our concern is with the universal element, not with the particular medium of its discovery. If some one pays attention to phenomena which previously had remained unnoticed, these phenomena presently be- come realities for the world, because any man may discern them. The alleged specially gifted man is for the moment absorbed in details to which he is able to call attention because of this absorption. He is like the man who is made more sensitively self-con- scious by illness and who therefore makes some discovery in regard to the inner life. All new develop- ments begin in a small way, or in the minds of one or two men who live at about the same time, and then spread into the realm of the universal. The special claims that are made in behalf of these men are not made by themselves, but by people who do, not culti- vate their own talents. It is a striking fact that even the chief est of prophets, Jesus, indicated the way in which he said all might follow him and do the works which he performed. We may still consult these pioneers, as we would any master in his special field. But let us seriously consult them as examples, not hold them up as alleged examples and then cover them with qualifications so that they are removed from the range of possibility. It has seemed necessary to dwell upon this point because of numerous preconceptions in regard to spiritual gifts. These preconceptions are like the notion that we must take ourselves as we are, or that man is a creature of habit, and cannot change his The Channels of the Spirit 143 habits. That there are gifts of the Spirit is indeed true. That people will always differ in type is no less true. But there are no people who cannot have gifts. And gifts are apt to be exceedingly small at the outset. They are much like capital which is skilfully used. If we do not respect our talents, if we do not follow seemingly insignificant clues, we are little likely to win possessions which people will value. Say if you will that to see the significance of evidence which all men possess is a gift. But there are other gifts no less important which you possess, too. In primitive times men doubtless dwelt nearer God in a naive sort of way, whereas we have interposed the obstacles of self-conscious thought. Hence in the primitive utterances of men one frequently finds more faithful records of the presence of God. But one would hardly look back to those times for a phi- losophy of the Spirit. We in our self-conscious age have a work to perform which the seers and hymn- makers of old could not have accomplished. It should give us pause, when we learn that relatively simple, if not credulously childlike, men could respond to the presence of the Spirit as we cannot, or as we thus far have not. The gift to be cherished above all others is receptivity, that is, willingness to follow where the Spirit leads and to utter what we believe the Spirit says, though it conflict with our most cherished no- tions and with all conventional belief. The real gift, in fact, is childlikeness. Those whom we revere have this gift. But in themselves, in the finite part, they may possess as little as we. The point is that whatever they are, whatever they possess, that they dedicate to the uses of the Spirit, and there is not a man so 144 The Philosophy of the Spirit humble that he cannot become such an instrument of the Spirit. One would not, then, ignore the teachings of the prophets, of those who had the courage to voice their convictions while others remained silent. Had these men not gone before we might not have been able to follow. But we now have before us the possibility of attaining amidst our self-consciousness the gifts which were once bestowed upon these scattered pioneers. We have more reason to revere our own age than any age in the past. The history of religious thought is in part a record of failures and we may profit by these failures. We need not in our day try the monastic experiment, we need not be hermits or ascetics, we need not mortify the flesh. We need not go apart in any exclusive sense. It may be said that all the ex- periments of the excluding type have been tried and pronounced failures, like the attempts to organise an ideal community away from the temptations of urban life. There have been many attempts to achieve the moral ideal, to find God, by giving up, by reacting against civilisation and discarding its refinements. It is now very generally recognised that it is cowardly to run away. If the temptations are greatly multi- plied in our day, so that it is difficult indeed to live in our complex civilisation, with its record-breaking pace and its luxuries, and yet preserve the simplicity of the Spirit, the possibilities of achievement are now greater. The refinements of life, for example, do not neces- sarily prevent us from finding the Spirit ; good form is not necessarily a hindrance. Our conventionality is indeed very likely to be a hindrance. Few observers of good form are free from it. But one need not be X UNIVE; A*=> OF 5 The Channels of the Spirit 145 enslaved. The more highly cultivated the instrument the better, provided it be recognised as an instrument. It is easy to be good where everybody is harmonious and smiling. It is too easy to preserve our temper where there is naught to disturb it. As Emerson reminds us, the test of the genius of solitude is the noisy disturbance of the city thoroughfare. One need not indeed spend all one's days amidst these noisy complexities. The devotee of the Spirit will inevitably elect the simple life, in due course. But first let him earn the right to it. To renounce the world is to maim the self, and how fortunate that we really cannot run away from the self. To be sure, the devotee of the Spirit who seeks God everywhere and in everything, instead of condemning civilisation, will attract little attention to himself. The way to make a stir in the world is to indulge in sweeping condemnation, cultivate peculiarity in dress and promulgate an unsound doctrine. But in the end those who go quietly about what they deem their Father's business will triumph. The Spirit does not call attention to itself, is not peculiar, affects no out- landish manners. The good sense of the community is a far better judge than the admirers who gather around the so-called spiritual genius. The man who draws people about him because of real merit is he who has the courage, wherever he is, whoever he may be, to believe in the Spirit. Those whose power is reared on the mere self shall be for- gotten as if the days of their glory had never been. They who live for the Spirit shall find little glory coming to themselves. But thus inexorable is the life of the Spirit with men. One must choose whom to serve. Choose the Spirit, and it will not matter where you are, 146 The Philosophy of the Spirit or however slight your original gifts. The way will open before you, and you shall be led as the prophets of old were led. Do not, then, in your zeal to realise the presence of the Spirit, make a hobby of freedom and cut yourself aloof from the world. This means that you deem yourself a little better than the world. It is easy to condemn the world. But this same world is God's world, and it is high time to cease this blasphemy. He who would be free must find his freedom in the life of the Spirit, and the Spirit is in all things. Therefore discard nothing as a mere thing, as if it were dead and God lived not therein. Select you must, but let your selection be in keeping with the growth of the Spirit, and when the time comes to leave old haunts go quietly away. Be positive, not negative, constructive, not iconoclastic. For if you reject before you understand, and tear down instead of transmuting, you will be compelled to return to the discarded circumstance and be taught to love what you once hated. He who finds love finds the Spirit, and where is love if not in the homely things of life, in the passions of men and in the world we so readily condemn? The love that people prate of who teach ascetic doctrines, and claim that it is strictly universal, knows no persons, is an artificial thing. Love mounts to the skies through the amours of men, it moves in persons and is graded in accordance with affinities. The Spirit does not reduce men to a dead level. To love universally is to see the beauty of all things in their place. Our times call for a new estimate of the channels through which the Spirit is revealed. It is safe to say that the most immediate channels for you and me are those which now give us our experience, even if there The Channels of the Spirit 147 are elements in that experience which make us eager to run away from them. We must indeed enjoy the benefits of a change of scene, of contact with other minds, of freedom from constant work. But the real clues are those of the nearest problems. Hence it is that the prime requisite, if we would realise the presence of the Spirit, is to meditate on the given situation, re- gard that as a gift of the Spirit. But if it be not our environment which is at fault, what is it from which we must escape? From our mere selves. Here we are, engaged in active pursuit of plans, endeavouring to coerce people and things to go our way. We are trying to possess, to master, to regulate. We are anxious, we over-strain. We look out for "Number One." But he alone who "loseth his life shall find it." If we would find the Spirit we must be willing to forego all plans, so far as they are merely personal. We must cease all coercion, all endeavour to manage people, all effort to possess, to make gains for the mere self. We must no longer be troubled lest that which is for us go to some one else. We should be restful where we once strained. As for "Number One" he shall be last indeed. If we are neither to renounce the world nor run away from it, neither to manage nor to condemn it, we may well accept it, let it come and unfold before us. It is astonishing how richly beautiful the world be- comes \vhen we thus give it an opportunity to reveal its reality and meaning. Likewise with regard to our own little section of it. Possibly if we cease all effort to manipulate it, the world will regulate itself very well. It may seem like reducing the spiritual life to the most commonplace level when one counsels the setting aside of all coercive plans and doing that which lies 148 The Philosophy of the Spirit nearest at hand as a divine deed. Yet this is an ex- cellent way to begin. That which lies at hand may not be the sort of thing one prefers. But it happens to be a piece of work which was begun in one's less enlightened days and duty bids its completion. There may be a hundred undertakings which more forcibly appeal to the mind, and one may be very eager to begin a bit of work which one has very much at heart. But, directly in one's pathway there lie trivial things to be done, and it is well to take them up as if nothing were more divine. But, after all, one can spend a delightful day doing what is at hand. Even more delightful is a day in which one lays down all occupations and ventures forth at random, into the city or the country, or where thoughtful friends abide. For it is not our self- conscious days which reveal the profounder clues. To meditate in carefully selected silence, to concentrate by rule, to worship by rote, may be to find the Spirit. But better is it to let the Spirit discover itself. A random walk over the hills may be far richer in result than a carefully planned day. To stroll through a book-shop, or wander up and down a city street, with no destination in mind, may be to detect an exceptional gleam of light flashing across the mind in the most in- cidental way. One who has the power thus to absent himself in this busy world may find the Spirit where it is ordinarily least expected. The ideal for those who would dedicate their lives to the coming of the Spirit would appear to be this: to arise each day without a fixed plan for the entire day, then follow the leading which applies to that day and that especially. Now, at first thought this might seem like doing merely what one wants to do. Yet The Channels of the Spirit 149 the leading of the Spirit is as likely to be the reverse of this. The deed at hand is not necessarily either the hardest or the easiest thing. The majority of us awaken into the spiritual life so late that there are enough undertakings on hand to last for several years before our life is to any extent free from plans. The readjustment of life may come slowly. But it will come with a new zest if we permit each day to be a fresh creation of the Spirit. The sort of withdrawal from the world which we now countenance is the momentary elevation of mind and heart which all may practise amidst the complexities of just this busy life of ours. Special modes of life were indeed necessary when men sought the Spirit in desert places and in the hermit's cell, through Oriental contemplation or mystic absorption. But we who seek God in the daylight need no special gifts. What we need is earnestness of mind and heart. The prophets of old have made clear the way. The time has come for the social revelation of the Spirit. The first point I wish to establish, then, concerning the experience of the presence of God is that there are no real barriers in our nature, whatever the artificial obstacles which thought has put in the way. The question of the nature and place of gifts is difficult. We must do justice to our teachers and our sacred litera- ture as well as to universal human nature and to our- selves. There is much still to be said in regard to particularly authoritative experiences, the nature and scope of guidance, and the immediate apprehension of the Spirit. It must long remain a significant fact that it is the childlike man who is our guide rather than the man who is older in experience but confused by his self-consciousness. For us there is no road 1 50 The Philosophy of the Spirit back to a supposed golden epoch. We must find God in our own time. Hence it behooves us to reconstruct our belief with regard to the coming of the Spirit. The first great fact is that God is present to all men, without hindrance. This means that He has always given revelations, though unheeded. Our philosophy must be broad enough to take account of these revela- tions, in the face of the fact that counter-claims in favour of special revelations have been made all through the ages. This reconstruction of belief in regard to the coming of the Spirit involves a no less radical change in regard to human nature. For we have made claims in our pride which have blinded us to the real character of men. For example, if all men really have access to the Spirit one would reasonably expect enormous differ- ences in modes of speech, forms of worship, in creeds, doctrines, and types of social service. Expecting differences, one would be on the alert to learn their significance, where formerly one would have con- demned. Hence there must be an enormous change of front, in place of the sometime attitude of theolog- ical superiority. Where we once saw only paganism, we will perhaps discover an element of the universal revelation of the Spirit. With the growth of this tolerance will come a more outgoing spirit, an attitude of belief in our fellows, of whatever race or clime. All this will mean actual recognition of the truth of the well-known saying that human nature is the same the world over. The rigid barriers between sacred and profane broken down, the heathen no longer aristocratically condemned, it will be necessary to alter our attitude with regard to the sinner, and even the criminal. Where shall the change end ? Will The Channels of the Spirit 151 the revolution be so great that everything and every- body will be reduced to the same level, and the Spirit become as commonplace as the sunset which nobody notices? Not so. The levelling must go on until the last artificial barrier has been removed and the sun of the Spirit shines upon all. We must overcome our exclusiveness in minutest degree. Then, these changes made in thought, we shall be in a position to readjust our views of human nature and the divine presence in terms of genuinely universal principles. If we have been in the habit of excluding God from the common- place, it is high time to find Him there. If we have been "too refined" to mix with the uncouth, we must see God there, too, in the rough exteriors of the common people. If we have been " too good" to associate with the sinner, lest our reputation be lost, we may well recollect the example which Jesus long ago set mankind. Every man is guilty in some respect. No man can first cast the stone, when it is a question of exclusive- ness, and the rearing of artificial barriers. In the spiritual world there are no barriers; there every man is a son of God, and there is no exception. The Spirit condemns not at all. It comes to uplift, to guide and to sustain. He who would experience its coming in large measure must open wide his heart for the coming of sympathy, of charity and love, where misjudgment, condemnation and hatred reigned before. Every man is striving towards the Spirit, and every man deserves to be recognised as thus striving. Hence our least thought about our fellows as well as our greatest must be brought in line with our philos- ophy of the Spirit. Our philosophy would appear, then, to require entire toleration of other points of view, and other 152 The Philosophy of the Spirit types of conduct, so far as they may be judged to spring from upright motives. Absolute charity is demanded, entire belief in people so far as their heart of hearts is concerned, coupled with the forgiveness which cherishes no lingering thought of unkindness. Another's method may not be ours, but if it sincerely spring from belief in God it is thus far genuine. To become an instrument of the Spirit one must eliminate all sarcasm, all unrighteous judgment, all exclusiveness and pettiness, by cultivating the most generous attitude. The ideal is to be outgoing to everybody, with no condemnation of persons however much objection there may be to particular deeds. In such an attitude there can be no bitterness, no hatred, no sentiment of jealousy or envy. The spiritual life is a life of giving, not of bartering; of doing, not merely saying ; of being, not alone of doing. One's experience becomes a channel of the Spirit by "living the life." Does this call for perfection? Well, the pathway of the Spirit is discovered through the quest for just these ends. It is no doubt attained at first through manifold conflicts, illusions, deviations, and simula- tions. When we are really on the way we are buffeted, tried, tested, according to our eagerness. There are "ups and downs," alternations, openings and shut- tings. But withal there is progress. The essential is to accept the Spirit as a gift and await developments. How far should one merely accept, merely express the Spirit? The ideal is complete acceptance, full expression. But inasmuch as the human factors always enter in it is important to consider how to better the various modes of acceptance and forms of expression. A doctrine of mere expression may readily lead to a life of license, in which the inclinations The Channels of the Spirit 153 i of selfish desire are put in the place of the leadings of the Spirit. This is an .abuse of the proposition that ultimately there is but one power in the universe. With that power it is first of all a question of measured, orderly expression. Mere expression is chaos. The more delicately attuned the instrument the nobler the music. The instrument of expression may either mar or aid. The greater the spiritual possibilities the greater may be the temptations, the struggle of contending forces to control. There are struggles, for example, in regard to worldly possessions, standards and authorities; contentions with the intellect in its ambition, its pride, and its lordly power of criticism; and wrestlings with selfishness in many forms. Merely to express what arises within one, merely because it arises, and because there is said to be " but one power, " is to make the barest beginning. It is primarily a question of direction and of fitness of the end to be attained and the means that lead to it. The mere life of the moment is not the life of the Spirit, for the Spirit takes thought, is for the morrow as well. The life of the Spirit is rather the life in the eternal present, the deep, philosophical present, as we shall see more explicitly in the following chapters. CHAPTER VII THE IMMEDIACY OF THE SPIRIT WE have now to consider the question of the special authority assignable to certain types of activity viewed in relation to the experience of communion with God. There are several hypotheses which might be maintained, some of which we may profitably examine in detail, (i) It might be held, for example, that there is a special faculty for the direct apprehension of the divine presence, not that the soul becomes one with God, but that revelations are directly made through this "faculty." (2) It might be held that God is not revealed through one faculty alone, but through man's higher nature as a whole, that is, through " the inner voice," through conscience, intuition, emotion, feeling, and guidance. (3) Or, it might be maintained that God is not directly apprehensible at all, but is know- able through thought, that is, by means of criticism of the so-called immediate gifts of the Spirit, through progressive inference. (4) Again, it might be con- tended that God is neither apprehensible through higher faculties nor knowable through reason, but is directly possessed amidst an experience in which the soul becomes mystically one with Him. (5) Finally, one might insist that there is truth in all these theories, hence it is impossible to decide wholly in favour of any one of them. That is to say, it might well be admitted that God is apprehensible through immediate ex- perience, but is knowable through reason; that He is 154 The Immediacy of the Spirit 155 revealed through pain, guidance, faith, communion, also through those aspects of the mystic experience which withstand the test of criticism, above all through enlightened reason. It is plain that in the choice between these hypoth- eses much depends upon what proves to be an accept- able conception of God, the implied theory of human nature, the theory of immediate experience and of reason. If we confine our investigation at the outset to a study of human faculty and experience, we may first consider the alleged supremacy of the spiritual "sense" or "faculty," then the power or activity known as intuition, the emotions, and mystic ex- perience. The foregoing discussions point to the conclusion that our entire nature is a channel of the Spirit. Still we cannot escape the conviction that a certain side of our nature is supreme. It would be well, therefore, to examine the various special claims with particular care in order to determine the place assignable to the faculties or experiences in question. Is there within man a special sense or faculty for the immediate apprehension of the Spirit? Some have believed so and have reared a philosophy of religion on this hypothesis. Such an assumption has seemed necessary to account for divine revelation and for the mystic's experiences. It is plain that if there be such a faculty what we have said about gifts and revelations will stand in need of revision. If there be no such " God-sense, " the analysis of the hypothesis will at any rate disclose additional evidence that the Spirit is actively present on all sides of our nature. So far as psychological considerations are concerned there would appear to be no reason for assuming the existence of a special faculty. The term "faculty" 156 The Philosophy of the Spirit at once reminds us of the old-time psychology, which described the mind as if it were divided into com- partments, one for the reception and display of feeling, one for will, and a third for the activities of thought. Present-day psychology, with more careful analysis, describes the mind in accordance with the type of experience that is uppermost at the time; but finds no experience that is devoid of elements derived from sensation, none without will, none without thought. Nor is any absolute separation made between active and receptive mental states. There is one mind, functioning in various ways, hence variously describ- able. The existence of this mental unity amidst variety is inferred from the study of the various types of mental experience. Taking our clue from this more accurate description of mental life, we conclude that there is no reason to draw sharp lines of distinction between ordinary mental experience and experiences known as moral or re- ligious. When we apprehend the beautiful, commune with our fellow-men, or worship, we use the same mind, the difference being that in each case different objects engage our attention. Esthetic values, for instance, are added to a multitude of other interests when we contemplate the beautiful. Our experience of beauty is partly a sense-experience, partly a product of thought. In the same way our religious life has grown out of and is commingled with our mental life at large. Sometimes the experience is one of rela- tive quiescence of the reasoning powers and chiefly contemplative. Again, active processes of reason pre- dominate and we no sooner pass through the ex- perience than we begin to interpret it. To certain of our sentiments, emotions, desires, aspirations, and The Immediacy of the Spirit 157 activities we have attributed special values. Hence we speak as if we possessed a distinctively religious nature. But this is figurative language, like our references to personality when we speak as if we pos- sessed several selves. There may be the greatest sort of contrast between emotions and moods, all within one self. Even when we speak of a "subcon- scious mind" we are simply making certain distinctions within a single mental life; there is not an iota of evidence in favour of the existence of subconsciousness that is not founded on distinctions drawn within consciousness. It is true, we often refer to the soul as distinctively spiritual, as specially active or peculiarly exempli- fied in prayer, as the recipient of guidance, il- lumined from above, "born again," as essentially pertaining to the immortal life. Yet it is this same soul that receives sensation, that is tempted from beneath, stirred by animal impulses, imprisoned by emotions. Whatever the experience of the soul, high or low, spiritual or natural, it is capable of being impressed and of reacting, of deriving data from without and proposing theories in explanation thereof. In all its relationships the soul is undoubtedly many- sided. This many-sidedness functions in numerous ways, hence is the recipient of a multitude of objects. It may be so far immersed in the life of the physical senses as seemingly to possess no other mode of life. Again, the life of the senses may be largely quiescent, so that there is scarcely a discernible sensation. In a state which is chiefly characterised as subconsciousness there may be a relatively large degree of receptivity. But again there may be a fixed idea so persistent that no external experience can arouse the mind from its servitude. 158 The Philosophy of the Spirit It may be, however, that in some of our experiences mental life more nearly approximates to a condition of discarnate existence. For example, the experience in which a distant friend seems to be as near as if bodily present in the same room, or the experience in which a sentiment or thought is apparently transmitted to one who is absent. Again, clairvoyance seems to imply a higher mode of mental apprehension akin to what is conceivably a non-fleshly, purely spiritual vision of the soul. These and other experiences may be typical of the soul's future existence when it shall be freed from the flesh and perceive without the medium of the physical senses. On the basis of such experiences some people believe that man possesses an inner or spiritual system of senses, corresponding to the organs of physical sensation. Hence there may be reason to hold that certain experiences are more specifically spiritual. Yet, granted these higher senses and their deliverances, these powers function amidst the usual activities of sensation, attention, volition, and thought. They neither imply a separate soul nor the separateness of the soul from the ordinary con- ditions of psycho-physical life. It is still a question of types of experience of the same soul. That souls differ in experience there can be no question. Some are almost wholly dependent on inferences drawn from natural experience, while others seldom arrive at any important result through conscious reasoning, but receive "impressions" of various sorts, guidances, leadings, intuitions. There are some whose experience may be characterised as relatively passive, while others have a decidedly active, positive experience. Again, there are souls that are describable as subjective, while others live largely The Immediacy of the Spirit 159 in an objective world. .Some seem to be especially gifted, illumined within, inspired by a consciousness of the immediate presence of God. Yet in all these cases we are speaking of different types of experience which arise out of diversities of temperament, varieties of interest. The mere fact that experiences radically differ is in itself no proof of the existence of other faculties or senses, to be specially differentiated as "spiritual." In general, those who have "spiritual experiences," and who therefore believe in the ex- istence of special faculties, live more in their instincts and emotions and hence analyse less carefully. Con- sequently their theories of human nature are less trustworthy. Moreover, it is noticeable that these people differ radically among themselves, while the pronouncements which they make in the name of intuition are profoundly in conflict. The reasons for this will be made plain when we discuss the nature of intuition. If by the term "spiritual faculty" or "God-sense" such powers are in question as the physical sense of sight or touch, there would appear to be no reason on psychological grounds to believe in the existence of any such faculty. That is, there is no distinct or separate faculty. Every sense may deliver to us what we take to be spiritual data. Many activities may combine to yield what is judged to be the essentially spiritual experience. Hence the experience of the divine presence may be precisely as real as if there were a special sense. Revelation may be precisely as real and as true. But all the evidences, textual as well as psychological, indicate that, however high or unusual the experience, whatever the mind in question contains is likely to be not only present but active 160 The Philosophy of the Spirit in the experience. Hence man's religious experience is interpretable with reference to his whole nature. If, however, there be no reason to assume the ex- istence of a special faculty, there is abundant reason for believing in distinct types of spiritual experience in which various phases of our nature predominate in different order at various times. That is, it is not a question of partiality or of separate endowment, but of difference of emphasis, according to the character of the experience and the type of person. There is as good reason to cultivate receptivity, to preserve spontaneity, or believe in seership, as there would be were we to believe in special endowments. All along in these discussions we have distinguished be- tween people who dwell near the immediate sources of religious experience and those who know such sources only at second hand. The seers and prophets are, if you please, divinely gifted. But the distinction would appear to be, not between some power which they possess while others do not, but that in them powers which are common to all are more highly de- veloped, so that the test is that of direct seership while less enlightened people appeal to secondary authorities. If some are alive to that which is non-existent for others, it is partly because their attention has been called to that which exists for all. But this is true throughout life. Some men have an eye for the sig- nificant features of a landscape, the indications of geologic formations, while others see merely prosaic details. Some think for themselves, while others never lift the events of life into the sphere of the intellect. The independent and the dependent are everywhere found. So are people of an objective type and those of a subjective. Difference in tern- The Immediacy of the Spirit 161 peramental experience leads to difference of emphasis, hence to the acceptance of various authorities. He who is able to go to the original sources in any depart- ment of human knowledge is particularly fortunate. But in religion as elsewhere it is an instance of dis- covery and use of that which exists for all. The same conclusions would follow were we to examine in detail the reasons for belief in the existence of a special faculty in the moral sense of the word, the faculty known as "conscience." It would not then be so much a question of the presence of God in the form of experience as of His supposed authoritative utterance, His command to do this or refrain from that deed said to be right or wrong. No doubt the majority of men believe in the existence of conscience as an inner voice which tells them what is right or wrong, as if righteousness depended on the particular utterance. It seems a pity, in one sense of the word, to reject this notion; for it is very serviceable in child- hood and implies a convenient theory of human nature. Yet there is no defensible evidence in its support. It would be extremely convenient if there were an ever ready voice to tell men positively what is right, what wrong. We would then be absolved from re- sponsibility and spared a deal of worry. But human life is not constituted on that basis. Sometimes one sees clearly what is wrong or right that is, what one judges to be wrong or right. Again, one cannot see at all, and one listens in vain for a "voice." In any event, one must pass judgment on the deliverances of consciousness. Thus to judge is to make oneself responsible. One must learn from experience, by comparing or discarding, that which the authoritative "voice" is supposed to declare. Analysis shows that 1 62 The Philosophy of the Spirit the "voice" is an extremely complex product of many sides of our nature. If the particular utterances of what is popularly taken to be conscience were one and all direct from God and in themselves constituted the right, one would reasonably expect them to be uniform, consistent. But every student of history knows that the judgments pronounced and the deeds wrought in the name of f conscience differ enormously, are hopelessly in conflict, and vary with the age. The moral constant or in- variant is not the pronouncement or the deed. Par- ticular actions do not in themselves constitute what is right. There is no consistency or uniformity here. Conscience is neither a voice nor a sense, neither a faculty nor a special power. The permanent or in- variable element is the moral principle or law, im- plied in the fact that all men make, and are obliged to make, moral judgments. That is to say, conscience is the universal principle of moral thought or reflection. The necessity which man is under to make judgments and to act on his own responsibility is what constitutes conscience. Hence the authority of conscience is the authority of law. It is because we possess a law-giving nature, because it is an inherent principle of our entire being that conscience shall rule, that we are under moral obligation, not because of any particular judg- ment assumed to be right. One would expect men's judgments to differ. It is inevitable that conscience should imply an activity of man's whole nature, for it is precisely the principle which brings order into his nature. If it implies a hierarchy of powers, it is primarily because human nature is ideally one, is not divided into compartments. The history of English ethics from The Immediacy of the Spirit 163 Shaftesbury to Martineau confirms these conclusions. The critical philosophy has not changed the situation, but has made the sense of obligation even more august by pointing out that our entire nature underlies it. The authority of conscience has not been taken away but has been strongly emphasised anew. It is the integrity of our nature that assures for us the divine character of that authority. We reject the hypothesis, therefore, that there is a distinct faculty or voice in favour of the theory that there is a hierarchy of closely united human powers over which conscience is supreme and in relation to which religious experience has special significance. Man's higher nature is indeed authoritative over the rest, but for this authority there is a firmer basis than the popular belief in a " sense" or "voice" would imply. That there is an experience popularly at- tributable to a voice is another matter. The reality of the experience does not imply the existence of an organ of utterance. The experience must take its place amidst many others that await the scrutiny of constructive thought. We here accept the theory of human nature for which there is the best psychological evidence, namely, that in all mental operations our "powers" or "facul- ties" are more or less active. That is to say, sensi- bility of some sort always enters into the experience, however noble and however great the power of the central idea; attention is present, also desire, thought, and will. This means that in the experience of com- munion with God the total mind is so far active that the experience cannot be accurately described as if it were a mere vision, for example, objectively pro- duced and passively perceived, apart from the partici- 1 64 The Philosophy of the Spirit pation of the intellect or other powers. On the spiritual side, the mind meets no experience with entire passivity, but here as elsewhere, wittingly or unwittingly, in- terprets, sees in the experience the confirmation of a cherished hypothesis or the fulfilment of a desire. Inasmuch as volitional and intellectual elements have entered in, the experience must be described and interpreted accordingly. Allowances must be made for the factors which the personality brings to the experience, allowances for the principles of interpre- tation, the individual ambition, the type of thought, the degree of emotion. This sounds like an innocent statement, which every one would accept as matter of common sense. But its logical implications strike at the root of many cherished beliefs, and we must establish it on a firm foundation. If the whole mind be subject to the presence of God, we must carefully examine the special claims in behalf of what is vaguely denominated "feeling." If God be thus present, the appropriate distinctions are not between faculty and faculty, as if emotion were separate from thought, but those which show the order and degree in which the Spirit is manifested most objectively in nature, more intimately in the human soul, more authoritatively in moral judgments, and more immediately in religious experience. To dismiss the theory of the existence of a peculiar faculty and of partiality in the distribution of gifts is to be prepared to admit that people differ enormously in temperament. There are some, for example, who possess the power of self-abandonment to a remarkable degree, in contrast with those who are too self-con- scious to do a genuinely spontaneous act. Some are able to enter sympathetically into another's experience, The Immediacy of the Spirit 165 or portray dramatically various types of character; while others have no such ability. Some stand aloof and study their fellows, seek causes, laws, and con- ditions; while others confess to a love of mystery and care not at all for science. The successful artist is likely to be the one who becomes so filled with a certain ideal, a theme, picture, or character, that he is fairly carried away by it. But the philosopher cannot allow himself to be entirely "carried away." The contrasts between the creature of emotions and the man of reason are striking and almost beyond belief. The one person can hardly understand or tolerate the other. Yet neither is wholly devoid of that which he despises in the other. It is plain that in the seer and the mystic, the power of spiritual self-abandonment is very great. The one who enjoys the mystic experience is usually not intellec- tually developed to a high degree. Hence the vagaries and the fallacies of mysticism, of which more anon. But it is important to distinguish between the religious experience which in a measure may be common to all men differing only in degree, not in kind and the account which is given of it. The experience, we have seen, is the primary reality without which men would never have believed in the existence of spiritual beings and a spiritual world environing the natural, nor would they have given forth revelations. The immediate experience, the illumination, is, strictly speaking, the revelation, and the account given of it is at best a report. The revelation, for example, is made in the language which the seer happens to know, is conditioned by his type of life, his mental activity, the age in which he lives. Hence even a sacred or inspired book is a report of the experience and thought of those who i66 The Philosophy of the Spirit wrote it, and the best verification of its truth or au- thority would be similar experiences on the part of those who read it. It may well be that in rare cases inspiration is akin to mediumship, so that the scribe interposes no ob- stacle between the Spirit and the word. At any rate, it is well not to be dogmatic on this point. But however successful the verbal reproduction of the Spirit's "utterances," it is still plain that the prime reality is the spiritual union of God and man, the im- mediacy of the Spirit's presence. Hence the qualifi- cations that are afterwards made apply to the letter and not to the Spirit. The real utterances of the Spirit are "words of life," too perfect to be reported in the languages of earth. The actual report that is made is a united product of the Spirit and of the instrumentality through which it receives expression. Most modern scholars would agree that not even in the most authoritative statement of the Bible have we the literal words of God. If the Bible be in any sense " the word of God, " its consistency is surely that of the one Wisdom behind its particular utterances. The authority is not of the letter but of the Spirit. Spir- itually to discern that authority is above all to possess the Spirit as inner witness. A religious experience may be wholly genuine yet be very crudely reported. There is constant need of distinguishing between the experience and the terms in which it is mediated. This distinction between immediacy and mediation, between experience in its initial guise and the account given of it, is funda- mentally important, and we shall make use of it from this point on. In brief, it is never a question of dis- tinct faculties or special endowments, but always of The Immediacy of the Spirit 167 immediacy and its interpretation in all types of ex- perience and character. There may be immediacy of sensibility, of impulse, emotion, desire, feeling, will, and of thought. Immediacy is in itself purely general, as Hegel long ago showed conclusively, and all that can be said of it in the first instance is that it exists. It is the first moment, the first guise of any experience or mental activity, any appearance, any phenomenon. The immediacy of any experience is its givenness, as a presentation, before the experience is identified. For example, the inrush of an impulse which meets no obstacle and is expressed in action almost before we are aware. The immediacy of a thought is its sudden flashing through the mind into execution that is, without deliberation. On the other hand, we have what we call "sober second thoughts." We set portions of our consciousness to watch, to give warning when impulses rush in, that we may stem the impulsive tide, deliberate upon and inhibit or express the impulse as the case may be. The immediacy of an experience is akin to impulse, instinct, emotion, and will; while the thought which deliberates upon it is derived, is of the nature of judg- ment, inference, criticism. It is not now a question of truth or reality. It may well be that the impulse acted upon without delibera- tion is later judged to be the truer guide. It may be that when we feel deeply we come nearest to the supreme reality. One should not permit the dis- criminations here made to interfere in any sense with the higher spontaneities. We must be true to human experience, and men very generally accord a superior place to certain of their impulses and emotions. The popular distinction between feeling and thought stands i68 The Philosophy of the Spirit for a real distinction in human experience. But the question is whether the distinction has been intelli- gently made and whether the theories founded upon it will bear the test of careful examination. For it is plainly one thing to have an emotion which is judged to be true or authoritative and another to develop the implications of that judgment. If there be no one power for the direct apprehension of the Spirit, all sides of our nature may be said to possess an immediacy, from our passions to our noblest virtues, from our most sensuous feelings to our most exalted thoughts ; nay, must have an immediate relation with God if all life be a manifestation of Spirit, and if that manifestation be said to attain self-consciousness in man. At any rate, there is no sure ground for the admission of our aspirations and the exclusion of our passions. It is no doubt easy to see God' when we aspire, difficult when we are tempted. But psy- chologically it is not a matter of aspiration or of temptation, but of immediacy of experience and its description. The passion is as directly present as the aspiration. The mere immediacy of the experi- ence tells us very little. If one man sees the power of an evil spirit in his passion, while another declares that it manifests the love of God, the difference is in the interpretation, not in the immediacy of the temp- tation. The belief in an uninterpreted immediacy has as little foundation as the notion that there is in man a special spiritual "faculty." These conclusions do not, one insists, take from the value assigned to certain of our experiences esteemed because of their fruits, any more than they deprive meditation or prayer of its worth. But they show us that the value is assigned, is attributed, and not The Immediacy of the Spirit 169 original, hence that more depends upon our principles of interpretation than we suspected. This does not imply that all experiences are when given qualitatively alike, but that even the quality as we know it has undergone mediation. There is as good reason as ever to seek distinct experiences, such as those of prayer and solitude, but precisely because one's principles of interpretation are highly selective. It will be all the more clear that the immediacy of the uplifting experience is contributed to by whatever has gone before of a similar nature. The distinction between the immediacy and the interpretation of an experience comes plainly into view in cases where people of varied types have what appears to be the same sort of religious experience but where the experience is variously described. One man, for example, will tell you what he "saw" and insist that he literally saw it; another what he " felt, " without reference to mental imagery; while a third will give a straightforward rationalistic account, devoid of symbols and with no reference to visions or feelings. To the one who received the experience in the form of a vision, the wondrous pictures he beheld may appear to be every whit as real as the truths they symbolise, yet for the emotionalist these pictures might have no significance. The one whose emotions reached the point where he seemed to be identical with God may have been no more deeply moved in a significant sense than the calm rationalist who avoids all pan- theistic terminology. To allege that one "felt" the presence of exalted beings, as if one touched the hems of their garments, may appear to imply a more correct portrayal of the experience. Yet there will always be those who contend that more careful interpretation 1 70 The Philosophy of the Spirit of the experience is demanded, that the particular elements may be separated from the universal. An endless number of interpretations of religious experience may be found in the history of thought. If we contrast the primitive accounts with those of the intelligent seers of a later time, we have no hesitation in judging in favour of monotheism as compared with polytheism. The difficulty begins in earnest when we find equally gifted people indulging in rival inter- pretations on good grounds. To one a religious ex- perience will come in what he takes to be the form of exalted souls who have a great message to communicate through him to the world. Another will insist that the living Christ came to him, that he saw the face of the man of peace and heard his gentle utterance. But a third will contend that God spoke to him directly. Neither one will perhaps be aware that he is inter- preting his vision or experience, but all will insist that the experience was the coming of exalted souls, was the real Jesus, was the living God. It is not for us who hear these diverse accounts to disparage the experience, or even the interpretations of it, but to point out that besides having a superior origin it was also the expression of the man who had the experience. The interpretation put upon the experience serves its purpose for the man who is in that stage of thought. It is a significant fact that man's early accounts of his religious experience are apt to be in terms of emotions, while as he advances from primitive life into civilisation, from childhood to manhood, his account becomes more and more intellectual. Thus we find people insisting that they "felt" the divine presence as they might speak of tactual or visual sen- sations, while others regard this as so crude an account The Immediacy of the Spirit 171 of religious experience that it repels them. Hence some critics hold that mysticism is a reversion to the sensuous plane. It would indeed seem inappropriate to say that one "senses" the divine presence, "feels" the Spirit, or the environing presence of God's kingdom, as if one could actually touch the divine Personality, "sense" the proximity of heaven. If one can find no more fitting terminology than this it would be better to employ a merely general term, such as "experience," and say nothing further. Strictly speaking, what is perceived is an experience too wealthy to be described as one might describe a sensation of warmth or colour. Although sensibility is undoubtedly a part of the ex- perience, there is much more in it than a mere sense- uplift or feeling. If we must be literal and exact, let us first be faithful to the ideal meaning, the poetic or religious value. The element of sensibility is little likely to be a significant part of the experience. The mere sentiency of the experience is by no means suf- ficient to differentiate it, or show that the experience is of particular value. This is not to exclude the Spirit from human sensi- bility, for, as we already have seen, man may so interpret even his basest sensation as to find the presence of God therein. But in any event it is the interpretation that gives the experience its value. So far as the mere sensation is concerned, every man in the wide universe might experience its like and see nothing in it. It is the consciousness with which we enter into experience, or what it suggests to us, that makes experience significant. The moment our interest is transferred from mere sentiency to the value accredited to it, we depart from the point of view of immediacy 172 The Philosophy of the Spirit to that of interpretation. If one is to depart from mere sentiency in any sense of the word, it would seem reasonable to undertake as complete an interpretation as possible. Probably every believer in the spiritual life would devote his interest to the interpretation were it not that custom has placed undue emphasis upon the mere experience. What the immediacy of the Spirit is from the God- ward side only the Spirit knows. On this side we may well leave the field absolutely open, without dogmatism and without any attempt at speculative description. What channels of communication the Spirit has with the sons of Spirit we do not know. Judging by the accounts which seers and prophets have given of their visions, or the revelations which were made through them, we may conclude that in the first instance there is an ineffable union between God and the soul, an ineffable nearness which may only be appreciatively interpreted, since the expenence is incommunicable. What the experience is said to be, other than this mere immediate union, is a matter of interpretation in which all men may take part. The ineffable union is private, particular; the interpretation is an affair of judgment, hence is capable of logical examination. The most general statement that can be made at the outset is that the ineffable union is for all a matter of immediacy, therefore in itself merely a universal form. The content which the form is said to hold is dependent upon the individual theorist. That is to say, the interpretation put upon the experience, whether swift and relatively unconscious, hence made without awareness that one is judging, or slow and careful, depends upon the theological The Immediacy of the Spirit 173 or other principles which the recipient happens to hold. The mind so readily, instantly, and insensibly judges, interprets, that almost invariably what a man says he " feels," "sees," or experiences, is what he takes the experience immediately to be, apart from all in- terpretations. If man were wholly naif, responsive, a mere impressionist, we might have a fairly good account of the direct experience. That this is never the case is obvious to all who make comparison of the varied descriptions which seers of different types have offered. The ineffable* union may seem to imply a direct relationship with a higher order of being, may be accompanied by an awareness of superior power, may be interpreted in a wholly personal way or appear to bear no reference to persons. Hence some would characterise their upliftment as "cosmic emotion," or the attainment of "cosmic consciousness," while others would regard this as an entirely vague account of the experience and interpret it in personal terms. Some claim that God spoke to them as a man might speak, that God "came" and bestowed His grace upon them. But others insist that it was because they attained a higher level that the union came, not that the great God of this vast universe actually spoke or came. The elements common to all these interpre- tations seem to be an uplifting emotion coupled with a sense of enlargement or freedom. In other words, the mind is lifted from the mundane level, above the thought of self, to a superior level of consciousness, and this marked expansion of consciousness carries with it a certain sense of blessedness, hence a sentiment of freedom. One insists upon these bare universal 1 74 The Philosophy of the Spirit elements in order to be loyal to all types of interpre- tation. To speak of the visions which in some cases accompany the upliftment would be to depart from the universal characteristics, for some do not behold the visions, and probably no two people have identical visions. To state what one "feels" other than the state of blessedness or cosmic upliftment, would also be to depart from the universal. Some would say that they "feel" nothing but have insights, catch illumi- nating clues. The only universal manner of relating the upliftment with the idea of the Spirit would appear to be this, that the Spirit is manifested to man in various forms, both through persons and through emotions or insights. For one has no right to restrict the presence of God to one form of manifestation. At best it would appear to be a question, not of the pure light of the Spirit, but of such light as our eyes can bear. At best the Father's love and wisdom are mediated to us. To some that love and wisdom would have no meaning apart from the thought of Christ. To others those qualities would be regarded as appre- hensible in the form of specific guidances. To a few the presence of God would never be regarded as an object of experience, but always as an object of thought. That is, God would be figuratively spoken of as " pres- ent" because one had accepted an idealistic argument for His existence. In this way the philosophic thinker, engaged in developing a system, is as truly aware of the presence of God as the most devoted mystic. Indeed it may be said that for him the presence of God is far nearer. One of the most significant considerations for our purposes is the conclusion that there is no separation The Immediacy of the Spirit 175 between the natural and the spiritual, no wall between, no abrupt change. There may not be a " blending" of soul with Spirit. It may be inappropriate to say " I became one with the universe, " " I became one with God. " But at least there is a nextness of the natural and the spiritual, and the Spirit is the bond of union. If there be no passing of power between, there is surely response on the human side. One at least ascends the heights sufficiently far to look over into another region, the land of eternal life, of limitless love and wisdom. To apprehend, to behold, is to receive a new impetus. It is the subsequent experience that shows the value of the insight for practical life. Another important result of our inquiry is that we place the authority with the rational or interpretative element, rather than with the merely sentient or particular. To discard the hypothesis of the ex- istence of a specially authoritative faculty, such as a "spiritual sense" or conscience regarded as a "voice," is not then to reject either the reality or the impera- tiveness of moral and spiritual truth. If there were only the special spiritual experience or the particular "voice," there could be no authority at all, but only the endless conflict of utterances made in the hollow name of conscience. The voice is always particular, it is through reflection that the universal element is discovered. If God be present to our entire nature, spiritual reality as we know it is a co-operative product, partly sentient, partly intellectual. From this point of view the greater emphasis is put rather upon interpreted and verified experience than upon experience in its first form. The first or immediate experience is given 176 The Philosophy of the Spirit back enriched by the thought which has discerned in it that which is universally significant. At the mo- ment of experience one is not thinking of the principle of union, the basis of obligation. Thus to reflect would be to alter the experience. But what was experienced cannot be told in terms of mere experience. It is philosophic after-thought which shows that there must have been unwonted communion of the soul with God. Hence we plead, not for mere experience, but for the collection and interpretation of all experiences which make for belief in the presence of God. We question no authority. We doubt no reality. But we would clear away the illusions that beset all special claims for the merely immediate, or the mere faculty. It is primarily a question of our ability to read the evidence. The evidence is for all. The presence of God is in some sense existent for all. But the clue is often missing. There are religious people without number who profess to believe that God is in every- thing but who show neither by their conduct nor by their thought that they really believe it. There are people who claim to experience the presence and who manifest it in their conduct who have not made even the beginning of a philosophy of Spirit. It is difficult to find any description comprehensive enough to include all the types of evidence. Plainly, our clues must be now empirical, now rational, while both ex- perience and thought must be tested by further thought and experience. The largest reservation must be made in favour of the Spirit which " bloweth where it listeth." Into one's thought, as well as into one's experience, the Spirit is likely to enter, adding an The Immediacy of the Spirit 177 element which was missed in the most careful in- vestigation, transforming scepticism into conviction and uniting apparently paradoxical fragments into a harmonious whole. For it is not a question of our own consciousness but of that which our consciousness reveals, not a mere affair of faculties but of that which the Highest achieves through them. za CHAPTER VIII THE VALUE OF INTUITION IN the preceding discussion, we concluded that the question of the experience of the presence of God does not turn upon the existence of a supposed faculty but centres about the distinction between immediate experience and its interpretation. This distinction between immediacy and mediation appeared at first to be a verbal subtlety, but presently began to prove extremely fruitful. One can hardly draw the dis- tinction without bringing the question of the immediacy of the Spirit down from the miraculous to the level of intelligible human experience. The supposably exclusive gift of the mystic or prophet thus becomes at least the possible possession of all mankind, with the balance in favour of a common-sense principle of rational interpretation. As our investigation pro- ceeds we shall find increasing evidence in favour of such a principle. But the conclusion above indicated cannot be es- tablished without sharply encountering various popular beliefs. For example, our results strike at the root of long-cherished convictions in regard to intuition, a term which is ordinarily used as vaguely as the term conscience, and with an implication of direct authority or infallibility. Our best course will be to investigate the nature of intuition in general, that we may clear away the popular misconceptions. We first note, however, that to call these popular 178 The Value of Intuition 179 beliefs in question is very far from denying the reality for which the term intuition was meant to stand. We have already stated that the immediacy or intuitive experience of the religious life is the reality without which there would be no religious beliefs. There is no reason to question the genuineness of the intuitive experience as such. The problem is, how to state the value of such experience without attributing too much to the mere unscrutinised intuition. The term is ambiguous, and is now employed as if with reference to a special faculty and now with reference to the products of that faculty. In what sense shall the term be understood? It is commonly supposed that intuition tells us directly or infallibly what is true or right, as if truth and reality sprang from a high source straight into the mind without mediation of any sort. As thus em- ployed, the term implies both the existence of a perfect "faculty" and the deliverance of infallible utterances. The hypothesis that there is a distinct faculty au- thoritative in itself, we have already examined and rejected. If intuition be in any sense a faculty, its activity implies a certain relatedness of the mind to its objects, whether or not there be any consciousness of the mediating conditions. It would be more reasonable to contend that the mind has in general an~ intuitive aspect, namely, the immediacy of any ex- perience, sentiency, volition, feeling, or thought. But we have seen that the mind's immediacy conveys very little information save that of mere existence. It must be then that the value of intuition belongs rather to the immediate products of the mind. The assumption of the infallibility of intuitive utterances implies the absolute distinction of truth from error, 180 The Philosophy of the Spirit and this assumption is not confirmed by what we know about truth and error. The difficulty here is that by an unwitting judgment authority has been accredited to intuition which belongs in part elsewhere for example, to the Spirit. It is perhaps admitted that human powers are imperfect, but the admission is forgotten and an utterance is revered as if it had not been mediated through a human personality. Pronouncements have, for example, been accepted as unqualifiedly true, as constituting the right, the moral law; while the code or creed of another religion has been spurned as wholly false. But the assumption that no human factors vitiated the alleged authori- tative utterances, while the others were nothing if not human, is totally unwarranted. The examination of sacred texts, as well as the study of human knowledge generally, shows that there are degrees of truth and error in all documents, even those once supposed to be verbally inspired, hence that no absolute line can be drawn. It is a question, not of the unimpeachable authority of an intuitive utterance, but of the utter- ances which most successfully bear the test of criticism and the application to life. "By their fruits ye shall know them." Once discover that the authority springs from the principle of interpretation and the gain is very great. For, instead of uncritically falling back upon the merely verbal form of the pronounce- ment, its devotees will begin to examine and improve the principle of interpretation. It will then be found that genuine intuition is that which can withstand criticism. Another misconception is due to the assumed identity between intuition and the higher sensibilities, more vaguely, " feeling." The difficulty here is that The Value of Intuition 181 the nature of truth is not understood. Here is a man, for example, who professes great love for truth. Truth is for him not an affair of discursive thinking, of corre- spondence between idea and reality, but an object of "sight" or "sense." Consequently, when a doctrine appeals to his "sense for truth," he accepts it as true, declares it true merely because it "appeals" to him, because he " feels " it to be true. On the same grounds he rejects teachings which do not appeal to him. The immediacy of his "sense" for truth is to him the only test. There are many people who can give no better account of what they believe than this. Their attitude is similar to that of people who dogmatically accept the theories of a teacher whose personality is emo- tionally persuasive. If we can give no reason for our confidence other than to allege that the teacher or doctrine is "appealing," the chances are that our confidence is bestowed at random. It would surely be unfair to attribute either the " sense for truth" or the " truth- feeling " to intuition. The subtle misconception involved is this: When the new doctrine is presented and forthwith accepted be- cause one "feels" it to be true, there is nothing in the mind to offer resistance. That type of doctrine has not been met before and one is unable for the moment to relate it to other teachings. The hidden assumption is this : inasmuch as one is ardently in quest for truth one cannot be misled ; one has long been a truth-seeker and by this time the love for truth is so deeply rooted that truth must be recognised when presented; this doctrine appeals to the deep-seated love, therefore it is true. Another assumption is that truth is so easily won that by mere "feeling" one can dis- tinguish it from error. It escapes notice that truths 182 The Philosophy of the Spirit accepted on the basis of " feeling" are enormously in- consistent. When this same doctrine is presented to a man who has acutely investigated the field in question, one who knows the facts and is able to make valid inferences, the alleged truth does not make its appeal in any direct sense of the word. This man has no "feeling" either for or against it, for he knows that emotions are as illusory as the persuasiveness of a magnetic personality. He is able either to argue in its favour or to raise objections against it. Or perhaps he merely takes the doctrine under advisement, well knowing that no doctrine is acceptable until it meet the tests of controversy and of time. Truth becomes such when it is separated not only from prejudice but from all other personal or emotional factors and is based on universal grounds. The truth-seeker who supposes he cannot be misled knows not the way of truth. The emotion which seemingly guarantees the truth of a doctrine very likely springs from a certain harmony of temperament between theorist and believer. Or, more vaguely, it is accepted because there is the proper proportion of ignorance and this ignorance fulfils itself in the new teaching. Again, we may have had such acquaintance with a person as to know him to be thoroughly sincere and because we have found him genuine we are inclined to believe whatever he says and accept his teachings as true. That is, merely because we "like" a person, because he chances to be a friend, tried and tested, we hold that integrity of character means soundness of intellect; and all this on the authority of "intuition." If, afterwards, we find this person's teachings unsound we are apt to disparage intuition. But it is. not in- The Value of Intuition 183 tuition, it is unsound inferences that have led to this result. Hence intuition may once more be dismissed as guiltless. One should be able to distinguish between persons and truths. A truth may well be promulgated by a person whom we love, and we may be eager to believe, even willing to believe, whatever the loved one accepts. But it is not the emotion felt in the other's presence that makes the doctrine true. All truth is true in its own right. One might well accept a teacher or love a friend yet utterly reject his teaching. A teacher is acceptable on one basis, a friend on another, truth on a third. On the other hand, it is doubtless a fact that purity of character and love for truth go together. Once test each separately and you may well be pre- pared to follow the lead of a teacher who has proved to be genuine both in character and as a lover of truth. Sometimes it happens that a greatly revered person whose intuitions we accepted as practically infallible becomes chronically ill, so that the once clear vision is steadily clouded. The shock is no doubt great at first, and one may momentarily reject all intuition as spurious. But, once more, it is not intuition that is at fault. The same mind that is on occasion illumined is also conditioned by physiological processes. Any person who ordinarily discerns with unusual keenness may on occasion be subject to nervous or other patho- logical conditions which impede the organism for the time being. On the other hand, some people are gifted with unprecedented discernment when ex- ceedingly ill or when the body is weakest. Sometimes personal desire works its way in so subtly that in the given case desire takes the place of intuition, although the integrity of intuition is still unquestionable. The 1 84 The Philosophy of the Spirit fact that desire leads astray proves nothing against intuition, but merely shows that one must learn by experience to distinguish between desire and intuition. The fact that a person possesses clear insight in one direction does not guarantee unequivocal discernment in any other direction. An intuitive person is as likely to be a specialist as any other. One grows more sceptical, as the years pass, of people of an intuitive type who are also impulsive or managerial in tempera- ment. The personal equation here plays much mis- chief, and should be sharply separated from intuition. The fact that a person is strongly intuitive may imply a temperament that is overbearing, one for which con- stant allowance must be made. It is no doubt dis- tressing to pass through a period of doubt with regard to intuition a doubt which later proves to be scepti- cism with respect to persons or in regard to physiological conditions but one can hardly hope to discern the truth without such doubt. Intuitively inclined per- sons are sometimes the most readily misled that is, in fields where they are uninformed, or because the habit of trusting intuition has bred a certain credulity. As we have already seen, there is no miraculous faculty within us which works upon demand to tell us positively what is right or true, and thereby spare us the lessons of experience. Our intuitions do not come to order, for exhibition purposes. Failure to obtain an intuition when desired should not be attributed to intuition as such. If people who once depended almost solely upon intuition become so sceptical that they do not trust it, the probability is that they have mistaken intuition for somewhat else. What is all this but a confession that intuition is given amidst conditions, The Value of Intuition 185 that one must distinguish between conditions and insights ? The same conclusions hold in regard to what appear to be intuitive precepts of various types, words of counsel which are put forth as guides to moral or other conduct. The fact that such clues to action are accepted may simply mean that the one who accepts them is unable to weigh the case pro and con. For example, take the advice sometimes given in love affairs. It is said to young people who have had various affairs and who are in doubt about true love: " When the feeling is irresistible you may know that it is a case of true love.'* In other words, the mere fact of sentient immediacy is said to be wholly authoritative. Against this view it might be urged that the irresistible impulse indicated that the person in question was being swept forward by a violent amour. Hence some have said : " When you find yourself falling in love, go far away that you may return to yourself." Plainly, an impulse is not necessarily an intuition. Yet further, the term intuition is frequently em- ployed when impression or emotion is meant, and without first distinguishing impression from guidance. An "impression" may be a mere sense-impression, or the prompting of instinct. It may be taken to imply the existence of higher types of intelligence, hence to convey warnings of danger for which no reason can be assigned. In any case it is appreciable in accordance with judgments regarding its origin and its fruits. If I am willing to act on an impression in regard to a danger that threatens me, the probability is that I have a general belief in divine or other " guid- ance. " The question of guidance will concern us in another chapter. An impression is in general a mere 1 86 The Philosophy of the Spirit leading, or clue, a hint which may or may not be followed, according to the character assigned to it. An impression is decidedly empirical. But an intuition is commonly regarded as cognitive, as conveying ideas or truths independently of reasoning processes and of greater value than mere experiences or clues. If it be a first "impression" of human character, the mere impression is only an immediate clue which may or may not be verified when one has had sufficient acquaintance with the person to form a sound judg- ment. One may be drawn to or repelled by a man on first meeting him. If so, the meaning of this im- pression will doubtless appear in due course and may be supplemented by intuition. An impression re- garding character is simply an experience demanding interpretation. The mere "feeling" fails to tell the whole story. Whether or not the impression be in itself a guide depends upon the degree of self- knowledge one possesses and the degree of acquaintance with the world. The absence of negative impressions may imply credulity, lack of knowledge of human nature. It may mean that the other's mind is positive in re- spects in which the recipient's is undeveloped or too receptive. The mere feeling of harmony with another may signify much or little. In itself it is but a single item. If impulse be not intuition but far more questionable, how happens it that, with intuitive certainty, some of the noblest deeds are done and some of the best results occur in instances where the recipients acted upon impulse? For example, the person who rushes to save another's life when deliberation might be fatal, or the impulse which springs from love? There is surely much to be said in behalf of such leadings' We have The Value of Intuition 187 not denied the efficacy of impulse. The problem is to recognise the sort of impulse that is worth acting upon. We have learned by observation and ex- perience that some promptings are worth acting upon. We also know from experience that some impulses are our undoing. It is impossible to accept all impulses as eligible. Moreover, as we have seen above, mere ex- pression counts for very little; it is a question of fitness, appropriateness. An impulse is good in its place, and if .not carried to excess. An impulse to rush to an- other's rescue may lead to good results if it spring from a well-ordered life. It is of small value if it spring from "a creature of impulse." It is plain that we judge impulses according to their ground, the way in which they are mediated, by their fruits. As such, they are merely empirical, immediate; as acted upon, they are already partly intellectual. Even when there is not a moment to spare we swiftly weigh alternatives and reach a decision. The sweeping judgment of the driver of a fire engine who decides between running into and killing several people and making straight for the plate-glass window through which he and his horses dash to death, as he skilfully avoids an approaching carriage and steers his machine to the side-walk, shows how mediation and immediacy play their mutual parts. The fact that we do not weigh all the pros and cons does not prove that we do not judge. The mere immediacy of the impulse is not sufficient to account for all the good that follows. We sometimes conclude not to follow the strong im- pulse to risk our lives. We follow selected impulses without conscious deliberation because we have so learned their value by carefully interpreted experience that they have become matters of habit. Such im- 1 88 The Philosophy of the Spirit pulses speak to us with an authority which no mere reference to the given prompting could explain. They have become intuitions in the best sense of the word. The fact that impulses, impressions, and the like are productive of good results when given in a desirable context is simply one of many facts of our common human experience. Cool deliberation has its place, guessing another. Over immense departments of our thought [says Pro- fessor James *] we are still, all of us, in the savage state. Similarity operates in us, but abstraction has not taken place. We know what the present case is like, we know what it reminds us of, we have an intuition of the right course to take, if it be a practical matter. But analytic thought has made no tracks and we cannot justify ourselves to others. . . . The well-known story of the old judge advising the new one never to give reasons for his decisions "the decisions will probably be right, the reasons will surely be wrong" illustrates this. The doctor will feel that the patient is doomed, the dentist will have a pre- monition that the tooth will break, though neither can articulate a reason for his foreboding. The reason lies embedded, but not yet laid bare, in all the countless previous cases dimly suggested by the actual one, all calling up the same conclusion, which the adept thus finds himself swept on to, he knows not how or why. If the discovery that misconceptions cluster about what is popularly but often erroneously taken to be intuition gives rise to temporary scepticism, it is only that one may pass forward to newly grounded belief in the intuition which is produced under favorable conditions. All experiences are profitable in the more or less devious pathway that leads to truth. The one Psychology, ii., 365. The Value of Intuition 189 who accepts intuition because of its assumed alliance with emotion possesses a meagre principle of interpre- tation, that is the difficulty. An emotion is an ex- perience of a certain type, intelligible with reference to other experiences of its class. So are many ac- tivities of a spiritistic type, those that imply medium- ship or "uncanny" psychic power that is, power on a lower level than that of intuition. When people insist that they " feel" this or that to be true they are still dwelling in the haze where nothing in particular is as yet either true or real. What, then, is intuition? Briefly speaking, it is an immediacy or first gift of experience containing implicit reality or truth and requiring to be made ex- plicit before either the reality or the truth is intelligible. It is not the mere immediacy that is significant but the content which is afterwards made explicit. That is to say, the important point is not that I directly " felt" a thing to be real, or a doctrine to be true, but that through my feeling, or whatever the personal reaction, I acquired that which has meaning for my life. I accept the intuitive utterance because of its inherent worth when put with other utterances, when attributed to a high source, or because of its con- formability to an accepted principle of interpretation. It is not authoritative alone but because of judgments with respect to origin or workability. As such it stands out in a clear light of conviction differing from that of conscious argument. If I believe, for example, that I possess what the Germans call an " intellectual intuition of God," the significant fact is that this in- tuition implies an immediate relation of my soul with God, as opposed to an argument for the existence of God founded, not on direct experience, but on merely i go The Philosophy of the Spirit logical considerations. The argument for the being of God is founded on previous arguments, and that on preceding data, and so on; whereas the intuition is supposed to require nothing prior save God's im- mediate existence. That is, one passes immediately from experience to conviction. The experience is taken to be directly cognitive. Or, again, it is so far unconscious that the percipient thinks only of the utterance accepted as divine and not at all of the channels of communication. Although intuition is supposed to imply this direct cognition, one may well challenge its devotees to point to a single instance in which no interpretation has been read into the intuition. The more strenuously a man insists that his intuition is absolute, the less con- scious he is likely to be of the implied judgments. To become aware of the judgments is not to disparage intuition but to put it on a more secure foundation. In ethical philosophy the term intuition is some- times employed to signify the direct apprehension, apart from all moral experience, of moral qualities and principles of action. The same usage appears with respect to religious intuition. But inasmuch as in- tuitive theories of the moral and religious life are primarily interpretations of experience, it would seem more reasonable to connect the intuitions directly with the experiences in question that is, to regard intuition empirically. Carefully denned, intuition means both the immediate or direct apprehension, perception, judgment, cognition, and the results of such processes. Hence the basic idea is that of im- mediacy. 1 On the question of immediacy we shall presently have more to say. ' Cp. Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy, i., 568. The Value of Intuition 191 As we advance in experience and knowledge we do not necessarily depend any less upon intuition, but our intuitions are of a higher type and we assign better reasons for them. With most of us they become more intellectual, are more carefully discriminated from emotion, prejudice, and the personal equations which were once well-nigh indistinguishable. The man who is naturally very intuitive that is, receptive, susceptible no doubt possesses a gift, a spontaneity, that is worth preserving at all costs. But the preser- vation of it means that it is more steadily directed to the highest sources. The same receptivity which once involved us in the most unpleasant experiences of life may become the channel of the noblest gifts when we have learned more about the illusions of emotion, and more about our fellow-men. It is still worth while to yield ourselves completely to an ex- perience or insight, provided we judge the source to be the highest which human experience affords. To tamper with spiritual intuition in process, to examine our gifts as they come, is indeed to close the door to that which is noblest. The rule is, first receive your gift, give willing ear to the Spirit, interpose no ob- stacle. But do not hesitate to learn what you may from critical study of the results and the endeavour to overcome the imperfections of your own instrument. It is the type of life and thought that avails. There are people whose first impressions are almost uniformly correct, whose intuitions are well-nigh infallible, and we readily follow their lead. But such acceptance springs from careful discrimination. We accept the lead of such people because of the purity and con- secration of the life through which the intuitions are mediated. We are still suspicious of the majority of 192 The Philosophy of the Spirit teachings which are said to be intuitional. We are especially suspicious if urgent claims are made in their behalf. For instance, there are writers who, uneducated in the broader intellectual sense, set forth what they claim to be a series of intuitively discerned truths in contrast with and to the disparagement of "intellec- tual truth. " Hence intuition is exalted above intellect as a superior guide to truth and reality. It is pointed out that the intellect is cold, makes claims in behalf of itself, is proud, paradoxical. Again, it is said, and said truly, that one can establish any conclusion one will by argument. The devotee of this type of in- tuition makes equally proud claims, but he is not now thinking of them. He, too, delights in paradoxes, but never mind those. He forcefully contends for his own position, but that position is forsooth "in- tuitive." In short, he, too, is "intellectual," but incompletely so. He is ignorant of the fact that he is merely offering a rival theory of the human intellect, supported by a faulty theory of intuition. Deprive him of his special "intuitions" and his occupation would be gone. The truth is that intuition as this man uses the term signifies insight. Now, insight is apt to come before explicit reason and is often superior in value. All our profitable theories grow out of initial insights. Hence an insight is a gift to be cherished and to be faithfully reported. But, in the first place, an insight is a culmination of experience and thought, of numer- ous inferences; and, in the second place, its develop- ment in the form of a doctrine is necessarily intellectual. For that is precisely what the intellect is the process of reproducing and making explicit that which intuition The Value of Intuition 193 and other immediacies have given. The intellect does not claim to be first, cannot create, but must take its data from experience. An insight, then, is like any experience, compacted with meaning and waiting to be developed. There is no reason to set up claims in behalf of either intuition or intellect, for their functions are different and neither is independent. There is no intuition devoid of intellect, and intellect is never divorced from intuition. All the special claims run back to the ill-founded notion that there is a separate faculty of intuition sundered from the intellect. No doubt those who make these claims would be astonished were they to learn how slight is the intuitive element in the insights which they set over against the teachings of those who are conde- scendingly called " intellectual. " No doubt there are methods of thought and work which may properly be denominated intuitive, and this is partly what the devotees of intuition mean by their criticisms. Some men, the intellectualists, ar- rive at their conclusions through successive inductions, just as some men write an essay or a book by consciously developing every detail of a carefully chosen argument. There are others who suddenly arrive at conclusions, or produce an essay which second thought can scarcely improve. The one supplements the other admirably. For the devotee of intuition probably sees too much in his data, while the careful reasoner overlooks some- thing. Both are reasoners, but in a different way. To jump to a conclusion is often to attain a better one than conscious reason could produce, but it is ra- tionalised experience which confirms it. "Seeing is believing," and our rational expectations are con- stantly upset by the entrance of new factors which 194 The Philosophy of the Spirit we did not foresee, or which we argued against as impossible. But this simply means that experience comes first and reason is helpless before it. But granted the new element, it is reason which relates it to the elements already classified. The controversy between intuition and intellect, faith and reason, is one of the great conflicts of the spiritual life, and every devotee of the philosophy of the Spirit must pass through it. But there need be no conflict. It is a question of order of function, and a few principles in regard to the human mind afford the central clue, some of which we came in sight of when we distinguished between immediacy and medi- ation. Other principles will appear when we consider the sphere of faith. To cleave to what we uncritically denominate in- tuition and pursue the spiritual life by crucifying the intellect is in part to deny the Spirit. Spirit is reason as well as love. If love is the motive, reason is the law. If we are unable to decide which is fundamental within us, love or reason, it may be because the whole question is as futile as that of the supremacy of man or woman. Man sometimes leads, and sometimes it is woman. Each typifies a principle which we judge to be divine. The masculine is not less eternal than the eternal feminine. The divine nature is dual and all life is dual too. To possess the Spirit is to apprehend their union. It is the witness of the Spirit, then, that is our guide and ultimate test. This witness is a co-operative product, springing from the interaction of the self and its varied experiences or powers. Its evidence in regard to ^he presence of the Spirit is not the evidence of one side of our nature alone, but is at least three- The Value of Intuition 195 fold in character. It partakes both of the immediacy of experience, whatever the type of experience, and the process of reflection or intellection, which in turn is expressive of foregoing experiences and thoughts. A spiritual experience, however exalted, is neither real nor true until confirmed by further experience, and confirmation is necessarily intellectual. An- in- tuition, however noble, is given as an item to be put with other items; it acquires significance when put, as it were, in a fitting environment. If intuition somehow brings us nearer reality it is only by stand- ing off that we detect the reality of that which was just now so near. The witness of the Spirit is, in fine, a conviction that gradually develops within our inmost selfhood. We did not consciously draw the inferences which led to it. We are unaware of the pre- mises from which we started. But insensibly the mind gathered its data, selected the evidence, and un- wittingly arrived at its conclusions. The product therefore seems like the gift of one side of our nature when, as matter of fact, all that we wrought and suffered has entered in. Without disparaging either intuition or the spon- taneity whence it springs, we have been gradually led in our investigation to adopt the intellectualists' account of intuition. Knowledge of human nature compels us to reject the popular view as not reared on facts. Intuition, either as an activity or as a product, is one of many phases of mental life in which whatever life contains is likely to participate. Its authority is the authority given it by the principle of interpreta- tion in question. To reject the view that its authority is unique is to arrive at the profoundly suggestive conclusion that our total nature in some 196 The Philosophy of the Spirit measure possesses the value formerly bestowed upon intuition. What bearings these conclusions have on the con- ception of reality implied in these discussions will begin to appear later when we consider the nature of mystic experience. The conclusion which most di- rectly relates to the subject in hand is this, that while it is immediate experience which gives us the first data of spiritual thought, and hence the reality of intuition is not to be denied, the value of intuition is found in its use, the authority is mediate, and it is reason which shows what is true. This conclusion does not make against the value of immediate experience. It takes account of the judgments and inferences based on it, and the principles in accordance with which it is in- terpreted, together with the illusions involved. The great consideration is that, despite the allow- ances which must be made for the illusions of " feeling" and the misconceptions of intuitionism, devotees of the Spirit are still able to believe that the soul is in immediate relation with a higher order of being, a real spiritual world. Experience may in fact be said to bring us into such direct relation that our descriptions are utterly inadequate. The accounts which devo- tees of intuition give of immediate spiritual experience are often misleading, as compared with the descriptions of those who have put intuition through the critical test. That is to say, all accounts of direct experience are so far matters of interpretation that we might well interpret in earnest, when we have taken due account of the factors involved. A merely " intuitive" statement, in the popular sense of the word, is worth extremely little. But the larger the variety of in- tuitive utterances the better prepared we are to arrive The Value of Intuition 197 at their common truth. What is needed, therefore, is not so much "intuition" as insight, discernment, ability to see to the end, analyse to the foundation; and insight is less a "gift" than many imagine. To have intuition is not necessarily to possess wisdom. Insight implies wisdom, cannot be had without ex- perience. Intuition does not exist by itself. Akin to that which is immediate, first, original in the self, in con- trast with that which comes by reflection, intuition is intelligible only in the light of all other immediacies. When produced most spontaneously it no doubt Qarries with it a sense of authority which tends to overthrow doubt. At its best it strikes at the heart of things, reveals inner causes, discerns character, is prophetic, synthetic. But on its lower levels it arises amidst emotions and personal equations for which abundant allowance must be made. It is so true at its best that reason is taxed to the utmost, when it undertakes to make its content explicit. It is so fallible on its lower levels that only by sceptically testing it can one discern any authority in it at all. The question, How far is intuition a guide? we may well leave unanswered for the moment, except so far as the foregoing analysis already answers it by showing that it is a matter of progress from uncritical accept- ance to rational reconstruction. For our first task was to clear away some of the misconceptions for which intuition itself is not responsible. Under the head of "guidance" we shall return to the subject of intuition, practically considered. For the moment we chronicle the fact that intuition is susceptible, readily tinged with emotion. The fault lies rather with the emotion and the judgments that are based ig8 The Philosophy of the Spirit upon it. Without the accompanying emotion and the illusory spells it casts, intuition might reveal pure truth, might proceed in its development and become illumined reason. Since it is chiefly emotion for which allowances must be made, it behooves us to investigate the emotions, before we undertake to follow the clues which intuition reveals. On the whole intuition has triumphed, and the critical examination to which we have subjected it should make it the safer guide for firm believers in it. For practical purposes it is a guide which approaches infallibility in value. Hence one returns to its immediacies with fresh con- viction, after criticism has done its utmost. For scientific purposes intuition is valuable rather as a culmination than as immediate. From a religious point of view intuition is of more consequence than "feeling," while from the point of view of our special inquiry it may unqualifiedly be said that the presence of God is intuitively made known. CHAPTER IX A STUDY OF THE EMOTIONS THE investigation which we now begin may take us somewhat far afield for the moment, inasmuch as it will be necessary to consider the nature of emotion in general before undertaking to evaluate it for our special purposes. Yet for various reasons such a study is highly important. There are two leading questions which we might ask at the outset, (i) What is the reality or ultimate value of the emotions? (2) Granted that some of the emotions are desirable, how may the higher or eligible emotions be organised in conjunction with other factors of our mental life, and with reference to the emotions, which should be eliminated? Or, we might put the total question thus, Are the emotions essential to human life? If not, how may they be over- come or transmuted? If essential, is it possible to arrange them in a scale of values with a view to moral and spiritual evolution, so that their relative reality and worth may be ascertained? It would be possible, of course, to dissociate -the practical from the scientific question, and simply describe the emotions, without reference to the authority assignable to them, inde- pendently of the problems of control and transmuta- tion. Yet the answer to the scientific question is likely to depend upon one's view of the place which emotions hold in practical life. At any rate, the present inquiry is undertaken for other than merely scientific reasons. 199 I 200 "The Philosophy of the Spirit If there be such experiences as higher or spiritual emo- tions, practical life will be most likely to reveal them. One need not seek far for popular characterisations of the emotions. Thoughtful people as a class are sus- picious of them. To characterise a person as " a bundle of emotions" is to be much less complimentary than to speak of the person in question as " a creature of habits." An emotional person is said to be unstable, " flighty," not to be depended upon. One is disinclined to deal with such a person on matters of importance, lest one elicit emotional responses of an unpleasant character. Hence it becomes part of one's practical wisdom to avoid arousing either the tender or the vio- lent emotions in cases where people are known to be so far victims of them that persuasion will be of no avail. Professor Royce summarises the situation when, speaking of the romantic poets, he asks: But what is emotion? Something changeable and by nature inconsistent. Each 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 be- fore the door even while the triumphant emotion is reign- ing over the heart within. Fulness 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. # such is Novalis, what will be a lesser spirit ? * "All enthusiasm as such," writes Gomperz, 2 "tends 1 The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p. 114. 2 Greek Thinkers, ii., 45. A Study of the Emotions 201 rather to obscurity than to clearness of mental vision. The same, indeed, is the effect of emotion in general. Every emotion attracts those ideas and images which nourish it, and repels those which do not. To perceive and judge of facts with an open unbiassed mind is im- possible except where impartiality that is, freedom from emotion has first paved the way." It is now a commonplace of science that a man must set aside all emotional bias in order to discover the truth. In the religious world, too, emotionalism is to a considerable extent out of date, and the emotional revival is re- garded with suspicion. That emotion belongs rather in the childhood of the race than in its maturity is so plain that it hardly seems necessary to argue the point. Yet, is the account closed here? Is emotion wholly primitive and without use in civilised life? If so, what of Emerson's saying that "nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm?" What is so high in the scale of human happiness as an emotion of the heart? Why is it that we habitually disparage certain religious people as "cold," and associate our spiritual ideals with those who are emotionally "warm"? If the brute passions, anger, hatred, jealousy, and the like are emotions, so is sympathy, aesthetic enjoyment, religious exaltation. The emotions range from the lowest impulses or instincts within us to the noblest sentiments of which we are morally and spiritually capable. They have the most debased objects as well as the purest and m<3st elevated. They may pertain to an essentially small, mean interest, or be related in thought to the total universe, as in the case of what men of science call "cosmic emotion." It seems impossible to generalise or to classify all the 202 The Philosophy of the Spirit emotions under one head. For emotions are not alone primitive but play a part all along the line. Disparage them if you will, you must take constant account of them in your studies of human nature. It is a question of eligibility and organisation rather than of elimina- tion. Some of the emotions are so far primitive that they can be recovered only through the scientific imagi- nation. Some are obviously so unworthy of us that we quickly banish them, while others annoy us for years despite all efforts to quell them. We despise a mere stoic as heartily as a creature of the emotions. The truth is that man's emotions change as his life changes. Only in evolutionary terms can one give a complete account of them. What we mean to say, when we discard emotion, is that emotion alone is an unsafe guide, for it is essen- tially transitory. But emotions may be exceedingly profitable when followed by philosophic thought or when compared in the light of their results. " Where there is life there is hope," and it is emotion that gives life. The prime difficulty is that emotion as such knows not whither it is moving. It is relatively form- less, insatiable, ever surging forward. But it is also through emotion that we learn what is rampant in us, how much of the animal remains. The long struggle with the duality of self springs out of the contrasts which our emotions reveal. If fear, anger, jealousy, hatred, and the like arise within us only to be unmerci- fully dealt with, we are never able completely to trans- mute the life that is active within them until we can philosophically relate them to the divine love. Fear plays a part in the life of faith. Anger persists far up the spiritual highway under the guise of right- eous indignation. Jealousy stimulates selfishness and A Study of the Emotions 203 teaches a profoundly important lesson. Hatred takes on successively higher objects until at last it becomes condemnation not of persons but of wrong-doing. Sunder all emotion from man and the spiritual life would be sadly maimed. Then, too, by emotion we learn that there is a way up and a way down. If the man who is in earnest works unceasingly to cut off the emotions which draw the mind down into passion, into the flesh, and into self, it is by cultivating the uplifting emotions that he finally conquers. Hence one must sharply discrimi- nate between the upward and the downward types of emotion. We condemn some emotions only to exalt others. Emotions of an impulsive character play less part in our lives as intellectual evolution goes on. But as impulse subsides higher emotions come into promi- nence. For impulsive emotions we can usually assign no desirable objects. The higher emotions we classify as aesthetic, social, moral, religious, or cosmic, accord- ing to the nature of their objects. An emotion, then, is not a state which springs as it were out of the air, full-fledged. It is given amidst an environment, is called out in the presence of some- thing, or accompanies other mental states. Whether it be aroused by a bodily change, such as weeping, or in response to an objective event, the contemplation of the sublime, the presence of an endeared person, it is essentially a response, a resultant. Hence, we should not expect to understand it alone. Nor should we take it as the central clue to what is fundamental in human nature. Mental life is not always emotional. It is possible to have the immediacy of an experience without the supervening emotion. Usually our new experiences 204 The Philosophy of the Spirit begin with emotional accompaniments. But as our understanding grows we know better what to expect of nature, of our fellow-men, and of ourselves, hence the accompanying emotion subsides and the intellectual object remains. Emotions do not of themselves com- bine well. They tend to make us believe that they alone are real and true, then they unceremoniously desert us. Hence we learn to assimilate their lessons and in time to do without them, and pass directly from immediate experience to its interpretation or to the appropriate conduct. Inasmuch as emotions abound in illusions and as most of them are desirable only when regulated, every man finds it necessary to pass through a period when he distrusts them, even love, which he charges with unlimited waywardness. But no man can long main- tain this extreme attitude. The emotions once under- stood, one is able to give free play to some, to be a child again in spontaneous response to their promptings. This means that the intellect also has been assigned its proper sphere. Hence the organisation of the emo- tions is likely to be the result of years of experience in which one was first too emotional, then excessively intellectual, until finally the balance was attained. It is also the result of certain discriminations by which the higher side of our nature is assigned its rightful place under the head of values. Who, for example, that genuinely appreciates love would subject it to the same analysis which he applies to hatred and jealousy ? Love, Swedenborg tells us, is the very "life of man," and before the great miracle of life we stand somewhat in awe. Probably for the majority even of thoughtful people the term emotion has no distinct meaning apart from A Study of the Emotions 205 sensation and the life of feeling, generally. The term "feeling" is often used in the vaguest sense to cover any sort of mental experience of which we are directly aware. But, obviously, there is a difference between experiencing a sensation, for instance of heat or cold, and being disturbed about it. The sensation may be accompanied by a feeling- tone of pleasure or pain, and yet produce no emotional effect within us. Sensations we are bound to have, there is no escape from them. But the way of taking our sense-experiences may de- pend upon ourselves. It would be well, then, to assign the term emotion to its distinctive place, in contrast with sensation, on the one hand, and feelings of pleas- ure or pain on the other. An emotion may then be char- acterised in terms of its cause, the object to which it is directed, or by reference to its bodily expression. In the case of anger, the sensational element in connection with which it arises, and its physical expression, would doubtless be far more prominent than in the case of emotions of finer types. If the emotion be called out by contemplation of the idea of God, the physical ex- pression would very likely be reduced to the minimum. An emotion is almost sure to be accompanied by feel- ings of pleasure or pain. Yet that is no excuse for con- fusing the two. In some instances the emotional life has no meaning apart from the bodily attitude, the organic reaction. Yet here, again, there is reason for careful discrimination. The emotions belong, then, with the primitive, origi- nal side of our nature, under the head of immediate experience, in contrast with mediating thought. To describe an emotion one appeals to actual experience, to those who have been shaken by fear, made wretched by anger, touched by grief, and deepened by sorrow. 206 The Philosophy of the Spirit Hence one must guard against giving a highly intellect- ualised account of the emotions. It is significant that it is not the psychologists who hold the intellectualistic view of human nature who give the best description of the emotions, but those who hold the physiological theory. We must make sure that we understand what an emotion is before we undertake to evaluate it. It will be well, therefore, to examine some of the theories of the emotions with a view to understanding the place of emotion in our mental life. The most natural way to define an emotion is with respect to its object and what is taken to be its accom- panying physical effect, for example, blushing, trem- bling, or weeping. That is, emotion is ordinarily regarded as mentally aroused, and followed by a bodily response. Here, for example, is a typical definition from a philosophical vocabulary once in vogue : An emotion differs from a sensation by its not originating in a state of body. . . . Emotions, like other states of feeling, imply knowledge. Something beautiful or de- formed, sublime or ridiculous, is known and contemplated ; and in the contemplation springs up the appropriate feeling, followed by the characteristic expression of countenance, or attitude, or manner. . . . Emotions, then, are awak- ened through the medium of the intellect, and are varied and modified by the conceptions we form of the objects to which they refer. . . . Emotions, in themselves, and by themselves, lead to quiescence and contemplation, rather than activity. 1 From this point of view, the chief emotions are won- der, grief, and fear; the intellect is deemed fundamental, and the emotions, regarded as chiefly quiescent, con- stitute merely one type of expression of the self. But 1 Krauth-Fleming, Vocabulary of the Philosophical Sciences, p. 156. A Study of the Emotions 207 a fundamental objection to this theory is the fact that it is not the quiescent emotions, not those that spring from ideas, which give people their problems. If emo- tions were simply due to confused intelligence, the resource would be plain, namely, strenuous cultivation of the intellect. In sharp contrast with this intellect- ualistic view, stands the theory that the response which the intellectualists regard as the physical effect or ex- pression of the emotion is the emotion itself. From this, the physiological, point of view, the emotions are by no means secondary to intellectual states, but are of independent origin. This theory involves some strange propositions, but it is perhaps the first gen- uinely scientific theory that has been proposed. For this physiological, or James-Lange, theory we are chiefly indebted to Professor James, who first an- nounced it in an article in 1884, and afterwards made it an integral part of his large work on psychology. The theory as expounded by Professor James is entirely consistent with his account of mental life as a whole and immediately follows his description of instinct, defined in customary terms as "the faculty of acting in such a way as to produce certain ends, without foresight of the ends, and without previous education in the performance." 1 That is, an instinct, apart from self- preservation and other ends which it is supposed to subserve, conforms to the general reflex-action type and is an impulse. That is, the instincts are allied to reflex action below, and to acquired habits and emo- tions above. Sympathy, fear, jealousy, and love, for example, are regarded at first as instincts. Instinctive reactions "shade imperceptibly" into emotional ex- pressions. The mere memory of an experience may 1 Principles of Psychology, ii , p. 383. 208 The Philosophy of the Spirit serve to "liberate the excitement," but the general causes of emotional states are physiological. That is, the emotions of grief, fear, hatred, and so on, are de- scribed in terms of the rigidity or relaxation of the muscles, the constriction of the arteries, the altered breathing, the quickened pulse, the changed secretions. Professor James's central proposition is that "the bodily changes follow directly upon the perception of the exciting fact . . . our feeling of the same changes is the emotion. Common-sense says, we lose our fort- une, are sorry, and weep ; we meet a bear, are frightened, and run; we are insulted by a rival, are angry, and strike." 1 Professor James defends the thesis that this order of sequence is incorrect, that the one mental state is not induced immediately by the other, that the bodily manifestations must first be interposed between, and that the more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble, because we are sorry, angry, or fearful. . . . Without the bodily states following upon the perception, the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale, colourless, destitute of emo- tional warmth. We might then see the bear and. judge it best to run, receive the insult and deem it right to strike, but we should not actually feel afraid or angry. Many objections would no doubt be raised to this hypothesis. But Professor James has already given abundant evidence that objects "do excite bodily changes by a preorganised mechanism," hence an emo- tion is only a special instance of a general principle. He insists that if we picture some strong emotion, then endeavour to abstract all the feelings of the physical symptoms from the consciousness of the emotion, there 1 Principles of Psychology, ii,, p. 449. A Study of the Emotions 209 will be nothing left. For there is " no ' mind-stuff' out of which the emotion can be constituted ... a cold and neutral state of intellectual perception is all that remains." " What kind of an emotion of fear," Profes- sor James asks, ''would be left if the feeling neither of quickened heart-beats nor of shallow breathing, neither of trembling lips nor of weakened limbs, neither of goose-flesh nor of visceral stirrings, were present, it is quite impossible for me to think." What would grief be "without its tears, its sobs, its suffocation of the heart, its pang in the breast-bone? A feelingless cog- nition that certain circumstances are deplorable, and nothing more. Every passion in turn tells the same story. A purely disembodied human emotion is a non-entity." 1 Emotions, then, in terms of this theory, are "sensa- tional processes, processes due to inward currents set up by physical happenings . . . each emotion is the resultant of a sum of elements, and each element is caused by a physiological process of a sort already well known. The elements are all organic changes, and each of them is the reflex effect of the exciting object. " 2 In reply to objections to this theory, Professor James points out that in listening to poetry, drama, or heroic narrative we are often surprised at the cutaneous shiver which like a sudden wave flows over us, and at the heart-swelling and the lachrymal effusion that unexpectedly catch us at intervals. ... If our friend goes near to the edge of a precipice, we get the well-known feeling of "all-overishness," and we shrink back, although we positively know him to be safe, and have no distinct imagination of his fall. 3 1 Principles of Psychology , ii . , p . 4 5 2 . 2 Ibid. , p. 4 5 3 . 3 Ibid. , p. 4 5 7 . 14 210 The Philosophy of the Spirit Every one knows how panic is increased by flight, and how the giving way to the symptoms of grief or anger increases those passions themselves. Each fit of sobbing makes the sorrow more acute. . . . Refuse to express a passion, and it dies. Count ten before venting your anger, and its occasions seem ridiculous. Whistling to keep up courage is no mere figure of speech. On the other hand, sit all day in a moping posture, sigh, and reply to every- thing with a dismal voice, and your melancholy lingers. 1 All this, of course, means that our mental life is far more closely than we suspected "knit up with our corporeal frame. Rapture, love, ambition, indigna- tion, and pride, considered as feelings, are fruits of the same soil with the grossest bodily sensations of pleasure and of pain. " 2 This is true of the subtler as well as of the coarser emotions. The aesthetic pleasure given us by lines, masses, combinations of colours and sounds are purely sensational. Even in cases of rapture there is, strictly speaking, no emotion without the bodily reverberation, the thrill at the case of justice, the tingle at the act of magnanimity. In support of this physiological theory, Ribot de- votes an entire volume to a study of the emotions from the point of view of their evolution. 3 The emotions are regarded as inseparable from the organic move- ments of the body, the needs, appetites, desires, and other physical tendencies which have to do with the struggle for life. The underlying element is the need or tendency, the bodily motion, while the emotion is secondary to the instinct or movement from which it springs. The motion is the cause, the emotion is the effect. As the internal sensations (hunger, thirst, the 1 Principles of Psychology, ii., pp. 462-463. 2 Ibid., p. 467. 3 The Psychology of the Emotions, Eng. trans., Contemporary Scientific Series. A Study of the Emotions 211 need of sleep, etc.) have to do with the maintenance of bodily welfare, so the primitive emotions directly relate to the preservation of the individual or the species. Of these primitive emotions, fear is the first in point of time, then come anger, affection, emotions connected with the personality, and the sexual emotion. At the root of each of the primitive emotions there is a tendency or instinct. From this point of view, the continuity of life is not in our emotions, but in the appetites and tendencies which are always at work within us. Even character is reducible to the preponderant tendency which gives unity and stability to the personal life. It is not the intellect which essentially expresses character, for the intellect tends to become impersonal. Scholars, for example, who deal with abstractions tend to reduce life to a monotonous routine in which emotion plays as little part as possible. In the vast majority of people, the emotions, pleasures, and pains occupy the first place in the mental life. The physiological evi- dence is in favour of the priority of the emotions and feelings. All this evidence centres about one point, the fact that organic life appears before animal life. The organic life is directly expressed by the needs and appetites, and these, as we have seen, are the founda- tions of the emotions. Ribot describes the emotions as the most mobile of the mental forms of life, incessantly oscillating around one point of equilibrium, ever ready to sink too low or too high. ' ' An emotion which does not vibrate through the whole body is nothing but a purely intellectual state." * Every emotion loses its strength in propor- tion as it is intellectualised. Hence the subtle and 1 The Psychology of the Emotions, p. 163. 212 The Philosophy of the Spirit refined forms of emotion of which the intellectualists speak are decidedly impoverished emotions. The higher emotions are explicable by the same principle as the primitive emotions. Esthetic emotion has its origin in a surplus of activity, expending itself in a par- ticular direction under the influence of the creative imagination. Religious emotion results from the fusion of fear and love and a process of development which depends upon intellectual conditions. The religious emotion in its origin, and taken by itself, is fundamentally selfish, it is mere anxiety for one's own salvation. While this account of the emotions is almost purely biological, with constant emphasis on evolutionary tendencies and organic movements, there is a noticeable emphasis put upon the intellect as the determining principle of the higher evolution. For example, Ribot traces moral sentiment to an emotional origin. There is a gregarious instinct; there are certain modes of action; habits founded on sympathy, and finally suf- ficient stability to constitute a society. Morality passes through an instinctive period in which it is unconscious, unreflecting. But there is forthwith a conscious period, reflective, many-sided, complex, expressed in institutions, laws, and codes. There is, then, a certain evolution of the emotions from fear to aesthetic contemplation and religious senti- ment. But on the whole the emotions are so intimately connected with the bodily instincts and processes that they do not of themselves ascend very far. Essen- tially speaking, the emotion is only the consciousness of the organic phenomena which accompany it. One emotion differs from another according to the quantity and quality of these organic states and their various A Study of the Emotions 213 combinations. The fundamental and irreducible root of all emotion is attraction or repulsion, motion or arrest of motion. An emotion may be a pioneer of knowledge, an anticipation of an ideal. An impulse (for example, the sexual impulse) may be in turn physi- ological, psycho-physiological, chiefly psychological, and finally intellectual. But the arrest of passions and emotions comes through the development of the intellect. It is no doubt a very obscure question how an image or conception can produce an arrest of move- ment, but the fact of the arrest is unquestionable. The intervention may result in two ways. It may obstruct and finally suppress. Thus a passion kept in check, after various oscillations backward and forward, may finally be entirely extinguished. Or there may be a transformation or metamorphosis by arrest of devel- opment. In this case the passion is not extinguished but its nature is changed. Reflection, although by nature slow, is in due course inhibitory. Ribot holds that scarcely one person in a hundred thousand or a million attains the higher emotions. To attain them the following conditions are needed: (i) a person must be capable of conceiving and understanding gen- eral ideas; and (2) these ideas must not remain simple intellectual forms, but must be able to arouse certain feelings, certain approximate tendencies. The order of development of the emotions depends on the order of development of the general ideas. The great merit of Ribot 's account is its fidelity to human nature as we ordinarily find it. It is no doubt true that in the majority of people an emotion is nothing more or less than a consciousness of instincts, bodily passions, sensuous stirrings. People live in their instincts and passions. By these they are prompted. 214 The Philosophy of the Spirit By the desires which spring from them they are actu- ated, not by reasoa^ or by lofty sentiment. It is well to recognise how primitive emotion is on the whole. It is well to verify by reference to history, and by present-day life, the descriptions which James, Ribot, and others have given. It is important to note that the moment we leave the level of bodily stirrings and begin to regard emotion as other than a consciousness of organic commotions we introduce intellectual consid- erations and have to do, not with emotion as such, but with mental evolution. It is no less important, how- ever, to notice the possibility of development out of a low-down emotional state through the acquisition of intellectual power. If an intellectualised emotion be an impoverished emotion, it is plain that in almost every instance it is greatly to be preferred. The question now arises, Does this physiological account of the emotions include all that is to be said? Is it an adequate description of the higher emotions, this investigation of the self-seeking instincts in which many of the emotions are said to have arisen? Or, have we thus far simply the evolutionary and physio- logical basis of the emotions? If the primitive emo- tions are accounted for on this basis, the higher are for the most part explained away. It would seem import- ant to regard these emotions in the light not merely of their origin but of their values. The supplementary point of view is well stated by David Irons, who begins with the assumption of pri- mary tendencies to action, which express themselves not alone in physical events but in mental experiences. 1 From this point of view man is primarily an active being, and is to be understood in the light of his primary 1 The Psychology of Ethics, Blackwood, Edinburgh, 1903. A Study of the Emotions 215 interests. External objects become significant through their relation to this fundamental activity and the ends to which it is directed. Man does not merely respond to stimuli but reacts in accordance with his inner char- acter. Hence introspection must be called into play, "for introspection alone can give a verdict in regard to the ultimate qualitative distinctions between psy- chical phenomena," and in the phenomena of impulse, desire, effort, an apparently irreducible fact of con- sciousness is involved. In order, then, to avoid explaining away emotion before a serious effort to discover its nature has been made, our author begins with a study of emotion as it actually appears in consciousness. Inasmuch as not all emotions are of a violent nature the process of direct observation is not so difficult as might appear. As opposed to experiences of pleasure and pain, organic sensations and tendencies to act in a certain manner, emotion reveals itself as essentially a feeling-attitude, a centrally initiated reaction. It expresses, for exam- ple, the desire to inflict injury, or affection for a person. The emotion is the subjective response which appears when we react in view of a situation instead of merely feeling pleasure or pain. Hence it has an outward direction, is an attitude towards something; whereas in the case of pain or pleasure we are pained or pleased by something. We might be pained but not angry at the conduct of a friend. The emotion is plainly dis- tinguishable from the idea of the object and from the pleasure or pain. A passion tends to subside if the person in question concludes that he is making himself ridiculous, but -no such reflection suffices to banish a pain. We are more aware of responsibility in the case of emotion than in the case of pleasure or pain. "We 216 The Philosophy of the Spirit justify, excuse, or condemn our emotions, while we accept our pleasures and pains as mere facts. This is inexplicable save on the assumption that emotion is reaction, for we can identify ourselves only with our own activity, not with an effect imposed on us from without. " * Pleasure and pain indicate the way events affect us, something given; while emotion is something done. Again, a bodily disorder may be painful, but a sense of danger must be aroused before emotion appears. Hate presupposes that the object of it is already re- garded as a hostile personality. The emotional situa- tion is such because it possesses significance. That is, the emotion implies an intellectual interpretation of the given circumstances. We do not respond to the facts as mere particulars. Unless we interpret we do not react emotionally. A disagreeable circumstance may, for example, inevitably cause pain, but whether or not it arouses anger, pity, or contempt depends upon one's point of view with regard to it. The emotion can be directly influenced by a change in point of view in regard to the object of it. Convince a terrified man that there is no danger and his emotion will van- ish. Abnormal physical and mental conditions in- fluence the emotional life by perverting the judgment. If the situation frequently recurs to which we have become accustomed to respond emotionally, anything which is associated with the conditions of the emotion may arouse the emotion directly. Fear may thus appear on a sign or signal, simultaneously with the sense of danger. . . . Previous interpretations and responses are . . . required to form the connections which give the particular presentation borrowed power. 1 The Psychology of Ethics, Blackwood, Edinburgh, 1903, p. 13. A Study of the Emotions 217 . . . Emotion is dependent on a cognitive interpretation of the facts, and will therefore be "irrational" if the judg- ment is wrong. Moreover, if a false interpretation has been persistently repeated, the resulting emotional re- action will have acquired, through repetition, a momentum of its own. . . . The conflict between reason and emotion is ultimately a conflict between inadequate knowledge and the deeper insight which has subsequently been attained. l Emotion, then, demands as a necessary condition an interpretation of the situation in question. The judgment may, of course, be made and all the normal conditions of the emotion be present, yet the emotion may be restrained or inhibited by considerations which reach beyond the case in hand. "A situation may be recognised as 'irritating' without arousing anger, if a vivid perception of ultimate consequences inter- venes. " 2 " When the agent is entirely under the influ- ence of emotion, he acts as he feels disposed towards the object, just because he is so disposed and for no other reason. He is concerned with the object alone; the subject is in the background, the object all in all. The malevolent passions are as 'disinterested' as the others. We ' lose ourselves' in hate as in love." 3 The efficiency of an emotion is not dependent on its strength alone, but is more frequently conditioned by the absence of opposing forces. A slight fear with regard to the distant future may be a more potent factor in conduct than a persuasive dread suddenly aroused by an impending danger. Further, even intense emotions are not necessarily accompanied by excitement. An individual of strong character may have 1 The Psychology of Ethics, Blackwood, Edinburgh, 1903, pp. 18. 2 Ibid., p. IQ. 3 Ibid., p. 22. 2i8 The Philosophy of the Spirit strong emotions and yet retain his self-control. . . . The different emotions arise regularly in connection with definite normal conditions. We feel kindly disposed towards those who have benefited us, are irritated by in- jury, admire worth and scorn its opposite, and the feeling in each case tends to influence conduct by fixing certain ideas in mind. Given the conditions, the result always follows unless special counteracting forces come into play. 1 In contrast with the James-Lange theory of the emo- tions, the present doctrine clearly indicates the relation between emotion and activity or desire, and shows that as emotion is essentially a reaction it cannot be analysed into organic sensations, which might indeed be present without arousing an emotion. An athlete who engages in a contest without sufficient preparation, is usually in a position to cognise a complicated series of physical changes . . . trembling, respiratory disturbances, heart-throbbing, and visceral changes gen- erally. Yet these seem emotionally non-significant, for they remain the same whether he is glad, sad, angry, en- vious, or simply too fatigued to care for anything. 2 Emotion is not mere excitement, nor is it the sum of the organic sensations aroused by the physical disturbance, as introspection proves. Excitement very naturally accompanies great fear, sudden anger, intense joy, and the like ; but excitement is not an essen- tial feature or concomitant. Excitement is merely a fortuitous accompaniment of emotional states. The belief that it is essential to emotion is the source of many misconceptions. That emotion must be regarded as an ultimate aspect of mind with distinctive influence on conduct, our au- 1 The Psychology of Ethics, Blackwood, Edinburgh, 1903, pp. 25. 2 Ibid., p. 51. A Study of the Emotions 219 thor further shows by an analysis of the primary emo- tions. A man may be irritated by an occurrence merely because it is at variance with his ideals. The range of objects which excite emotion depends upon our sphere of interests. " If one tendency is as good as another, there is no reason for subordinating one to another. There must also be an impulse to realise this supreme end, else all subordination would remain purely theo- retical." 1 All our judgments in regard to human con- duct imply that the regulation of natural impulses is possible. Some of our tendencies to action are well- nigh overpowering. Others tend to obscure the judgment. We are strongly inclined to believe what we wish to believe. The conflicts are numerous and severe. But within and above all are the judgments of worth which imply a higher type of self-conscious- ness and a central tendency towards self-realisation. The individual, possessing an ideal of worth is able to triumph over otherwise utterly discordant tendencies. If we compare this ethical view of the emotions with the physiological theory, we find that it is a question of rival analyses of a collection of tendencies which are regarded as fundamental to the emotions and which the emotions may express or influence. Much depends, then, upon the interpretation of these fundamental activities. If we interpret them physiologically, we are likely to find -little value in the emotions save as they further man's physical welfare. If we distinguish between emotion and organic sensation or excitement, and regard emotion in the light of the objects towards which it is directed, the way is plain for the assessment of the emotions from the point of view of ideal standards. A fundamental theory of human activity, then, is of 1 The Psychology of Ethics, Blackwood, Edinburgh, 1903, p. 144. 220 The Philosophy of the Spirit more consequence than a theory of the emotions. Plainly, the physiological theory is of little value except for purposes of description of the coarse emotions and their physical expression. But it is an inadequate account of the emotions to describe them apart from the objects towards which they are directed and the actions in which they eventuate. Since emotion is a feeling-attitude, a centrally initiated response in the presence of a significant situation, the intellectual element cannot be omitted. Moreover, there are emo- tions that are by no means describable as mere commo- tions, or as the consciousness of organic processes. We rightfully judge some emotions on physiological grounds, but cannot estimate all emotions in this way. Most emotions may, indeed, be low-down and physical. But the whole story is not told until it is no longer a question of physical repletion or of nervous excitement, but a question of the fruits, values, and eligibility of emotion. When, therefore, the question is raised, Is emotion essential to human life? it is plain that no general an- swer can be given. That the emotions are everywhere prominent and have played a prominent part in human experience is indubitable. But the mere fact of exist- ence is no argument for eligibility. When self-develop- ment begins in earnest men find that they acquire moderation, equanimity, self-control, and this means, more than anything else, control of the emotions. It is safe to say that most of the emotions are of a selfish char- acter. The emotion of fear, for example, may occa- sionally embody an element of genuine solicitude for others, but is most likely to be mere distress lest some anticipated ill befall ourselves. One may be indignant because another has suffered wrong, but anger usually A Study of the Emotions 221 signifies merely personal resentment because of fancied injury to our pride, our reputation, or the like. Emo- tions of scorn, envy, contempt, are plainly expressive of undue self-esteem. Jealousy is always selfish. It has been said that all grief is selfish. Indeed, a selfish person might be defined as one who lives in the emotions. There is abundant evidence that emotions are for the most part detrimental. The evil effects of passion are too obvious to need mention. Whether one is genuinely angry or merely stirred up, the drain upon the organism is unmistakable. Most emotions are ''wearing" in the extreme. The nervous tension and physical heat attendant upon an emotion of compara- tively short duration are sometimes the equivalent of the energy used in several days' work. Then, too, emotions are often pathological, or at any rate readily run into disease. Unprincipled and selfish people carry their ends by "working upon" the emotions of others. Those who are too easily influenced by other people are invariably too emotional. The mag- netic person sways by means of the emotions. We create innumerable imaginary ills through the emotions. Some emotions are quickly followed by depression, or by overwhelming nervous exhaustion. The history of human moods is thus in large part the history of the emotions. A creature of the emotions is seemingly a multiple personality. To possess unity, self-con- sistency, is, on the other hand, to be no longer emotional to a noticeable degree. Whether or not a man be actively endeavouring to control and transmute his emotions of course depends upon the stage of development he has attained. Just as some psychologists strenuously insist that an emo- tion is nothing if not physical excitement, so one finds 222 The Philosophy of the Spirit people in practical life who express the greatest scorn for those who try to intellectualise the emotional life, who speak as if love, for example, were aught else, or ever should be aught else than passion. But for the man who is in earnest it is merely a question of eliminat- ing the coarser emotions, of transmuting into higher modes of expression the life which would otherwise go forth in emotions of anger, hatred, jealousy. Merely from the point of view of practical efficiency, the man of common sense sees that he must keep cool and col- lected. When it is a question of comparison between mental states accompanied by excitement and those that are devoid of it, probably every one would prefer the quiescent state. The business man who finds him- self excited over a prospective bargain knows that his judgment is likely to err when he is thus excited, hence he adopts the ideal of calm dispassionate judgment. The lover of music who becomes so excited over the symphony or opera that she must either master this nervous excitability or forego such pleasures, is likely to decide in favour of a more intellectual form of en- joyment. If no experience is so wearing as emotional excitement, there is every reason to cultivate the mode of life that is characterised by poise, equanimity, the husbanding of energy. Most of our mistakes in life are traceable to deeds which we committed under the sway of emotional impulse. Yet if in some cases the entire elimination of emo- tion be called for, in others it is a question of progressive acceptance. The emotion of wonder is naturally asso- ciated with primitive life, yet wonder leads the way far up into the world of science. The objects on which we bestow admiration change as our interests change, yet we continue to admire. Likewise gratitude assumes A Study of the Emotions 223 progressively higher forms. We overcome impulsive sympathy only to express a calmer, more genuinely altruistic emotion. Our aesthetic emotions also alter in so far as we cease to "rave" over objects of beauty and begin to display good taste. In many depart- ments of life we begin emotionally, then discover that emotion impedes, and finally eliminate it. Emo- tion may have taught us something. But we assimi- late its lesson and substitute quiet contemplation where we once went into ecstasy. Some emotions cease altogether, after a time, or appear only at rare intervals, when we are taken un- awares, while others assume higher forms and take on new objects. The whole history of human passion in all its baseness and all its holy zeal belongs under the latter head. All passion becomes despised in the spiritual world save the passion for souls. The love of truth in the scientific world is the last expression of a progressively transmuted emotion. Love at the outset is no doubt a "low-born earthly thing." But it is still essentially an emotion when, springing from a pure source it is expressed in the unselfish devotion of the mother. Let us remember that it is selfishness and bodily passion which we despise when we disparage love, not that we condemn emotion altogether. The love which seeks not to enslave for selfish purposes, but to ennoble and to serve, is as genuinely an emotion as the excitement which delights the physiological psychologist. Love may be fickle and blind, but may also be constant and clear-sighted. Love reveals reality and deserves a place all along the line of human thought. In other words, it is philosophy which shows, the reality and value of love. To answer the question whether emotion be essential 224 The Philosophy of the Spirit to human life is thus in the last analysis to propound a philosophy of the Spirit. Fo/ no account of the emo- tions is adequate which fails to take into profound consideration the place and meaning of passion and love. The whole history of human struggle, the entire prob- lem of evil is implied here. When we are about to disparage and discard emotion altogether, we are forci- bly reminded of the profound function of what is figuratively called "the heart," as opposed to the well-known coldness of "the head." Whatever we may conclude in regard to the results, it is at any rate the affections which set men in motion in this world; it is to the emotional side of our nature that we trace the spontaneity and the sympathy which spur men on t6 nobility of service. The same conclusions follow when we examine the essentially spiritual or religious emotions. Such emo- tions may be exciting, and hence highly objectionable, or calm and eminently desirable. They may lead to emotionalism with all the consequences of the nervously exciting revival, or be direct sources of the highest type of spirituality. The crucial question arises when we ask whether religious emotion be a safe guide in and of itself. This leads to the more fundamental question whether any emotion be intelligible by itself. If not, it is not likely to be acceptable as a guide. If one were to tajce the clue from the physiological description of the eliiotions, one might well believe that emotions are independently intelligible. These physi- ologists have feared to introduce intellectual elements lest emotion be no longer itself. Hence they have held fast to sensation and practically identified emotion with its physical expression. But we have found reason to conclude that men never have emotions without A Study of the Emotions 225 knowledge of objects and the interpretation of objects. The intellectual element is always present. What a man thinks about the experience or person in question has much to do in determining whether or not he shall be angry, give way to jealousy or fear. In the case of religious emotion, the implied interpretation of its ob- jects God, heaven, salvation, the soul is much more apparent. People may constantly seem to be governed by emotion when their whole theory of the religious life is involved. The emotional element is usually very apparent, while the intellectual is subtle and concealed. We find a clue to the solution of this question in re- gard to the alleged independence of emotions in the fact already insisted upon, namely, that emotion does not spring up by itself but is added to an activity. Whether we regard this activity as physiological or spiritual, it is the environment amidst which the emo- tion appears and without which it cannot be under- stood. No emotion either exists or is intelligible by itself. Since the emotion is added to an activity, and since the activity is constant while the emotion may or may not be present, it is a question of rightly inter- preting the activity. The devotees of the physio- logical theory interpret the activity biologically. But even this implies the introduction of an intellectual element. If we are to be loyal to the higher emotions we have every right to assess them in the light of their objects. If the emotions are relatively unstable, more or less in conflict, there is every reason to judge them in the light of eligibility. If only a few emotions finally meet the test, they will be estimated in accordance with our philosophy of love, art, or religion. For it is ulti- mately a question of a desirable type of activity, to- gether with the emotion which is on occasion permitted 226 The Philosophy of the Spirit to accompany it. One who has reduced the eligible emotions to two or three is likely to possess the power to eliminate them altogether. Hence, everything will depend upon one's theory of the self and its social, aesthetic, or religious objects. These conclusions are enforced when we ask whether emotion be a practical guide. Obviously, it is such only when its fruits prove worthy. If the love-impulse leads to unselfish results we commend it, hence by implication the pure source from which it springs. Much depends upon the life in which the emotion ap- pears. It is character, nobility, and purity of selfhood that gives it worth. Unless judgments of worth are introduced emotion is not eligible as a practical guide. It is plainly impulsive emotions which work the greatest mischief in our lives. Yet, as we noted when discussing intuition, the noblest leadings in the world spring from impulse. We disparage the man who coldly reflects whether or not to risk his precious life while others are in grave peril, and commend the one who acts instantly. But once more it is a question of mediation. The emotions we condemn are those that spring from thoughtless impulse. Those of which we approve spring from a life of reflection, of strength of character, one that is trained to meet emergencies. The emotional impulse is trustworthy only so far as it arises in a mental environment that is far more than emotional. Moreover, as in the case of intuition, thought is incredibly rapid in many instances, and what appears to be mere impulse expresses a decision which was arrived at by a most astonishing swiftness of thought. The mere impulse might have been fool- hardy in the extreme. Likewise with love. The love- impulse is genuinely trustworthy only when tempered A Study of the Emotions 227 by wisdom. If youthful love be "blind" it is because it is an emotion. Love is clear-sighted when it is more than mere impulse. It would perhaps be generally admitted that all ecstasy is detrimental when the ecstasy springs from our passions. But it is a new idea to some that ecstasy of pleasurable emotion is also undesirable. Yet, what- ever its object, ecstasy is undeniably allied to physical excitement and is either wearing or tends to interfere with the judgment. Everybody knows how great is the reaction, the exhaustion which follows emotional pleasure of the intense sort. In contrast with such pleasure one pleads for happiness as the more durable, moderate state in which the emotional element is reduced to the minimum. Ecstasy disorganises, while happiness characterises the well-ordered life. Any emotion which brings fatigue may be classified as unde- sirable, as well as any emotion which confuses the judgment. When it is a question of the control of the emotions it is plain that much depends upon what theory of their nature is adopted. Yet even the physiological theory is suggestive. The coarser emotions, scarcely distin- guishable from their bodily expression, may best be controlled by regulating the physical appetites and passions, the bodily attitudes and responses. Inas- much as the evolution of emotion proceeds as rapidly as intellectual evolution, the emotions may at least be indirectly regulated by persistent development of the intellect. The finer emotions are inseparably associated with ideal standards and judgments. Hence we must look to our judgments of worth, more carefully interpret the objects towards which our emotions are directed. If undesirable emotions spring from a 228 The Philosophy of the Spirit certain mode of life, the resource is plain, namely, to lift the whole life to a higher level by pursuit of ideal interests. The ideal would seem to be the steady development of an attitude so well balanced that there should be a minimum of emotion, with a quiet constancy of happiness, and a maximum degree of philosophic thought. The question, How far does emotion acquaint us with reality? would likewise depend upon answers to still more fundamental questions. It is plain that when emotion is associated with belief it has a pe- culiarly significant character. In an instructive chap- ter on "The Perception of Reality" J Professor James points out that belief, or "the sense of reality," is more allied to the emotions than to aught else. Emo- tional interest is one of the reasons for believing ob- jects real that is, objects for which we feel desire, admiration, dread, love. "Speaking generally, the more a conceived object excites us, the more reality it has. . . . Every exciting thought in the natural man carries credence with it." 2 Deeply moved by an ex- perience, we believe that its supposed objects are real. Religious beliefs are of this type. Immortality must be true, God must exist, because we so greatly long to know our dear ones in the future life, because we deeply need a protecting Providence. "Our require- ments in the way of reality terminate in our own acts and emotions, our own pleasures and pains. " 3 Pro- fessor James holds that this emotional interest goes so far as to lead to the choice of our world-view. He adduces much evidence in behalf of this conclusion that emotions are fundamentally influential, not merely in the credulous acceptance of what we wish 1 Op. cit., ii., 283. 2 Ibid., pp. 307,308. *Ibid., p. 311. A Study of the Emotions 229 to believe true, but in our most serious attempts to explain the world. Whether or not emotions are rightfully influential in determining our views of reality we are compelled, then, to chronicle the fact that they are influential. This is particularly the case in the religious world. From the crude stage of emotion experienced by primitive man in the presence of nature, or in a highly emotional conversion, to the stage of refined religious sentiment, man has been strongly inclined to believe in objects which were real for his emotions. It is no doubt the emotional element added to the otherwise colourless mental activity w r hich makes men believe in various forms of religious ceremonial as expressions of faith in genuine realities. The extreme case is that of mysticism, in which a world- view and a theory of the Godhead, usually culminating in pantheism, is accepted on behalf of the clues which ecstatic emotion affords. Yet if emotion tends to lead man to accept as real what he merely wishes to believe real, it is a question whether an important place can be assigned to it. At any rate such influence is not very creditable. Essentially personal in character, emotion is undoubt- edly too eager; it particularises, whereas it is reason that discovers universals. Emotion is a trustworthy guide only when put with other deliverances of our mental life so that it is prop- erly qualified. What we applaud in an essentially emotional action are the fruits which have withstood the tests of moral judgment. An emotion is a guide to reality only when it is so carefully evaluated that its moral and religious elements can be singled out from the personal equation and the illusions which accompany it. 230 The Philosophy of the Spirit But "God is love," some one insists, in behalf of emotion. Yes, but the constancy of the divine love could hardly be described in terms of emotion. One can hardly employ the same term even in the human sense that one uses for emotions of fear, anger, jealousy, and the like. Love that is worth while is spiritual, is a gift of the Spirit, does not come and go but abides ; all else is passion. Such love Mrs. Browning sings of in the Sonnets from the Portuguese. Such love is of the soul rather than of the body. It lacks nearly all the characteristics of the emotions. Likewise with the divine love, which is not intelligible apart from the divine purpose and wisdom. We find no difficulty, then, in reserving an appropri- ate place for love, even though we reject nearly all the emotions as unstable and tending to excess. It is a question of orderly arrangement -of the various impulses and emotions in a scale of values. Emotion belongs under the head of immediate experience, and as such is often inferior in value to the immediacy of sensation, and is less constant on the whole than feeling. Its chief value is found in the results whereby it surpasses itself. That is, emotion brings experience, and once in possession of experience we may rationalise it so as to eliminate the emotion. Love, for example, may begin with the lowest passion, the most ignoble impulse ; but in the end may be so far purified as to be purely unselfish, known for its kindness and gentleness. If emotion gives life, arouses people, and hence is essen- tial at the outset of human experience, it is illumined insight that is preferable in the end. Such insight is synthetic, reserves a place under the head of values for the nobler fruits of the emotional life. Thus the warmth of the Spirit may be preserved without undue emotion. A Study of the Emotions 231 Our conclusions therefore leave no room for decisive scepticism. One may indeed pass through sceptical periods during which the only resource is the calmest reasoning from the best ascertained facts, devoid of emotion. Meanwhile, the supreme objects of re- ligious faith remain at heart untouched. When one's heart is again deeply touched by emotion it is with a new conviction of the everlasting realities of the Spirit. Love remains triumphant where all other emotion fails. Emotions reveal God too. The only stringent qualification is, that one must abide one's time till the activities have settled so that one may discern the full beauty of that which was for awhile obscured. CHAPTER X THE VALUE OF FEELING THE two preceding discussions were necessarily critical. We found intuition beset by misconceptions which had to be cleared away to make room for the real insight which withstands the tests of application to experience and of illumined reason. It seemed for the moment as if our inquiry were lost in mere relativities. But, as in the case of conscience, we found that the authority rests, not with the mere "sense" or "faculty," but with the rational reflection which discerns the reality of that which is immediately given. The intuition which, as a supposed absolute gift provokes scepticism, reappears in the full power of conviction when put in its proper environment. Likewise with the emotions. The fault lay with mere emotionalism, not with the emotions which undergo the appropriate tests. The trouble with ordinary enthusiasm, for example, is that it runs to excess and then peters out, taking with it all interest in its objects. But organise your enthusiasm so that it shall endure, re-create each day for you, and it will prove a noble ally. There is the enthusiasm of temperate patriotism, for example, of reasonable class-spirit, the zeal for souls and for truth. The theory that emotion is real or authoritative by itself belongs with the old-time division of human nature into distinct faculties. Regard emotion as inseparably connected with the remaining phases of 232 The Value of Feeling 233 mental life and it takes its place with the rest, to survive or perish according to the estimate put upon our evolving mental life as a whole. The emotional life contributes a power or principle, love, which be- longs with the eternal verities of the Spirit. The heart, with its warmth of devotion, is a part of per- fection itself. In this sense the emotional life with- stands all tests unto the end. But inasmuch as this is mainly an ideal it is inseparably connected with all else that constitutes the ideal life. It might seem that in thus classifying and dismissing the emotions we have done scant justice to the feelings. Despite the fact that the term feeling is vaguely used there would appear to be a sense in which the feelings stand over against the life of thought as the direct channels of the religious life. By insisting that man is a spirit one explicitly means that he feels the presence of God, not now through a special faculty, not through sensational experiences, but by means of a group of higher powers collectively known as "the feelings." Moreover, the term "feeling" has meaning with reference to the self that is not equally attributable to the intellectual side of our nature. One's feelings seem to be nearer one's inmost selfhood; they consti- tute "the heart." One must personally feel in order to know, and what is "the witness of the Spirit" if not an affair of feeling? It must be admitted that there is truth in these con- tentions. But it is a question whether any reality or truth is implied that has not already found place under the head of immediacy and the emotions. What we "feel" is immediate. It is the immediacy that is private, personal. Everyone must have experience in order to know. Without doubt the witness of the 234 The Philosophy of the Spirit Spirit is at first thus intimately personal. Moreover, "the heart" apprehends realities to which thought never does entire justice. For all this we have re- served a large place under the head of values, worths, appreciations. But when it is a question of a distinct philosophy of feeling one must take exception to the popular view. To assert that we can only kno\v God through the immediacy of feeling, and not through reason, is to be dogmatic in the extreme. This would mean that the content of such knowledge could not be distinguished from the merely immediate fact that God is. We should then never know what God is. Hegel characterises the philosophy of feeling as starting with the statement that we have immediate knowledge of God, and that we should not seek to comprehend Him, nor to argue about Him, for rational knowledge has proved futile. 1 The question would then be, What does the term "knowledge" here mean? Is it mere acquaintance or philosophical comprehen- sion? If rational knowledge be of no avail, all that one can know is that God is. There is an assumed certainty, through faith, that God is, and this certainty is feeling. What is in our faith we call knowledge, hence we believe in God's existence. Hegel points out that in this "feeling" there is im- plied the existence both of the self and of something felt, hence that feeling is not merely subjective but involves a reference to an object : it is in reference to an object that I first become a subject, namely, by placing some "other" over against me. If, now, we accept "feeling" as the guide to the reality of which we claim knowledge we should recollect that the matter of feeling may be exceedingly varied. 1 Philosophy of Religion,!., 119 ff- The Value of Feeling 235 We have the feeling of justice, of injustice, of God, of colour, of hatred, of enmity, of joy. . . . The most con- tradictory elements are to be found in feeling; the most debased, as well as the highest and noblest, have a place there. Experience proves that the matter of feeling has the most accidental character possible; it may be the truest, or it may be the worst. God, when He is present in feeling, has no advantage over the very worst possible thing. On the contrary, the kingliest flower springs from the same soil and side by side with the rankest weed. Be- cause a content is found in feeling, it does not mean that this content is anything very fine. . . . All that is good and all that is evil, all that is real and all that is not real, is found in our feeling; the most contradictory things are there. All imaginable things are felt by me ; I can become enthusiastic about what is most unworthy. 1 Mere feeling is therefore in itself no guide. Feeling is a form for every sort of content, it is the content which shows whether or not the feeling be eligible. So far as the mere form or feeling is concerned, it is of no significance that the content in question is found there. Hence, as Hegel puts it, it is so far from being the case that in feeling alone we can truly find God, that if we are to find this content there, we must already know it from some other source. And if it be affirmed that we do not truly know God, that we can know nothing of Him, how then can we say that He is in feeling ? 2 This is the decisive consideration. The significance of feeling cannot be known except through comparison with other phases of our mental life. But if to grasp its significance be to compare its content with other deliverances of the inner life, we know feeling not i Op. ci/.,p. 130. 2 Ibid., p. 134. 236 The Philosophy of the Spirit through mere immediacy but through mediate thought, and if we are to mediate why should we not be thorough ? If, now, we take the proposition that God is known through feeling to imply the possession of immediate knowledge it is not now a question of feeling it is then understood that God is; it is a fact of our con- sciousness, it is so. This is supposed to imply, as Hegel shows, 1 that all modes of knowing which involve relations are obliterated. It is supposed to be a mere matter of immediate experience, one is not to go beyond what is found in consciousness. But analysis shows that there is nothing that is merely immediate. If I declare that in my consciousness I find the idea of God, I am already asserting my own existence and that of God; hence affirming a relation, and therefore passing beyond the immediate. But thus to criticise the philosophy of feeling is by no means to reject the reality of religious feeling. Note that Hegel, who is supposed to be the most one-sided of all intellectualists, declares that not only may a true content exist in our feeling, it ought to exist, and must exist; or, as it is put, we must have God in our heart. Heart is indeed more than feeling. This last is only momentary, accidental, transient; but when I say "I have God in my heart," the feeling is here expressly represented as the continuous, permanent manner of my existence. The heart is what I am; not merely what I am at this moment [this would be mere feeling], but what I am in general; it is my character. 2 Hence the conclusion is, " Spirit bears witness to Spirit; this witness is the peculiar inner nature of Spirit. In this the weighty idea is involved that re- Op tit., p. 160. For a further elucidation of this point of view, see below, Supplementary Essay. 2 Ibid., p. 132. The Value of Feeling 237 ligion is not brought into man from the outside, but lies hidden in himself, in his reason, in his freedom." l Instead, then, of declaring that God is known through feeling, with all the vagueness which that term implies, it would be better to state explicitly what we mean. That is, God is apprehended through the spirit in man, and this spirit is complex, holding various contents. The spirit in us is intuitively related to the supreme Spirit, and this is what we mean to say when we vaguely declare that He is known through feeling; every man may enjoy this intuitive relationship, indeed he must apprehend it for himself; and this is the truth in the statement that every man must "feel" the presence of God to know Him. The spirit in us also includes the emotional life at its best, notably love, hence "the heart"; and this, again, ex- presses a meaning implied in feeling. Further, there is an upliftment and freedom in the divine presence, and here we have feeling in a more specific sense of the term. Again, feeling is closely allied to what is sometimes denominated "the inner light." There are states in which the mind experiences a general illumination, not the result, so far as one can discover, of conscious reasoning or of any particular experience, but states in which one is able to ask questions and obtain an- swers by coming into direct contact, as it were, with the reality which is the answer. At such times there is apparently very little that stands between us and the environing spiritual world, hence we "feel" that world near. At four o'clock in the morning this immediate vision is sometimes clearest. So far as it can be psychologically explained it appears to be due to the relative quiescence of sensational and Op. tit., p. 165. 238 The Philosophy of the Spirit emotional elements and intellectual activities, and the predominance of a contemplative mood. This or a similar state is well described by Granger, in a book which contains the finest appreciations of the life of the soul. 1 When the mind reaches the attitude of self -forget fulness, and laying aside all prepossessions sets itself to receive the truth, it may be said to cease from the acts of under- standing; and in so doing it reaches the temper for which reflection of the highest kind first becomes possible the objective temper in which the soul sees things in a clear light. This is the purity of heart upon which the divine vision fol- lows, the stillness that is required for knowledge of God. The life of feeling is a starting-point for that which is noble, provided the appropriate ideal is there to guide. As Granger says, "the spiritual life is not degraded by having its roots in the life of sensible impression, but the latter is exalted by being taken up into the life of the spirit." 2 Again, Santayana points out that ''the dumbness of a passion may . . . be called the index of its baseness; for if it cannot ally itself with ideas its affinities can hardly lie in the rational mind nor its advocates among the poets. " 3 The life of feeling easily passes over, for example, into ecstasy and is accordingly to be tested by one's judgments in regard to mysticism. 4 It is closely allied with the imagination and hence with the poetic and mystical symbols in which feeling finds expression. But it would take us too far afield to give special attention to these topics. In the growing psychology The Soul of a Christian, p. 291 2 Op. cit, p. 43. 3 The Life of Reason, ii., 14. * Granger's work above cited contains a sympathetic account of ecstasy, chaps, v, vi. The Value of Feeling 239 of religion of the day all these topics are receiving appropriate attention." l For our purposes it is plainly a question of interpre- tation, after psychology has made its descriptive account. If feeling fails to give rise to a philosophy of the presence of God which can be defended in the naively exclusive form in which it arises, it behooves us to discover another point of view. For the most part, the life of feeling already lies behind us. A more comprehensive study of the higher nature of man than the one here undertaken would involve a study not merely of its immediacies but of its reactions and its constructive powers. That is, man's nature is (i) responsive, receptive, yields spontaneities, leadings, promptings, instincts, emotions, feelings of pleasure and pain immediacy in general; (2) reactive, ex- presses itself through choice, volition, conduct; and (3) reconstructive, indulges in reflection, criticism, propounds theories of its own responses and reactions. For the present we are passing by the volitional re- actions, so far as they express themselves in objective conduct. Strictly speaking our investigation should include a thorough examination of the intellectual life, as opposed to that of feeling, especially the intellec- tual claim that only through reason is God knowable. But inasmuch as the present volume is primarily devoted to the immediacies of the spiritual life it must suffice to inquire into the nature and scope of immediacy in contrast with intellectual mediation. i On mystical symbolism, see Rece"jac, Connaisance Mys- tique; for other phases of the psychology of religion, see James, The Varieties of Religious Experience; Starbuck, The Psychology of Religion; Coe, The Spiritual Life; J. B. Pratt, The Psychology of Religious Belief. CHAPTER XI THE IMPORT OF IMMEDIACY THE purpose of the present discussion is to indicate the nature, scope, and significance of the immediate, hence to outline the concept of immediacy in contrast with all mediating thought. That is to say, What reality and authority shall be assigned to the immediate, and what are its limitations? These questions are significant for various reasons. Philosophy begins with the discovery that the immediate is not self-explana- tory, but gives rise to clues which are susceptible of various interpretations, and is a quest for universally valid principles of mediation; philosophers are con- stantly called upon to assess new claims regarding the immediate, as philosophy divides and subdivides; while certain problems of immediacy continue to be live issues as long as there are those who insist on the given reality of "pure experience," or try to return to original sources of experience in search for the satis- faction which mediation is apparently unable to give. No considerations are more elementary than some of the relationships of the immediate, and no conclusions are supposed to be better known than those at which the student of the immediate is likely to arrive. Yet that which is most obvious is sometimes longest overlooked, and as long as rival systems' of first prin- ciples exist it will be necessary to call fresh attention to these elementary considerations. That there is still wide divergence of opinion in regard to certain 240 The Import of Immediacy 241 of the great systems which have profoundly reckoned with the immediate is another reason for investigating the subject afresh. By the term "immediacy" one means in general any experience, sensational, emotional, affective, in the guise in which it first comes to the mind; any thing, element, or principle in its original form. The imme- diate is first in contrast with analytic thought, which is plainly reflective, reactive. Immediate experi- ence is direct as opposed to derived thought. To open one's eyes and look about is to become aware of the appearances of things. These first semblances are immediate in the most uncritical sense of the word. At first glance, things are seemingly what they imme- diately appear to be, as if in so appearing there were no observer. For naive realism the problem of how we know things does not arise at all; if things are not strictly what they at first appear to be, at any rate they are immediately apprehended. But, for more mature thought, immediacy is experience on its sub- jective side, it is the present moment of psychical apprehension, the present sentiment or volition. This psychical experience, that is, sentient experience as given, is a typical case of immediacy. In Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy immediacy is carefully discriminated as (i) psychological, (2) psychical, and (3) logical, (i) Immediacy is said to be psychological in so far as a new conscious process is free from connection with all previous mental processes ; whereas a process is mediate if it is a develop- ment of previous processes. For example, I am sitting by the window reading, when suddenly I chance to look up and out of the window just as a crow alights in the garden yonder. There was nothing in the fore- 16 242 The Philosophy of the Spirit going mental process which foretold the appearance of that bird in my field of vision. Its appearance is for me an immediate fact, an event in my consciousness originating from without. The psychological moment of immediacy is not, however, entirely outside of all series. Since it belongs to a series without whose foregoing events it could not have happened, it is not purely immediate, but is both mediate and immediate. Hence one agrees with Baldwin that psychological immediacy is never pure. It must have some con- nection at least with the present moment of the de- veloping mental process, although it is an aspect that cannot, as immediate, be wholly explained away. The bird arrives in my field with no apparent con- nection with previous experience. Yet it is only by reference to .previous experience that I am able to describe the object which thus unpredictably appears. Only by considerable mediate thinking am I able to differentiate the type of immediacy known as 1 ' psychological. ' ' If some one argues that it is an illusion that I see anything outside of my own inner states, then I reply that I am at least aware of the moment of inner appre- hension. An idea may suddenly occur to me that I never consciously thought of before, which seems to have not the slightest connection with my present train of thought. In comparison with the train of thought, that idea is immediate. Doubt as I may the objective aspect of any given moment of percep- tual connection with the outside world, I am at least sure of the inner apprehension; I find the mediate and the immediate contrasted in my own consciousness. (2) Psychical immediacy is defined as the element of experience which is directly apprehended by the The Import of Immediacy 243 subject " as it exists for the subject of that experience, at the time when it occurs." 1 In the foregoing illustration, the mind was supposed to be under- going a process of mediate thinking, suddenly broken into by the act of looking up and perceiving the bird. In the present case, there is no object brought before the mind from without. We are now considering more specifically a moment of con- scious experience as felt. There is no conscious in- ference. There is no recognition of the dependence of the given moment upon other cognitions. Were there conscious inference, the moment would be mediate. The moment is felt for and as itself. Or again, it may be defined as having no reference to the psychological conditions wherein it appears. For example, an idea is accepted precisely -as it occurs, without inquiry either into its theoretical connection with other ideas, or its psychological association with them. The purest form of this kind of immediacy is perception, feeling, emotion. (3) Immediacy is logical or epistemological when no proof is required, whereas mediate cognition requires proof. One naturally thinks of immediacy as per- taining to the perception of external objects, or to the inner aspect of perceptual experience. But in refer- ence to that which requires no proof immediacy is considered independently of particular experience as the element wherewith thought begins. We have immediate certainty, for example, that something exists. What that something is, is another question; but we must start with the proposition that something is, has being. Hence the immediate is, in general, that with which we must begin. In contrast with the Op. cit., i., 522. 244 The Philosophy of the Spirit immediacy of this beginning all thought is mediate. To philosophise about the world is to mediate just the world which experience gives us. Thought does not create its world. The more purely immediate, however, the more empty, seems to be a general law. To say that some- thing exists, or must be started with, is to state very little. A logical immediate is held to be axiomatic, self-evident ; yet until a man has done much mediating he is unable to distinguish any truth or fact as self- evident. Even then such truths appeal to those only as self-evident who have made a similar analysis. A truth or axiom may seem self-evident until a critic appears who is acute enough to point out its derived character or the implied fallacy. The alleged creation of something out of nothing is a good illustration in a theoretic sense of that which begins as immediate. The difficulty is to conceive of an immediate event, a first thing without a previous thing to spring from. If there is to be a first in any ultimate sense, plainly it must be absolute, its own eternal ground. But there could be but one such immediate and this is what we mean by the Absolute, the ground of all existence and of all thought. For purposes of logical convenience, the immediate may be regarded as the first of a series, the first of its kind in a given universe of discourse. But it is one thing to find a first in the realm of pure thought and another to find an immediate in the realm of experience. Atoms would be true firsts in a physical sense of the word, and empty space would be their playground for im- mediate impact. But atoms and empty space are merely speculative items in the world of cosmological thought. The more one considers the old-time notions The Import of Immediacy 245 of atoms and empty space, creation out of nothing, the origin of force where there was no force before, the beginning of motion in a motionless void, and the like, the more one is driven into the realm of modern scientific theory with its conception of the conservation of energy. In the world of human life, innocence has sometimes been brought forward as a candidate for authoritative immediacy. Again and again in the history of thought there has been an attempt to return to nature, but somehow it is always to a different nature, oftentimes far removed from nature in any verifiable sense, as in the case of Hobbes's account of the primitive state of man, regarded as in constant warfare and artificially combining to break from the primitive condition of hatred. Devotees of Rousseau's * ' uncorrupted natural feeling" reappear, and it is sometimes said that art and the other higher things of life cannot be taught. But the more forcibly these pleas are brought forward the more theoretical they prove to be. The alleged ''pure gift" of nature is discovered by very careful interpretation and is preserved only by being developed. For devotees of the garden of Eden story, the "fall" seems to have been the first bit of mediation which broke the purity of innocence as immediate. But mere innocence is eulogised less and less as human thought matures. The belief still lingers among the naively orthodox that all mediation is of the evil one, hence the priests should keep the people in a state of igno- rance. Yet, once more, one cannot maintain this position without setting up a rival mediational theory. If to endeavour to understand spiritual things be to league oneself with the devil, spiritual things are already so far understood and one may as well com- 246 The Philosophy of the Spirit plete the undertaking even at the risk of losing heaven. Salvation gained at the cost of intellectual self-sup- pression were indeed a poor thing. The intuition which, as opposed to all reasoning processes, appears to be direct cognition, proves to be partly an eventuation and intrepretation. The alleged thought without words of which some people speak would be intelligible only so far as it should be made intellectually explicit. The supposed highest type of immediacy in which all thinking ceases, and subject and object become one, is the sort that underlies not only mysticism in all its radical forms but all doctrines of verbal inspiration. The tacit assumption is that the recipient of the ecstasy, the vision or the scripture, is mentally passive. That is to say, there are no intermediate factors that in the slightest degree modify the product. This assumption we totally reject, in- asmuch as the hypothesis of passivity is inconceivable. The human mind is not like a window-pane, but is responsive, reactive, carrying with it a highly complex personal equation and always some sort of interpre- tative belief, together with various social and other conditions. For our purposes the term immediacy practically resolves itself into a matter of sentiency. The im- mediate is the psychical element as it exists for the subject of an experience when the experience occurs. The immediate is apprehended as one might rub one's hands over a smooth surface and create frictional heat ; immediacy is a joint product, due to relatedness. The immediacy for which uncritical devotees plead is unrelated, and experience reveals nothing that is not related. Merely to describe is further to relate that which was already widely related. To describe is one The Import of Immediacy 247 thing, to explain is another, and to interpret is a third ; popular thought confuses the three. To describe our mental states is psychologically to tell what took place, for example, a feeling of pleasure or of pain ; to explain is to show why, psychophysically, the feeling occurred; to interpret is to account for it philosophi- cally. Plainly the question of authority depends upon the previously assigned degree of reality. If sentient experience be assigned a relatively low place in the scale it is not likely to be accepted as authoritative. Whether mystical or other spiritual experience be judged immediately real depends upon the con- clusions reached in regard to the description of im- mediacy in general. The first problem is to find a way to describe im- mediacy in its simpler forms so as to do justice to its reality in contrast with descriptive and interpretative thought. That immediacy' is real in some sense goes without saying. Everything that originally stirs men proceeds out of the immediate, for the immediate includes the wide realm popularly known as " feeling." The peculiarity of the situation is that, while there is nothing of which we are more sure than of the im- mediate existence of something, there is nothing more difficult in the descriptive world than to seize upon anything that really is immediate. " If to have feelings or thoughts in their immediacy were enough," says Professor James, 1 " babies in the cradle would be psychologists, and infallible ones." James repeatedly insists that the description of a mental state is other than the state itself; to confuse the two would be to commit "the psychologist's fallacy." It is easy to insist that the real is simply what it ap- i Psychology, i., 189. 248 The Philosophy of the Spirit pears to be as given. But to ask what the given means is to find it incompetent to account for itself. If you question a believer in the existence of an immediate moral sense, you will be given, instead of immediacy, a highly mediate series of beliefs that are meant to establish the supposed immediate authority. In his Types of Ethical Theory, 1 Martineau points out that one psychical state is immediately felt to be unlike another. For example, the sense of shame is at once felt to be different from the sound of thunder. We regard the immediacy of sense-perception as sufficient evidence that physical objects actually exist; why, Martineau argues, should we not accept the authority of our ethical sentiments? He regards the immediate gifts of conscience as at least as authoritative as any other pronouncements of consciousness. Moreover, there is what he calls a "felt 'inner binding" which we are morally bound to obey. But, having advanced thus far, Martineau proceeds to mediate this ethical immediacy at great length. He points out, for ex- ample, that mere spontaneity is not moral. We do not morally judge our spontaneities, but our volitions. Now in volitions there are two impulses present, not one, as in the case of spontaneity. How, then, is one to know the authority of conscience? Why, by Mar- tineau's well-known serial arrangement of ".the inner springs of action." It is clear, therefore, that con- science, so far from being immediate, is made known through such an elaborate series of mediations that no tendency to action, or moral sentiment, is to be taken as authoritative by itself. Again, the 'spiritual devotee lays great 'stress on first-hand experiences, which are said to be un- 1 "., 7- The Import of Immediacy 249 qualifiedly real and true in their first form. Yet to examine these assumptions is to find them depen- dent on many preconceptions. In order for a revela- tion, for example, to be absolutely pure, we must not only presuppose the entire passivity mentioned above, but perfect affinity between inspirer and inspired, no modifying circumstances in temperament, cerebral or other states, and perfect correspondence of word to word. This would mean that the scribe was practically an automaton. But experience as we know it is never absolute possession of one member of it by an- other; immediacy is given in a context and is not in- telligible apart from its context. It is plain, therefore, that to establish a belief in such inerrant revelation would be to rest it, not on immediate grounds, but on the basis of theologic mediation. Even on the hy- pothesis that revelation is essentially spiritual and any degree of allowance may be made for the personal equation, it would still be a question of assigning certain interpretative values which would have to be defended on rational grounds. The final resort of uncritical thinking is to fall back upon mystical ecstasy. But as this appeal involves not only the acceptance of a long series of practical mediations for the attainment of the beatific vision, but certain ill-established conclusions in regard to the illusions of mundane existence, it is plain that to agree with the mystic would be to prejudge the whole question. Immediacy is due to a relationship of elements which may not be alike. In the most meagre experience a part of the immediacy is communicated by the subject, and part is given to the subject by the object experienced. This twofoldness precludes the alleged absoluteness of the mystic experience. 250 The Philosophy of the Spirit Even the self, regarded as immediate, proves to be an interchanging relationship of subject and object. There is no ground for believing that it is a bare unity, intuitively known as such; it is rather a ground of multiform differences. The same is true of God, re- garded as the ground of all differences in the universe. To imagine all those differences overcome were to deem God non-existent. God is known by means of inter- relationship, not by the annihilation of all relations. If there be no experience and no thought that is not relational, why should we seek to transcend all rela- tions? The characterless Absolute of mystical panthe- ism has been relentlessly exposed as mere zero. As matter of fact, however, the mystic does not lay so much stress upon the alleged transcendence of all relations as upon the inferences he draws when he has descended from the heights and begun to mediate his vision. It is not, then, a question of a unique immediacy, but of accurate description and rational interpretation of well-known psychical elements. Since it is first a question of scientific description, we turn from those who merely point to experience to those who expound the universal characteristics of immediacy. If immediacy have a universal character every man can verify it, whether or not he be a mystic. Life as we all know it begins and persists amidst the immediate. If the quest for immediacy in a universal sense lead us to a point where we despair of finding a solution to our problem, it will not be because sen- tiently perceived reality deserts us. We may well challenge mere intellectualism to do its worst, give criticism the freest opportunity. Only by going as far as critical philosophy can carry us may we arrive at sound conclusions. The Import of Immediacy 251 Our entire investigation has, in a sense, been a study of the immediate; for we have tried to let experience speak for itself, we have zealously guarded the witness of the Spirit as an empirical possession. But we must now undertake to penetrate farther back. For primi- tive man, the sense of the immediate was undoubtedly so strong that he projected his own emotions outward, and regarded the world of hard-and-fast things as animated with great compelling emotions such as those that stirred within him. Before man began to specu- late about the nature of things, the immediacy of emo- tion doubtless played a part which it would be difficult for us to conceive of. Here was the pathetic fallacy in all seriousness, and mysticism is only an extreme case of this projection of emotions into the entire universe of discourse. When reason appears a new epoch begins in human life. Santayana has in admirable fashion portrayed the transition from the immediate to the mediate, a portrayal which might well serve our present purposes. Speaking of the immediate in general, he says : The immediate is what nobody sees, because convention and reflection turn existence, as soon as they can, into ideas ; a man who discloses the immediate seems profound, yet his depth is nothing but innocence recovered and a sort of intellectual abstention. Mysticism, scepticism, and transcendentalism have all in their various ways tried to fall back on the immediate; but none of them has been ingenuous enough. Each has added some myth, or sophistry, or delusive artifice to its direct observation. Heraclitus remains the honest prophet of immediacy. 1 Santayana holds that to revert to primordial feeling is an exercise in mental dis- i The Life of Reason, i., 15. 252 The Philosophy of the Spirit integration, not a feat of science. ... In order to begin at the beginning we must try to fall back on uninterpreted ' feeling, as the mystics aspire to do. We need not expect, however, to find peace there, for the immediate is in flux. . . . Nor has the mystic who sinks into the immediate much better appreciated the situation. This immediate is not God, but chaos. . . . Peace, which is after all what the mystic seeks, lies not in indistinction, but in perfection. 1 To revert to primitive immediacy is also to discover that man has travelled very far from simple sensation. It would be futile to contend, at this late day, that there is simple sensation, that any of us can experience a sensation as such. What we mean by the term is some sort of unexperienced union or pre-experienced immediacy. Professor James conclusively argues that "no one ever had a simple sensation by itself. Con- sciousness, from our natal day, is of a teeming multi- plicity of objects and relations, and what we call simple sensations are results of discriminate attention." 2 What is immediately given is not sensation, but a complex stream of consciousness in which manifold characteristics are distinguishable. Hence for a de- scription of what is immediate one turns, for ex- ample, to James's classic chapter on "The Stream of Thought"; whereas his account of sensation (as an abstraction) does not occur until his second volume. That is to say, the thought-stream is empirically verifiable by everybody, while "sensation" is a psychological construction. We appear to be immediately conscious of the causally efficient influence of the mind on the body, but every student of Hume knows that no one is di- rectly aware of causal power. What we are aware of * The Life of Reason, i., pp. 40-42. a Op. cit., i., 224. The Import of Immediacy 253 is the last mental event, say the volitional act or the motor image, and of the subsequent movement, for example, of the arm; we are not empirically conscious of what lies between. Between the image or volitional event there are, as Strong shows at length, i events which are entirely concealed from introspection. As Santayana has pointed out, the immediate is in flux; hence it is that Heraclitus is its prophet: ' 'transition is unintelligible, and yet is the deepest characteristic of existence." 2 What is immediately apprehended, when we seem volitionally to cause a bodily change, is mental activity, not a causal con- nection. All that one discovers by immediate intro- spection is the moment that is just now passing. The meaning of that moment is another question. That consciousness is active is indeed immediately known. 3 Consciousness may perhaps immediately apprehend its own efficiency in a very slight degree, but, as Pro- fessor Royce points out, the activity of consciousness is never quite immediate. Immediate consciousness can only tell that B follows A. A and B are immediate facts for the moment. As facts only their connection is felt. No psychical experience of apparent efficacy can be seized upon. The causal connection of event with event is far too complex to be immediately known. Immediacy in its simplest form cannot be mere identity of subject and object, although as apprehended it may seem so. The unit of primitive immediate experience is a twofold, complex fact; and it is im- possible to conceive of any empirical immediacy that is less simple. One need not even assume, with nai've Why the Mind Has a Body. See especially pp. 106, 170, and foil. *Op. cit., p. 67. 3 See Royce's criticism of Stout's theory of activity, Mind, xxii., 387. 254 The Philosophy of the Spirit thinkers, that like apprehends like. In the act of apprehension there is a union of something external with an organism capable of apprehending the im- mediately given. The apprehending portion of the organism need not literally become the something felt, nor need the something felt absorb the organism which apprehends it. The thing felt is such that it can be simply apprehended. The apprehending organism is such that it can apprehend. In spatial terms, we may say that something is next- to the organism, as when, for example, an object is placed on the hand. This spatial contiguity may be said to be typical of the relation which exists all along the line, when the physi- cal contact is reported to the nerves, and thence gives rise to the psychological element known as "sensation," finally to the psychical moment of perception. But what we mean by immediacy, when this long series of contiguities finally leads to a perceived moment of experience, is rather a sense of blurred oneness than an awareness of union. The investigation of the nature of psychical immediacy properly begins with a fact on the mental side of the psychophysical series, that is, when the relation of contiguity is reported in an experienced moment which we hypothetically recon- struct and term "sensation/' but which as sensation is not experienced. The sensation could be known only in case the self could be aware of the act in suffi- ciently simple form to be as it were present and yet not present, as if subject and object were one (as the mystic believes they are). By hypothesis our unit of immediacy is a mere moment in a psychological series, an object of possible experience. This hypothetical unit is too abstract to be experienced, inasmuch as the barest moment actually known is not a sensation, but The Import of Immediacy 255 a perception in which the sensation is already an element; the felt union is not simply apprehended, but is perceived. Even perception therefore involves an immediacy which can be described only in mediate terms. This is an important conclusion. Thus the character of immediacy begins to be plain. It is a kind of psychical nextness such that object, sensation, perception, and perceiver seem to be one continuous experience. Our problem is to try to maintain this apparent oneness while rendering pro- gressively explicit the wealth which it involves. For there is a reality in this first immediacy which is never wholly absorbed, but is partly mediated and partly suggested in appreciative terms. The more faithfully we try to single out this psychical instant as appre- hended, the more are we compelled to confess that it is not the merely sentient contiguity which it appears to be. Distinctions are made within the seemingly blurred oneness, then judgments are passed: Something exists; there is a world outside of me; I, the perceiver, exist, and so on. Hence interest centres upon the logical implications of that which at first appeared to be independent. Plainly, the simplest moment of the immediate is not absolute, but is already a multiform, belongs to a system of relations which involve the universe. Not until a described moment of immediacy stands out in contrast with a moment of mediation do we really begin to know immediacy; and simply to describe is after all to mediate, to admit that im- mediacy is not what it seems to be. The first statement that can be made, then, con- cerning the immediate is that it exists, it possesses be- ing, is a brute fact, is something given, a mere "that" without a ' ' what. " What the something is one cannot 256 The Philosophy of the Spirit discover by mere reference to just that moment of psychic experience, for that moment as such has al- ready ceased to exist. Seek as we may to recover the experience precisely as apprehended, the result is at best its mediate reconstruction. For, contrary to popular thought, we cannot have identically the same experience twice. 1 At best we have that which we take to be a similar experience. Only by experience can one appreciate what psychic immediacy is, but only through reflection can one know what even this uniqueness is, for we know by comparison, hence mediately. Yet mediacy must not assume too much, for it is immediacy which supplies thought with its original content. If immediacy is known only through reflection, it exists as real when psychically perceived. From the point of view of thought, immediacy is mere unorganised stuff which must be taken up into the categories of form. Psychically regarded, then, immediacy is most unruly, since it cannot be seized and held fast to dis- cover what it is. What we really begin with is an experienced moment as it exists for memory, as re- constructively dwelt upon, and with the general series in which that moment appears, not as isolated, but as giving place to another moment in a stream which exhibits no rest. There is, to be sure, a break on the selfward side during sleep; but this gap is not experienced. Immediacy as perceived is due to the coming together of two streams one flowing from the environing field of our mental life, and the other meeting it from the depths of the self. Neither stream can be seized and held fast. Immediacy is their point of contact, a moment in their co-operative activity. i See James, op. cit., i., 230. The Import of Immediacy 257 It may be that the self is in a profound sense inde- pendent of time. But in its empirical aspect it is appreciable amidst time. Time is not a fact of direct experience, but immediacy when analysed proves to possess a transitivity in contrast with what James calls the ''substantive" states of consciousness; time and the wealth it brings are differentiated out of "the stream of thought." The significant characteristic for our purposes is the fact that psychic immediacy is given amidst change in a relentless time-stream. Into the same moment of that stream no man can step twice. Thus we are compelled to distinguish between immediacy as (i) just now presented and involving change, and (2) as it exists for reflection, as a concept. Since immediacy as psychically ap- prehended can be known only through the mediating thought which reconstructs it, what we really mean in most of our references to the immediate is this construct, not the bare psychic moment, no longer recoverable. In other words, it is not the mere fact of being that interests us, not the mere that, but what it is that exists and what its meaning is. Our recon- structed immediacy may indeed be intended as a mere description of what was felt in its simplicity, but the probability is that we are concerned with its theoretical implications. Thus our analysis points more and more to mediation as the prime consideration. This is an important result, as we shall soon see. It may well be that we constantly refer anew to immediacy as now apprehended, and hence exclaim, "That is the experienced quality I meant." But note that it is ever with increased wealth of mediate thought that we refer to and interpret the experience. The chief difficulty thus far is this: Here, in my 17 258 The Philosophy of the Spirit description, I have immediate experience conceptually represented. I endeavour to reconstruct every de- tail with utmost faithfulness. At last my concept is marked off with such clearness that I am able to point out universal characteristics, for example, that a given moment is knowable only in relation to another mo- ment, when the first has gone ; that the psychic element is particular, unique, evanescent, while the implied universal is the product of mediation, hence is the property of all. But do I at last possess the imme- diacy of real experience, so that another, reading my account, may possess the reality itself? Obviously, only in case he turns from the conceptual characteri- sation in renewed reference to his own stream of consciousness, as even now passing. The empirical element each man must appreciatively apprehend by means of that unique quality so hard even to suggest, namely, the living moment itself. The description fails just so far as life is appreciable by experiencing it as simple life. Life in a sense is the same for all; all are compelled to make precisely these admissions; life is always in a way psychically unique. You can- not know it completely from my description, for you must apprehend it as presented fact. Hence we find psychologists constantly appealing to immediacy; for example, when Miss Calkins says of pitch, "like every element of consciousness it is indescribable/' 1 Pro- fessor James repeatedly makes this empirical appeal: "The reader's own consciousness tells him of course just what these words of mine denote. And I freely confess that I am impotent to carry the analysis of the matter any farther. . . . " 2 But all this is univer- sally characteristic of immediacy, and the commonest * Introduction to Psychology, p. 46. 2 Op. cit., ii., 568. The Import of Immediacy 259 phase of it presents the same elements as the most mystical. What, then, do you mean when you refer to a given case of immediate experience as profoundly real for you? Suppose it is an experience which has stirred you deeply, a great joy or a supreme sorrow. You attempt to describe the experience to me and I try to show that I know what you mean. "No," you insist each time; " it is not that, but something you will know when you have felt it. There is a certain deep sense of life in it for you, a warmth, a reality which defies analysis. In fact, it is sacrilegious to attempt to analyse its higher phases" so you declare. The ex- perience entered into your life, became part of you, made your life larger, hence it possesses for you a certain character which wills, as it were, to be just itself. All the experiences we revere as most in- timately parts of us possess a quality such that others apprehend in a measure what we mean when we refer to them provided they have enjoyed similar ex- periences. The unique, immediate quality is the essence without which all mere description is cold and dead. Note that the more persistently one endeavours to be true to immediate experience, in however sacred a guise, the more one is compelled to mediate by differ- entiating its values as constituting a universe of ap- preciation in contrast with the world of bare fact. The mere uniqueness becomes less significant as we proceed, while the mediated world grows in value. Here, as elsewhere, the immediacy that is so real for us is no "mere immediacy," but belongs to a class of experiences which have survived all criticism. The most empirical aspect of immediacy is itself dis- 260 The Philosophy of the Spirit covered to be such through critical scrutiny. To mis- take the psychic or particular element for the universal which mediation alone discovers, is to be guilty of confusing psychology with logic. What is important in descriptive theories, such as sensationalism, and the doctrines of so-called "pure experience," is not after all the experience so emphatically appealed to, but the subtle universal which has been introduced unawares. Critics of constructive idealism resort to such conceptions as "pure experience," in order to escape from what they call "absolutism," but thereby merely propose a rival system of first principles which must be tested by the canons of thorough-going me- diation. The complaint seems to be that thought is artificial, "abstract"; while immediate experience is somehow directly real or rational. But it is precisely the inherent rationality of the immediate which thought endeavours to make explicit. Mediate thought, when complete, enters into full possession of the truth which immediacy implicitly meant. In a sense one need not even refer back to new immediacy, for mediation in its higher moment passes over into a third moment in which it holds the realities of sentiency and of thought in unification: it sees that just this its pro- foundest meaning is the truth which immediacy in all its wealth involved. It is clear that we must distinguish between that which is through mediation found to have been present and the interpretations which attribute to the given that which was not empirically found there. That things differ or resemble one another is a discovery made through mediating comparison, and the differ- ences or resemblances are empirically verifiable. All such discoveries merely tell us what was present all The Import of Immediacy 261 along. By this sort of discrimination we learn what was immediately given as a confused whole. People constantly resort to various devices in order to make explicit that which they possess as immediate wealth. Hence our analysis by no means takes from the im- mediate the value which it possesses as an empirical clue, to be first discovered, then interpreted. Suppose, for instance, a man wishes to discover his own deeper meanings, shall he find them by sheer self -analysis, or partly through the side-lights which direct contact with his fellows reveals? What if he wish to determine his position with regard to the teachings of the church, will mere intellectual in- trospection suffice? Experience shows rather that it is the unexpected side-lights which reveal a man's true estate, particularly if he be at all aware of the witness of the Spirit. Take the case of one who has analysed his religious faith down to the point of thin symbols and soulless values. From the point of view of mere theory there are no realities corresponding to these cold mediate symbols. Such a man may sup- pose that he knows precisely what he believes. He may maintain this attitude for ten, fifteen years. Yet, upon occasion he may be so deeply touched by a new experience that he will find himself believing in or praying to God with the old fervour. Or he may be like the man whom Professor James tells about who thought he believed only in Spencer's "Unknowable" but who one day discovered, after the lapse of many years, that he had really believed down in his heart in the God of his early faith, the God of prayer. In such a case the symbolism or agnosticism is a mediate husk which conceals the real pith of a man's belief. This theoretical mediacy must be mediated by refer- 262 The Philosophy of the Spirit ence to the concealed immediacy of still unquestioned belief. I do not say that thereby the unexpected side-light proves the concealed belief to be true, or authoritative ; but only by taking this into account may the man in question discover what he really does believe. The sudden side-light on one's character which a quick insight throws may have far more value than the severest self -analysis. Our deeper imme- diacies may be much nearer the heart of things. But they are at best so many considerations to be taken account of when immediacy and mediation combine. If immediacy must in all cases be mediated before one can judge what is real, what is true, it may also be true that all mediacy must be compared with these spontaneous immediacies. It may then be said that immediacy has a truth of its own. The hidden and half-hidden immediacies of human life are of great interest and of great consequence. But it is important to point out the equally subtle effect of mediation. On the whole, one is inclined to think that the part played by mediation is far more subtle. It is the inferences that are unwittingly read into immediacy which give it its great value in all cases bordering on mysticism, poetry, love, faith, and the like. Or, again, it is the rediscovered conviction wrought out by a long process of mediate thinking which seems to be a pure, entirely new revelation. The immediate is in a profound sense more directly connected with the subject than with that which is outer. In this sense will and feeling are more sub- jective than thought; feeling and will are particular, personal; while thought is universal, seeks to com- prehend all things in concepts freed from personal equations. Perception refers to the objective, while The Import of Immediacy 263 feeling is the inner "tone" accompanying it. As re- lated to the self, the term feeling may be said to possess a broader meaning than that of mere pleasure and pain and hence to represent immediacy in its most personal guise. H. N. Gardiner, for example, defines feeling as the "immediate consciousenss of the modifi- cation of individual experience, as such." 1 That is, the immediate modification of the individual's con- sciousness is distinguished from "the functions of knowledge and action it subserves." In the process of thought, however, there is again a respect in which the immediate certainty spoken of by logicians is directly connected with feeling, hence with the self. 2 From the point of view of feeling, in order for im- mediacy to exist there must be: (i) something felt, given, perceived; hence some thing or some being that gives; (2) a state of union between perceived and per- ceiver; and (3) a perceiver, who apprehends the im- mediacy and apperceives it. Immediacy exists, then, for a self, and the self possesses some sort of cognitive constitution ; the self on its part brings those principles to the experience which enable it to enter into the union. Hence, to state our problem differently, we have been endeavouring to differentiate the factors of psychical union so as to make the element of im- mediacy stand out by itself, now on the objective side and now on the subjective; and we have found this extremely difficult. Despite the fact, however, that there is a give and take between subject and ob- ject such that we seem to lose immediacy altogether, we constantly find that even with all its shifting there 1 Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, iii., No. 3, p. 61. 2 See, for example, Sigwarc, Logic, Eng. trans., i., 14. 264 The Philosophy of the Spirit is a sense in which the immediate is real in which mediacy is not. These points are so important that we must insist upon them. To love, for example, to enjoy music what is that but to apprehend a somewhat which thought never fully exhausts? To show that nothing is immediately complete just as perceived is by no means to prove that there is not a quality which one may critically return to and truly apprehend. If thought corrects feeling, feeling also corrects thought. Despite the fact that given experience is largely chaotic, as given, there is still a possibility that one may compare pre- sented experiences and long afterward learn their law, the profound order, system, which they reveal. That is to say, thought may have intruded its own recon- structions, and must now become passive, contem- plative, obedient, in search for the spontaneous. According to this view of immediacy we may then say that immediacy has a law of its own, namely, the order of existence which given experience reveals, when that experience has been scrutinised, freed from accidents, taken up into the understanding, yet separated from the artificialities of understanding and again discovered by reference back to immediacy. Thus understood, immediacy implies the total system of human experience, the real order and constitution of the universe, the nature of the self, and of the Supreme Self. This law of immediacy is the one implied in the mystic's attachment to the immediate: that is, sentiency is in a sense the real thing, and to know you must feel. No account of immediacy can take the place of personal experience. Another man's account of a given immediate experience must be tested by further reference to experience. The Import of Immediacy 265 But the laws implied in the critical view of immediacy are no less true. That is, (i) immediacy has a law of its own, but (2) it is a law that nothing immediate is really known as first given; thought must follow upon and discover by contrast and comparison, by criticism, what the directly presented implied; (3) the third law is that, since the immediate is directly felt, it must be felt by a self which brings to the experience its own cognitive constitution. These laws hold within all ranges of human experience. That is to say: we recognise that a thing is through some reality which our will did not create ; that the meaning of that thing is not clear on the face of it; and that in all attempts to discover its meaning there is involved the sentient constitution whereby the thing is apprehended. In all this we must emphasise the fact that thinking is itself almost as susceptible to illusion as feeling; hence that when our theory of immediacy has said its last word we must once more turn to immediacy to see if thought correspond to reality. There are of course many assumptions involved in this exposition of the laws, system, and ranges of im- mediacy. But one must start with some sort of hypothesis in order to mark off the concept in any clearly defined way. The general presupposition is this: The self is able, through mediate thought, to grasp the meaning of immediacy; reason is competent to complete its task; immediacy and the mediate belong to one system; thought and corrected feeling apprehend the same Reality. Yet it may well be that the character of human ex- perience is such that no unqualified law of the ultimate gifts of immediacy can be stated. For if you must verify your theory of the immediate by reference to 266 The Philosophy of the Spirit further immediacy, if that immediacy is somehow just your immediacy, yet is also the gift of a larger Being to whom you belong, you must leave room for the unexpected deliverances of further immediacy whose character no one can foretell. In short, there seems to be involved in the immediate a peculiar com- bination of the individual and the general, the one and the many, law and chance. In the light of the appreciations of the preceding chapters, it is plain that we must assign an important place to the spontaneous upwellings which throw a light on the immediate that is hardly to be equalled by the insights of self-conscious thought. The spon- taneous action which, as Emerson assures us, "is always best," belongs under this head, and we have made allowances for this factor from the first. A system of practical thought is sometimes reared on the basis of acceptance of such immediacies. It is argued, for example, that immediate giving to the poor, immediate succour of the afflicted, precisely as the heart prompts, is greatly superior to the pains- taking donations gingerly measured out by that de- lectable sentiment known as "charity." Again, it is said that what a man writes intuitively is superior to aught that he can think. In one form or another, this belief in immediacy underlies many kinds of esthetic, literary, social, and religious endeavour. Al- though it may be carried to great excess, and easily passes either into sensualism or mysticism, it is not to be lightly set aside. There are many practical problems involved in it which are still far from solution. But if it be a question of the substitution of this kind of immediacy as authoritative, one must point out that no one accepts such immediacy as authoritative The Import of Immediacy 267 except by careful comparison of experience with ex- perience. One may very well give such insights and experiences their place and let them reveal all that they are capable of revealing untampered with. But it is barren immediacy indeed that is not made logically richer by mediation. The point is that immediacy is never found by itself, nor is it judged by itself. As a concept it is as thoroughly inwrought with other concepts as any that could be named. Only by putting mediation out of the way as much as possible, by setting self aside, may one hope to apprehend it in deepest reality. But only by mediating this negation may one know how deeply the self really was put aside. If only by losing oneself may one find it, the discovery of the self is the great point, not the mere losing. He who has never doubted the existence of God, the self, freedom, immortality, love, and all the rest that the heart holds dear, has never fully pos- sessed these verities. To analyse intuition, to inquire into the possibility of revelation, is not to lose, but in the profoundest sense to gain. The moral of such examination is not that one should cease to believe in life's first gifts, crush out all spon- taneity, and depend solely upon painful induction; but that we should give immediacy a place side by side with thought and encourage it to reveal its ut- most. We may well trust our instincts to the end. But granted the rich possessions of experience in its first guise, we may well learn all that can be learned from appreciative comparison. To fall back upon the merely immediate would be to close the door to the profoundest truths of human life. The coolest, calm- est reasoner in the world is dependent to the last upon the clues which fresh experiences and flash-like in- 268 The Philosophy of the Spirit sights afford. The realities which he would interpret are of the order of sentiency, while thought is as persist- ently indirect, derived. The great lesson of our com- parison is the utter mutual dependence of experience and reason. Thus we arrive at the same conclusions whether it be a question of immediacy or of mediating thought. Neither is knowable as real without the other, and both must be tested by comparisons, side-lights, criticism, and by fresh return. Negation, not immediacy, is the fundamental law. Try to seize immediate experience while it passes and you fail utterly. Only through retrospection can you make any headway. But do not trust your mediating retrospect absolutely, for only by constant reference to the subtle stream which you observe but cannot check shall your description possess value. Begin to take interest in your description as such and it shall forthwith become dead. Only in change is life abundant. Entirely universal in form, so roomy that it can hold anything conceivable, hence in itself entirely non-committal, immediacy is nevertheless the bearer of an ever-astonishing wealth. 1 What, then, is thought if not that power in us which makes the empirically implicit intelligibly explicit? Thought is no enemy, as the devotees of religion some- times fear, it is utterly powerless in itself. If it negate it must itself be negated to the utmost. The truth, as Hegel shows, is found neither in the immediate nor in mere mediacy, but in a higher moment. The process would be endless if it were merely a question of the elusive contrasts which we have been considering. This will become the clearer if we once more briefly summarise. We find that psychic im- i See Supplementary Essay, Sec. 19. The Import of Immediacy 269 mediacy is appreciable rather than describable; as psychic fact it exists for one subject only, is statable as a felt moment only in retrospective, hence in mediate, terms. Therefore immediacy is rather psychological than psychical, is a theoretical construct, proposed after careful discrimination. But, further, it is more strictly logical; for only when assigned its conceptual place may it play a part in our critical thought. No immediacy as given informs us (i) what is; (2) what is real; (3) that a world exists; or (4) that a self exists; (5) hence no immediacy as given is authoritative, not even the immediacy of sensuous experience, not that of consciousness in general, not mystical immediacy, therefore not revelation; (6) no immediacy as given is a test of truth; and (7) none issues into defensible sensationalism, or any other form of immediatism. The truth or reality exists, rather, for judgment: im- mediacy is first judged to be, then judged to contain this or that; if there is reference back, or forwards to new immediacy, its verifying quality still exists for mediating thought. Hence, again, immediacy proves intelligible only as a logical moment. But its logical character cannot be reduced to mediacy; it qualifies while it baffles, opens the way to new experiences and unexpected side-lights until, finally, it escapes from an infinite process by uniting with mediation to con- stitute a third, or higher, logical moment. Both immediacy and mediacy are one-sided when taken alone, but their baffling life which sends us hither and yon, when confined to the level of the understanding, proves to be the rich life of constructive dialectic when developed by enlightened reason. 1 Thus the deeper lesson is transitivity, "becoming," See Supplementary Essay, Sec. 20 ff. 270 The Philosophy of the Spirit as Hegel calls it. The inner stream whose moments never return, the perpetual flux which so long ago fascinated Heraclitus this is the constructive clue which emerges from our study. Our investigation reveals three stages. In the first, we have immediacy regarded as unique, particular, psychical; in the second, we have immediacy as it retrospectively appears in detail, with its baffling character of reality amidst irrecoverable flux, facing its rival, thought, and almost succumbing before it; in the third, experience is con- ceptually given back enriched, immediacy has lost its innocence and its independence, yet it retains a value which thought can never take away. Imme- diacy as first discovered belonged to the lowest cate- gory of being, 1 and it was necessary to resolve it into this poorest of categories in order to strip it of all misconceptions. But there is a higher immediacy of tested insight, transfigured love, transmuted feeling, perfected guidance, proved faith, which is the ally of illumined reason. There is in fact a gradation of immediacies from sensuality to divine love, and he who is unable to classify is unable even to appreciate. The reality which clings to the immediate is the reality of that wonderful gift called "life" which is a sharing in that larger Life that is more than ourselves. Thus it is primarily immediacy that convinces us that there is an Other than ourselves. The transitivity to which we must be obedient in order to know that which is real is precisely this immanent Life. Our whole process of mediation is in a way a recovery of what we at first unwittingly possessed, the highest universal, "the Absolute Spirit," as Hegel calls it. The higher 1 The Seyn of Hegel's Logic. See Supplementary Essay, Sec. 52 ff. The Import of Immediacy 271 immediacy is a co-operative product. Its meaning is the Idea. 1 i Since the above was in type an article has appeared which strikingly confirms some of the above conclusions: " Immediacy, Mediation and Coherence," by G. F. Stout, Mind, Jan., 1908. See especially pp. 26-30. CHAPTER XII AN ESTIMATE OF MYSTICISM IT should be plain from the foregoing that there is no road back from the point reached in the preceding chapter to empiricism, whether mild or radical. All immediatism is in some sense a reversion to lower experience, neglect of the fact that immediacy is only intelligible when combined with mediating thought in a higher moment. For him who has once put his hand to the plow there is no looking back that is of more than tentative value. The prime question is, Whither does life lead? If we are unable at present fully to say, we may at least state what we can now discern, then move forward with the life that is ad- vancing within and around us. To appeal to the witness of the Spirit does not mean to revert to what the Spirit was, but to be faithful to what it is now doing. To know what the Spirit is at present accom- plishing is in the first instance to refer to experience, but we must also consult that parallel line of mental life which, added to the other, comments upon and expounds it. The "life of reason" is far more sig- nificant than the "life of feeling." Only through sentiency are we concretely brought into relation with reality in an empirical sense, only through "the feelings" do we personally enter into experience; but only through thought do we apprehend the significance of the persistent transitivity of experience. Imme- diacy refers not only to itself as experience, but to the 273, An Estimate of Mysticism 273 self that apprehends, as well as in the direction pointed out by its incessant life. Far deeper, therefore than the nature of the immediate, is the question of the reality of the self. That our conclusions coincide in a measure with common sense becomes evident when, for instance, we consider the nature of love. Love is revered above all else in its immediacy, its first estate; and yet what do we mean by love in its deeper sense if not that quality which is perfected through the years? If love be "blind" at the beginning, it is clear-sighted when matured through relationship with wisdom. What people adore in love is not a state, a fixed condition, but a life that is ever renewed and for ever renews. The literature of love which has fascinated the ages is the mediation of this wonderful life which has stirred men all along. But our conclusions, although at this point coin- cident with common sense, lead in two directions. The practical man will return to the clues of the inter- preted immediate with renewed conviction, inasmuch as he can now rationally single out the clues that are worth while. The religious man, for example, can believe in the critically discerned immediate presences of the spiritual life, while rejecting all doctrines which, like mysticism, are reversions. For those who are interested in the further logical development of the im- mediate the most direct clue is found in the dialectic of the Hegelian Idea. For if Heraclitus was the prophet of the immediate, Plato was its first great critic, and in the idealistic movement from Plato to Hegel one finds the all-inclusive philosophical clue. This does not mean that one stops with Hegel, but that he above all others has exhaustively analysed the im- 18 274 The Philosophy of the Spirit mediate and developed the logical forms in terms of which it may be reflected; it is he who furnishes the proof that idealism, not sensationalism, materialism or mere empiricism, is the final philosophy. In Hegel's philosophy one finds a constructive idealism of the Spirit which, beginning with the most meagre moment of consciousness, moves forward to the Idea. The movement is through Spirit and nature in antithesis to their union in the Idea. Nature is the process and the transition to Spirit reveals the ultimate truth; in nature the Idea is merely potential, not con- sciously known; in the Spirit the truth of that which is external is made clear. According to Hegel, we possess the idea of God already, what we seek is its full significance; to develop this meaning is to propose the Idea and develop it through its various stages. It is the nature of God not to remain merely implicit, within Himself, but to manifest Himself. The com- pleteness of this manifestation is the absolute Spirit. Nature, the world of consciousness, the finite selfhood, are forms of manifestation of God, "embodiments of the divine Idea." The fundamental issue to which one is thus led is this: Is the immediate a product of absolute Thought, so that it is through and through rational, can one deduce nature and history from the Idea; or, is the immediate a given somewhat, a datum, an irrational element, which our thought, starting with the facts of history, must mediate as well as it can? This is a subject which can hardly be treated without a technical study of the profoundest works in the history of thought, and hence has been reserved for separate treatment in the Supplementary Essay. Cp. Supplementary Essay, Sec. 19. An Estimate of Mysticism 275 Like Santayana, we have started with "the im- mediate flux, in which all objects and impulses are given," 1 although we have forthwith denominated this flux "life" and interpreted it as manifesting the Spirit. With Santayana, we acknowledge that "the immediate exists, even if dialetic cannot explain it." 2 But inasmuch as a doctrine exists which makes an attempt absolutely to revert to the immediate as ir- rational, it would seem necessary to examine that doctrine. Moreover, in assigning 3 to emotion an or- ganic place amidst a whole we apparently passed by the most striking case of emotionalism in the entire history of human thought. For it is the mystic above all others who claims to have had experience of the direct presence of God, and mysticism is nothing apart from a certain interpretation of religious emotion. Indeed it is the mystic who gives rise to the theory that God is in a special sense directly present to the human soul. It is surely incumbent upon us to examine the mystic's assumptions. The foregoing dis- cussions have fully prepared the way. In fact we have delayed the analysis of this most striking case until we had gathered the elements of a criticism which should be decisive. This delay was all the more necessary inasmuch as our conclusions will differ from those of nearly all other critics. In general, mysticism implies belief in a religious experience which transcends all ordinary under- standing. The experience is supposed to bring the soul into the most direct relation with the spiritual world and to involve the most intimate communion i Op. cit., i., 32. *Ibid, p. 41. On chaos as a starting point, see ibid., pp. 35-43 3 Chap. IX. 276 The Philosophy of the Spirit with God. Essentially incommunicable, the experi- ence is appreciable only by those who have enjoyed it and who indicate by various hints that they, too, have stood on holy ground. The term mysticism is of widespread significance and is not necessarily a term of reproach. It need not, for example, involve a belief in the identification of the soul with God, and does not always eventuate in pantheism. It usually implies a radical departure from worldly ways, but does not necessarily involve the notion that the world is an illusion. The mystic may be a Hindoo ascetic or a mild-mannered religious devotee of a well-known type here in the Western world. Usually, however, the mystic in whom the experience is strongly enough marked to be deemed decisive is one who disparages both the human intellect and the human self. In- asmuch as the experience seemingly involves the transcendence or suppression of discursive reasoning, all attempts to describe it in rational terms are given up as hopeless. If the mystic continue to believe in his own selfhood it is with the conviction that he is nothing and God is all, hence God alone may be men- tioned. Alone with God, he is so far absorbed in beatific contemplation as to be unable to give any account of his ecstasy save to refer to it as essentially incommunicable. In other words, mystic experience is the extreme case of immediacy and mysticism is immediatism in the extreme; to know its reality is not to analyse and define, but to feel and enjoy. We may well begin our study, therefore, by refer- ence to actual experience. The following is from a correspondent whose appeal for help reads like a voice from the middle ages. I write you in almost fearful hope that I have found a An Estimate of Mysticism 277 living man who can and will guide me in my efforts to arrive at a true interpretation of a religious experience, which no one seems to understand, nor I myself, and which has sent me a-wandering o 'er the world . . . bringing me in conflict with all established systems and institutions, whether practical or speculative. ... I have been brought to realise that I am a mystic. . . . For some years I have been struggling, in feeling and in thought, with profound questions of religion and philosophy. . . . Starting with the fundamental assumption of experience as a basis of all knowledge and thought, I find difficulty in making any beginning in building up a system of belief . . . from the fact that my own experience is radically different from that of any person with whom I ever came in contact. I may say that the following lines in your book [Man and the Divine Order] were the inspiration of this letter: "The intuitive person who has beheld the beatific vision receives no sympathy except from those who have also stood on holy ground. It is right to cling to the reality of such experiences despite all scepticism [p. 294]. . . . Why does a single insight outweigh the authority of all arguments which apparently make against it? [p. 157]. ... It may seem to the percipient that he is, in very truth, the living God [p. 162]. . . . The experience is incommunicable. Although it is not to be known in terms of thought, it may be known from itself, by having it " [p. 158]- I am confronted with a serious practical problem of nullifying my own experience which I have endeavoured to do in vain, or of finding an environment on earth (in order to remain thereon in any peace of mind, or hope of usefulness) in which I can objectify the subjective, and make real that which I feel is true, that for which I have suffered worse than death. As it was with St. Teresa, I need a "confessor," a "di- rector" of my thought. Thus far I have sought in vain 278 The Philosophy of the Spirit until, in despair and desperation, I am about to turn my back upon the world in which I have tried to live so long; and seek the peace and quietness of some form of monastic seclusion in which I may live in communion with departed spirits who felt as I do and cherish my wild dreams and dear delusions until released from the bondage of the flesh by the kindly hand of Death. You may or may not sym- pathise with and respond to this effort to find a kindred soul one to whom I may speak in the fulness of my love and faith, without being cruelly tortured and misunder- stood; but it is a necessity of my being. . . . Among others whom this mystic had consulted, he thus speaks of those who have engaged in psychic research : I have ever felt a kind of repulsion toward those "psy- chical societies, " whose endeavours have seemed to me to be uncanny attempts to penetrate divine mysteries with the eye of the intellect alone which are doomed to barren results; for it is not through the senses, but through the eternal Spirit, in which we must "live and move and have our being," that we may find out God. The keenest intellects are baffled by the mysteries that are laid open to the eye of faith and heart of love; for indeed are "these things hidden from the wise and great, and are revealed to babes. " I hope I do no wrong to those excellent gentlemen who are engaged in such pursuits. In response to this outpouring I wrote that it was not necessary to retire into monastic seclusion, nor to "nullify" the experience of immediate communion, but rather to mediate it in sympathetically rational terms; and a second outpouring came as follows: I read your letter with deep emotion ; and I glance with sacred awe into a future that is fraught with tremendous consequences, if my strange experience is true if the vision that swept over me in the long ago proves to be a An Estimate of Mysticism 279 reality and not a mere hallucination. For the burden that I bear seems more than can be borne by one man alone and yet all attempts to share it have proven worse than vain, bringing naught but strife and pain to self and others. If it be not delusion (against the snares of which, from within, and the charges of which, from without, I have ever struggled in bitterness and doubt) , if the insight that guides my thought is not the fallacious reasoning it is pro- nounced to be by the world, the problems of my life are the problems of the age , and their solution will mean some- thing to mankind. Oh! I hope you don't misunderstand me; and if I go beyond you, I implore you to have patience and faith ; and you will enable me thereby to sift the true from the false, and cling to it as no other will, or can. Believe me, it is only the blessed Truth I seek; and to die for it would sweeten the torture of living for it! I feel the terrible responsibility that rests upon me '-or seems to which I long to share with another, or be freed from, whether it be real or imaginary. But I am driven by a power I cannot all control; and the Spirit of the Eternal demands that we be faithful to our trust, and obedient to what we believe to be truth or perish everlastingly. And if I have found the friend I have looked for so long wandering in the darkness of the world, swept almost out of being by the storms that have broken over me my joy will break forth in an ecstasy of delight, which I shall endeavour to subdue by deeds of love and gratitude. If you could know my sufferings at the hands of faithless men, in my life-long search for a friend one whom I could trust, one "with whom I can think aloud" you would understand what otherwise might shock and repel you. . . . Through "excess of self," I have lost every real friend that ever came close to that which I actually am I who would lay down my life for my friend, if I had one ! You would be amazed at some of the experiences I have been through in relation to the human spirit, in a life that has been filled at times with intense social activity. 280 The Philosophy of the Spirit Even now, I stop a moment to question if you will sympathise with this outpouring. But I know that if you understand at all, you are aware that the self must be lost in, interpreted by, or related to something without it, before its higher energies can be aroused, its real strength and interest expressed in objective form. . . . As you may perceive, the idea of reformation is a vital part of my nature and religion. So strong is this desire in me, that it throws me out of all harmonious relation with the world in which I live individually and otherwise. I believe in "leaving all to follow" which the Church preaches; but, as she will not leave all, she cannot follow. The practical application of this simple doctrine of the Martyr of humanity means more than reformation: it means Revolution. It means the overturning of all existing systems and institutions, and their foundation on a more lasting basis. And this must be done to satisfy the demands of the expanding soul of man, and to furnish the Spirit of the Eternal a habitation and a home on earth. As I have found by actual experience in the world, the complete reformation of a single human life, and its establishment on the higher law of love proclaimed by Jesus Christ, would bring about such unfitness between organism and environment as could only result in the extermination of the former or the transformation of the latter. Which shall it be? The progress, nay, the sal- vation, the continuance of the human race depends upon the answer. For my part, individually, I have left all; but have not been able to follow all alone. The world, which I endeavoured to reform, was too much for me ; and I have not yet been able to get a hold on any existing insti- tution, nor individual, with whom I may join hands, and "make a beginning of right living" in the light of the eternal Truth of the divine Ideal, that shines down through the darkness of the ages from the glorious life that went out on the Cross of Calvary. . . . My main problem seems now to be to keep body An Estimate of Mysticism 281 and soul together in a world that seems almost bent on rend- ing them asunder; for my very presence, through the ideas that possess me, seems to be disturbing to the peace of those with whom I come in contact; and unintentionally, un- consciously, instinctively, they turn on me, like animals. It is this that is forcing me into seclusion. Among the educated, with whom I have spent most of my days, I am peculiarly out of place. To one who loves his kind, this is very painful; but I suppose it is better for the develop- ment of my doctrines which must be, henceforth, through study and reflection. To meet this man face to face was to find him even more on fire than the above quotations indicate. He had indeed enjoyed the mystic's vision, with all its ecstasy. But not being of a merely emotional type, he had sought to relate his vision with prevalent the- ories of human nature. Everywhere misunderstood, he had turned so violently against the world that for him the existence of evil was the central problem, hence his bitterness and his longing for monastic seclusion. His statements exemplified all the ex- cesses of mysticism, notably that of attributing to others the conditions which were due to " excess of self." Not by any possible persuasion could one con- vince him that the trouble lay within himself, not with the world. Yet the fault was not wholly his own. Strange to relate, it was within the walls of a divinity school that he had been most deeply misunderstood. Of all places in the world, such a school is the one where the mystic should meet sympathy. There he should be gently dealt with, there the right word ought to be spoken which should enable him to organise his powers. To condemn a man as "insane" merely because he is a 282 The Philosophy of the Spirit mystic, and because mysticism is heresy, might indeed be called the unpardonable sin of a theological institu- tion. To fail to understand and to organise mysticism is to fail radically. Why is it that the mystic is thus ungently treated? Why is mysticism heresy? In the first place, because the mystic claims to hold direct communion with God. This assumption appears to the orthodox theologian to strike at the root of all beliefs in Christ as the sole mediator, as well as to undermine the conviction that the Bible contains the only authoritative revelation. If mysticism be universally true, any one could hold communion with God. Where, then, is the authority of the Church? To admit the validity of the mystic's experience were to put the first emphasis upon ex- perience, but dogmas and creeds stand first ; not a word of qualification can be admitted. In the second place, mysticism readily runs into the doctrine that "all is God," and pantheism is heresy, while Chris- tianity is explicitly theistic. It is well known that the pantheistic tendencies of the Christian Church were of foreign, mainly Eastern, origin. To admit one premise might be to run the full length to which the mystic's conclusion carries. It matters not that mysticism reappears in various forms and hence may be said to express human nature on one of its sides. Wherever it appears it is replete with danger to estab- lished institutions and creeds. This unsparing theological condemnation is seem- ingly strengthened by the disparagement which mys- ticism receives at the hands of moral and metaphysical philosophers. It is well known that mystic doctrines, such as "All is- God," usually involve the denial of all moral distinctions, the reduction of all ethical An Estimate of Mysticism 283 trasts to the dead-level proposition, "all is good, there is no evil," "whatever is, is right"; and belief in evil is the very life of the Church. Even when mysticism does not involve pantheism it is ethically objectionable, because the mystic isolates himself from his fellows and emphasises the via negativa, mere self -purification, and absolute absorption in the mystic state. Conse- quently mysticism is conveniently classified as exempli- fying "the abstract universal" and as conveniently dismissed. Metaphysically, it is sharply dealt with because its Absolute is conceived in merely negative terms. The mystic claims that reality is knowable only through pure immediacy, mere oneness with God, in which all contrasts between subject and object have been over- come. But psychological analysis fails, as we have conclusively seen, to reveal any such experience as mere immediacy. The mystic experience is said to be mysterious, beyond all rational description. But metaphysics is essentially rational and finds no place for mystery. Once more, therefore, mysticism is said to represent the abstract universal. Condemned, disparaged, the mystic can find no comfortable place on earth. Yet he cannot be wholly wrong. The main fault is no doubt his. Tempera- mentally one-sided, emotional in the extreme, in- tellectually undeveloped or defective, he gives so poor an account of his experience that those who judge by the letter find no positive content therein. Hence he is supposed to be a sensuous degenerate. It is not strange that he has fared ill. The mystic's experience is not, however, merely negative, and it is unfair to dismiss it without ap- preciative examination. Were the experience nega- 284 The Philosophy of the Spirit tive, the mystic would not mind the ill-treatment he receives. It is so far overwhelming that the mystic would stake everything in its behalf. The difficulty is that the experience is so greatly excessive that its percipient is unable to describe it in sufficiently mod- erate terms to win attention. But let a man who is not essentially a mystic enjoy the same type of ex- perience in milder degree and it is possible not only to appreciate but to interpret the vision, to succeed where the mystic fails. In this sense it may be said that many have the mystic's experience. Indeed, if real, this experience must conform to a type of mental life which every intelligent person is capable of identifying. Regarded without prejudice yet appreciatively, there appear to be three leading misconceptions in the radical mystic's own account of the experience. The mystic declares that (i) he apprehends God either by "becoming" God or by being so far "one with" Him that nothing further is to be said; (2) the communion is an experience in which all thought is transcended; and (3) this ineffable communion or ecstasy is indescribable, incommunicable. (i) We may very well go part way with the mystic and declare, not that the finite self "becomes" God, but that the pure in heart "see" God, apprehend the realities of the divine love. This is both rational and Christian. In various books of the Old Testament and throughout the New Testament the verities of mysticism are discoverable without the excesses. As a child of God one may hold communion with Him, yet still possess one's finitude. To behold the glory of the Lord need not be to turn away from the beauty of the world. If in some sense of the word the incar- An Estimate of Mysticism 285 nation of the Father in Jesus have special significance, it is at any rate through personal communion that the meaning of the incarnation is appreciated. Belief in direct communion of man with God is not incom- patible with belief in the special mission of Jesus. It is questionable if even in the mystical Fourth Gospel any of the excesses of mysticism are right- fully discoverable. (2) Our entire inquiry has shown that there is no experience in which thought is wholly transcended that is, there is no mere immediacy, either emotional or of any other sort. The mystic's communion is nothing if not emotional, and we have found that it is the nature of emotion to fill the entire horizon as if it alone were real. But the fact that an experience completely fills the mind neither proves that it is not the fulfilment of the experiences which went before nor that its reality possesses unique significance. The mystic would have it that his ecstasy springs, as it were, out of the air, an absolute gift, absolutely real. But his life has long been a preparation for just that experience. He has his methods of purifi- cation and contemplation. He brings to the ex- perience a full measure of expectancy. Thus it is in part a creation of his own thought, it is mediated, made possible by what he is and by all that he brings to the experience. The fact that in the supreme moment of ecstasy the conscious expectancy gives place to pure realisation by no means implies the negation of the foregoing preparatory, interpretative thought. His experience is in part a gift and in part the product of conscious mental life. Even in case it occur without conscious expectation on the mys- tic's part it is a fruition of his temperament, so 286 The Philosophy of the Spirit that to know what he is, is thus far to mediate the experience. (3) But since the mystic's experience is analysable into emotional and other elements, it is in part at least describable. To accept the experience as wholly incommunicable would be to ignore the fact, that it is given amidst a mental environment which can be psychologically described. The more pronounced the ecstasy the less able is the mystic to describe it, and an experience which is so far absorbing that there is no opportunity to give attention to details is naturally difficult to recall. But the greater the absorption the more reason for comparing it with moderate ex- periences, such as the enjoyment of nature or of art, in which there is opportunity for intelligent recall. In the first place, the experience is probably like any emotion in which an underlying activity gives the decisive direction. In this case the activity expresses eagerness to possess God. It is a moment of attention which for the time knows no wavering. Supervening upon this comes the emotion which gives zest to the activity. Then there is the feeling of happiness that the divine presence has been found. That is to say, there is first an experience of ineffable union, then a sense of blessedness and an uplifting emotion. These, occurring simultaneously, and ful- filling an intellectual expectancy in terms of which the experience is symbolically mediated, undoubtedly constitute the mystical experience. The emotion would conceivably increase in intensity according to the temperament of the individual, the stress put upon mystical blessedness as a clue to reality, and the inter- pretation put upon the ineffable union when regarded as a direct revelation of God. If the. mystic possessed An Estimate of Mysticism 287 acuter knowledge of himself and greater power over his mental states, he would probably be able to in- hibit the emotional ecstasy, retain the happiness and sense of upliftment, and be able to interpret the ex- perience in moderate terms. If the implied principle of interpretation happened to be theistic, the emotion would no doubt be tempered, would be such as a con- ception of the divine Father would call forth. A more sensuous experience would probably give rise to an overwhelming emotion. Hence the subject might exclaim in his intemperance, ''all is God," pointing to his emotion in proof. That is, the emotion which accompanies the immediacy judged to bespeak the divine presence is no doubt the chief source of the excesses of mysticism. In some cases the sensuous ecstasy is probably temperamental, hereditary, na- tional; while in other cases the preceding thought has tended to evoke it. In the more intelligible sense, the ecstasy is apparently due to the eagerness on the recipient's part to seize every atom of blessedness while the vision lasts. Hence the mystic defeats his own object. To make allowances for the ecstasy, to interpret the feeling of blessedness philosophically, would be to prepare the way for an impartial account of the experience. Quiet, passionless contemplation would seem to be greatly preferable. To control the emotion might be to spread the sentiment of happiness so far as not only to avoid reading a mystical interpre- tation into it but be able to assimilate it into one's daily life. It would still be the peace which "passeth all understanding," but its surpassing beauty would be intelligible. When due allowances have thus been made for the excesses both of the experience and of the interpre- 288 The Philosophy of the Spirit tat ion, what remains is the intelligible proposition that in the ineffable union there were no obstacles that separated God and man, that man holds com- munion with God in accordance with his temperament and his belief. That the actual psychic union is incommunicable might reasonably be expected. But so is any experience whatsoever, to the extent that the experience is immediate that is, psychically perceived. The calmest emotion is as non-trans- ferable as the most exciting. To know any sensation, emotion, feeling, volition, or other mental state as felt, one must feel; there is and could be no other way. What is communicable is the description of the expe- rience, and the chief difficulty the mystic labours under is the fact that his experience is so much more intense that it appears to be of another kind, hence all words fail him. The mystic is skilled neither in psychology nor in logic, and he gives as faulty an account of the experience as could well be made. There are various approaches to the divine nature, different communions. Mysticism selects but one. If we live in union or affinity with God at all [says Mar- tineau] 1 it must be in several relations, not in one alone; for our being is complex, and must touch His at every point. We suffer, we think, we will; what we feel is the pressure of His laws; what we know is the order of His reality; what we choose is from His possibilities; and how can there fail to be a path to Him from the sensitive, the intellectual, and the moral passages of our history? We cannot agree, then, with those who so severely characterise mysticism that they have nothing positive to say. For, as we have seen, the difficulty is not that i A Study of Religion, i., 16. An Estimate of Mysticism 289 mysticism is empty, but that mystic immediacy is so compacted with content that the mystic is unable to do aught save to point to it. The most one-sided of men, the mystic above all others requires the sym- pathetic aid of the appreciative psychologist, the con- siderate logician, the moderate theologian one who is not hunting for heretics, and above all, the meta- physical thinker who shall explain what the mystic really meant to say when he declared that reality is immediate. There is nothing in mysticism, then, that leads us to modify the conclusions of the foregoing chapters. In the mystic experience the presence of God is im- plied, but so it is in the great world of nature: the Spirit is not limited to the inner life. There is no reason to suppose that any "faculty" or "power" is active that is not present in other experiences, hence the mystic experience is neither miraculous nor unique. That God is immediately present is no doubt known through intuition, but this intuition is of the well- known intellectual type that is, it is an insight, a culmination of many experiences and reflections, a rich product susceptible of logical analysis, like any other intuition. That emotions which demand the most careful scrutiny are present is too obvious to require further mention. That the mystic obeys what to him is a sure principle of guidance which even- tually leads up the mountain of beatific vision is no less plain. That he possesses a certain faith which has its perfect fruition in this same vision is also clear. What is least obvious is that the mystic has awk- wardly employed his intellectual powers, and has mediated his experience so that his theory plays straight into the hands of the constructive idealist. The Philosophy of the Spirit What the mystic should say is, not that the world is illusion this is the conclusion of Hindoo mystics but that it is a manifestation of Spirit, hence of such stuff as intellectual insights are made of. Instead of turning from the world, he ought to carry to unen- lightened man the glorious news of the realities of the Spirit. Instead of condemnation he should display love. Instead of enlarging his own selfhood so that the whole world seems to have gone wrong, he should learn the open secret of mysticism all through the ages, namely, the fundamental malady of the mystic is that he takes himself too seriously. For if ever the pathetic fallacy was exemplified here it is. It should be plain from the foregoing that we are not using the term mysticism with respect to so-called mysteries, such as the trinity and the incarnation. For these phases of religious belief we reserve the term "values." If "the blessed trinity" be an acceptable mystery which it is not man's province to inquire into, it is for those who accept it a value to be con- served. If the incarnation be beyond all comprehen- sion it, too, belongs to the world of values. We have agreed from the first to reserve a place for the ac- complishment of divine ends whose conditions man may not comprehend. The "Lord's supper" and other forms of religious observance have special significance for those who employ them. But from a philosophical point of view these are merely particular instances of general principles. No doubt there is a connection between mystery and mysticism. The devotee of mystery, like the mystic, prefers to retain the mystery in its unmediated form. The rationalist would say, mediate your mystery, resolve it into its elements, and while you may still reserve some of these elements An Estimate of Mysticism 291 as unanalysable values you will gain in understanding, mayhap discard some of the mysteries. The thorough-going mystic is not often found in these days outside of the far East, and the problems of mysticism do not exist for the average religious devotee. But the mystic element appears in the religious hymns and poetry of the ages. Even the most moderately stated reminders of the direct pres- ence of God contain the same element. Every genuine prayer is so far mystical as to imply sane communion with God. The act of worship is a stage in the mystic ascent. The hymn of praise springs from the thought of God's presence. The beatific vision of the poets is a more refined form of the mystic's ecstasy, without the pantheistic implications. More direct still, the practical mysticism of the ages is a clue to what is sane in mysticism at its height. The " practice of the presence of God" implies a certain preparation which may lead, not to the ecstatic sum- mits, but to acts of divine service. The trouble with the ecstatic mystic is that he is seized, carried away by his mood. Were he sensible, instead of sinking more deeply into self-contemplation he would turn his consciousness of the presence of God to practical account. Fortunate is he of a mystic type whose experience is spread along the years in milder form, so that he can at will realise the divine presence, so that he not only knows the way up but the way down. To ascend to the mount at will is to be able to temper one's zeal, to linger there and enjoy the landscape, noting its details so that one may recall them at leisure. A poor psychologist, a worse logician, the mystic may well become a noble servant of the people. For 292 The Philosophy of the Spirit what could be better than to bear within the soul the consciousness of the presence of God in such wise as to manifest that consciousness in daily life? Surely, the pragmatic test should be applied to mysticism. What do you propose to do? What practical con- sequences has mysticism for your life? If many mystics have failed to show good results, the time is ripe for conduct which shall show that the mystic really believes what he professes. Judged by its fruits, the mysticism which has run into disparagement of the world, mortification of the body, condemnation of men, belittlement of the intellect the unpardon- able sin of mysticism is faulty indeed: that it im- plies "the abstract universal" is too mild a form of reproach. But the mystic needs to be harnessed. If by some good fortune you are able to persuade him to become "as a little child, " you may lead him where the needy and the sinful are and give him work to do. Without the mystic in the general sense of the word how would we ever have had religion, save as a remote supernaturalism? For, plainly, it is the men who are fired with the presence of God who stir their fellows out of worldliness. It is well that the mystics have been specialists. Forgive them their excesses and recognise the work they have wrought. The passion for God becomes a lost emotion every now and then. Forthwith there arise men so filled by this passion that they are fairly beside themselves with zeal. They are the original seers who behold the kingdom at first hand. Few in any age, they enjoy the greatest of privileges. From them power goes forth into the world, so that uncounted thousands feel it and respond. In Jesus we behold what the mystic might have been had he risen to the fulness of his privilege. An Estimate of Mysticism 293 The saying that " things go by contraries" is well illustrated in the case of mysticism. The mystic above all others insists that God is first and last, while the self is naught. Hindoo mystics especially under- valuate the individual, and place great stress on hu- mility and resignation. Yet by a subtle irony of fate it is the mystic who puts himself most in the way, so much in the way that it is not strange that the reality of mysticism has frequently been overlooked. If he who would "annihilate the self" permits it to be most prominent, then in truth is the self unescapable. The lesson of mysticism in this regard plainly is, since the self is a hindrance, understand it through and through, so that due allowances may be made for the deflecting power of emotion, the subtle play of desire, and the resistance of will. If the self be unescapable, cultivate it to the full, in accordance with the Greek ideal, round it out to the full and then offer it as an instrument for the Spirit well knowing what you are offering. To annihilate the self were to destroy God too. He who loses the self shall find it, that is, he who interprets, not he who tries to ignore; he who mediates, not he who endeavours to revert to mere immediacy. If there be pride, talent, desire for personal leadership, originality, belief in self these are not to be despised but to be consecrated. Their "nothingness" is not that of their inherent qualities, but of their mere immediacy, the first form, which must be transmuted. When the self tries to be somewhat of and by itself it fails, it is literally nothing. This is the first great discovery of the spiritual life. The second is the one for which mysticism stands, namely, that God is all, that all credit belongs with the Holy Spirit. But this is only the second movement 2 94 The Philosophy of the Spirit in the great dialectic of the Spirit. The third is the one in which the truths of the other two are unified, where the power of the individual is seen in the light of the glory of God. There need be no ultimate conflict between the teachings of Greece and of India. Self-realisation and self-disparagement both teach their lessons. The harmonising clue is found in the fact that the deep spiritual experience which has come to the soul, the test of faith, the leadership of guidance, is precisely that which prepares the way for the best expression of the individual. The purpose of God is expressed both in the spiritual trial and in the promptings of intellectual ambition. We help to make ourselves individuals by the act of faith through which we accept the higher guidance. The particular experience gives us something to say, something to do; it is the Spirit that gives the carrying power. The abiding truth of mysticism is the great fact of the presence of God, the environing relationship of the eternal spiritual world. The mystic may be chiefly mistaken in all other respects, but on this fact he rightfully insists. One would not go to him to be told what reality is, for he over-emphasises the importance of immediacy. He is not a moral philosopher. It is difficult either to use or to teach him. He is surely wrong in insisting that his experience is unique. But it is very profitable to analyse his doctrine so far as to learn its universal elements. We return not only to the larger truth that God is present to man's entire nature, but with increased conviction that there is nothing that excludes you or me from that presence. It is not for us who do not so vividly realise the divine presence to bemoan our fate, as if we were cut off from An Estimate of Mysticism 295 the Spirit. It is no doubt unusual to be so profoundly aware of the divine presence as some appear to be who tell how deeply they were stirred, what a sense of up- liftment the experience brought, and it is still more unusual to have the beatific vision. But we who can interpret what baffles the mystic may be in a position the better to serve than he. There is some truth in the statement that mysticism is a reversion to sensualism. At any rate, there is no reason to envy the mystic. .If none of us is deprived of the presence of God, it behooves us to discover what form that presence takes in our individual experience. If one is of the intellec- tual type rather than the emotional, the chances are that the idea of God will be brought near to the soul by philosophically taking thought in regard to the under- lying reality, the fundamental purpose of life. There are advantages in this mode of approach inasmuch as the way lies through a clearly defined country, and the possessions of thought are permanent while the uplifts of emotion are ephemeral. If you can so far read the meaning of your soul's travail as to conclude that the power of God has had a hand in it, you have won a possession which is at once stable as compared with the stirrings of emotion and secure from the point of view of systematic thought. These conclusions will become more certain when we examine the evi- dences for divine guidance, and the nature and the sources of faith. CHAPTER XIII GUIDANCE WE may now regard our investigation as completed so far as special claims in behalf of unique faculties and experiences are concerned. In each case we have found that the special claims involve a measure of truth, but we were unable to discern that truth until we eliminated various misconceptions. The gain was great inasmuch as we vindicated the conviction that the Spirit is present to all sides of man's nature. The authority of the Spirit proved to be no less when dele- gated to man's nature at large, when transferred from a special "sense" to the universalising power of re- flection. The reality of the Spirit was equally great, although we reduced the vague "feeling" through which the Spirit was said to be revealed to numerous principles and elements. The authority is discoverable through reason and vindicated by its fruits; while the reality is discovered through analysis and comparison of experiences. There is a part of our nature which is supreme over the rest, but it is supreme because there is a hierarchy of inseparable powers. That is to say, it is not a question of independent senses or faculties, but of a series of intimately related powers. God may well be directly present to the sentient side of our nature. But, if so, this does not mean the singling out of a distinctive spiritual sense ; it means that there is an element of sentiency in all experience, not absent even when we will or reason. Moreover, our study of 296 Guidance 297 immediacy showed that there is no mere sensation, as supposably experienced; even perception is in part a theoretical construct. God may indeed speak through a "voice," but no such possession is found on inspection; the "voice" is an experience, given in a context, and interpreted to be the voice of God. The power of God is surely immanent in conscience, but it requires analytical discernment to discover it amidst the inconsistent wealth of utterances made in the name of conscience. Again, God is revealed through intuition, but pure intuition is an ideal; actual intuitions are like the "voices" whose complexities require analytical me- diation. Emotion withstands the test of the most severely critical study, inasmuch as love itself is an emotion, and it is emotion that drives us forth to experience. But, like intuition, the mere immediacy of emotion is incompetent to reveal its worth and reality. Emotion is felt towards something, love is love for some end; to state the end in sympathetically rational terms is greatly to enrich its value. Mere emotion is unaware of its own meaning. Mysticism is an attempt to state that meaning; but mysticism, we have seen, is an immediatism, and immediatism thinks it has preserved the immediate unaltered. God is no doubt as surely present as the mystic believes, but He is present in an ineffable immediacy which may be compared to pure white light; whereas what human beings feel and know is an interpreted im- mediacy as rich as the prismatic colours. Each of these deliverances of the receptive side of our nature is, therefore, real, contains truths, values; the spirit of man is in direct relation with God. But these immediates do not possess the independence 298 The Philosophy of the Spirit which is popularly attributed to them. There is no mere immediacy, no " thing in itself," no intuition or pronouncement by itself; every thing, every ex- perience, or product is given amidst relations and is intelligible only so far as rationally interpreted with reference to these relations. What we mean when we revert to the immediate, eulogise " feeling," or ad- vise a return to spontaneity, is interpreted experience; and all such experience is susceptible of varied interpre- tations. Hence it becomes a question of the right interpretation, and to discover this we must have a philosophy. Inasmuch as it is reason, and reason only, that interprets, no study of the higher nature of man is complete without taking into account the nature and value of reason. Intuition, emotion, feeling, need not be any less productive, but their independence has been taken from them. One may still accept a teaching because it "appeals" to the mind, but once having raised the question one is little likely to give allegiance without distinguishing be- tween the personal equation and the given doctrine, without separating the mere impression from the ignorance which it may imply. In short, there will be a gradual progress from "feeling" to reason, from mere immediacy to discriminative thought. In turning to the subject of guidance we know very well, therefore, what to expect. We have no reason, for example, to look for guidance which, like a "blind instinct," is complete in itself. But there surely is guidance that is produced through our total nature. The evidence for it is found by consulting human experience in a sympathetic attitude. We may well regard such experience at first very much as it is known by those who uncritically accept it. There can Guidance 299 be no doubt that many experiences and insights have the value of guidance for those who pursue the spiritual life. Fortunate shall we be if we can lift our philosophy to the level of conduct of those who already live by "divine guidance." It is plain that the results thus far attained bear directly on the question of the nature and authority of guidance. If we had taken intuition to be merely what it is ordinarily supposed to be, as directly au- thoritative, our theory would be relatively simple. We should then deem guidance a mere gift or mystery. But inasmuch as the authority attributed to intuition has proved to be that of illumined reason, not of mere ''feeling," or uninterpreted experience, it is clear that what we have to say about guidance will also come under the head of interpretation. This does not imply the rejection of guidance either as a fact of experience or as a practical incentive to action. We have thus far been concerned with beliefs in the general existence of a higher order of being. With the acceptance of guidance as a fact in the religious life we advance to the position that a higher order is not only around us but that out of its recesses there proceed leadings which pertain to successive purposive experiences. That is, we approach the question of divine providence, of teleology. Here as elsewhere we must depend on the witness of the Spirit, in the face of criticism which would laugh to scorn those who believe, themselves divinely led. Too many all down the ages have claimed to be guided "from above" to permit us to doubt the practical reality of the ex- perience known as guidance, although we may take exception to some of the theories brought forward in its interpretation. From one point of view, it is the 300 The Philosophy of the Spirit fact of guidance which underlies the entire empirical approach to a philosophy of the Spirit. Hence we must make full allowance for its value. The term "guidance" might be taken in a variety of senses, varying from the promptings of instinct, the indications which Nature gives of her prudence, to the highest moments of illumined insight. Experience in general is a guide, the wise lead the less wise, and the guidance of common sense is always available. There are also abundant sources to draw upon in the literature of the ages. But it is desirable to employ the term as indicative of experience whose source is in part other than that of the ordinary channels of instinct, investigation, and reasoning. As thus used the term relates to any item of wisdom, any "leading" which pertains to the conduct of life, its immediate needs, and ideal interests. The line between ordinary thought and guidance is difficult to draw, and in the light of the foregoing discussions one would not expect to discover a sharp line of distinction. The term ordinarily implies belief in the existence of higher powers or presences and the capacity of man to obtain wisdom for special occasions, either through the exer- cise of unwonted receptivity or through the spontaneous leadings of the inner life. The results of our investi- gation will perhaps justify this use of the term. Guidance is obtainable through the whole mind, and when one seeks it one brings to the experience whatever life holds up to the moment in question. Guidance is a clue or leading for its recipient to follow, for experience to confirm, or for later clues to modify. It is most apt to be a distinct experience for those who have preserved a well-nigh unquestioned belief in the divine fatherhood. Intuition is a phase of it Guidance 301 that is, all higher guidance is intuitive. The term "inner light" is closely identified with it. But the term itself refers not so much to the general intuitive ability of the mind, the light shining from within, as to the leading which is intuitively given, the defi- nite message or authoritative utterance. Guidance is essentially an experience, or comes amidst an ex- perience, apart from which it would be unintelligible. We may distinguish several types of guidance, according to the sources to which it is attributed and the method by which it is sought. In the first place, there is the guidance which is attained through conscious receptivity, silence, prayer- ful listening, consecrated openness of mind and heart, deep longing to know and to do what is right. The characteristic of this type of guidance is that it is obtainable through voluntary activity. As a pre- liminary to such receptive listening as may be deemed essential one may have sought the counsel of friends, or argued the case pro and con. But when the time comes for the final decision the believer in the inward light withdraws into the solitude of nature, or to a quiet room away from people and their atmospheres, influences, and persuasions. The mind may still be engaged in a process of testing or weighing, but the process is not now explicitly argumentative; it is rather a process of seeking the harmonies and fitnesses of the matter in question, a casting about in quest for the line of action which unmistakably accords with the highest ideal. A person may, for example, look ahead in imagination to discover what one of several proposed plans arouses favourable impressions. Or, less actively, one may bear several possibilities in mind in a quiet way, while roaming over the hills or idly 302 The Philosophy of the Spirit looking at books. The aim is to discern the finer leadings which make themselves known when the mind is less active, when the whole personality is spontaneously at play. The contemplation of various possible courses of action serves to keep the mind sufficiently alert, in the preliminary stage. The mind once rightly di- rected, the next step is the kind of responsiveness amidst which one may discern the appropriate leading. The ultimate ideal is the discovery of the divine will. Hence one is ready to forego all plans of one's own. One believes that at each hour of the day there is a line of activity which most directly accords with the divine purpose. What the wisest action is in the given case one hopes to learn by dwelling upon the divine ideal as nearly as one can conceive it, and by quietly brooding over the situation. These quiescent mental states are sure to be instructive, for one at least discovers by a process of elimination what courses of action do not accord with what has been accepted as the divine ideal. Then, too, one learns by contrast with previous experiences of the same type what progress has been made meanwhile. Sometimes one arrives at a clearly defined conviction. But again the mind may glide almost insensibly into what proves to be the right course, and one hardly realises that a decision has been reached until one begins to act. The acceptable guidance may be either a confessedly rational conclusion or an immediate leading whose value is seen by its fruits. But in any event the guid- ance is accepted, and acceptance means judgment, hence involves responsibility on our part. The guidance is frequently negative rather than positive. That is, one is not shown decisively what Guidance 303 to do. The absence of positive guidance may some- times be taken as an indication that one already knows what is right, hence that it is high time to make use of the wisdom already at hand. Or the guidance may come, like "the certain divine sign" of Socrates, by way of restraint. Possibly it is a mere impression for which one can see no reason, but which when followed proves to be entirely worthy of acceptance. The absence of a reason may be as significant as its presence. In the second place, there are guidances which come into the mind unsought but possibly in response to previous quests that is, as a result of subconscious activity or during the greater receptivity of the hours of sleep. Such guidances are most likely to come as it were "out of a clear sky," with no apparent connection with any conscious train of thought. It simply appears plain that a certain course of action is right. The moment's flash of insight illumines the pathway, and for the time the mind is in possession of the wisdom that is especially applicable to the given situation. There is nothing more to say, nothing to argue. The way is clear, unmistakable. The guid- ance may come, for example, in the form of a distinct sentence embodying the needed wisdom and bearing the clearest sort of conviction that it is decisive. The sentence does not seem to be uttered by any one. Nor does it appear to be the utterance of one's sub- liminal self. Unassociated with any personality, it flashes into the mind, a message of convincing wisdom. An intuitive utterance, it is the succeeding months or years which prove its wisdom. In the third place, we may distinguish the guidance which comes from some person, usually a friend or 304 The Philosophy of the Spirit teacher. The friend may or may not know that he is uttering words of wisdom that strike at the heart of the matter. Givers of such guidance sometimes insist that they do not know why they insist upon what they are prompted to say, but the leading came and they obeyed, they were so "moved." Again, those who come with such guidances almost force themselves upon one's notice, until their message be delivered. Sometimes they come with a distinct warning. The one who is warned may be under a spell, at the mercy of another's mind, too active, or mayhap too fatigued to see clearly. The message may strike home at once and awaken the soul from its spell. Or, perhaps the wise word seems far from right when first heard, perhaps it is rejected or combated, but presently forces its way so into consciousness that the mind must give it credence. The friend who utters the word may or may not be able to give a reason for it. It is the proof of its wisdom in actual results which shows its character. Then, in the fourth place, however objectionable to those who profess no interest in the implied beliefs, one must reserve a place for guidances which are definitely associated with friends who have passed out of the flesh, and for so-called angel guidances. The recipient of such guidance is not always able to assign the prompting to the appropriate personality. Yet the wise word is unmistakably uttered from outside, accompanied by a spiritual presence, a supernal in- timation which is unmistakable, which withstands the test of sceptically critical mediation. Oftentimes the message comes in the form of a distinct sentence spoken as if into the ear. It plainly does not come by thought transference from some one in the flesh. It is not a mere uprush from the subliminal region, an impersonal Guidance 305 product of subconsciousness, but is unmistakably personal. Some people are so well aware of such guidances that they attribute nearly all to some one person, or to the same "angel guide," who seems to have one's complete welfare lovingly and wisely at heart. To doubt these messages, or to endeavour to reduce them to the mere machinations of one's own mind, would be to deny a series of experiences which for their possessor are as real as life itself, per- haps the most significantly real of all the experiences of life. Such leadings or warnings sometimes come at about four o'clock in the morning, the hour already mentioned as the time when the physical organism offers less resistance and the mind is more receptive. For ex- ample, take the case of one w r ho was awakened three times at this hour during one month by the same message, associated with the same angelic personality. The recipient of these insistent messages finally obeyed the summons, which came in the form of an imperative warning, and when he followed it found that the guid- ance was indeed the utterance of superior wisdom. He explained his unusual obstinacy on the ground that his mind was greatly absorbed in an important intellectual task, in an environment which did not greatly favour receptivity. Again, the guidance may come in decisive restraint at one of those crucial moments of life when character is made or unmade. Here is a young woman, for example, whose whole life is altered by such a re- straining presence. Here is a young man of promise who is sorely tempted by influences which are ap- parently about to overwhelm him. Suddenly, without the least warning, without conscious receptivity, and 306 The Philosophy of the Spirit without prayer, on the recipient's part the angelic personality conies between, turns the youth from the enticement, and gives him a higher impetus. Such experiences may not come oftener than two or three times in a lifetime, but they are sufficiently real and authoritative to form the basis of an entire spiritual creed. These experiences are to be ranked above the intuitions which we have subjected to criticism. They are overwhelmingly convincing experiences in which a wiser person's power, not one's own mere judgment and will, decides. It is a source of great satisfaction that there are at least these few guidances which so stand out as to be utterly unassailable. All the scep- ticism which years of study enables the mind to en- gender is unable to shake one's conviction in the authoritative reality of these superior presences so one hears people say who have been fortunate enough to enjoy such experiences. "There are really angels," they insist, "they are no figments of the imagination, not hypothetical entities postulated by way of medi- ation of one's insights. They are real beings. Their guidances are real facts, facts to be reckoned with in rearing the structure of one's philosophy." Does the coming of such guidance imply that the recipient of it is specially favoured? It is difficult at times to avoid thinking so. Yet these guidances are not miraculous, they correspond with the higher, partially dormant nature of the soul not yet fully aware of the divine ideal. The guidances become more distinct when the one who receives them has reached the level of consciousness where he is distinctly able to recognise them. But they undoubtedly exist for all. Possibly we are many times led, if not almost coerced, when we believe we are acting solely of our- Guidance 307 selves. If the angels ever utter a lament it is prob- ably because they find it supremely difficult to win our attention, engaged as we are in all sorts of activities. Finally, we note the guidances which are directly associated with the presence of the divine Father. To be sure, the religious devotee believes that all guidance bespeaks the presence of the Father. But we have pointed out in the foregoing chapters that the Father manifests His wisdom through some instrumentality, and the channel becomes purer, as one ascends the scale of guiding experiences, until a point is reached where one can no longer assign even secondary causes or describe the conditions. Sometimes our own con- sciousness is the channel. Again, it is not our active thought but our childlike subconscious receptivity. Anon, it is the word of a friend, and again the irresisti- ble guidance of a discarnate soul or angel. The com- mon characteristic of all these forms of guidance is the conviction that the guidance is right, contains a higher wisdom, that the mind which utters it speaks better than we consciously know. The consciousness that the wisdom is higher than ours is at first implicit, but the implicitness is an earnest of what is presently to become plain. The channel of communication is secondary, the ultimate source is divine. There are doubtless some misconceptions to be guarded against in the guidance which is more directly referred to the divine Personality. For example, here is a teacher who claims that God bids him cease teach- ing school and take up the study of theology. He further insists that God distinctly told him to go to a certain divinity school. Now, the school in question may prove to be the wrong one. The mistake lay not with God, not with the guidance, but with the man 308 The Philosophy of the Spirit who read too much into the immediacy of his guidance. That the man was divinely led to take up a line of work more nearly in accord with his soul's purpose one can well believe. But granted the central guid- ance, it would probably rest with the man who re- ceived it to determine where to carry it into execution, in accordance with the methods which we have made mention of above. The fact that one decided to enter one divinity school in preference to another might well express one's own judgment, after various plans of study had been submitted to quiet moments of brooding reflection. By this highest type of guidance one does not mean the form but rather the spirit of the prompting that distinguishes it from the others. It is not, for ex- ample, like the leading which seemingly guides a person to open the Bible at an appropriate place, but is rather the upwelling of the highest spontaneity, a supreme moment of illumination, a prompting of the Holy Spirit. Like the noblest messages that come from the "angels," such guidances come by a law of the unexpected. So far as one may reasonably look forward to them, it is with the probability that they will come when we least anticipate yet when we most need them. Such guidance is plainly a gift, somewhat that comes not because we seek it but because it seeks us. It is due to the "divine grace" not the super- natural grace of old, but the grace of the divine love and wisdom, ever ready to meet all human needs, as plentiful and universal as the sunlight. The various types of guidance mentioned above might possibly be reduced to two, that is (i) those that come in response to desire or search on our part; and, (2) those that come unsought, whether from Guidance 309 friends in the flesh or from a higher source. It might even be said that all guidance is due to desire or need on our part, hence is of one type. But if we undertook to explain all guidance on psychological grounds the difficulty would be to account for the religious values and striking characteristics which mark off the guid- ances from ordinary processes of reflection. Guidances, for example, are infrequent, they come as gifts, freighted with conviction, oftentimes in striking con- trast with individual desire or with the processes of thought into which they break with triumphant persuasiveness. Again, guidance is characterised by disinterestedness. In contrast with selfish interests guidance pertains to the best welfare of others, to the best work one is able to do in the world. Then there is always the result to judge by, and by comparing results one is able to connect guidance with guidance and ascertain the implied laws. Some discrimination is required in order to detect the quality of disinterest- edness, as compared with mere preference or inclina- tion. One may not at the moment see the force of what is later judged to be a divine prompting. But retrospect, at least, enables one to single out the guidance from its attendant desires or temptations. Thus the divine quality in time stands out in striking contrast. It is momentarily profitable to undertake to explain away all guidances, since doubt prepares the way for deeper conviction. It is also profitable to mistake individual preference for guidance, since by so doing one the more clearly learns to apprehend the quality of disinterestedness. It is experience tested by reason that reveals these distinguishing qualities. The re- lationship of desire and guidance, for example, de- 310 The Philosophy of the Spirit pends upon the case and upon the individual. What a man individually wants to do may or may not be in accord with the divine guidance. If out of accord, it is superficial, ephemeral, readily deviates into side- issues; if in accord, it bespeaks a man's central purpose in life. The man who is still wrestling with self-love is likely to mistake the human for the divine very many times, whereas the one whose will is already in line with the divine will may frequently find his own preference coinciding with the divine prompting. There need be no conflict between the ethical ideals of self-realisation and of service. Every acceptance of guidance means the giving up of something, and the more clearly defined the life-purpose the more clearly one sees this. On the other hand, disinterested promptings more and more fulfil the heart's ideal. The fact that guidance must be carefully discrimi- nated, empirically tested, and rationally verified, implies no disparagement of its worth ; but merely proves that guidance is an affair of our whole nature. Promptings which are not attributable to a higher origin are more apt to have a deceptive emotional accompaniment, or to be belittling; whereas divine guidance is uplifting. Again, guidance is knowable by the feeling of happiness which frequently arises immediately after a decision has been made. One may not at the time be able to tell why a move that was made on faith was the right one, but the ensuing happiness is an earnest of genuine- ness. But, again, a period of doubt may ensue, and this in turn may be a sign that one has made the right decision. One frequently hears believers in divine guidance say that at the moment of guidance and decision only one course seemed right the one they thereupon embarked on and that they were very Guidance 311 happy when the decision was made. These same people later confess, however, that doubts crowded in, that they not only doubted the decision, or that the guidance was divine, but persistently raised ob- jections to it, and argued for many alternative courses of action. Such is the pathway of the Spirit. The more important the decision the greater and more persistent the temptation. All this is a part of the mediation of the guidance. Never without contro- versy is truth established. To find one's convictions assailed is to have evidence that there is truth in them. A conviction can hardly be truly called such until it has borne the test of criticism. One may learn to distinguish between guidance and its counterfeit so as to be sure of the guidance even in advance of ex- perience, precisely because through contrast one has discerned the promptings which withstand the test of criticism. Thus the guidances may increase in number and value even amidst criticism, that is, in so far as one possesses a rational faith in terms of which the guidances are interpreted. Again, guidances are distinguishable through their connectedness, they are not only disinterested, social, moral, ideal; they belong together and imply a more comprehensive purpose than any of which the human mind is independently capable. It is this implication of purposiveness which above all else shows the divine character of the various guidances. It does not of course necessarily follow that predestination is true, that every detail of life has been arranged in accord- ance with a fixed plan. A devotee of such guidances may well believe in the universe of law and evolution of which modern science tells us, may hold that no- where is there infringement of law. Guidance does The Philosophy of the Spirit not then imply divine intervention. It need not even imply design or providence except so far as the most important issues are concerned. Guidance might rationally be said to pertain to each individual's welfare when viewed in the light of what I have called the eternal type of life. That is, guidance may di- rectly relate to that which is permanently essential to the soul's welfare in the long run ; and only indirectly to the little events once supposed to be arranged by special design. If this be the true principle, guidance is most likely to be gained in the decisive epochs of human life, when men seek their life-work, the en- vironment in which to labour, their partners in service ; and when they are passing through the great tran- sitional stages of moral and religious experience. Again, if this be the true principle of explanation, if guidance relate more intimately to the opportunities which make for the growth of character, this shows why people are sometimes unable to obtain divine guidance for secondary things, why a part of our life may be foreseen while the rest is indeterminate. The central leading would appear to be a basis on which we should be able to settle secondary matters for ourselves. For there are apparently minor decisions without number that are left wholly to the individual. If the Spirit be responsible for the central purpose, the individual is responsible for the rest. It is plain that there is no open book on whose pages we may read the decrees of fate, nor do the facts in- dicate that no room is left for human freedom. Some devotees of the spiritual life do indeed speak as if there were but one course a man could pursue, and as if that course were always right. But this would im- ply fatalism, hence would rob man of his reason for Guidance 313 being. Divine guidance is not forced upon the soul, it comes as an alternative or check. One may or may not choose it as a clue to action. Oftentimes one is scarcely aware that the guidance came until, retro- spectively, one discovers that side by side with the prompting which one obeyed there was an imperative guidance not to follow it, or a guidance whose superior origin was overlooked in the excitement of obedience to an impulse. At any rate, analysis shows that either the alternative was vividly present or, if ignored or put aside, was as surely there. The presence of al- ternatives is unmistakable. Without them, whether they be judged good or bad, guidance would have no meaning. For if every "feeling," emotion, impulse or thought that chanced to enter the mind were a guid- ance, the term would be wholly without value. It is the occasional moments, those that stand out when measured by a criterion, that are worthy of the name "guidance. " Regard every moment as a guidance, do merely the thing at hand, and all your life will be spent in that which is trivial; there will be no time for or- ganised action with a high end in view. This would be a reversion to the life of instinct. It may be that at every moment there is some deed that is wiser than any other, and every one is in a sense bound to believe this who holds that the Spirit is present as a guiding life. But such a belief is interpretable in accordance with human freedom. The ideal of fidelity to the Spirit would be the central principle. Contributory to this would be the fine art of conduct, with its wisely adjusted details, and its minor matters all alike expressive of a consistent life. That is to say, the central purpose would be a mat- ter of divine guidance, while the details of its fulfil- 314 The Philosophy of the Spirit ment would depend upon the good sense of the individual; and there might be many roads to the same goal, within the same field. The significant consideration is the presence of a unitary tendency in a person's life as a whole, a work- ing of all things together towards one high end. To possess a series of guidances which thus belong to- gether is to conclude that in the eternal order of life there is a place for the purpose which these guidances imply. One may not as yet be able adequately to justify this conclusion, or to show how a given purpose relates to the purposes for which other people exist. But the conviction grows gradually out of the experi- ences which reveal the guidance. Were the guidances merely products of one's own reflection one might explain how they cohere. One dimly apprehends at first what later proves to be an underlying tendency, one accepts the tendency on faith until, in due course, it becomes matter of conscious purpose. It is not, then, that there is a straight and narrow way that is clearly discerned from the first, but one that is found through much experience, questioning and search; and the way may be very far from straight and narrow, may lead into thorny regions and involve much suffer- ing and hardship. Again, it is characteristic of guidance that it arrives only when most needed, oftentimes at the eleventh hour, or after the last hope that guidance will come has vanished. All may be darkness up to the last moment, when the skies suddenly clear and all the way is bright. Then it is that one exclaims, as if in self -rebuke, "O ye of little faith!" The seeming tardiness of the guidance is one more evidence of its superior origin. In one's finitude one would like to Guidance 315 be assured in advance that all will be well, one would like to know the nature of events ere they happen. But such assurance and such knowledge, if vouch- safed as frequently as we wish it, would no doubt deprive us of the opportunity of learning from ex- perience, would leave no room for trust. It may indeed be true that the essentials of our life are divinely foreknown. But their fruition is plainly de- pendent in part on our co-operation. Hence a divine guidance at best, however authoritative, is a possi- bility or probability. In accepting it as divine or authoritative we are willing to make a venture, we assume that it is congruous with previous guidances and in accord with the central purpose of life. Other guidances have brought good results and we antici- pate good from this. We have not been misled and do not expect to be now. But there is no absolute assurance of success. Guidances, then, are not so numerous or so sure as to deprive us of the lessons of experience. Yet the leadings come in sufficient frequency to make possible the conviction that all essential moments of life work together towards one high end. There are many indications of this co-operation of events in the spiritual life. Here is an opportunity to serve another, for example, which accords capitally with the aid which one is able to give. Here is some one whose acquaint- ance we make at a time which proves most fortunate for the soul's best good. There is surprising fitness in the meeting and we wonder what brought it about. Again, it is a book which is put into one's hands when most needed. Or, perhaps one is greatly in need of a certain sum of money and the money arrives from an entirely unexpected source on the appointed day. 316 The Philosophy of the Spirit Such incidents are explained, so far as they are explicable at all, by the deeper connection between souls in the eternal order of life. Here, for instance, is a believer in the inner light who has abundant financial resources which he stands in readiness to bestow wherever they will do the greatest good. Here is a person greatly in need who also believes in being led, and whose need becomes the other's opportunity. He unexpectedly needs a hundred dollars and does not know how to procure the money on short notice. But he awaits the appropriate guidance, and a few days before the money is due opens a letter containing a gift of one hundred dollars. His friend is in Europe and has no means of knowing of this sudden need, but sends the money with no other explanation than this, "I was prompted to send thee this little gift." Supply and demand are brought together by the subtle attraction which is all the time operating in the spirit- ual life. The attraction is part of the eternal fitness of things. It bespeaks a general tendency which in- cludes all souls in their upward march. It environs all, exists for all. Now and then there is a soul suffi- ciently alert to detect both the tendency and the guidance which corresponds with it. One is disinclined to believe that there is any fa- vouritism in the eternal world. The stream or tendency includes the welfare of all souls, the guidance is for each one who lowly listens. But there is the sin of non-receptivity, there is the darkness of ignorance. At best we are merely progressing souls emerging into the light, we still see " as in a glass darkly. " If some are more frequently guided than others it would appear to be because more is expected of them, or because they are more faithful to opportunities that are open to all. Guidance 317 We return once more, then, to the conclusion that guidance is disinterested. It is those who obey the law who know it. Guidance is not bestowed at random, but upon those only who will use it. Yonder man who complains that it never comes to him is doing nothing to aid his fellows. This very moment, while he stands there bewailing his lot, there are opportunities which he neglects. He is like the man who, in this genuinely ideal world of ours, dreams of what might be accom- plished if only we lived in an ideal state of his own creation. The condition of affairs which enables men and women to take the next step in evolution or in service is the ideal state. That is, it may be laid down without qualification that, whenever we ask what we ought to do and receive no answer, the deed that should be done is already awaiting accomplish- ment before our eyes. A thousand times a year when the mind reaches into the future to know w r hat will be wise for the morrow, for next week or next year, one must recollect that the present opportunity is sufficient. If you are unwilling to do the work which lies nearest your hands, you have no right to complain either to God or to your fellow-men. It is an important part of the law of guidance to understand why there is no new prompting. One finds it impossible, however, to agree with the optimistic fatalists who declare that because an event occurs, therefore it is right. We have seen that guidance is distinguishable from individual desire, emotion, and inclination, that it possesses convincing qualities and is disinterested. It may lead away from or more deeply into present circumstance. The present circumstance may be the contrivance of some one who is trying to shape events in his own way. The mere 318 The Philosophy of the Spirit fact that an imperious person has forced his plans into your view is no sign that those plans are right. The case is for you to test by reference to the highest standards you know. You may indeed conclude that the disturbing presence of this officious person has meaning for you, but the meaning may be that you should be strong on a side of your nature where you are disposed to yield too much. Every incident of the experience may be turned to account. Yet the occurrence of precisely this set of circumstances may signify very little. The true basis of optimism is not mere acceptance of whatever comes, but the fact that the profound, occasional leadings reveal a deep connectedness that implies a divine purpose. On the basis of these con- nected guidances one concludes that the eternal life is for the best, that its ultimate source is the Spirit. Whether or not the details of daily life may also rightfully be judged to be for the best depends upon the degree to which such conduct has been co-ordinated in terms of the central tendency or purpose. The optimistic conclusion is an act of faith relating to that which is essential, fundamental, significant. No doubt the majority of believers in divine guidance hold a less critical view than this. But the view that withstands the test of reason is expressible in terms of purpose, that is, with reference to the end to be achieved rather than in terms of the mere immediacy of the several guidances. A purpose is plainly not a hard-and-fast plan or design that is forced upon us, as if naught else were possible ; it is not a mere instinct or "feeling of tendency." It may be prompted in the first place by desire, love or longing of some sort ; but it is far more truly a product of patient reasoning, Guidance 319 the fruition of many years of conscientious thought. A purpose expresses individuality, and that is of slow growth. It manifests will, and experience is required to learn how to will. It unifies head and heart, and such unification is not quickly made. The intellect gives centrality to it, and the intellect must weigh and ponder. If in the last analysis it is a common ex- pression of the human will and the divine, then once more it is gradually discovered and slowly wrought. To achieve a purpose which shall at once express the Father's will and the human individuality and there need be no ultimate conflict between the human will and the divine one must return to the sources many times a year, asking ' ' What wilt thou have me to do ? " much as if one had never had a purpose. Thus successive guidances lead the way to the strengthening of a man's purpose. To do the Father's will, whatever it be, is precisely one's purpose. Inasmuch as one does not always clearly discern that will, one must commit oneself afresh to the Father's good wishes, ready to follow whatever is given. A relative degree of freedom from all plans, or at least a willingness to change all plans, is imperative. One may be led to continue in the same work. But one needs the new leading, so that one may abide with the Spirit. Thus adjustment to the divine will is attained progressively, by repeated endeavours. One frequently hears devotees of spiritual guidance say that they have no plans, they do not know where they may be next year, or what they may be doing. To the critical observer this seems to imply a random sort of life. Yet from the point of view of divine guidance nothing seems more sure or more reasonable. The man who plans his career from beginning to end, 320 The Philosophy of the Spirit and is entirely dependent on worldly methods, be- lieves that he knows precisely where he is coming out. He has money and can use it as he wishes. He has friends and can use them, too. He is enter- prising and immensely confident. On the other hand, the man who lives by faith, appears to have no basis of assurance, is the one who really has a principle to depend upon. Inasmuch as he seeks to do that which is permanently worth while, to live for eternal ends, he knows perfectly well that no event can befall him which will upset his calculations. However the ex- ternal life may fluctuate, the inner life will be marked by steady development. If changes come they will grow out of that which already exists. He who dedicates everything to the Spirit is not asked to give up anything essential. As we concluded when studying the conditions of realisation of an ideal type of life, one of the prime essentials throughout is willingness to receive the gifts of the Spirit as gifts, to let them develop in their own way, not to impose one's own way upon them. For example, here is a new friend who has come in an hour of need. To ask why that friend came and how, why he loves you, what place you occupy in his love, what that love is leading to, is thus far to close the door upon the divine gift. The fact that the gift has been bestowed suffices. Do not ask why it is right. Follow the friendship and learn from its development whither it leads. For a gift comes by its own laws, in fulfilment of an inner attraction or affinity. The fact that it comes shows that it accords with the other factors of your soul's life. Therefore let it develop in accordance with the ideal of the eternal type of life. Guidance 321 Guidance, then, in its various forms is an experience which springs from the immediate side of our nature and assumes different phases as life progresses from a stage of childlike faith to the stage of rational purposes. Beginning in the life of feeling, at a point where dis- crimination is difficult, it emerges from mere impres- sions into the moral realm of disinterestedness. It is social as well as individual, and implies a working of all significant events together towards a worthy end. It is originally empirical, must be tested, put in contrast with selfish desires and inclinations; yet is knowable by its quality, the convictions which are attendant upon it. It is occasional in its coming, provident, orderly, revealing a fitness in things, never arriving so frequently as to be commonplace but always to be had for the asking or through remembrance of the gifts already at hand. It is not insistent, never exacting, and does not so greatly abound as to imply fatalism. Yet if it gently retires when rejected it as surely returns to teach the lessons which non-receptiv- ity inculcates. You may have it if you will abide by its conditions, but will lose it for a while if unwilling to make certain moves on trust. The evidence for it seems decidedly intangible to those who insist on absolute proof, yet there are those who would hazard its reality and its leadings over against all other de- liverances of human experience. In short, guidance is a gift of the Spirit "which bloweth where it listeth,'' and relates to the eternal welfare of the soul. It is plain that decidedly different views spiritistic, optimistic, fatalistic are compatible with belief in divine guidance. The foregoing account is based on ethical considerations. We submit that a guidance, whatever its source is said to be, is an experience 322 The Philosophy of the Spirit awaiting response on man's part, subject to his will and, if acted upon, involving him in responsibility. If side by side with a leading judged to be divine there are inclinations and temptations, it is absurd to de- clare that "whatever is, is right. " So long as alterna- tives exist fatalism cannot be true, and one challenges any man to find a guidance that is not accompanied by alternatives. To conclude that the message is from a departed spirit is not to be absolved from responsibility. Guidance is never so frequent or so conclusive as to save men from making mistakes. Granted a prompting that is judged infallible, ex- perience tested by reason can alone prove it to be so. In all acceptance of guidance there is an element of risk, that is, of faith ; guidance is an element in the life of faith. It would not be difficult, therefore, to prove that the seeming fatalism, the inert optimism, the pleasing conceits of those who insist that "all is good, there is no evil, " "whatever is, is right, " are due to insufficient analysis. Such doctrines are no mere gifts of ex- perience, but are due to imperfect induction. To examine them critically is to be prepared to make far more careful inductions; that is, it is a question of reason, not of the mere "feeling" which seems to be decisive. It is impossible sharply to distinguish between guidance regarded as a sheer gift and guidance regarded as a product of reason, because the mind is not guided into compartments. Guidances and theories alike are co-operative products. Sound interpretations grow out of recognition of the intimate relationship of all parts of our nature. If part of one's experiences are emphasised as more directly related to the Spirit, it is because by careful Guidance 323 comparison we have learned to know the worth of these higher moments. The initial guidances were not self-explanatory. There is no wholly complete or absolute guidance if by "guidance" one means the prompting as first given. But there is a persistently true inner light that shines upon our pathway, and in terms of this we are able to make successively truer interpretations. The childlikeness of spirit which we eulogise is by no means the merely unthinking inno- cence of childhood, but rather a spontaneity recovered after we have found the illuminating clue. Reason contributes, it does not merely criticise, and our later guidances are partly due to reason's persistent en- deavour to free the mind from all misconception ; when we rightly interpret we know what to look for. These conclusions are reinforced when we consider the relationship of guidance to prayer. While prayer is in addition an act of worship it is essentially a request for the guidance of the Spirit, and the interpretation put upon prayer is likely to be the same as that put upon guidance. If one still believe that God answers prayer by altering the course of events, one will seek guidances which imply interruptions of law. But it one adore the God of law, one's prayer will be for the guidance which is already provided in the plenitude of the divine love. Some maintain that prayer is meaningless unless it imply belief that God will bring about some change in the course of things. But others would ask, Why restrict the meaning of prayer thus narrowly ? Despite the fact that prayer has a crude beginning in which it is allied with incantation and with selfish interest, it has a place and meaning even in the most intelligent spiritual life. Prayer springs from a need and the belief that there is a provision for that 324 The Philosophy of the Spirk need. Our needs change all along the line, the the- ory of the Godhead changes ; yet prayer endures. The type of prayer indicates the stage of development. To condemn its form as "vain repetition'' is not to disparage the principle; its persistence in human life may be taken as evidence of man's belief in guidance. The complete theory of guidance begins with an evaluation of prayer and ends with the conclusion that adjustment to the perennial gifts of the Spirit is its permanent value. Prayer lifts consciousness from ordinary levels to the plane of sweet communion with the Father. It assumes definite form as the need of the moment prompts. But however earnest the prayer, however great the need, the true request for guidance ends with the qualification, in which belief in prayer and the theory of guidance are alike summarised, "Nevertheless, if it be thy will." Thus prayer is at best renewed consecration, dedi- cation of all that one is to the uses of the Spirit. With- out the specific need the prayer would hardly be effectual. Without endeavour to gain v the guidance for which the soul longs there would not be sufficient receptivity. Yet need, prayer, and the request for guidance are alike transcended in the moment when the human will is adjusted to the divine. To pray without ceasing is to believe, as matter of consecrated habit, that the Spirit is ever near, with perennial provision, according to the need. What the need is one believes one knows. We seem to know very well what another's needs are for whom we pray. Yet we may not know. Hence the element of consecration is needed, the life of faith is triumphant. The Spirit, one sees, is doing its work all along. But we fail to do ours. Hence the need of readjustment. Without Guidance 325 the uttered willingness to yield our own way to the better way which we may not know, we could hardly seek the divine guidance in earnest. It is also plain that belief in and adaptation to spiritual guidance bespeak a certain type of life. Not only is less effort given to the making of plans, but in general there is less concern for what is ordi- narily deemed success. The so-called successful man pushes and drives, looks out for his own interests, and strives to outwit others. The devotee of guidance holds that if a contemplated course of action be right, events will develop in line with it; that if a possible opportunity to help another accords with one's powers the necessary means will be found, and it would be contrary to the spiritual ideal to take coercive steps to bring the opportunity. There is no scheming and pulling, no driving or managing , but much expectancy and readiness. This readiness does not imply in- activity, but the absence of the anxiety which is so often an obstacle to all that is highest. The simplicity of this kind of life carries with it the repose which readily invites and leaves room for guidance and spontaneity. One's days may be as full as the days of those who depend solely upon their own wit. Indeed, they may be more active days; time may pass so quickly that no room is left for secondary interests. But, again, they may be days of com- parative leisure. For it is well that some days be wholly given over to the quiet solitudes of the Spirit the spontaneity of a day entirely free from plans. If the external life of those who adapt their conduct to such an ideal is as busy as the lives of those who have no such ideal, at any rate there is more repose at the centre where a portion of the consciousness 326 The Philosophy of the Spirit is for ever consecrated to the whisperings of the Spirit. It is difficult to characterise the lives of those who are thus led by the Spirit without seeming to set them apart from other people, as if they were of a distinct type. As matter of fact, there is no sharp line between the guided life and the life in which there is no con- sciousness of guidance. The one who is led by the Spirit has his times when he cannot see so clearly and must depend upon more widely known resources, while the man who is unaware of guidances is some- times led more wisely than he knows. We may seem to be wholly deciding our careers when there is a higher Wisdom working in and through them. The difference between people is that some are far more aware of such leadings than others ; hence they are able to shape life accordingly, while to others a guidance would be a miracle or coincidence from which they could learn nothing. For the purposes of our inquiry, guidance is a part, and a part only, of the witness of the Spirit. When the time comes to put together the evidences of the Spirit's presence the facts and values of guidance are sure to occupy a prominent place. Yet there are lives equally near the Spirit which would be describable in rather different terms. Such lives might as truly be called guided lives, yet they might not abound in incidents which indicate susceptibility to impressions, leadings, and illuminations. For we have seen that guidance, beginning in the immediacies of impulse, feeling, and intuition, gradually evolves into conscious purposes and clearly defined ideals to which reason has made rich contributions. The guidances which some would experience in detail as so many separate Guidance 327 impressions might in the case of a genius be compacted into a single ideal. For others the leadings would be indistinguishably blended with conscious reasoning processes. Hence it is important to avoid a narrow view of guidance; far more important to avoid exclusive conclusions, as if some were led by the Spirit while others are not. If we do not find the inclusive prin- ciple by investigating the facts and types of guidance, we may find it by inquiring into the nature and content of. faith. At any rate our inquiry would be incom- plete without a study of the character and place of faith in the spiritual life. CHAPTER XIV THE PLACE OF FAITH THROUGHOUT these discussions we have insisted on the presence of an ideal element in human experience. The distinctions made, the principles emphasised, and the goals which have come into view have not been dependent on mere fact, but have involved appre- ciative evidences of the guiding presence of the Spirit. Hence the witness of the Spirit, the truth of hope, has been our chief subject of reference. With this su- perior principle in view, we have ventured to claim real existence for a spiritual order of being, an eternal order which fulfils the values assigned to experiences that cannot adequately be described. In accordance with this principle, we have also ventured to accept spiritual guidance as a reality. From the first we have pointed out that the immediacies of spiritual experi- ence are subject to varied interpretations. Neverthe- less we have steadily accumulated evidence that there is an ideal principle at work in the inner life, and our studies have pointed forward to a certain type of interpretation. The important consideration thus far is that the Spirit is apprehended through all sides of our nature. As opposed to those who limit guidance to an exclusive principle of which they apparently possess the secret, we have shown that there are many leadings and clues which the heart knows and various types of guidance. Moreover, these leadings are not the exclusive sources 328 The Place of Faith 329 of higher wisdom. The guided life is one of a certain type. In behalf of those who live according to that type, it might be said that those who are willing to lead the life may have the guidance: for all who are ready to meet the tests there is abundant evidence that guidance springs from a higher source. The tests are those of experience and patient fidelity to the leadings which are judged to be divine. It is reasonable to appeal to experience, since it is only through ex- perience that we know what promptings are disin- terested. If we are unable to discover all the tests and principles in our own life, we have as resources the teachings of the pioneers of spiritual idealism whose work stands out in bold relief against the half-hearted doctrines of their age. They are the men who most consciously dwell near the sources and most con- vincingly bear the essence of the Spirit within them. Such seers seldom have opportunity to propound a constructive theory of the spiritual life, or explain in detail the laws and types of guidance; for they are absorbed in good works and in the enunciation of practical principles. But inquire into their lives and you find that events occur almost daily which would be pronounced ' ' miraculous " by uncritical people, those who have no theory in regard to the universality of guidance events which are passed by almost un- noticed by the profound believer in guidance. It is in the life of habitual adaptation to higher leadings that one finds the clue to a philosophy of guidance. To know what guidance is at its best is to be aware of a superior element which transfigures life and makes it holy, guidance being but one expression of the gen- eral immediacy of the Spirit. The divine element is given amidst circumstances which may be very well 330 The Philosophy of the Spirit described, whereas that element itself belongs essen- tially to the world of values. The certainty which makes guidance knowable as divine is given with the guidance. The Spirit seems to possess the soul in that moment. By that moment's decision, that venture in the world of faith, one's life is allied with the Spirit, come what may when doubts and struggles ensue. The most that one can say with respect to the human part of the experience is that there is an element of humility, of receptive readiness to make the venture, without which the guidance would hardly come. Guidance, then, is apparently relative; the greater receptivity yields the greater guidance, up to that point of which Jesus speaks where man has no desire save to do the Father's complete will. The moment of the coming of guidance is not a time for analysis, but for readiness. Not until certain guidances stand out as authoritative is one able to understand the finite factors and make clear the law. Even then it may be impossible to discover how the guidances are mediated to us, that is, to assign them to their proper secondary origin. There may be virtue in the belief that ministering angels attend us. But if in the last analysis it be a question of the Father's love and purpose it would be well to place emphasis there, that one may not attribute a too prominent part to human instrumentalities. Hence in the present discussion we leave the account open, with the re- minder that in divine guidance there is an element that surpasses merely factual analysis. The essential on our part is the humility that invites the guidance, the faith which enables us to make the venture. For the moment our conclusions appear to be in conflict with results at which we arrived when we were The Place of Faith 331 studying intuition and the emotions. We were scepti- cal regarding intuitions, feelings, and the like in the guise in which they first come; and now we are ac- cepting guidances as authoritative intuitional products. But the conflict is only apparent. We studied intuition from the side of human faculty and as a product; and we discarded the emotions which bear unsound fruits, or claim the right to occupy the whole field. Intuition as a " faculty" is merely one of many, and as a product it points to the fruits by which it should be tested. We distrusted emotion because of its low origin, the excitement by which it is accompanied, and the mis- conceptions to which it gives rise. We were no less distrustful of guidance in its crude forms. To dissociate genuine guidance from its imitations we were obliged to distinguish between disinterested promptings and personal desires, philosophical and spiritistic inter- pretations, rational purposes and naive beliefs in providence. Acceptable guidance is able to withstand the tests which we have applied to mere immediacy, and hence is interpreted in the light of a philosophy of the Spirit. Emotion, for example, is divine guidance when it is transfigured love, when it is mediated by a noble life. Illumined feeling is divine, so is illumined thought. The test in every case is the divine quality w r hich withstands the test of reasoned experience. Guidance springs from our total nature, is essentially a product. As such it points forward to its fruition in the life of faith. If intuition, emotion, feeling, or guidance, or even all these together, were immediately authoritative, there would be no room for faith. But experience shows that the life that is inspired by belief in divine guidance is essentially a life of faith. It is not through 332 The Philosophy of the Spirit sensuous experience, emotion, feeling, or intuition, or even through mystical union, that we know the Spirit face to face, but through faith. For, as we have repeatedly noted, the immediacy of our experience is purely general, and hence may be variously inter- preted, by reference now to human factors and now to those that are adjudged divine. If despite the misconceptions which are associated with intuition we still believe in it, we believe because on various grounds our faith supports this claim. If despite the excitement which mars most emotions we persist- ently cling to a few as divine, our faith is the secret of such persistence. However greatly we may be misled, if we continue to trust that certain guidances are true, it is faith that offsets our scepticism and carries us to the point where experience shows what promptings are trustworthy. Thus faith is a link between the immediacy of an experience and the fruits which reveal its true character. It is allied to the instinctive, intuitive side of our nature in its original forms, but is also a product of inductive reasoning. The immediacies of our experience yield the content of faith, but its maturer form is intellectual. It is not, therefore, a special power or faculty, but a characteristic of our total human nature. The appeal to faith thus has universal significance, whereas the appeal to guidance is often special. Every one knows that faith has a place in human life, every one in a measure lives by faith. Hence from one point of view it would seem absurd to counsel a man to be of firm faith. Yet, although faith at its best is created in us by experience, or is a matter of tempera- ment, it grows by study of the facts and values of the spiritual life and may almost be reared from the The Place of Faith 333 foundation by reflective reconstruction of familiar facts. For all people have at least detached evidences of the Spirit's presence within them; the difficulty is that they have had no unifying intuition. It is worth our while, then, to regard the subject in a very general sense in order that we may discover the special function of faith in the life according to the Spirit. I pass by some of the better known aspects of faith with merely a reference. That confidence in those with whom we have constant dealings is requisite, every one knows. We tentatively put faith in people, or for increasing periods of time, as the case may be. We have faith in tested servants, in teachers, the family physician, the clergyman, in friends. Sometimes we are able to state the basis of faith; for example, the sincerity which necessarily underlies all friendship. Again, our faith is a pure venture based on intuition. We entrust our lives to many relatively dangerous modes of conveyance, and every journey through a city is an act of faith. We put faith in various under- takings and always there must be faith in oneself. It is less obvious that faith in the uniformity of nature supplements our scientific knowledge, for or- dinarily science dwells on what is known, not what is taken on faith. Our most exact knowledge receives a rude shock now and then, however, and we are con- strained to have faith anew until our science shall enlarge to the proportions of newly discovered phenom- ena which no one is at first able to explain. Oftentimes a phenomenon of which science renders a clear account is equally explicable on another basis, and one must make choice according to one's faith. The man [says Fullerton] who would cast out of his mind all beliefs for which he is not in a position to offer 334 The Philosophy of the Spirit definite and detailed evidence should first reflect upon the extraordinary denudation of his mind which must result from such a procedure. We walk by faith much of the time, and sometimes we have no choice save to walk where the clear light of assured knowledge does not reach. l Without faith no philosophy is possible. At the very beginning of any serious attempt to propound a philosophy there is confidence in the power of reason to organise its data and develop a consistent view of things. We believe, for example, that reason in us corresponds with ultimate reality in such wise that we need make allowances only for the deflections of temperament. We must make this assumption on faith, for we are unable to lift the mind above its processes so that it may look down upon these and compare them with reality. That an objective reality is out yonder, and that we can accurately describe it, we believe, and without this belief we could make no headway. Hence faith is a fundamental element of belief, underlying philosophy in all its branches. Ordinarily we make the act of faith and think little of it. But so far as mere facts go we might often de- cide the other way. The agnostic or the sceptic may know the facts in a given case as well as the man who believes. Something other than facts usually com- pels belief. A philosophy is in reality a reasoned faith, based on an accepted immediate or first principle which can- not be proved by ulterior reference. Or, again, it is founded on moral conviction, and this implies a prior faith that the world will sometime witness the triumph of the good. 1 A System of Metaphysics, p. 603. The Place of Faith 335 We can ia part give reasons for such faith, the rest remains as mere assumption. Further, there is religious conviction that the power of love is supreme. Belief in God's existence is an act of faith. We cannot prove, but must start with, the postulates of religious faith. Granted the postulates, reason may make the best of them it can, and hence in a measure offer justification for them. In practical life every man recognises the need of a working faith. Our creed may be partly founded on knowledge verified by experience, partly on beliefs borrowed by acts of faith from others; but is more likely to be faith outright faith in the world and in God. Such a faith involves a collection of hy- potheses which have been accepted simply because they met our needs. If a faith "works" it is deemed true. But it works only so far as familiar experiences are concerned, and is easily shaken when an event occurs which apparently controverts the implied hypothesis. However secure the practical assurance, there is a region of uncertainty covered by downright trust. Even when intelligence is put before faith, when we plainly see what we are placing reliance in, our working faith is supplemented by a less secure trust where hope plays a larger part than reason, where we make a venture almost in the dark. That faith is essential to the religious life is more cbvious than in the cases cited above, for the more we relate our life to the unseen the more our thought departs from fact. If faith be "the substance of things hoped for," it is still a venture. Who would be accounted worthy of the reality unless he willingly trusted where he could not see ? We would fain know precisely how the future is to develop and when. But 336 The Philosophy of the Spirit give us such knowledge and life would lose its zest. Faith is at once an assurance and a substitute for it, in- asmuch as it both gives the essence of that for which we hope and yet still leaves room for courage. The essence pertains to the immediate, hence to the initial promptings of human life, rather than to the pronounce- ments of reason, but the venture which faith inspires takes the subject out of the immediate into the world of the will. To "fall back upon faith" would be to revert to an immediacy of an emotional type akin to what is called * ' blind faith." A merely emotional faith may be as misleading as the belief of the man who so firmly relies on what he "feels" to be true that he thinks he cannot be misled. Knowledge that one possesses the "essence" should give one a better clue than to "fall back," or to cultivate emotionalism; for the essence points forward to the experiences and the thoughts which are to put it to the test. Hence religious faith becomes intellectual, the more faith- fully we depend upon the promises of that which it essentially holds for us. It is the essence of "things hoped for" precisely through the potentialities which reason makes explicit. Theories of interpretation are read into our faith as readily as into the intuitions which we believe we have preserved in their purity. We may suppose that we are relying upon pure im- mediacy when, as matter of fact, our faith is supported by a gradually produced conviction that had but a slight foundation at the outset. Faith, then, is not a pure gift bestowed upon us in completed form, but grows out of our total life and is far more a product of inference than we suspect. The important point is that, while faith is partly a result of the hidden processes of reason, it possesses a spiritual The Place of Faith 337 quality which surpasses the reason that mediates it. If without reason faith would hardly be more than blind instinct, without faith reason would be unable to proceed at all. Faith makes or receives the gifts which reason forthwith renders explicit. Reason often halts by the way, and becomes so involved in the multiplicity and the wealth of faith's gifts that it cannot arrive at a comprehensive synthesis. It is then that faith once more enters with its appreciative element, its essence of things rationally hoped for. If intuitively inclined people are more dependent on reason than they suspect, the intellectualists depend more upon faith than they know. Faith is by nature unitary, comprehensive, synthetic ; it pertains to the eternal, the divine order. In a sense it is the best representative of the Spirit, inasmuch as the Spirit is essentially a whole. Hence the impli- cations of faith are sufficient to engage the mind for a life- time. Fortunate are we if we put faith and reason in the right order. To understand their relation- ship is to go very far towards a solution of the age-long conflict between feeling and thought, dogma and criticism. Formerly faith was more dogmatic and reason was either regarded as an enemy or as a mere tool wherewith to defend the established faith. In reality faith and reason should be allies, since faith contributes the unitary vision while reason develops its content in systematic form ; faith makes the gifts while reason contributes an element which faith was not aware that it possessed. Hence a faith analytically established, a faith-illumined reason, is the ideal. We have more confidence in faith than in reason, as reason is ordinarily understood. For our reasoning is usually very human. We may argue that a certain 33 8 The Philosophy of the Spirit event is utterly impossible and the next day experience it. Reason is often limited in scope, while faith gives horizon. Even when we cannot discern the reasons we have more confidence in faith's pronouncements, inasmuch as we possess the essence concerning which faith prophesies. We distrust reason because a man can so readily reason as he will, "prove" what he wishes to prove. All this, however, with reference to popular usage of the term "reason." Strictly speaking, the faults attributed to reason are those of the mere understanding, whereas reason is higher and commands an infinite horizon. Nevertheless, it is faith that gives us ideals. We do not say, " Go to, let us be philosophical." We find ourselves in possession of a faith which inspires in us the ideals of truth, beauty, and goodness. We do not always inductively reason out what we shall do in life, that is, not when it is a question of the best; we find ourselves in possession of a gift. To hold to an ideal means to live by faith more than by explicit reason. Yet, once more, to see the reason, to make our faith explicit, is to depend more and more upon the philosophical element. Faith implies possession of a power which we be- lieve will accomplish through us what we could never achieve alone. We do not so much have this con- sciousness when we reason, for reason is more critical and analytical, more dependent on fact and logical clues. The ideal of human reason is to render the best account it can of the great whole which faith re- veals. If reason to be strictly accurate must acknow- ledge faith's gifts or immediacies, it is reason which, with fine discrimination, acknowledges the world of appreciation, in contrast with the more familiar world The Place of Faith 339 of fact. Every item is acceptable to reason, and in the end the account which reason gives of the world is no less broad than the ineffable whole which faith reveals. But faith is not alone the ally of reason: for the majority it is a guide to practical life, and the aim is not to lift reason to its level but rather to enlarge conduct to its ideal proportions. It is easy to have a general faith in the universe, in God, a faith that for the most part has never been seriously questioned ; the real tests of faith hardly begin until we not only carefully question but endeavour to apply our faith in detail. Indeed it may be doubted if we truly possess faith until we have applied it to the little things. If we are comfortably placed in life, with an abundance of resources, people to serve us, friends to assist us, the probability is that we scarcely know what faith is. The real tests begin with financial hardship, ill- health from which the chances of recovery are slight, or the contests with adverse circumstance which come to those who are thrown on their own resources: necessity is the spur which incites men to the real tests. Such tests often begin with a certain readiness on our part to meet whatever may come that will bring spiritual development, with a certain eagerness to take life very much in earnest. The tests may be slight at first, but they increase almost without limit if we meet them with entire earnestness. Faith, then, is really faith when it is concrete. Jesus thus characterises it when he assures his hearers that not even a "sparrow falleth without the Father," when he bids them give heed to the lilies of the field, and counsels them to take no anxious thought for the morrow. Merely general faith is only a belief. 340 The Philosophy of the Spirit Our entire conception of the Spirit points forward to this conclusion; for we regard the Spirit as a concrete principle working through events moment by moment, in minuteness of emphasis. Men hardly recognise the Spirit in a practical sense until they look behind or within the present moment of joy, sorrow, or conflict. To be thankful for whatever comes in the pathway of the Spirit, and to banish the little cares, moments of anxiety and distrust this it is to manifest faith. This means the giving of thanks for that which might once have been deemed a burden or affliction. It means unqualified acceptance of whatever may come in response to the dedication of the soul to the pur- poses of the Spirit. It means the cessation of hatred, bitterness, impatience, and condemnation; it means that one now judges righteously. This entirely philo- sophic view of the situation is not easily attained, but it surely accords with the ideal of trust in the Spirit. If you avow faith in God and then lay plans to shape circumstances in your own way, that is ev- idence that you do not really trust. To believe that the Father really provides all things is to act in accordance with this conviction the first time you are concerned for something which you fear may not come. If the work in which one is engaged be given, if it be spiritual, the needed resources will come in accordance with its own developments. The immedi- ate question is, Do you see what move to make just now? If so, that is all that is at present required. If not, there is good reason. To await faith's occasions is to do faith's work. Many times when we seem to have faith there is an offsetting doubt, a secret fear, which later comes to light. It is fairly easy to see the power of God in The Place of Faith 341 some events, but hard to find God in everything. We are apt to identify the terms "God" and "good," and forget that naught exists without the Father. Hence faith in the little things of life is slowly attained. Then, too, there is the resistance offered by habit and by outgrown creeds. We would gladly make faith a habit, but the tendency to distrust is strong. The life of faith should be centred in the immediate present, but it is easy to borrow trouble. .Yet practical faith can surely be acquired, for it is faith in a power and a law ; and one may gather evi- dences. Retrospective intuition increases faith, when we realise how wisely we have been led, how tenderly cared for. Then a greater test ensues, new evidences arrive, and the power to meet the new situation is greater. Each new test may require as much faith as the old, but in due time the multiplicity of evidences is impressive. One has so many times been provided for when one was apparently about to be deserted that it would be ungracious to disbelieve. It becomes plainer and plainer that when the central guidance comes one may take the rest on faith. The central leading is the gift of the Spirit, the essence of that which is to come; our part is to make that guidance a working basis and to refer to it each time a dubious point develops. Faith, then, is a power as well as a working basis and a spiritual essence. To yield to its leadings, to make the move in the dark that is sometimes demanded of us, is to find that an additional impetus has entered into life. Faith lifts the soul, imbues it with a divine energy, a sweet love and peace. It makes "whole," gives centrality the power by which the soul's various activities are welded into consistency. A 342 The Philosophy of the Spirit man will do for his faith what he would hardly do for aught else save for the one he loves. Faith is love in another guise, love for truth, for a cause, an in- stitution, a. creed, love for God. Blessed are we if we are able to break free from circumstances and yield to faith's uplifting tide. As we have before noted, faith brings a security that we little realise until we consider the insecurity which besets many of life's enterprises. No one knows what sudden turn will take away the resources of the man who depends upon getting all he can out of people instead of giving whatever he may. To found one's judgments of people upon character is to lay a basis for security. Nothing ill can befall the man of faith, he is in no sense a child of fortune: what comes is part and parcel of the supreme purpose of the universe, a purpose that is of one piece. There is no obstacle in the way, and whatever comes grows logically out of whatever exists. One who possesses faith's central insight is able to quicken faith in others. Grounded in consciousness of the one Power, he carries in his presence a life that inspires confidence, arouses conviction. Intellectually he is constructive, in contrast with those who, lacking the central insight, do the iconoclastic work of the world. Even if he does not consciously seek to be logical he is so by virtue of this unitary possession. Dwelling at the centre himself, he is able to stir those who have found no poise. The critic may discern flaws in his utterances, for he may give himself far more to the spirit than to the form of his insight. But the critic no doubt judges solely by the letter; whereas those who possess the constructive insight are faithful above all to the essence of their vision. To possess the The Place of Faith 343 Spirit, to discern the unity, is to be unable to bean iconoclast. A marvellous consistency springs from the central insight. To seek the sources of this all-compelling faith is to find that at some time in life the possessor of it passed through an experience that stirred the soul to its depths. For example, here is a young man whose hopes are bound up with his father's life and work. Suddenly the father passes from this life and leaves the son practically helpless. Apparently every door is closed, all resources are gone, and the work which the two were doing together hardly seems worth carrying on alone. Moreover, the shock of separation brings upon the bereaved one an illness which strikes him down to the depths. But in the most forlorn moment, when the soul seems utterly weak, a soothing presence comes, a manifestation of the divine love that brings supreme evidence of the life of the Spirit. Out of this deepest of experiences a new faith is born, the realities of the spiritual life are brought home. No one would voluntarily undergo so severe a test of the law that " he that loseth his life shall find it," yet no one who has passed through the experience would for any price part with it. For it is the last moment of weakness, the uttermost evidence of the finitude of the human soul, that brings the supreme proof of the sustaining strength of the Spirit. One such descent into the depths, one such moment of utter despair, followed by the ascent to the heights of the Spirit, is sufficient to transform mere theory into faith, mere appearance into reality. Before that time one may indeed have seemed to believe, but by contrast one now proves to have been a doubter. One appar- ently understood the laws of life, but now one not 344 The Philosophy of the Spirit only knows but possesses, lives, commands. Every- thing one possessed before is turned to account, but the power has now come which productively employs it. This is the sort of faith that is created in us. The Spirit comes as a sustaining presence, an encompassing love, and the everlasting arms so enfold the troubled soul that it would be an utter sin not to respond. It is such experiences which above all others make the word " Father" the fitting name to apply to God. God is literally a Father in that supreme moment. This is one of the occasions when religious experience stands forth in all the wealth of its reality. Yet, again, it is the mediation of the years of experience and thought that follow which transforms the ex- perience into an intelligible faith. Food for thought sufficient for a lifetime may well be involved in such an experience. It is the quickening of the Spirit which creates the faith, but it is the life of thought that makes it rational. As the years pass and one learns the deep meaning of this quickening, one is able to put it in its true light as central to a faith which applies to every experience in human life. It is be- cause the soul was once touched as deeply as could be that the way is clear to meet manifold experiences even when all seems dark ahead. As Hoffding puts it, religious faith is the conviction of a steadfastness, a cer- tainty, an uninterrupted interconnection in the fundamental relation between value and reality, however great may be the changes to which the conditions of reality . . . are subjected. . . . Faith is a subjective continuity of disposition and will, which seeks to hold firmly to an objec- tive continuity in existence. The object of faith is the con- servation of values, but the existence of faith is in itself The Place of Faith 345 a witness to the conservation of values in the particular personality. 1 The postulates of faith would of course be stated differently according to the theological point of view. One person may, as we have noted, experience an upliftment of heart and will which he attributes to the direct inspiration of the Father, while another will declare that "Christ came," that he actually saw the face of the Master; and yet both may have enjoyed essentially the same experience. You could hardly convince a man who believes that he literally saw the face of Christ that his theological interpretation had aught to do with what he claims to have beheld. Yet compare the inner history of one illumined man with that of another and you will find that in very subtle fashion the theological preconceptions largely create the imagery. To some people it has long been matter of habit to attribute everything spiritual to the acceptance of the presence of Christ. To another it is no less natural to turn in thought directly to the Father. The one cannot think of God without the idea of a mediator, the other cannot conceive of Him except as immediately revealed. There are those who maintain that it is a positive hindrance to put Christ in the place of the Father. From their point of view this implies the deification of Jesus. Hence the Father is seemingly lost to view. For if God be alone known through Jesus, it is heresy to believe in the direct presence of the Father. Con- sequently a philosophy of the Spirit is impossible save so far as the third Person of the trinity is concerned. This doctrine has no doubt had much to do with the i The Philosophy of Religion, Eng. trans., p. 117. 346 The Philosophy of the Spirit relegation of God to a heaven outside of the universe. It has held men back who might have enjoyed a universal faith. It has subordinated both God and man by elevating Jesus into a place which he never sought. It is not our province, however to take sides in theological disputes. No doubt it was Jesus who showed mankind the supreme pathway to the Spirit, so that he alone at that time could say, "I and my Father are one." It may be that Jesus has appeared to many an illumined soul besides St. Paul. That some should at any rate symbolise their vision in terms of Jesus 's face, even declare that they beheld the fleshly "Son of man" as a living personality, is per- fectly natural. To many it is far easier to think first of the Son, then of the Father. But this is no reason for excluding the Father. It does not disprove the belief that the Father is directly related to every human soul. The ideal is to be "one with the Father " as Jesus was one with Him. Insist, if you will, that the living Christ came to you. Enter into the vision in all its fulness, and by all means live by the truth which your vision revealed. But recollect that what you experienced may be the subject of numerous interpretations, that your Chris- tology is an interpretation, and that you make it on the autnority of your own judgment. Remember that for others it has been easy from their spiritual youth up to turn in thought directly to the Father. Those whose interpretations differ from yours may hold Christ in equally great esteem. One might accept a strictly orthodox view of Jesus as the redeemer, yet believe in the immediate presence of the Father. Our philosophy of the Spirit must be broad enough to in- clude strikingly diverse interpretations. The Place of Faith 347 Inasmuch as philosophy aims to be universal, a strictly universal faith would seem most to accord with a philosophy of the Spirit. That is, it is not for the devotee of philosophy to impose dogmatic dis- tinctions. If no man ever lived without the Spirit, the Spirit may be said in very truth never to have left man without a witness. Man, made in the image and likeness of God, is by nature fitted to apprehend the divine presence without personal intermediary. Teachers, organisations, revelations, and the Master are indeed necessary. But to what end ? Not because they are final, but because man in the darkness of his ignorance needs help. The ideal is not one of dependence on scripture or upon Jesus, but upon the Father, namely, the ability each may acquire to go directly to the Father. Make any of the instruments or intermediaries ends in themselves and to that extent you exclude the Father, for ' * No man can serve two masters." "To preserve the faith," as the phrase goes, may be to preserve the letter. Really to preserve the faith is to recollect that faith is a gift of experience. That is, it is first a gift of experience, then is marred, modified or appreciatively set forth, as the case may be, in forms which are likely to be outgrown. A living faith springs from a living experience, one in which spontaneity is perennial. If the experience expresses itself in new ways, its modes of expression must alter, too. The test is fresh experience studied afresh. It may be hard to part with endeared forms of expression. But, once more, no man can serve two masters, and unqualified allegiance must be given to the Spirit. The Spirit is here now, its revelations are true now. Nothing except man's own perversity can keep him from apprehending the Spirit. 348 The Philosophy of the Spirit It is the office of faith to supplement, bridge over, act as intermediary, while we are in partial possession of facts, while we are making a move in behalf of intuition, the inner light, guidance. It is not a faculty or an organ. It does not represent an entire phase or side of our nature but plays its part on all sides. Hence it is not to be assigned a special place as revealer of reality or truth, but must be taken into account all along the line, as essential not merely to the spiritual life particularly so-called, but as essential to human life itself, as a prime essential of our very being. CHAPTER XV THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT THAT the presence of God may be regarded in a number of ways has become more and more apparent in the preceding discussions. From the point of view of a philosophy of Spirit at large, God is the immanent source of all things and all experiences which may rightfully be called real. In this sense, God is not an object of experience but the absolute ground of all experience. The trees, fields, and hills are not God ; our sensations, emotions, and feelings do not give us sense-impressions of God's being. God is rather the underlying life whose Spirit imbues all these. Nature and men are manifestations of God, not identical with Him; for God is an object of thought. The same is true if we speak of the divine being from the point of view of logic: God is the ultimate universal, the immediate of immediates, the basis of all premises, the giver of all objects of thought, hence the ground of all truth. From an ethical point of view, God is the final ground of the right, hence the ultimate object of reference in all moral judgments. From a theological point of view God is still an object of thought, as the basis of all attributes, providences and religious powers ; and as the creator of the physical universe and the human soul. One might argue without limit in be- half of the existence of God as the Underlying reality without believing that God is present as an experience. Not until it is specifically a matter of religious expe- 349 35 The Philosophy of the Spirit rience is God referred to as vividly present in the same way that a sensation or feeling is present. In the above-mentioned respects God is only inferentially present. But for religion God is empirically immanent in the fullest sense of the word. He is present when we worship, when we pray, imbuing us with His pur- poses when we aspire, loving through us when we serve, and bestowing His sweet peace upon us when we commune with Him. For religion at its best there is in fact no barrier of any sort between : in the revela- tional experience it is God who speaks, in the prophet the Holy Spirit is incarnated. For religion, too, the relationship is so intimate that it would ordinarily seem audacious to undertake a differentiation of its factors. In the foregoing chapters we have sought to give meaning to the experience of the divine presence by regarding it as not merely special and religious, but as implied in the entire inner life of man. Regarding the miracle of the renewing life of nature and of the human heart as an earnest of the reality of God's life in action, we took the clue from the presence of an advancing life within us, adopting the theory that this life is from the Holy Spirit because it more abundantly explained the facts of human experience. This led to the conclusion that the life of the Spirit has a nat- ural basis within us, that the natural and the spirit- ual are in closest relationship. Hence we found the Spirit not only in man's so-called higher nature, but working up from below through the stirrings of instinct, the activities of desire, through our struggles and our aspirations towards the perfect. Yet, although we concluded that God is present to all sides of our nature, we also concluded that there is a hierarchy of powers The Witness of the Spirit 351 within us; hence we must acknowledge the supremacy of the higher over the lower, the authority of conscience and the decisive power of enlightened reason. Approaching the subject from the point of view of human faculty, the chief difficulty we encountered was due to our inability to limit the divine presence, or even the authoritative divine pronouncement, to any single power. To assign the experience of the presence of God to a special faculty would be to do injustice to our other po\vers, hence to exclude the Spirit from them. There is no exclusive faculty or ''God-sense," no miraculously operative revelational power implying quiescence of human initiative, no moral "sense" which invariably or infallibly tells man what is right or wrong. Nor could we even say that God is made specifically know r n through those vague possessions known as "the feelings" in contrast with the intellect. God is no doubt present to our sensibilities, but it requires philosophic thought and a criterion to discern Him there, and the life of sensation is not sundered from that of thought. God is authoritatively present in conscience, but that does not absolve man from the law of responsibility. Neither through conscience regarded as a "sense" nor through intuition regarded as "infallible" are we always able to discern the right or the true, but experiences of various sorts are in- wrought with all our judgments and our judgments are very human. God is without doubt directly apprehended through the emotional life, yet the emo- tions by themselves so readily run to excess that only in connection with other phases of mental life are we able to distinguish the emotions which are permanently eligible. We cannot go even half way with the mystic, for he places too much emphasis on ecstatic emotion, 35 2 The Philosophy of the Spirit although we recognise a value in the experience which is so filled with the thought of God that God alone seems to exist. God is surely apprehended through ' ' feeling," that is, each man has experiences peculiar to himself, the presence of God is made real to the individual through actual immediacy, as opposed to intellectual generality; but it is more intelligible to say that God is known through "the heart," meaning by this conven- ient expression not any organ, not a faculty, not the emotions of love alone, but the entire immediacy of man's spiritual nature. To say that God is revealed through providential guidance is also to acknowledge that it is not a matter of faculties but of interpreted experiences. Faith, too, is a co-operative product. The imagination plays its part, also, and oftentimes what we really mean when we speak of spiritual ex- perience is that the imaginative description is a mere symbol of the Spirit's presence: we did not actually experience what we describe, but this is our way of poetically suggesting what we experienced. Moreover, our more technical analysis of immediacy showed that there is no precisely describable or re- coverable immediacy. What men mean by "sensa- tion," "feeling," or "intuition" is not something merely empirical, not something which they actually felt as described, but an experience conjoined with a descrip- tion and an interpretation. Indeed our analysis almost led us to believe that reality is merely a recon- struction of human thought, that our sole resource is to develop mediational thought. We were con- stantly reminded, however, that in immediacy, how- ever elusive, lies the pearl of great price which we went out to seek. If only through analysis, comparison, criticism, and interpretation can what is real or true The Witness of the Spirit 353 be known, only through spontaneity, obedience, fresh return and fidelity to unexpected leadings can we keep sufficiently close to reality to interpret it in terms of life. Thus the presence of life, with its wealth and its surging progress through us, once more proved to be the central clue. The result of our in- vestigation was not that we were condemned to the formulas of thought, but that through transitivity, becoming, movement, change, it is possible to pass beyond immediacy and mediation to a higher moment of thought in which both are included in the Idea. Our general conclusion therefore was that the spirit in man is directly related to the Spirit of God, and that out of this ineffable union proceeds a rich life which may be appreciatively apprehended and philo- sophically interpreted. The mystic is surely wrong in claiming to know this direct union so familiarly, nor does that union imply either identity of selfhood or absorption in God such that naught else exists. The union is too high, too pure, to be thus characterised. By the time the mystic has brought the description down to his level the experience has already become complex and is lost in irrelevant sentiency. It would be more reasonable to say that the power of God is mediated to us, and that only the human factors are recoverable. Inasmuch as no realistic description can do justice to the experience of the presence of God, it would be better to give up the attempt to be literal and make the best interpretation possible in terms, not of mysticism, but of constructive idealism. Since God is present to all sides of our manifold nature, we are compelled to give a constructive account. The same results follow if we regard the divine presence, not from the point of human faculty, but in 354 The Philosophy of the Spirit the light of various modes of conduct. If some men find God by withdrawing from their fellows, rejecting society, and living a life of contemplation or of asceti- cism, others discover Him amidst the most social life. Some know Him through what they take to be direct guidance, while others depend solely upon inductive thought. Again, there are those who so shape their conduct as to obtain and enjoy what they call the di- vine peace. For them, as for many others, the divine presence is always associated with a life of harmony and tranquillity, inspiring reposeful freedom and ineffable beauty. But what of those who find God in moral victory and spiritual struggle? If He be a God of peace and harmony, what of our passions? It may be that to find Him in the discarded things of life is really to find Him. To limit God to one channel is to exclude Him from others, but a philosophy of the Spirit must be widely inclusive. No doubt the special experiences in meditative solitude have their value, but that value can hardly be seen in its true light until the relationship of God to our entire experience is seen. It cannot be fundamentally a question of a certain mode of life, if by such conduct we mean that external conditions are ultimate factors. Though ideally a unitary self, man as matter of fact is a collection of manifold tendencies, and his life is so rich in inconsistencies and conflicting forces that it is difficult to make our descriptions sufficiently inclusive. Then, too, temperaments differ, and what one man would characterise as spiritual in a given situation another would account for in wholly different terms. Some would neglect facts and indulge in symbolic imagery without limit, while others would care solely for facts and precise general principles. The mystic The Witness of the Spirit 355 and the rationalist are so far apart in point of view that they can scarcely understand each other. The intermediate man runs the risk of being true to neither while trying impartially to serve both. Some readers of the foregoing chapters would find little to interest them in bur account of intuition, guidance, and the life of faith; while others would complain that we have not given sufficient credence to these factors of the spiritual life. The resource is to return to our guiding principle throughout, namely, the witness of the Spirit, a witness which, while taking individual form in each case, exhibits universal characteristics, and includes values which relate to the ineffable immediacy of the Spirit. Were we able to say all that their devotees would have us say in behalf of faculties and special modes of life, regarded as authoritative in themselves, there would be no word left for the Spirit. We should expect all accounts of spiritual experience to fail in so far as it is a question of human faculty. The larger truth is that there is one Spirit but a diversity of gifts. The witness of the Spirit in the race is the human evidence in general of the creative gifts of the Spirit. The spiritual life of faith is created in us. We would doubt if we could, or explain these spiritual gifts as merely psychological; but we cannot. The Spirit sur- passes all limitations ; it is perfectly made known not through one mode alone, but through the organised totality of human experience. The Spirit is first, last, and always its own witness, identical in essence, yet varying so greatly in forms of expression as to challenge all powers of description. Thus conceived, the Spirit may be compared to the sunlight, poured in and around all, abundant 356 The Philosophy of the Spirit beyond all computation. Universal in essence, its forms are individual, its utterances particular. It enters into this channel, now into that, taking on and revealing itself through the characteristics of the channel through which it is manifested. It is not itself any one of these its instruments. It is not it- self any of the pronouncements that are made by its agents. Yet each represents a phase of its total selfhood and reality. Speaking through guidance, it is real and true for the recipient of guidance, although another soul would express the message differently. Voicing itself through intuition, it is infallible for the believer in intuition. Stirring within the heart, it is unspeakably real for the heart that apprehends its tender presence and all men speak the language of the heart. Welling up as experience, it is experience and naught else for the mystic. But rare, in any age and in all time, is the man who knows God as reason, who has the universal insight. We might then compare the presence of God to natural beauty. The same landscape exists for all, but beauty in its various forms for those who have eyes to see it. The beauty is not in any one object, grass-plot or group of trees, seen at close range, but in that subtle blending which appropriate distance reveals. The objects in which the beauty appears to reside might indeed be enumerated, but the beauty is real for those only whose attention has been called to it. So in the case of human faculty, one may point now to intu- ition, now to emotion and to guidance ; but these when psychologically analysed prove to be very human. The presence of God is not thus to be confined. To find that presence it is necessary rather to gather evidence here and there until something comparable to a total The Witness of the Spirit 357 scene in nature is developed. Such evidences are found, for example, in studies like the foregoing in which we symbolically referred to the presence of God as the awakening life, the over-power which unites that which is natural to that which is more frequently denominated spiritual ; the spontaneous element which wells up in man through worship, prayer, creative work ; the life that is active in our struggles from lower to higher; and through the creation within us of a convincing intuition of the fact of guidance in- spiring a life of faith. The difficulty is to make the account large enough to include all approaches to this universal element. If some would gather evidence solely through inter- pretation of nature, others would depend rather upon a study of human faculty, while still others would insist that it is a certain mode of life or an authoritative revelation that reveals God. Again, it would be said that God is known through distinctively religious experience, through "the soul's awakening," the prompting to prayer, worship, service, holy love; through expressions of praise, sacred music, and in- spired hymns. But, again, it would be said that God is known through a specifically moral life, through regeneration, the awakenings of conscience, through reverence for the moral law. Still others would insist that the divine Being is appreciable through the love and quest for truth. But all these statements are true. It would be unwarrantable to declare that any one of these approaches is exclusively a channel to the divine nature. The universal failing of men is exclusiveness. The mystic, for example, holds that God is solely what the mystical ecstasy shows Him to be. The moral philosopher assures us that God 35 8 The Philosophy of the Spirit is good, meanwhile there is the fact of evil. The churchman has a copyright on his creed. The devotee of social reform thinks that yonder scholar in his library knows not God. Meanwhile the Spirit waits for unqualified recognition. If instead of making special claims we wait on nature and consider how our convictions come to be con- victions, we discover that it is not alone through any one of the channels ordinarily enumerated, but that the witness of the Spirit is gradually developed within us, through co-operation of all sides of our nature. Men assume that their intuitions spring into being full- fledged, but it is not so. The man whose life is governed by guidance began, not with a distinct and unmistak- able leading which answered all questions, but with a clue which when followed eventually led to desirable results. Then came another clue and another, amidst conflicting impulses and moments of doubt, until in due course a habit was acquired the habit of listening, discerning, testing, accompanied by a habit of practical application. Thus through years a standard was developed, by comparison of immediacies and their fruits when variously interpreted. The love that at last stands revealed as spiritual, in contrast with passion, hence with selfishness, gradually emerges into such prominence through no particular act on our part, but through many experi- ences and periods of reflection. We doubt and contend to a certain point, then arrive at convincing insight. So with intuition: it proves itself by its works and by its triumphant contests with impressions, emotions, and feelings; intuition is a culmination. By insensible degrees we gather our evidence, now brooding over our data and now drawing inferences. By the time the The Witness of the Spirit 359 conviction emerges we have forgotten the steps that led to it, hence it appears to be a pure gift. But were it not a complex product, partly empirical and partly intellectual, partly of slow growth and finally of sudden fruition, it would by no means possess the authority over us which it proves to hold. Faith, too, is a gift that is gradually bestowed. We may believe that it is either a pure gift or that it is solely the result of inductive reason, but neither view is correct. We can no doubt point to certain experiences which strengthened our faith, we can argue in their behalf, point lessons for others, hence inculcate faith. But that is not the whole story. The Presence which surpasses all description has meanwhile dwelt with us, silently carrying forward the stream of our life. We cannot tell how, we cannot tell when, but some- how and at a time of which we took no account there was added an element which now reveals itself as a living witness. Where we once contended or were disturbed, we now sit serenely watching the play of forces which would then have shaken us to the foun- dation. We cannot tell where we won this trium- phant power. Through no poise that was consciously acquired could we withstand such contentions. Something has been born within us in the night of unconsciousness. Its power is unmistakable. Its works prove its high origin. Again, it is a matter of general experience which we cannot assign to any particular side of our nature. As the days and weeks pass, hours intervene that add an ineffable value to the occasion. Had we planned for. them these hours would have failed us. Had we psychologically analysed them they would have thinned into pale descriptions. We did not even "let" them 360 The Philosophy of the Spirit come, they came. They are like the sunset glow, added to the prose of cloudland. They come as those wondrous moments come when, listening to a Beetho- ven symphony, one transcends the mere moment and thought plays at random in the world of eternal values. In due time these ineffable hours combine by a law no less sacred than the law of their coming. Out of their variety springs a new unitary conviction. That the Spirit is one, universal, and varied in its forms of expression this is the great truth that emerges. Thus the deeper truth that the Spirit is progressively bestowed upon us displaces the petty doubts which annoy us when we try to develop a static conception of the divine presence. Whatever else the Spirit is, it is surely life, it is life-bringing, and only in terms of life can we even approximately describe its reality. It would seem delightful to enter such a state of bliss as the Hindoo mystics tell about and to abide in such consciousness. But such is not the way of life. He who knows God merely as the quiescent good does not yet know Him. Our God is a God of struggle as well. He who has wrestled, who knows what sorrow and suffering are, has a right to speak. When God is excluded from nothing then is He truly God. My own life must know no exception if I am actually to realise the divine presence. I must discern to the foundation, philosophise to the utmost and fearlessly. Then shall the great conviction be born. The ideal element for which we have made allowances throughout, the element of values appertaining to the world of appreciation, is just this additive gift of the Spirit. When we have made our most precise statement, and apparently included all the facts, it is this over- element that gives worth to all the rest. Yet the The Witness of the Spirit 3 6z witness of the Spirit is no less precise than the limita- tions which it overcomes. It is not a vague or random element, but is added according to law. Hence to make allowances for it is to proceed with as much con- fidence as to appeal to anything else that man knows only through experience. The only qualification is that one does not attempt to complete even the ap- preciative account. On the God-ward side it is pure Spirit that is given. To know what is given were to be the Father of all gifts. What we apprehend is the Spirit as mediated to us by such experiences as we are capable of entering into. That the Spirit is life and stirs us to newness of life we frequently realise when, bored by the artificialities of conventional society, we drop them all and associate with people who are doing things. It may be the missionary who gives us the divine touch, or the social worker who opens our eyes to real life in the slums. Or, again, it is the reactionary who has forsworn society altogether and is working his way back to the heart of life. Peasant people lead us back, nature restores us, so do little children. To give up all plans and let life manifest itself through us as it will is another way. A new insight brings freshness of life. Love quickens us anew, and when all other resources fail we can find the Spirit by ministering in love. Where "two or three are gathered together" there indeed shall the Spirit be found as it never could be if we dwelt alone. The great lesson is obedience. He who w^ould know the Spirit in its more immediate guises must be willing to follow, ready to give up all attempts to manage or control. Obedience is indeed a fundamental need of the spiritual life. It includes the preservation of spontaneity and the losing of one's life in order to 362 The Philosophy of the Spirit find it. First there is need of receptivity, patient listen- ing, quiet readiness, closeness to life. Then comes the discovery of leadings or clues, accompanied by will- ingness to follow wherever they may lead, in full trust, in entire fidelity to the new life that stirs within the breast. To follow without knowing at first that we are obeying is best of all. For we then do what we are led to accomplish, write what comes, express what stirs, without ulterior motive and with self-abandon- ment; when self -consciousness comes, as come it must, fortunate are we if we do not try to imitate the letter of some previous act instead of seeking the new meaning of the Spirit in the living present. If we try to repeat what people have applauded our performance is sure to be inferior. To centre our interest upon the letter is to take it away from the life. Without the fresh revelation of life the letter soon dies and becomes a crystalline record of what the Spirit was. Thus constant obedience is the price of life. The devotee of the Spirit no doubt wishes to be established in faith, in attitude and in life, but he must choose between a static and a dynamic conception. In this volume we have argued from the first for the dynamic view. Hence we have emphasised the pri- macies of experience as opposed to all formulas, creeds, books, and institutions. The forms find their value as instruments of the achieving Spirit and must keep pace with man's growing consciousness of the Spirit. To become settled in a static sense is eventually to lose the Spirit for which we sought to become es- tablished. In motion or change alone is life constantly present. It is what the Spirit is doing to-day that avails. Consequently the first and last need is ad- justment to the present leadings of the Spirit. The Witness of the Spirit 363 Hence the one in whom the witness of the Spirit is strong is frequently heard to remark: "This is what I see to-day. I cannot tell how the situation may appear to-morrow. I know not what I shall do." He who is thus poised, who is ready to go wherever he is led, has in truth begun to be settled. For the only real basis of rest is in the trust which the Spirit inspires. And we now know that such rest is very far from being merely emotional. For unless a man understand the law his pathway is by no means sure. Indeed one may say that a man is sure in so far as philosophic conviction has taken the place of mere experience. Stability is a gift of divine reason. To be faithful to the present leadings of the Spirit does not, as here conceived, mean the rejection of all system or order. On the contrary, to be established in adjustment with the Spirit's leadings is to possess the only real system. The disorder of human life springs from man's effort to be something by himself in the world of surfaces. Really to be grounded is to move with the Spirit whose perpetual creation is the divine order. The Spirit is one, the only ultimate basis of unity. Each soul may find a home there. That home shall be eternal for those who abide in the consciousness of the divine presence. Centred in that presence within the sacred precincts of the soul, one may adjust oneself without limit to the needs of external and social life, hence make the fullest use of all systems. The basis of choice is this central guidance. The criterion is fidelity to the Spirit. To begin each activity in the light of the Spirit is to follow the central clue. And every line of conduct, every system, needs to be repeatedly tested to see if it meet, the require- ments of the Spirit. 364 The Philosophy of the Spirit Despite the fact, however, that the witness of the Spirit is first a matter of experience, and that out of experience a conviction almost ' unwittingly grows, we are unable to conclude that the Spirit's witness is merely empirical. Experience never gives universals, but only particulars, not even when it is a question of the presence of God. It is our sentiency which gives us the experience, our thought that tells us it is God. Experience may indeed combine with experience to produce conviction, but the conviction is no less a matter of thought. Without reality immanent in our premise we should not discover it in our con- clusion, and critical comparison is needed to prove that it is reality. To know the witness of the Spirit is not alone to live close to the immediacies which bestow upon us a newness of life, but to ascend the heights of reason and learn the universal meaning of our experiences. If experience supplies the renewing clues it is reason that makes explicit their divine order. Hence the necessity for a philosophy of Spirit as op- posed to mere life. This relationship of experience to mediating thought has appeared throughout the preceding chapters. The discussion in regard to the presence of God each time showed that it is first a matter of immediacy, then of comparison and interpretation. The basis of the mystic's experience, for example, proved to be an im- mediacy which we resolved into its elements. . Guid- ance, too, proved to be a gift of the immediate side of our nature, distinguishable into numerous types. So far as the immediacy of guidance is concerned, it might be given us by a community of spirits ; only through the acceptance of an underlying philosophy of the spiritual life is one able to decide that all guidance is ultimately The Witness of the Spirit 365 from a single Providence. Faith in the first instance is a product of the immediate, growing up within us out of a complexity of emotions, feelings, and beliefs, meeting successively severer tests and finally as- suming philosophic form. If there be any reason for differentiating a part of our nature as spiritual, then that part is surely immediate; for it is characteristic of the spiritual to be in the first instance receptive, docile, responsive, obedient. Hence the simplicity of all these powers and experiences is best seen in child- hood, in the naive or uncritical stage of experience. In contrast with these essentially obedient immediacies, the intellect is more active, aggressive. Manhood's thought recovers the immediate, yet in a reconstructed form, one that has survived the tests of doubt, struggle, and seeming defeat. To the immediate side of our being belong the ex- periences which first send us forth into activity. It is not originally ideas that stir men's souls, compel them to believe, and make them willing to undergo hardships ; it is some prompting that rises from the realm of sen- tiency, some emotion or feeling. The immediate may be of slight value in itself, for instance, an emotional conversion in one's youth; but it may be unspeakably rich in consequences. Under the head of immediacy belong all instinctive stirrings, the original quicken- ings of desire, the swaying powers of impulse, and the overwhelming life of passion, all emotions of an un- critical or untransformed type, all spontaneous prompt- ings and all activities of love in primitive guise. It is impulse, desire, love, not reason, that first sends men forth to action. Imagination may follow and enlarge upon our original experiences, emotion may cause their increase, will may choose and hence develop some 366 The Philosophy of the Spirit experiences to the neglect of others, while reason makes plain what it is that we love; but it is love that stirs. Indeed it might be said to be the function of the im- mediate to stir, to make gifts, while reason's province is to state the implied ends, worths, and values. Our immediacies are often like vague gropings in the fog, while the calm intellect sits aloft and beholds the var- ious ends we would attain, like so many masts rising above the mist. Yet the intellect is helpless without the gifts which life brings it. The intellect is delibera- tive in the extreme, while impulse surges to the rescue and saves the endangered. On theoretical grounds we disbelieve what immediate experience forthwith pro- ceeds to reveal. Intellectually our minds become dry and lifeless, but the new awakenings of the heart create everything anew. While there is spontaneity there is hope. A thousand experiences would be impossible and life would be dull in the extreme were it not for the ever-powerful gifts of the immediate side of our nature. Without the inspired zeal of our evangelical friends we would hardly depart as missionaries to foreign lands, or seek out the sinner in the slums. Without the emo- tional persuasiveness of the magnetic leader we would not break from the usual routine of life and thought. One's evangelical friends may preach strange theology when, for example, they insist that probation ceases with death and hence one must be energetic to save souls while there is yet time and before the devil is up. But were it not for their almost fanatical earnestness we might have settled back with the quiet conviction that, as all men are sons of God, they are saved already. We do not go to the evangelical leader primarily for ideas, but rather to the philosopher, who tells us how the The Witness of the Spirit 367 mind works and almost wearies us with his criticism. But who in all the world so stands for the power of God as these naive theological people who are in touch with the compelling immediacies of the religious life? What we love, what we will or are stirred to be, this it is which makes the most of us what we are ; not what we conclude after careful reasoning. The mystic simply shows in the extreme this compelling power of the immediate. His is the soul on fire, his the all- mastering emotion. But he is merely an exaggeration of all men in the childhood of the race. Were he a good critic of his own states he would be a poor mystic. He teaches us that there is something sacred in human life. To preserve the power of spontaneous return to the original sources is of as much consequence as to in- tellectualise the mystic's experience. It is a deeply suggestive fact that the man who brings us nearest God is most apt to be the evangelical person who stands for an uncritically naive view, who pleads for "the point of view of God." Ignorant of the profounder results of modern criticism and unable to interpret his own experiences, he will insist with utmost earnestness that God alone can accomplish, that man does nothing by his own efforts. Man is in fact belittled in the extreme, and the intellect is disparaged without limit. Yet amidst all this crudity of thought there stands out the sublime truth that "God is all in all." There is an enormous carrying power in such utterance. It has the persuasiveness of an absorb- ing idea, the power of an overwhelming emotion; whereas the well-informed man has so many ideas that he is unable to yield his mind wholly to any one of them. Surely here is the witness of the Spirit. Yet, having conceded all this persuasiveness to the 368 The Philosophy of the Spirit immediate, we must accord to criticism its due. Woe unto him to whom doubts come, for it is a long, long road from this naive evangelism to the mature con- viction which puts criticism in its right light. The uncritical devotee of the religious immediate appears to possess the full reality and truth concerning God. But reality is not so apparent and truth is not so easily won. To depart from the uncritical stage of life is like beholding the disappearance of youth, with all its delights and its unconsciousness. Yet every man is sooner or later compelled to sail out on the sea of life in quest for his own fortune. The unspoiled heart- is a priceless treasure, innocence is a perpetual delight, and every one must indeed ' ' become as a little child" in order to enter the kingdom. But no one is counselled to be or to remain merely a child. Nothing is surely known as real until it has been put though the tests of experience, comparison, and restatement. The truth is discoverable through dialectic, through negation, contrast, and reconstruction. Immediacy is so dear to us that we cling to it as to life itself. But the life of the Spirit in us is progressive, and its su- preme witness is the testimony of reason. It would be possible to attribute an exaggerated importance to knowledge as opposed to experience, and no doubt modern philosophy has over-emphasised the problems of epistemology. But it is plain that no man is really established in faith until he has not only enjoyed the vision but grasped its meaning. If, as Emerson assures us, "our faith comes in moments, our vice is habitual," it is because we still live much in the realm of emotion and other immediacies. To possess a faith that is stable, to move steadily towards the moral and spiritual goal, we must understand The Witness of the Spirit 369 the law of life. It is easy to have faith while we are prosperous or when the mood is on, easy to rejoice with those who rejoice; but the test comes when we must prove for ourselves that which seemed so persuasive when we dwelt with the multitude, or when we had not yet encountered adversity. Really to know is to prove in detail for ourselves. Wisdom cannot be com- municated as the immediacies can. Emotions are cheap; for knowledge we must pay an increasing price. It seems to the uncritical observer that the mere immediacy of emotion or feeling reveals the universal- ity of the Spirit. This misconception is repeatedly exemplified in popular speech when, for example, we hear people say, "I feel this to be true," meaning thereby a law which they hold to be universal. What they "feel" is of course merely a particular instance which they judge to be representative of a law already accepted on other grounds. Newton, gazing at the apple, does not "experience" the law of gravitation, does not "feel" its truth; he reflects upon the apple's fall, and on the basis of his knowledge of nature and of science arrives at a generalisation. He does not and cannot observe every possible falling body and hence arrive at his law by mere enumeration of instances. No one can empirically verify a law by actually perceiv- ing every instance of it. No one can touch, see, or feel a law. A law, just because it holds in every case in the given universe of discourse, is universal and necessary. The truth of its universality and necessity is arrived at by means of a generalisation. The nearest one can come to experiencing it is in a given instance of it when experience and generalisation blend in a verifying intuition. It is such a blending that leads to the con- fusions of popular speech. 24 370 The Philosophy of the Spirit The element of surety in spiritual faith belongs, therefore, to the intellectual generalisation, not to the feeling which seems to establish its truth. Far more important than to receive a particular guidance, or any number of such guidances, if uninterpreted, is to arrive at a conclusion in regard to their common origin and meaning. Hence to receive a guidance and to prove its value by its empirical fruits, and to discern its philosophic significance, are two different things. The mere guidances do not by any means leap together and form themselves into a law. The law is discovered through comparison and inference. It is no doubt an act of faith to pass from the particular to the universal, but we have already noted that faith is an inseparable part of our rational processes. To see the consistency, the connection of all guidances that is the significant discovery. The grand result, therefore, of spiritual experience at large, whether mystical or not, is the conclusion that there is a law, a power call it what you will so long as you express its universality that presides over events, over our lives, a Life in which we can absolutely trust. It is no small part of the witness of the Spirit, there- fore, to gather the evidences which indicate the Spirit's presence and on the basis of the facts to arrive at sound generalisations. Particular experiences are often so ambiguous that one questions whether all ambiguities can be resolved. But, however perplexing the various pronouncements of experience, one fact is plain, that there is a Life in events not of our own creation, with the arrangements of which we had nothing to do. It is plain that this Life takes a certain course through us, that it is revealed under varied conditions, some phys- ical, some moral, some distinctively religious. We are The Witness of the Spirit 371 compelled, for example, to observe certain natural conditions in order to live; and no man, by taking thought, can change these natural conditions. Again, there is a law over us in the mental world, conditions to which thought must adapt itself if it would under- stand that world with its unceasing flux of experiences which never recur. In the moral realm we are brought back to learn what we sought to escape from. There is a necessary correspondence between inner and outer conditions such that we are compelled to suffer the consequences of our own acts. We are com- pelled to observe precise, orderly conditions, if we would attain certain ends. Indeed the law is so far over us that men miscall it "fate." But it is this same law which, enforced upon us at every turn, proves to be the law of love, and convinces us beyond all doubt that the Spirit exists. It is a part of this great law, for example, that the noblest gifts of the spiritual life come in their own way, added to the rich blessings of that which is more distinctively natural. Hence in one's reflection on the facts of life there gradually grows up a belief in the environing existence of a higher order of being in- visibly surrounding the natural world. Then there takes place a memorable transition as the point of view shifts from the natural or temporal to the eternal. From the higher point of view, the great truth is that God is eternally present, not "in" space, but mani- fested in and through a universe of which nature is a part only. From this point of view God is not speci- fically "here," but is immanently related to all beings and things every "where." From this point of view, the initial fact is life, the divine power manifested in and through, active in every living creature. From 372 The Philosophy of the Spirit above, not from below, becomes the great word, "the above" whence cometh the direct influx of life and love; the above whence descendeth the divine grace, the quickening power of the new birth, the everlasting wonder of the incarnation. From that source is born the conviction which transcends all doubt and reveals the Reality of realities. And, here, once more, it is experience that is the primary clue. It has been said that no one is prepared to teach philosophy who has not had "the spiritual experience," and we have found abundant evidence that it is expe- rience that gives the incentive in a spiritual direction. The mystical ecstasy will serve as well as any other provided that out of the experience there emerge, not mysticism, but the conclusion that ultimately there is one law of all spiritual things. To discern the mean- ing of the mystical insight is to see that the implied law or unity gives a basis for a philosophy of the Spirit. To emphasise the emotional factor, the feeling- element or sentiency, is indeed to degenerate; hence mysticism is rightly denominated intellectual degenera- tion. But to distinguish between the particularity of the experience and the universality of the insight may well be to discover sufficient material for an entire philosophic system. Hence "the spiritual experi- ence" no doubt underlies some of the greatest systems in human thought. The philosophers do not narrate their experience, for they well recognise that it is merely particular. What they give is the result of their reflection. Likewise in the tests to which we put our faith, it is not experience that proves the law; experience merely supplies additional data for further judgment. The way out of our straits, when we are caught in the The Witness of the Spirit 373 narrows of agnostic criticism is undoubtedly empirical, that is, pragmatic; but pragmatism is merely a tem- porary method. If we are so beset by doubts as to be unable to believe in God, the resource is to adopt one of our childhood's beliefs tentatively, then see how it " works/' If the demands of practical life are met by the belief that there is a guiding Spirit, a divine Father who provides for every need, we have splendid evidence which we may forthwith develop into a phi- losophy of religion. If the conception of an immanent Spirit meet our religious demands, we may then take this doctrine as a starting-point for a complete phi- losophy, and compare it with other doctrines. Thus "the spiritual experience" may well give the clue to all experience. To find a working conception that applies, an idea of God that pragmatically "works," is a great step in advance, yet it by no means takes the place of a thorough-going reconstruction of our faith. So far as merely practical conceptions go we are still in the region of ambiguities. The otherwise splendid re- sults of Professor James's Varieties of Religious Ex- perience well illustrate this. In that book you have an unusually liberal description of experiences, and a capital psychological explanation of their occurrence. But the psychological theory is so excellent that one is free to conclude either that there is or that there is not a real spiritual world corresponding to these ex- periences. On psychological grounds one is totally unable to resolve the difficulty. Worse yet, Professor James offers metaphysical alternatives. 1 Only by accepting a system of first principles on other than 1 1 have criticised this book more at length in Man and the Divine Order, Chap. III. 374 The Philosophy of the Spirit merely psychological or pragmatic grounds is one able to return to the difficulty and resolve it. Professor James inclines towards a curious pluralistic view. In the preceding pages we have steadily advanced towards a monistic conclusion. The choice between the belief that the Spirit is one and that it is many cannot be decided on merely empirical grounds. If comparison of experiences reveals the fact that all the guidances of the spiritual life imply one law, we have thus much evidence in favour of a teleological idealism. But the contrasts between so-called good and so-called evil forces may suggest an ultimate dualism, and this implication must be compared with the teleological implication. If the mystical insight be deemed conclusive that is, the monistic mystical insight it remains to be tested in the light of other considerations. Hence the supreme witness of the Spirit is the one which shall guide the way even through the mazes of the age-long dia- lectic of the One versus the Many. This is so long a way that few care to walk therein, for it implies the complete development of a constructive idealism. To what extent, then, does the witness of the Spirit throw light on the nature of reality? Judging by the fact that a belief has long prevailed that the universe is a manifestation of Spirit, this witness has proved to be of widespread and fundamental significance. To us, living in a more critical age, this witness can afford a clue only so far as we are able to find a way from mere immediacy, unreflective insight, guidance, faith and intuition, to reconstructive reason. Our inquiry into the nature of reality is necessarily incomplete. We found that immediacy of experience is the primary reality, that is, first in point of time; The Witness of the Spirit 375 but we concluded that only through analysis and criticism can the immediate be distinguished from appearance. We were unable, then, to adopt any form of immediatism, not even mysticism with its convictions regarding the direct presence of God. Our psychological studies pointed to a definite con- ception of reality, inasmuch as we rejected the theory that there is a special "faculty" for the apprehension of spiritual reality, and concluded that only by esti- mating the pronouncements of reason, as well as those of feeling, emotion, intuition and the experiences of our sensibility in general, can what is real be ascertained. Thus while psychological considerations proved in themselves ambiguous, the clues they afforded sug- gested some form of critical idealism as the probable theory of what is real. On other than psychological grounds, that is, in terms of faith, we concluded that there is a higher order of being corresponding to the values of religious experience. Hence we resolved the ambiguity by adopting as conclusive the demands of practical life, namely, that spiritual things shall be real. Moreover, the conclusion that the natural and the spiritual are intimately related tended to confirm this view. Everywhere we have found that it is inner experi- ence that affords the direct clue to what is real in the higher sense of the word, and in this sense we ac- knowledged that there is a truth in mysticism. But we discovered that the truth of inner experience is far from plain on the surface, inasmuch as there are mis- conceptions attendant upon intuition, feeling, and emo- tion, and conflicting interpretations of parallel facts. In contrast with detached guidances and particular insights, we indicated the fundamental character of 376 The Philosophy of the Spirit the central guidance which pertains to man's eternal welfare. This fundamental clue furthered the pro- bability that there is divine providence, or purpose; and thus again our investigation afforded an idealistic clue, namely, in favour of a teleological doctrine. Again, our discussion tended towards theism, rather than pantheism; monism instead of pluralism; and towards emphasis upon one power resident in all activities, as opposed to a dualism of conflicting good and evil forces. We could not, however, accept op- timistic fatalism, and say, ''all is good, there is no evil/' "whatever is, is right"; for we noted that everything exists in order and degree, from lower to higher; a thing or quality is good in its appropriate place, and our theory of the spiritual life is through and through ethical. It was inevitable that we should encounter limitations in the development of a theory of the divine nature, inasmuch as our inquiry was specifically concerned with God as Spirit, as progressively present to human experience, accomplishing ends in concrete life. The practical man and the pragmatist would be content to stop here, as much as to say, If your theory meets the needs of practical life what more is wanted? We are reminded, however, of the service which reason has been to us from the start, and of the idealistic clues mentioned above. We have scarcely given reason an opportunity to declare its type of revelation of the divine nature. To develop an idea of God in the more complete sense, it would be necessary to begin afresh with an idealistic analysis of experience. Thus far we have kept close to experience, and while mere experience has proved inadequate we have discovered realities The Witness of the Spirit 377 there which many intellectualists have left out of account; we have found abundant evidence that human experience, especially religious experience, can- not be accounted for without a wealthier conception of actually known reality than that of the meagre rela- tivism of our time. That is to say, even the inade- quacies of experience imply a larger conception than agnostic intellectualism affords. That we should find it difficult to account for higher types of experience on the basis of merely human powers, by an analysis of faculties, intuitions, emotions, feelings, and the like, is precisely what should be ex- pected, if there be but one Power that is efficient, one Reality that creates experience in us. That all spiritual or other experience is given through relations, that no independent immediacy is discoverable, is indeed a profound fact. If we experience nothing apart from relations, we surely know nothing apart from them. Both the human and the divine factors must, then, be taken into account. The truth that eludes us if we revert to the mere immediate, however authoritative the revelation, is discoverable through the dialectic pursuit now of sentiency and now of thought, now of the human and again of the divine. Through movement, life, the truth is found. The same conclusion follows if we consider the practical bearings of our inquiry. Inasmuch as no emotion, feeling, guidance, or intuition is adequate by itself, the moral is, By all means preserve spontaneity, learn obedience, seek the leadings, clues, and guidances of spiritual immediacy and follow them whithersoever they lead; but also seek the rationally reconstructed clue which implies a conception of the divine purpose. There is surely priceless wisdom involved in such 37 8 The Philosophy of the Spirit immediacies, but both experience (including failures) and reason (including criticism) are needed to render that wisdom fully available. One is sent back to the simple life of fidelity to spontaneous inner leadings with new conviction, since criticism has proved them unexpectedly valuable. But the necessity for right interpretation has thus become greater. The fun- damental truth is this, namely, that there is a pathway of the Spirit, a course which the Spirit pursues in and through us. This is the law in things. This is the great gift of the immediate. Our part is to recognise, then to move with the Spirit. Hence the ideal is poise, adjustment, in accordance with the standards of the eternal 'type of life ; not poise in self, not mere submission, but co-operation in line with our concep- tion of the one Efficiency. This ideal includes the promptings to individuality and originality, it is inclusive of the Greek moral principle of self-realisation. While, then, our inquiry leads us to emphasise the one Efficiency, it does not involve the denial of the individual self. All along we have gathered clues which imply a conception of the finite self, as the centre of self-consciousness, the possessor of mental powers, the recipient of guidance, the being that has in- sights, grows in faith, loves, wills, and reflects. All experience is mediated through the self and without it nothing can be understood. The revelations of the Spirit through the inner life and in nature are repro- duced in the finite selfhood, and accompanying the progressive life of the Spirit there is an attendant finite thought. This thought is not to be scorned, but de- veloped to the full. For, what is it in the last analysis if not the revelation of the presence of God? Who gives that thought its objects if not the larger Self The Witness of the Spirit 379 without whom there were no reality and no truth? But the self, like the larger idea of God mentioned above, is plainly a construct; there is no single ex- perience, no immediacy which shows what it is. Hence constructive idealism must complete what is here merely outlined. It is experience that reveals the clues, it is the Idea that renders them explicit. The greater truth which our inquiry suggests is the utter dependence of the finite self upon God. Ac- knowledging the results of modern criticism, with its emphasis upon the facts of self-consciousness, we nevertheless insist that to put emphasis first of all upon man is to put it in the wrong place. No merely factual analysis of human experience can reveal the presence of God. There is an element of values, a witness of the Spirit, that surpasses the utmost that descriptive analysis affords. God reveals His presence in and through and despite the limitations of finite experience. Human experience and even the human intellect is relatively passive in the presence of that mighty Power. Of himself man is and can do nothing. To put too great emphasis on the fundamental truth that there is but one Efficiency would, however, be to neglect the supplementary truth that God is known and manifested by the individual. To speak of the one Life alone would imply a wholly negative concep- tion of the individual, as if man were a merely passive observer of a supreme immediacy. We have found no such immediacy. Not even in man's most recep- tive moments is he wholly negative. He not only responds, reacts, but prior to his response approaches the experience in an attitude of expectancy implying a preconception or interpretation of such experience. He not only receives but reacts in terms of conduct 380 The Philosophy of the Spirit and of thought. The immediacy is but one element. Moreover the immediacy is knowable by what it leads to, is life, rich in implications. The divine presence is life, and is lifegiving. What man is led to do shows what the divine presence means to him. Unless a man does that which manifests life he has hardly apprehended the divine presence. In the larger sense, then, that presence is known not through mere receptivity but through co-operation. To place stress on the mere universal, therefore, is to neglect the particular which gives it content and meaning. The mere immediacy of the Spirit is purely general, universal; the significant consideration is the specific guidance, the particular purpose or in- dividual tendency which develops out of that im- mediacy. It is a question not of the power of God, which exists for all, but of the person whom God means us to be. To insist upon the mere divine efficiency is to paralyse human endeavour. Without that efficiency man is indeed nothing and can do nothing. But it is a question what man is and can do when he moves with that efficiency. Man is naught only when he tries to be somewhat by himself. When he is his true self the power of God manifests itself through him towards definite ends. It is of fundamental significance, therefore, that the presence of God is known as life, through life. Were God merely static, were He an inflexible king of iron will whose decrees had arranged every moment of our lives, mere passive resignation would indeed be called for. Were there an authoritative voice which we could all hear, one which should always tell us precisely what to do, why we exist, who we are, then our course would be unmistakable. But in the real life which each of us The Witness of the Spirit 381 knows by painful experience, struggle, and defeat, leading to slowly won victory, the divine life is discover- able only by degrees and amidst fluctuations, ques- tionings, and extensive reasoning. To fall in line with what we take to be the divine, whether we know it to be such or not, and discover by trying where it leads is the surest method. Whatever we may become, the result will be a co-operative product of many factors, some explicitly distinguishable as divine, some per- taining to the life of impulse, some springing from the life of reason, others from social influences. What we are is simply indescribable apart from the life we lead. Through transition, movement, the deeper realities are seen, not through anything stationary. However fixed the divine purposes may be, we at any rate ap- prehend them through the perpetual flux. We arrive at the important conclusion, then, as a result of our inquiry, that the experience of the pres- ence of God must be taken account of whenever men would answer the great question, What is reality? Thought cannot arrogate to itself the power of deter- mining what is real by imposing its own static uni- versal. The true universal is dynamic, and its content is discoverable by waiting patiently upon life. The resource for the sceptic, the agnostic, the man who has lost the power of belief in God because of reiterated emphasis put upon the human factors of experience, is to throw himself in line with life and learn whither it leads. The power of return to the sources is not lost. Within each of us there is at least a spark of the divine light left and this may be kindled whenever we will. Out of the paralysed state of mind in which we cannot see the wood for the trees there is a way of escape, that is, through faith, receptivity, responsiveness. 382 The Philosophy of the Spirit If man will simply live, and take his clues from life, in due course he will be able to make life's tendencies articulate in terms of an ideal. Our investigation thus brings us into possession of a method alike for practical life and for scientific pur- poses. The first step is to discover what is given or immediate, not merely from the point of view of fact but from what is active in the immediate. The next step is reaction, criticism, exposition, and analysis of that which the immediate has given, even though it be apparently self-contradictory. This is the stage in which immediatism contends with intellectualism, when because of paradoxes and conflicts the devotee of immediatism counsels return to nature or to mystic ecstasy, and when reason encourages man to persist. No antitheses could be sharper than some that emerge in this period. The serious question is repeatedly raised whether education really educates, whether man has a right to depart from or try to improve upon nature. To depart seems to be a necessity, yet to depart is to fall into endless doubts. But a third period is attained when the harmony of experience and of thought is seen. For, lo and behold, they are from the same source. The same God who prompts us through our impulses quickens us through our reason. There is one Reality revealed in and through all. The life that gives the thinker his facts also yields the dialectic through whose progressive movement the Idea is discoverable. Reality is both immediate and mediate ; the larger truth is found through their union. There is no single finite point of view from which the en- tire truth can be seen. There is no individual whose revelatory experience is complete. But all men, all points of view are needed, that the total revelation The Witness of the Spirit 383 may be made. Hence each man must be true to what his individuality reveals and develop it to the full, believe in himself to the end, while constantly learning the truths which other men declare. Out of the wealth of considerations which our in- quiry has brought into view we may single out certain propositions of prime significance. We declare (i) that the Spirit is (appreciatively speaking) an awaken- ing, progressively revealed life which pursues a cer- .tain course through the world and through men; (2) that the Spirit is the basis of the natural as well as of the spiritual world, that the two worlds are in the most in- timate relation, such that it is a question of order and degree from the lowest levels of nature up to the heights of the beatific vision; (3) that the Spirit is revealed through a gradation of realities, through a descent and an ascent, an involution and an evolution, hence everything is intelligible as real according to its place or level, not at random, as if all things were equally real; (4) that the clue to goodness is found in this gradation of realities from lower to higher, not that all things are equally good; (5) that the clue to truth is found in this same gradation, rendered in- telligible through progressive dialectic from the lowest immediate to the absolute Idea; (6) that within man's consciousness this orderly life of the Spirit is reproduced in terms of relation such that knowledge of reality is possible; and (7) that in relation to this progressively revealed life of the Spirit the human self is made known amidst an activity based on a natural flux, a natural response, and ideal interests culminating in a central purpose through which the will of God is achieved. The life, activity or flux is thus everywhere the starting- point, the initial clue, the general immediacy out of 384 The Philosophy of the Spirit which the various differentiations lead onward and upward to the beautiful, the true, and the good. The Spirit comes that we may have life and have it more abundantly, and that out of this life the fulness of the divine love and wisdom may be revealed. SUPPLEMENTARY ESSAY THE ELEMENT OF IRRATIONALITY IN THE HEGELIAN DIALECTIC 335 ' FOREWORD THE following Essay, accepted by Harvard Univer- sity as a part of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, was originally one of several studies in the concept of immediacy begun under the instruction of Professor Josiah Royce, in the Logical Seminary at Harvard. It was due to the fruitful suggestions and kind advice of Professor Royce, at various critical junctures, that the investigation finally led to a problem in the logic of Hegel as the culminating issue. To Professor Royce I am also in- debted for valuable suggestions in regard to the relative worth of the various books on Hegel. To be put on what proved to be the right track from the start was of such consequence that I venture to make a few sug- gestions to others who may be going over the same ground, and to publish the results of my own investi- gations. For the results as here stated I am alone responsible, since the thesis did not receive the criticism of Professor Royce, nor have those who passed judg- ment upon it communicated their opinions. So far, then, as I am indebted to Professor Royce, or other philosophers, the reader must infer from the foot-notes or references to Hegelian literature. The thesis has been slightly revised and condensed, with the addition of a few notes and criticisms. It is safe to assume that the reader who is sufficiently interested in Hegel to make a study of his works, and of the best books about him, is already familiar with the history of thought and needs only a hint in regard 387 388 The Philosophy of the Spirit to the order in which one may best read Hegelian literature. A thorough study of the history of philo- sophy has perhaps convinced him that Hegel is above all others worthy of serious consideration. In this case a work like Professor Royce's The Spirit of Modern Philosophy will refresh his mind in regard to historical problems leading from Kant to Hegel. Recently a work has been published which combines the study of the history of philosophy with that of metaphysics, and leads directly from Descartes to Hegel, whose system is regarded as the logical fulfilment of preceding systems. 1 Readers of works such as Bradley's Ap- pearance and Reality, Taylor's Elements of Metaphysics, and Royce's The World and the Individual, would natur- ally turn to Hegel in further pursuit of the issues raised by these writers. Or, the issues may be logical rather than metaphysical and may have arisen through a study of Bradley's Logic, Bosanquet's Logic, and works by Hibben and others who have treated the Hegelian logic appreciatively. It is more likely, however, that Stirling's The Secret of Hegel, and the expository volumes by Wallace, Caird, and McTaggart, mentioned below, have prepared the way. Any one of these groups of books would serve to introduce the student into the fundamental issues. Since the present Essay was written, two works have appeared in Germany which will greatly facili- tate the study of Hegel, namely, Die Jugendgeschichte Hegels, Wilhelm Dilthey, Berlin, 1905; and Hegel's theologische Jugendschriften, edited by Hermann Nohl, Berlin, 1907. At the moment of writing there has appeared a centennial editon of the Phdnomenologie i The Persistent Problems of Philosophy, by M, W. Calkins. New York, Macmillan, 1907^ Supplementary Essay 389 des Geistes, the revised text of which is edited, with an introduction, by Georg von Lasson; Leipsig, Verlag der Diirr'schen Buchhandlung, 1907. This edition, moderate in price, will bring Hegel's great introductory work within the reach of all. In Edward Caird's little work, Hegel, Edinburgh, 1883, one finds a brief account of Hegel's life and a compact but instructive exposition of his philosophy, together with statements which throw light on the problem of the present Essay. W. Wallace's Pro- legomena to the Study of Hegel's Philosophy and espe- cially of his Logic, second edition, Oxford, 1904, is a work to be read both before and after beginning the thorough study of Hegel ; also the same author's essays prefixed to his translation of Hegel's Philosophy of Mind. On the whole, Wallace is the surest guide, from first to last. Kuno Fischer's culminating work on the history of philosophy, Hegel's Leben, Werke und Lehre, contains clear expositions of the various works, with brief explanations and comments. The chief biographical works, other than the two new volumes mentioned above, are Rosenkranz's Hegel's Leben, Berlin, 1844; and Haym's Hegel und seine Zeit, Berlin, 1857- Hegel's two most fundamental works, the Phdno- menologie des Geistes and the Wissenschaft der Logik, must be read in the original text. The student is not likely to choose Hegel as the first German philo- sopher to be read in the original, but will begin rather with Schopenhauer, or a work such as Paulsen's Einleitung in die Philosophie. When he turns to Hegel he will find little assistance by consulting a Worterbuch, but will be compelled to work his way into the text until he is acquainted with Hegel's peculiar termi- 39 The Philosophy of the Spirit nology. Professor Hibben's Hegel's Logic contains a brief glossary of Hegelian terms, and Sterrett's The Ethics of Hegel contains a list of ethical key- words. 1 The best aid, however, will be found by constant refer- ence to the article on the Hegelian terminology in Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy. The section on Quality in the Wissenschaft der Logik has been rendered into his own peculiar English by Stirling, in his The Secret of Hegel, of which a new edition, revised, was published in 1898, New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons. One may begin to translate the Logik by reference to Stirling's rendering and annotations. A higher stand- ard has been set by Wallace in his rendering of the En- cyclopddie. Wallace has appended to his translation of the smaller Logic various notes and illustrations which throw light on difficult terms and passages. Stirling's unique book is an aid chiefly to those who are working their way into Hegel and is profitable only in part. If, as some allege, the author kept "the se- cret of Hegel" to himself, he has at least made known the problems which students encounter who are work- ing their way into Hegel, and he has steadily insisted on the close connection between Kant and Hegel. Har- ris's Hegel's Logic also exhibits the processes of a mind engaged in grasping Hegel, and is a valuable aid if read at an early stage of one's studies. Hibben's little work, mentioned above, contains an exposition of the Logic of the Encyclopddie only, and is not a critical study. Noel's La Logique de Hegel contains an excel- lent exposition of the dialectic, together with passages which throw light on difficult transitions. There are many valuable aids and criticisms in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, especially Harris's exposure 'P. 57- Supplementary Essay 39 1 of the misconceptions of Paul Janet, i: 251 ; his refuta- tion of Trendelenburg, ix: 73; and the explication of four Hegelian paradoxes, xvi: 119. The Journal also contains translations of important passages in various portions of Hegel's works. McTaggart's excellent Studies in the Hegelian Dia- lectic * is invaluable from first to last, but inasmuch as it is critical as well as expository the study of it may well be postponed until one is acquainted with the orig- inal text. The same writer's Studies in the Hegelian Cosmology * logically belongs to a still later period .of one's studies. In the latter work the author departs more widely from the strict interpretation of the text and one is not always able to follow him. In Haym's book, mentioned above, one becomes acquainted with a .polemic of the Hegelian system; also in Seth's Hegelianism and Personality. Baillie's The Origin and Significance of Hegel's Logic is a study of the Logic in the light of the earlier writings, but is of little value when it is a queston of the more funda- mental connection between the Phdnomenologie and the Wissenschaft der Logik. A work such as Mackintosh's Hegel and Hegelianism is of small value from any point of view. Dr. Mackintosh's objections do not win our confidence. A work on Hegel prepared for " The World's Epoch Makers" series should be written from the point of view of a comprehensive study of the original works and in the light of their influence on the history of thought in the nineteenth century. 2 One derives comparatively little help from . histo- ries of philosophy, on account of the brief and often- 1 Cambridge, The University Press. 2 For an account of Hegel's works, the various editions and trans- lations, see Miss Calkins's work mentioned above, pp. 545-549. The Philosophy of the Spirit times disparaging expositions of the Hegelian system. Schwegler's Handbook of the History of Philosophy is translated and annotated by Stirling. 1 Windelband's History of Philosophy contains a conceptual exposi- tion of some of the problems which the critical stu- dent must early consider. 2 Pfleiderer's Development of Rational Theology since Kant contains an instructive exposition of Hegel's Philosophy of Religion. The best logic for parallel study is undoubtedly Bosanquet's Logic, 2 vols. > See especially pp. 315, 429 ff. 2 See pp. 611 ff., Eng. trans. THE ELEMENT OF IRRATIONALITY IN THE HEGELIAN DIALECTIC 1. THE purpose of this discussion is to examine a prevalent view in regard to the Hegelian system, and plead for a counter-interpretation. The aim as thus stated appears to be a large one, and it at once suggests the most comprehensive metaphysical interests. In reality the inquiry is concerned with a single issue, and metaphysical questions are for the most part subordinate to the sharply defined investigation of one concept. The problem of interpretation is an ulterior interest, without which the investigation would not have been undertaken. Yet the method employed is such that one may arrive at final conclusions in regard to the central logical contentions without subscribing to the Hegelian system of categories as a whole, or grappling with the epistemological and metaphysical problems, which are for the most part postponed. The present discussion is properly an introduction to the larger issues. If the logical investigation be complete, so far as the narrowly defined issues are concerned, the way will be clear for the consideration of the re- maining problems. For the removal of a supposably fatal objection will put the entire system in a different light. 2. The situation which we must meet is this: A certain opinion in regard to the method and value of the Hegelian system has so long prevailed, and this point of view possesses such apparent authority, that the entire question of the worth of the system is 393 394 The Philosophy of the Spirit seemingly settled. To remove this long-established opinion it is necessary to pass beyond mere questions of interpretation, and concern ourselves with the de- tails of what may be denominated dialectic facts. The opinion in question is connected with popular estimates of certain of Hegel's doctrines, and chiefly relates to his secondary works, to the neglect of the more fundamental. It is therefore necessary to call attention anew to the decisive considerations out of which the entire system has grown. That is, there is an unsuspected element implied in the initial analyses of the system and it is impossible to estimate the va- rious branches of the system without taking this neg- lected element into account. To discover the existence of this significant element and assess it at its proper worth one must disabuse the mind of apparently deci- sive estimates, lay aside all preconceptions with regard to Hegel, and study his works anew. Yet, in thus insisting upon an unbiassed study of the text, we may so far give weight to the opinion in question as to insist upon the significance of many dialectic details which might otherwise be passed by. For, although the pre- valent opinion is unsound, it serves as a point of de- parture for those who are concerned to put the system in its true light, and by contrast leads to the discovery of unsuspected wealth. In thus bringing into promin- ence one element at the expense of others, and dwelling upon the structural significance of a single concept, we run the risk of distorting the whole dialectic, hence of doing further injustice to the system. But with the exigencies of the case thus explicitly stated, it would seem possible to avoid all misunderstanding. 3. The opinion in question is so well known that a few references will suffice to suggest it. Hegel's system Supplementary Essay 395 is popularly regarded as the quintessence of " absolute idealism, " and the absolutism is supposed to be so far sufficient that no connection with the world of fact is necessary. That is to say, the system is supposed to begin and end in the Absolute Idea, not in the world of experience. So far as there is any reference to experience, the Idea is said to supply the connection so that even the historical order of events is knowable a priori. . This opinion is often summarised by quoting He- gel's own words, namely, ''What is rational is real; and what is real is rational." 1 The term "wirklich," here translated "real," without the much needed explana- tion of the sense in which Wirklichkeit (actuality) is to be understood, is taken to mean everything that exists ; whereas, as we shall see, decisive considerations depend upon the interpretation of Wirklichkeit. Inasmuch as Hegel is supposed to include whatever exists in the category of the rational, all that is necessary in order to guarantee the rationality of an event is to indicate the fact that it has taken place. To discover what is real in the domain of the Idea is to learn that which is presently to exist. On the other hand, to point to the strife and evil of the world would apparently prove such a view absurd. The implied interpretation and criticism of Hegel involved in this general view have also been extended to other parts of the system. It is supposed, for exam- ple, that Hegel's theory of nature is meant to take the place of all scientific induction, as if nature could be deduced from the Idea. It is held that Hegel has carried out the same speculative point of view in his theory of religion and history of philosophy. What 1 Philosophy of Right, Eng. trans., xxvii. 39 6 The Philosophy of the Spirit we have, then, in these and other special disciplines is an arbitrary account of the development of nature or of history. It is supposably a sufficient confutation of this point of view to indicate the discrepancies between the facts of nature and the romantic speculations which Hegel offers in place of the exact sciences. 4. The reaction against this romanticism, together with the fact that the Hegelian system long ago fell into disrepute in Germany, has been regarded even by historians of philosophy as sufficient evidence of the failure of the doctrine. 1 Hence in the books which so often shape the views of students of philosophy one finds Hegel dismissed in a manner which tends to prejudice the reader against him. Hoffding regards Hegel as a representative of the Romantic school, and deems him even more arbitrary than Schelling. 2 Turner says: " The speculative or a priori method consists in laying down a principle, such as the Hegelian principle that the succession of schools corresponds to the logical succession of the categories, and deducing from such a principle the actual succession of schools and systems," 3 Weber says : ' ' The defects of the Hegelian method and the errors of fact following from it are due to the rationalistic prejudice of which the system is the classic expression. According to Hegel, the absolute is idea, thought, reason, and nothing but that; whence he con- cludes that the idea, or, as the School says, the form, is also the matter, of things. When he assumes that Recently there have been signs of a reaction from this extreme view. See, for example, an article by Dr. Ewald, "Philosophy in Germany," Philosophical Review, May, 1907. 2 History of P kilos., Eng. trans., ii., 183. *Op. cit., p. 2. Supplementary Essay 397 the ideal world of science can be deduced from reason alone, it is because, according to him, the real world, the world of beings, is derived from reason and from reason alone." 1 Again, Paulsen says: " The fundamental conviction that a system of absolute knowledge of reality can be produced by a new process of purely conceptual thinking, independently of experience and the empirical sciences, characterises the philosophies of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. ... In Hegel speculative philosophy reaches its completion. He constructs the whole of reality out of concepts. . . . Never before had philosophy spoken in so proud a strain." 2 According to Paulsen, Hegel was simply reading his own nature into the world, as Schopenhauer did later. "Hegel, too, regards the world-process as directly converging in his philosophy. Thus the philosopher interprets the universe according to his own nature and highest aspirations. The world-process invari- ably passes through the head of the philosopher. " 3 In rejoinder, it seems sufficient to writers like Paul- sen to plead for the will as fundamental, and dismiss the intellectualistic view without further hearing. Others, taking their clue from Schopenhauer, who long ago set the fashion by abusing Hegel, heap ridicule where they are unable to confute. The climax in this direction comes when Professor James, in his essay "On Some Hegelisms," 4 - propounds jokes at Hegel's ex- pense. Such an essay should not, of course, be taken 1 History of Philos., Eng. trans., p. 534. 2 Op. cit., pp. 28, 29. ' Op. cit., pp. 314, 315. 4 See The Will to Believe, p. 263. James's Principles of Psy- chology also abounds in unappreciative comments on Hegel. 39 8 The Philosophy of the Spirit seriously, but it nevertheless tends to emphasise a pre- vailing opinion. On the authority of historians of philosophy, or of critics of Hegel, students of philo- sophy arrive at adverse conclusions without even turning to Hegel to learn whether he has been cor- rectly expounded. 5. Hegel has also been accused of starting in a peculiar way with his own presupposition. Trendel- enburg maintains that the dialectic of "pure thought" attempts to create and to form the whole content of the Logic. For, "the self-movement of self -related thought is at the same time the self-creation of Being. . . . The Logic tries to presuppose nothing but pure thought, which possesses no external intuition, no image, but simply itself; but by creating from itself, produces the conceptions and the determinations of Being." 1 "It has been supposed by such critics," says Professor Royce, "that Hegel deliberately in- tended to deduce the empirical element in knowledge wholly from the other, or spontaneous, factor of 'pure thought ' ; and Hegel has been blamed for failing in this essentially hopeless enterprise." 2 6. If, as usual, Trendelenburg's criticisms are not deemed final, those of Seth are often taken to be so. In Seth's Hegelianism and Personality one reads, for ex- ample, that in the development of the categories, "as elsewhere, in the exposition of his system, Hegel has suppressed the reference to experience . . . through- out the Logic . . . Hegel has been nowhere in direct contact with facts or factual existences. The Logic deals from beginning to end with abstractions . . . 1 See an article summarising his views, translated by T. Davidson, Journal of Spec. Phil., v., 349. 357. 35$. 2 Baldwin's Dictionary, i., 455. Supplementary Essay 399 thought out of its own abstract nature gives birth to the reality of things." 1 7. Furthermore, there is a tendency to judge Hegel by the utterances of some of the English philosophers who hold doctrines that are adversely criticised by writers whose views are by no means identical with Hegel's. In J. Caird's Philosophy of Religion, and in E. Caird's Evolution of Religion, the Neo-Hegelian positions are not always so prominent as in E. Caird's Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, a work in which the presuppositions are so much in evidence that one finds some of the interpretations of the Greek philosophers of little value. Anything that arouses suspicion in regard to the fundamental princi- ples of the English Hegelians tends to increase the doubt concerning Hegel himself. References to Brad- ley and other English philosophers are often made in such a way as seemingly to disparage all "absolutists," hence to discredit the supposed prince of absolutists, Hegel. Worse still, generalities are indulged in which their authors could by no means make good by refer- ence to any "absolutist" in particular. 2 8. It is clear that an investigation which strikes at the root of the opinions mentioned above will directly relate to the interpretation of the entire system. If it can be shown, for example, that the meaning of Wirklichkeit (actuality) has been overlooked, the foundation will be removed from a general line of ad- verse criticism. Another point will be gained by an explanation of the term "pure thought" with reference to the starting-point and method of the dialetic. If it shall appear that Hegel first arrived at the principles 1 Second edition, pp. 96, 108, 118. 2 This is especially true of the writings of modern pragmatists. 400 The Philosophy of the Spirit which led to the dialetic through an analysis of expe- rience, from which the dialectic is never wholly sun- dered, the entire development of the categories will be put in a different light. If, moreover, it shall ap- pear that provision is made for the irrational, the necessity for a revision of opinion will be still more apparent. In the end it may prove that the Hegelian method throughout implies an idealistic interpretation of the world which we all know, and by no means in- volves an attempt to deduce nature with its temporal events from the Idea. Nevertheless, the method may prove arbitrary in some respects, that is, in the manner in which it is applied. 9. In brief, the opinions quoted above resolve them- selves into the central contention that Hegel has de- veloped an abstract system of categories which suffices for the deduction of the actual, temporal order of events in the world, and hence renders all scientific induc- tion unnecessary. In rejoinder, we shall endeavour to show that Hegel's entire interest is to seize upon the essential elements in any branch of science with which he is engaged, and develop these scientific essen- tials into the logical system which thy imply. In the case of his Wissenschaft der Logik, 1 Hegel's interest is to develop the various categories in their most uni- versal aspects, the categories, namely, which find more concrete exemplification in the special disciplines. It will be shown that the dialectic, or logical system as a whole, begins in each case with the concrete facts of the world and eventuates in the Idea. Thus, while the Idea will in truth prove to be the central interest in the system as a whole, the data which it construc- 1 To be briefly denominated his Logic. Supplementary Essay 401 lively stands for will be found to have due recognition in their proper place. 10. It will be made plain, then, that Hegel's sys- tem, to be understood, must be classified as an idealistic interpretation of human experience as we know it, and as such should be judged in comparison with other idealistic reconstructions of experience. For, it will be seen that Hegel attains his end, not by beginning with "pure" or abstract thought, devoid of all empiric presuppositions and references, but by starting with an analysis of given, finite consciousness as known by direct inspection. It will further be made plain that, even with the conception of absolute science before him, Hegel does not at once proceed to the formulation of ideal meanings; but begins with the category which is primary in all experience, and does not introduce the conception of scientific essentiality in its fullest sense until he has adequately provided for the contin- gencies of ordinary experience and thought. 11. Of particular consequence for our purposes will be the greatly neglected transition from Existenz (existence in a subordinate sense, mere immediacy) to Wirklichkeit (actuality in a significant sense) in Book II of the Logic, with the implied relationships to con- tingency and the irrational, on the one hand; and to the Idea, on the other. For, unlike many who refer to or quote Hegel, we do not propose to ignore his confessedly most fundamental work, the larger Logic. Nor can we neglect the important question of the rela- tionship of the Phdnomenologie des Geistes l to the Logic. If it has been by reference to the Propadeutik, or to the smaller Logic of the Encyclopddie, that the adverse 1 To be briefly denominated the Phenomenology. 26 402 The Philosophy of the Spirit opinions have been chiefly substantiated, it is high time to correct these views by a study of the actual text of Hegel's two leading works, the Phenomenology and the Logic. 12. In order to make good this outline of what may be expected in the present discussion, we propose to undertake, in the first place, a general study of the character, scope, and meaning of Unmittelbarkeit (im- mediacy) in the Phenomenology, the Encyclopedia, and the Logic. This preliminary inquiry will prepare the way for the specific subject of our investigation, namely, the discovery and significance of the element of irrationality in the Logic. That is to say, the field of immediacy is the larger background whereon we shall forthwith locate the element of irrationality. 13. Our general thesis therefore is that the study of the structural significance of immediacy in the Hegelian dialectic throws new light on that dialectic by revealing an element of irrationality; and hence supplies a central clue to the interpretation of the system as a whole, besides un- dermining the objections referred to above. The study of immediacy begins at the point where the dialectic starts, in the Phenomenology, and continues throughout the Logic and into the various branches of the system. But the nature and scope of irrationality are not thus early discoverable, nor are all parts of the system equally available for its interpretation. Hence we emphasise the structural significance of immediacy as essential to the system from first to last, reserving the right to interpret immediacy in the proper place. 14. In this study of immediacy we emphasise the essentially logical character of the investigation. That is, we are to consider immediacy as a concept and ob- serve the phenomena of its dialectical development. Supplementary Essay 403 It is not our province to examine each of the above mentioned objections in epistemological and metaphys- ical detail, but rather to supply the data for such exam- ination. The development of the concept of immediacy will be considered throughout with the objections in mind, yet that development will be kept as free as pos- sible from all interpretative criticism, until the point is reached where the general question of irrationality may most satisfactorily be considered. The main contention of the inquiry will be established, if the structural investigation be carried out as promised. What is added by way of interpretation will be for the most part suggestive, so far as the system in general is concerned, inasmuch as the main interest is to call attention to neglected portions of the Logic. 15. In our preliminary inquiries we shall begin with psychical immediacy, but the main interest from the start will be to trace the development of the logical concept. For the moment, we take the Hegelian term Unmittelbarkeit (immediacy) for what it obviously represents, that is, the given or unmediated; and pro- ceed with its developmental description. It is a word of many meanings, and its significance is best seen in its various usages. In certain cases we shall use the German words interchangeably with the English, or leave them untranslated. The advantage of retaining the German term is plain in the case of Begriff (usually translated the Notion), or aufgehoben (sublated or transmuted). To tender the latter word "annul" is to be as misleading as the English Hegelians are when, for example, they use such expressions as "swallowed up," "absorbed," "destroyed," or "blended." It is well to let Hegel speak for himself when there is any doubt. 404 The Philosophy of the Spirit 1 6. In order to understand the full bearing of imme- diacy in its important aspects, it is necessary to know how Hegel begins the inquiry in which the logical inter- est is first discovered. Very much in Hegel depends upon the beginnings and the endings. If we discover precisely where he starts, what he assumes and what not, we shall be in a position to make important infer- ences. To make sure that we know what the first pos- tulates are, it will be well to start far back of Hegel's beginning in the Logic. We shall then ascertain what he means by "pure thought," and pass to a general definition of immediacy. Our inquiry thus falls under the following heads: (i) the differentiation of imme- diacy as a logical concept, (2) immediacy as the begin- ning of the dialectic, (3) meanings of the concept, (4) contingency and irrationality as aspects of the imme- diate, and (5) immediacy at the end of the Logic, with references to other parts of the system. 17. Hegel expressly states that the Phenomenology is his direct presupposition, and that he carries over to the Logic from the study of consciousness in its phenomenal stages the conception of absolute knowledge. Thus he begins with a highly mediated result, howbeit he starts afresh in the Logic with a logical object, a specific kind of immediacy, far removed from immediacy in the strictly psychic sense of the term. It is clear that the Phenomenology is in a sense a broader, freer inquiry. Hence we must begin with the larger field in order to understand how the issues are narrowed. Hegel does not specifically refer to the passage on which we are about to place considerable stress, but his references to the conclusion of the Phenomenology as his presupposi- tion, obviously imply a further allusion to the analysis whereby the concluding conception was obtained. Supplementary Essay 405 In his Introduction to the Logic Hegel says : ' * In the Phanomenologie des Geistes I have exhibited conscious- ness in its progress from the first immediate antithesis of itself and its object to absolute knowledge. This course passes through all forms of the relation of con- sciousness to its object, and has the conception of science as its result." 1 Hegel refers of course to his present science of logic. He contends that this concep- tion requires no other justification in the Logic, aside from the general outcome of the Logic, inasmuch as that conception has already been justified in the Phenome- nology. Moreover, the conception is capable of no other justification than its production by consciousness, the study of whose forms results in this conception as their truth. "The conception of pure science and the deduction of it are presupposed in the present treatise in so far as the Phanomenologie des Geistes is nothing else but the deduction of the same." 2 At the beginning of Book I, Hegel refers to this pas- sage in the introduction, and more explicitly reiterates his statements by pointing out that the beginning of the science of logic, although logical, and made in the ele- ment of free, independent thought, is nevertheless mediated, since the conception of pure thought is the last absolute truth of consciousness. "To this extent the logic has the science of the phenomenal spirit as its presupposition. That science contains and displays the necessity, hence the proof of the truth of the stand- point of absolute knowledge, also its mediation. 3 That science of the phenomenal spirit begins with empirical i Werke, iii., 31, tie Aufl. * Op. cit., p. 32. 3 Hegel refers of course to the process whereby the conception was obtained. 406 The Philosophy of the Spirit sensuous consciousness, that is, with the proper imme- diate knowledge. . . In that treatise immediate know- ledge is also the first and immediate [that is, it is the initial consideration or datum with which Hegel begins] of the science, as well as its presupposition. In the Logic, however, that is the presupposition which had proved to be the result" [of the preceding investiga- tion]. 1 The beginning of the Logic, then, is explicitly and directly related to the Phenomenology, and the reference exhibits the unmistakable clue which guides us to the origins of our concept. Although the logical inquiry is restricted to a field of its own, it bears reference to actual experience in precisely the way that is most significant, namely, to experience as directly appre- hended. We are not only justified, therefore, in begin- ning with the preliminary inquiry, but we are directly referred to it as to that which must first be understood before the logical investigation can be rightly inter- preted. Obviously, if immediate sensuous experi- ence is the original presupposition, the entire inquiry assumes an empirical character. The immediately empirical aspect of consciousness is thus seen to bear an intimate relation to the whole problem, later to become a decidedly logical problem. The bearing of this upon the objections above mentioned will become evident as we proceed. 1 8. How, then, does the Phenomenology begin? Hegel's assumptions in regard to philosophy and science are no more bold than any thinker would make who proposes to be thorough-going. Philosophy is said to belong essentially to the realm of universality. The 'Pp. 57, 58. Supplementary Essay 407 true form of truth is its scientific system. The true is the whole, and there is no inner necessity that know- ledge shall complete itself in the Begriff. 1 Yet Hegel takes his age as he finds it, and regards philosophic science as an ideal to be striven for. There may be profound implications in data which we already possess, but one may as well insist that a building is done when its foundations are laid as to declare that the Begriff (notion) of the whole is the whole itself. The whole becomes the true whole through its self-development; the Absolute is essentially a result, it is first at the end what it in truth is. The human embryo is, if you please, a man, implicitly, but is not truly man until man has made himself such through the life of reason. Consciousness is to find itself through its otherness, its movement or becoming. Knowledge at first is mere sensuous consciousness. Hegel therefore proposes to write a natural history of this "becoming" of consciousness. In so far as this undertaking already implies a science, it is the science of experience, the system of experience or phenomena of the spirit, as the substance is observed and its activity becomes an object. 2 The relation of phenomena to knowledge in the exact sense is to be con- sidered, the reality of cognition is to be investigated, and the truth of knowledge ascertained. 3 In short, the inquiry is to begin as such an inquiry would naturally start, with the given existence of consciousness and its two moments, subject and object. 4 Doubts might arise whether what we term the essence of experience is simply its essence for us, merely our knowledge of it. Consciousness on the one side is knowledge of the Vorrede, zte Aufl., pp. 3, 6, 15. *Op. cit., pp. 27, 29. Pp. 64, 65. 4 p. 27. 408 The Philosophy of the Spirit object; on the other, consciousness of itself; the consciousness of (i) what to it is true, and (2) the con- sciousness of that consciousness. If from the compar- ison of these relationships it appears that consciousness must change its knowledge to make itself conformable with the object, then we must take into account the fact that in the changing of knowledge the object also changes: the present knowledge was also knowledge of the object. 1 That is, consciousness knows something; there must be a given object wherewith to begin. The given object is naturally regarded from the point of view of its essence, its implicitness. But this its im- plicitness is plainly such from a point of view, and the point of view must be taken into account. The con- sciousness for which the object is appears at first to be simply the reflection of consciousness into itself, a representation rather than an object. But the first object already appears in a different light: it has ceased to be merely implicit, has become an object to that for which it was implicit, and this second moment becomes an object in a complex sense. The second object con- tains the denial of the first. The new object has become, through a turning about of consciousness. Hegel is not, then, regarding the moments of con- sciousness as ''abstract," "pure," moments, but pre- cisely as they are for concrete consciousness. What he seeks is the whole system of the data and laws of this concrete experience the science of the experience of consciousness. 2 He begins with consciousness as he finds it, and of course at once meets the per- plexities which beset analytical introspection. He is in search of the universal, but the universal must 1 P. 67. 2 p. 6 9 . Supplementary Essay 409 comprehend the particulars of this actual, living ex- perience, with its concretely given perplexities and relations. What, then, are his postulates? He makes as few assumptions as possible in order to begin the inquiry. We may state these as follows: Consciousness exists, as a fact of given experience. But consciousness is not merely existential, immediate; it is awareness of objects, and becomes aware of itself as thus aware. Thus mediation springs out of immediacy and proposes an ideal (Begriff) of its own complete mediation. There is a given moment which when made explicit points forward and may be made more explicit. By follow- ing this clue consciousness becomes aware of its own deeper reality and meaning. This progressive becom- ing is necessary, for without it consciousness is unable to discover its own significance. Consciousness as given, then, already contains the implications of its own full meaning. The consciousness wherewith we start might be yours or any man's. If the account of consciousness be universal any one may verify the reference to it as psychically real, as possessing an in- structive movement, and as pointing forward to its own complete meaning. There might be other aspects of consciousness than those selected as significant, but it is just now a question of the essentials wrought into a system. 19. The significance of Hegel's beginning becomes apparent when we follow the introductory analysis of consciousness as first presented. It is natural to regard consciousness as the sensuously presented, without at first raising the question whether any- thing be truly presented, or what it is that is given. Thus Hegel takes up sense-certainty as simple 410 The Philosophy of the Spirit knowing. 1 In so far as the subject of this knowing is to be regarded, it is to be taken as immediately receiving, without altering what it apprehends, and without comprehending it. Here we have psychic im- mediacy in its simplest guise. We may say: (i) that the psychic moment as felt is the immediate, (2) that the moment is immediate because it is directly our object, (3) that it is immediate because it is direct knowing, or (4) that it is immediate because it is know- ledge of that which is. All these aspects of the imme- diate are indicated in Hegel's analysis. For purposes of logical investigation it is the existential consideration that is of most consequence. Hegel does not at first penetrate behind the knowing or the being to ascertain which is prior. At first it is plain that to be is to know, to be is to be known, and to know or to be known is to be. Obviously one cannot at first discriminate further than this, for that would be to mediate, and we seek the immediate. It is plain that our meaning shifts when we undertake to state what the immediate is. But to remove the ambiguity were to mediate. The most precise statement is that, knowing is. The terms employed need not be taken to mean that "a" being is, for the " is " refers rather to the knowing. To shift the mode of statement is not to be ambiguous, but to ex- press more adequately what immediacy is as knowing. To regard the knowing either from the subjective or the objective side would be to regard typically the same immediacy. If it seems impossible to regard an object as immediate in the sense in which Hegel takes it, with- out modification on the part of the recipient, there is at least the bare fact that immediacy momentarily is, and that it aims to be what Hegel says it is. Immediacy P. 71. Supplementary Essay 411 as immediate to, in the barest sense of " knowledge of acquaintance" this is what Hegel endeavours to set forth. With this bare characterisation to start with, let us see what else may be said about this mere knowing. Since nothing has been excluded from it, we may as- sert that it is immediately the wealthiest knowledge, as if it w r ere an infinite kingdom in which we could find no limit. Or we might allege that it is the truest, since it has rejected nothing from the object, but has the object before it in entire completeness. Yet, from another point of view, it is the poorest, the most ab- stract truth; for all that we can say is that it is. If we mediate sufficiently to mention the ego, we can only say that it is mere ego, pure " this" in relation to pure "that," as object. Neither terms of the relation can be taken as manifold. The ego is merely recipient of an object which we are now regarding from its own side. On its own side the object is not supposed to have produced a manifold of conditions whereby it got itself known. Nor is it said to possess a variety of conditions or relationships. The reference to it as im- mediate is not its own work. It is through its nextness to the ego that it takes on this character of immediacy. Hence neither the object as known, nor the ego as percipient, produces the immediacy. The immediacy merely is since it is. Certitude is implied, namely, that immediacy is actually present, is felt; but this is at first simply the certainty of sense, the instant's feeling of direct apprehension, which is undeniable, since it is. This simple immediacy constitutes its sole present truth. Note, then, that Hegel faces the sensuously given moment and puts the utmost acumen into the effort 412 The Philosophy of the Spirit to detect precisely what the empirically given is. He finds certain characteristics and describes them. He seeks the truth of this given moment in the guise in which that moment seeks to be known. He is at once compelled to state the laws of the sensuously given as such, and does not enunciate the laws which an a priori theory might impose. This description is an example of immediacy. Whatever the other differences, the immediate falls apart into the "this" as apprehending, and the "that" as object. Again, to reflect upon either term of the relation as "immediate" is already to pass beyond it to the mediate. Here, again, Hegel states a law of the given. Sense-certitude is after all certainty through an other, and this "other" is through the ego. It is not we who make the difference between the essence and the instance of it ; we find it in our con- sciousness, and it is to be taken in the form in which the distinction appears, not as we might determine it. The essence is the thing itself, the object; the unessen- tial in this case is our own mediation. The object regarded as true, essential, is indifferent whether it be known or not. It remains, whether or not it be known, whereas the knowing is not without the object. Surely, Hegel here gives full recognition to the reality of the object. If unable to seize upon a single aspect of im- mediacy to which an independent meaning can be attached, the striking feature of his account is his fidelity to precisely the baffling aspects of consciousness which any acute observer may verify. The further he carries the analysis, the more is he compelled to follow the dialectic of two tendencies of this baffling givenness, (i) the peculiar character of the object when further examined, and (2) the significant developments of consciousness in its endeavour to interpret the given. Supplementary Essay The endeavour, for example, to follow the moment's presentation and to identify it with a specific object, involves the discovery that the alleged definite descrip- tion of the "now" as present moment no longer fits when the moment has gone. The now or the here is indifferently day or night, a tree or a house. As simply immediate, the apprehended moment is utterly indifferent as regards content. There is always some here or now present, but what it shall contain the mere immediate cannot show. What is meant by the appre- hended moment cannot be told until the moment is gone. We meant to mean some particular thing; but it is mediation that makes explicit the particularity: the immediate as such is the simple universal. The same results follow if we drive the certitude out of the object into the ego and declare, The now is day because "I" see it, the tree is a tree because I see it. Another ego sees the house and asserts, The here is not a tree but a house. Both truths have the same evidence, the immediacy of sight, and the testimony of each ego is in regard to what is immediately known. But it is the ego, now, that is indifferent. We meant a single ego in particular, but we are as little able to say imme- diately what we mean as when we referred to the now and the here. The essence of immediacy, therefore, seems to be neither in the object nor in the ego. Both the object and the ego are unessentials, so far as the mere presentness is concerned; in neither does the here remain. In neither is the "here" that we mean. 20. Thus Hegel already begins to indicate how the immediate is later to be considered, in the third mo- ment of thought wherein the antitheses are assimilated. Yet just because of this richer dialectic moment one 414 The Philosophy of the Spirit is the better able to return to the presented now or here, and say, "Yes, Hegel is right; the immediacy is the whole, the living now, so roomy and so general, yet so persistently itself that no mediation, can rob it of its reality." As psychic, immediacy is always the moment that just now is. If we attempt to seize it, it is gone. Hence we describe it as it was. But it is not essentially what it was; it ever is in the moment of presentation. The "here" which we really mean, when we undertake to specify, would be a point. Yet there is no such moment of immediate knowing, but rather an activity. Instead of simple sensation, or pure instant of feeling, what is really given is constant movement. This the most tantalising aspect of immediacy begins to be for Hegel its profoundest aspect. 1 For the dialectic of sense-certainty is for him the simple history of this activity-experience. That is, the real certainty, in the last analysis, is just the assurance of the presence of this ceaseless activity. It is impossible to deduce from this activity as such the particularity of the given mo- ment for example, this house is now present. For the immediate object is not the tree or house but the psychic movement. If we declare that the movement now makes known the tree or the house, we do not cor- rectly state what is. The "this" is merely general; the sensuous this that is meant is unattained ; the like- ness of objects as sensuously apprehended is expressed, rather than the difference. If I say that a particular thing is signified, I affirm what is general; all things are particular, and "this thing" is any thing you please. 21. Thus the sensuously immediate, as it is popu- larly supposed to exist, retreats farther and farther. ' P. 78. Supplementary Essay What remains is an exceedingly subtle piece of media- tion. Is there, then, no real immediate? Certainly there is, but it is not what it was reputed to be as di- rectly giving information that now I apprehend this tree as an independent thing. What I immediately apprehend is not to be described until it is gone then what we possess is, description. We meant something that is felt, and this immediacy of sensuous apprehen- sion can by no means be denied. Nor are we able to reduce it to mere thought. We can at best suggest its truth as it exists for experience by pointing out that what we directly apprehended was the general activity in which we retrospectively differentiated what we took to be just this object. Since our certitude pertains rather to the psychic activity, and is not the supposed assurance that we just now apprehended this particular external object and no other, we are con- strained to admit that we really do not know sensuous objects immediately, but rather through mediation. What we cannot know immediately we can indeed perceive, but perception is already a mediate form of knowing, and does not now concern us. The impor- tant consideration is that "Die unmittelbare Gewissheit nimmt sick nicht das Wahre, denn ihre Wahrheit ist das Allgemeine" 1 22. Hegel thus cuts the foundation away from all sensationalism. Sensuous reality exists as such for thought. Our immediate object is a flux of mental states. Into the thought which refers to these states we inject a judgment so rapidly that we seem to possess physical objects as large as life, directly before us. Hegel's analysis dispels the illusion and shows that the alleged immediate content of the psychic moment is 'P. 82. 416 The Philosophy of the Spirit through and through mediate, else it could not be known. Hegel does not deny aught that is real. He takes away no genuine certitude or knowledge. But he points out the utter generality of the psychic imme- diate, when regarded apart from mediating judgments. That reality exists is indeed immediately known ; what it is, thought alone can tell. The logical significance of this conclusion is clear. Since it is only through thought that the reality of sense-presentations can be known, the plain course is to carry mediation to the end. But this does not mean that thought is to create out of itself that which cannot be learned immediately, to pursue its own romantic devices, then inflict them on a disap- pointed world. We must recollect that Hegel has pointed out the boundless wealth of the implicit imme- diate. The given is in fact so wealthy that practically everything is there. But just because so much is there, mere immediacy can tell us nothing we want to know about it. All that succeeding moments can ever tell us is that the merely general psychic activity is present. Wherein one moment differs from another, the mere moment as such can never tell. But that which mere immediacy fails to accomplish, mediation, ever referring to fresh immediacy, can attain. What promised to be a psychical concept, based on merely sensuous certitude, turns out to be decidedly logical. Yet at every moment the dialectic of the immediate refers to its own living moment, and draws its material from that boundless reservoir, a mere section of which might be spread as it were in space and no limit be found in it. 1 If we are to draw in- ferences they can never be such as might be dictated by mere immediacy. But it is no less clear that .P. 71. Supplementary Essay 4*7 mediation is forever determined by, bound to, the immediate. 23. Two courses are therefore open before us. We may continue the process of gradual mediation of the wealth of the directly given, as such mediation takes place in the natural history of consciousness. Or we may start with the profoundest implication of the fore- going analysis, namely, with Being as the fundamental category, and develop the logical implications of this firstness, mediate the discovery that immediacy is utterly general. The former course would lead through the Phenomenology in detail until we should arrive at the highest type of cognition, namely, absolute knowledge. The second would lead at once to the Logic, as already indicated in Hegel's references to his presupposition. In either case, be it noted, it is with the spontaneity of the empirically given that we have first of all to deal. For, out of the great wealth of the given, certain tendencies have now furnished the clues alike for the historical and for the logical interest, (i) The psychically given possesses a life or activity, it surges on. Although it ever presents the same gen- eral character, it may ever be returned to afresh and found productive; and hence that which we meant to mean immediately can be shown mediately, i.e., now this tree, now that house. The life of the moment ever changes and brings new wealth ; what immediacy shall bring forth its further moments alone can show. The succession of apprehended events belongs essen- tially to the immediate; consciousness has a natural history exhibiting laws, and consequently it must in the first place be accepted. (2) The endeavour to un- derstand the wealth of the given leads to the discovery of an immanent dialectic movement which must also a? 4i 8 The Philosophy of the Spirit be accepted, but which may then be observed for the sake of learning the logic of the given from a study of the given itself. In other words, mediation, although contributing a principle which immediacy fails to sup- ply, nevertheless must derive its material and take its clues from presented experience. That Hegel should first state what immediacy first appears to be, then be compelled to negate this account, only to pass forward to the larger truth of the first statement, is a procedure genuinely expressive of the whole character of imme- diacy as any one may discover it. The entire wealth to be rationalised is indeed found to be in the first place a gift of experience, spontaneously revealing itself. Reason starts with its data, it does not create them ; it discovers itself as the power which develops the imma- nent implications of the given; in this sense it even begins with itself as found, given. Reason then dis- covers its own method of reacting on the data of ex- perience. What is more natural than that it should wish to abstract that which is most essential to its avowed interest, namely, to pursue to the end the implications of the logical immediate? 24. To turn, then, from the natural history of con- sciousness to the study of the logical implications of the immediate is not, therefore, to enter a realm of "pure thought" in an artificial sense of the word; but to bear in mind this astonishing wealth which the foregoing analysis reveals and proceed to develop it systematic- ally. What Hegel discards is not the concrete content of the given; he leaves behind the psychological point of view, that he may investigate the logical categories, then turn once more to Nature and Spirit. There is such wealth in the category of Being that it is important to pause and mediate it simply as a logical category, in Supplementary Essay 419 barest abstraction. Becoming, too, has been found to possess not only a psychological but a logical aspect. Hence the question arises, How does Becoming dia- lectically behave when freed from temporal consider- ations? The whole problem of the Logic, its method, and many of its results, are already implied in the course thus marked out. 25. It is well known that Hegel covers practically the same ground' with different considerations in mind in each of his important works, and the Phenomenology is often spoken of as the essence of his system. But Hegel's commentators lay little stress on the pages just passed in review. Baillie, who devotes much space to the Phenomenology as a whole, fails to see the significance of these pages. Professor Royce re- states their significance in his own terms and the present interpretation agrees essentially with that of his Spirit of Modern Philosophy. 1 Staudenmaier, who devotes an extended analysis to the pages in question, introduces his criticism by asking what course Hegel takes in order to cognise the sensuously presented as it actually is. The answer is short, he says: "Hegel, guided by a false presupposition, namely that only the universal possesses actuality, does not try to understand concrete being as such, but devotes all his energy to the endeavour to resolve the concrete which he has condemned to the empty universal. " 2 The highly important question of the nature and place of actuality we will reserve for a later dis- cussion. 3 The foregoing has prepared us to see the superficiality of this criticism. There is no mere 1 P. 204. 2 Darstellung und Kritik des Hegelschen Systems, p. 261. ^ Sec. 78 ff. 420 The Philosophy of the Spirit concrete being; every particular thing as presented is given in a psychic context. One might well mediate further and consider what the tree is, or what the house is; that would be an inquiry for botany, or for physics and chemistry. Or one might further mediate the psychic content; and this Hegel does in the Phe- nomenology. The merely immediate particularity of the given object has been shown to be incidental. The utmost that sense-certitude can do is to reveal being in its particularity, so far as external objects are concerned. But the single object is apprehended in a universal mode, and this mode is the object of another kind of inquiry, one that by no means denies the related reality of particular things. We now propose to consider how to think particular things in their system. Thought is interested to mediate both the particularity and the universality (of the mode of apprehension), and pass on to a richer moment. Hence, again, everything depends (i) on the correct understanding of what Hegel proposes to do; (2) on the willingness of the reader to pursue the logic of the situation to the end. For the time being, we have dismissed immediacy in one of its aspects, for we are now concerned with the logical implications of the cate- gory of Being, which has proved to be, not " empty," and not "abstract, " but in a surprising degree concrete. 26. It might seem necessary at this point to con- sider how Hegel derives and concludes with the absolute knowledge which he explicitly states is a pre- supposition of the Logic; for it might appear that we are selecting the more plausible phase of the presuppo- sition and endeavouring to enter the logical world with the Absolute tucked away somewhere. The suspicion is groundless. All that we are carrying forward is Supplementary Essay 421 the concrete environment amidst which Hegel dis- covers his logical problem. The fact that the Phe- nomenology ends with an absolute is. a consideration for the Logic to deal with in the proper place. Hegel by no means regards the logical aspect of the question as settled. The problem wherewith the psychological history ends is a fresh question for an inquiry which must exhibit its own demonstration. We are just now concerned with the beginning, not with the end, of the psychological inquiry. The Logic must go back to that beginning and cover the same ground in another way. When the absolute again appears, let it be sharply dealt with, if you please; at present we make no claims for it. 1 II 27. The critic may now be ready to admit that we have established a number of points in favour of our thesis, that we have won the right to study immediacy in the light of decidedly empirical considerations. But he may be disinclined to turn at once to a strictly logical investigation of our concept, inasmuch as there might be other points of view from which immediacy may be regarded. For such Hegel has provided by his references to the Encyclopedia. 2 We shall not be able to devote to this remaining preliminary inquiry the attention which it deserves, but a brief reference is important. 28. Hegel is entirely willing to acknowledge the 1 Even if Hegel had undertaken, as some maintain, to deduce a priori man's psychological history, instead of analysing and developing the various typical attitudes of the Spirit, we would be justified in pursuing our inquiry into the Logic, in which the fundamental interest is conceptual, not psychological. a In the second edition of the Logic, Werke, iii., 56. 422 The Philosophy of the Spirit lesson of empiricism, namely, that "man must see for himself and feel that he is present in every fact of knowledge which he has to accept," 1 and this is im- portant for our purposes, since it indicates that Hegel is concerned with experience as it exists for the ordinary man. But when empiricism, undertaking to rationalise the immediacy on whose reality it has insisted, em- ploys the categories of metaphysics "in a style utterly . . . uncritical," it is necessary to subject its doctrines to the most searching examination. Empiricism tries to hold fast to the realities of sense by making sense- perception the form in which fact is to be apprehended, meanwhile thinking it has kept sensuous immediacy in its original shape throughout the analytical media- tion to which that immediacy has been steadily sub- jected. But all the while it has been transforming the concrete into the abstract, and proposing results for consideration which cannot be tested by sense- experience, but only by rigorous criticism. "Matter," for example, is an abstraction which cannot be per- ceived. Yet on this theoretical construct empiricism would rear a mighty structure. 2 29. Kant performed a great service by pointing out that the unity that was supposed to reside in the objects was only in our minds 3 and by showing that the unity is not even in the sensation. Hence Kant removed many claims for the immediate, and pointed out that the objects of immediate experience are mere appearances (p. 93). Kant's criticism attacks empirical theorising for being a syllogising, i. e. t a transition from the immediate. Perceptions, and that aggregate of perceptions which we call the world, Sec. 38, Wallace's trans., second edition, p. 78. 2 P. 81. P. 89. Supplementary Essay 423 exhibit as they stand no traces of that universality which they afterwards receive from the purifying act of thought. 30. But it is to his chapter on the third attitude of thought to objectivity that Hegel directly refers. There we find an analysis of various claims for immediacy, such as the plea for spiritual intui- tion, religious feeling, innocence, simple trust, love, fidelity, natural faith. Once more, Hegel is ready to acknowledge the realities of experience ; what he rejects is the claim that through them Reality is immediately or authoritatively known. In each instance what seemed to be an immediate leap beyond the finite into the infinite that is, mere religious immediacy proves to be the familiar process of mediation. "Faith," for example, is often contrasted with know- ledge. But faith is obviously put forward as a form of knowledge; what we believe is in our consciousness which implies that we know about it. In the second place, this belief is a certainty in our consciousness which implies that we know it. * It is what we inferentially claim to know through this our already mediated experience that is of import for faith. It is a question, then, of a philosophy of faith, whether authoritative in the Christian sense, or a merely personal doctrine. As for the claim that God is immanent in the mind, Hegel is ready to accept the fact, even to make more of it than the intuitionists themselves. But he seems surprised that the claim- ants of immediate knowledge set themselves up against philosophy. It is precisely philosophy which brings out the implications of this greatest of facts. If the thought of God is inseparably bound up with the being iSec. 63. 424 The Philosophy of the Spirit of God, there is every reason why this relationship should be made explicit. It is thought that brings out the certainty that God immanently is; the mere existential judgment is the barest beginning. It remains for philosophy to prove the unity between thought and being which faith postulates. The relation of immediacy to mediation is a logical problem, and the prime difficulty in the case of the intuitionists is their refusal to examine the implications of their own claims. Let the claims in behalf of instinct, implanted ideas, common sense, natural reason, and Platonic reminiscence, be as great as they may the greater they are the more mediation through develop- ment, education, and training is demanded to reveal their wealth. 31. The great error in the popular theorising based on these claims for the immediate is the wholly ar- bitrary separation between immediacy and mediation. Hegel points out that the essence of the intuitionists' claim concerning the unity of thought and being is the demand for mediation. The mere idea of God is of no moment; it is the transition to being that is of consequence. 1 Mere being, moreover, is of no moment alone; it is the idea that reveals its truth. To reject mere immediacy either in the case of the idea or in the case of being (regarded as indefinite, empty) is pre- cisely to take the step which Hegel deems the most important. Hence he is ready to go as far as any one in his claims for immediate knowledge; the know- ledge is the essential, not the bare fact of being. The content of religious faith is the important consideration, not the form of the experience. The faith-philosophy erroneously selects as its criterion the factual aspect * Sec. 69. Supplementary Essay 425 of consciousness; hence many conclusions follow in which the emphasis is put in the wrong place. The immediacy of religious experience involves particular and accidental elements which must be stripped off, to discover the universal tacitly implied in the appeal to the consensus gentium. "The form of immediacy is altogether abstract; it has no preference for one set of contents more than another, but is equally sus- ceptible of all." 1 Immediacy on the whole means an abstract reference-to-self, that is, an abstract identity or universality. 32. McTaggart points out that in his criticism of the intuitionists Hegel denies one immediacy and admits another, both of which are called by the same name in English. He denies the validity of intuition, if by intuition is meant Jacobi's un- mittelbares Wissen, which perceives immediately the unity of thought and being. But he admits that intuition, if we mean by it the Kantian Anschauung, is essential to knowledge, for without "the sensible and finite beings of the world" the idea has no truth. ... It is quite con- sistent to deny the immediate knowledge, while admitting the existence of an immediate element in knowledge. Indeed the assertion that all knowledge consists in the mediation of the immediate at once affirms that there is an immediate, and denies that it is knowledge. 2 33. Hegel arrives, then, at the same conclusion by another road which we found so important in our study of the Phenomenology. What appeared to be the most important factor, the presentedness of ex- perience, proves to be the poorest; for the true wealth is the content and the inferences made from it. Hence Hegel assimilates the intuitionist argument and finds i Sec. 74. 2 Heg. Dial., p. 41. 426 The Philosophy of the Spirit a firmer basis for it. He denies no experience, but refuses to accept unfinished reasoning. That he holds in high esteem the great realities of religion is plain throughout. But those realities are put in a different light by his analysis. Already in an earlier section of the Encyclopedia he had pointed out that "the unutterable feeling or sensation far from being the highest truth, is the most unimportant and untrue." 1 Thus he relieves religious thought of a source of vast misconception. The question of au- thority in religion is shown to be an affair of mediation. And the chief problem is the one with which our other inquiry ended: What is the significance of the cate- gory of Being, which proves to be at once the most barren and the most fundamental? If "the im- mediate consciousness of God goes no further than to tell us that He is ... so that God as an object of religion is expressly narrowed down to the indetermi- nate supersensible, God in general, and the significance of religion is reduced to a minimum, " 2 then it is clear that there must be a thorough inquiry into the whole subject of immediacy before it will be possible to consider what God is, and thereby give theology positive content. 34. Our inquiry should not, then, be disturbed by questions which do not yet concern us, questions, for example, in regard to other possible experiences which might prove to possess superior reality or authority. To examine moral, aesthetic, and other immediacies would obviously be to discover the same need, namely, for a prior inquiry into the general character of the immediate. We may say once for all that the worth or authority of these immediacies Sec. 20. 2 Sec. 73. Supplementary Essay 427 Hegel by no means denies. He acknowledges all immediacy that is intimately akin to mediation, and fails to find any that is not. He is a keen student of human nature, and he draws his data from ex- perience. If he later departs into a realm that seems for the time entirely separated from experience, it is only because the analysis of experience compels him to do so. 35. The question is, granting the empirical worth of immediacy for the man who feels it as contrasted w r ith the one who merely learns about it how are we to represent in our theory this type of reality? It is clear, in the first place, that immediacy will bear with it to the most abstract heights of logic an em- pirical reference which can never be overcome. But let this be once clearly understood, and there need be no fear lest thought shall try to do without or deny feeling. Therefore let no one as he leaves the world of religious experience, to consider the logical bearings of immediacy, complain that we are departing from the world of real life. It is precisely that we may solve the problems which these three attitudes to objectivity fail to solve that we limit the issue for a time. The real immediacy that we mean in our logical inquiry is precisely the immediacy which gives life its zest. Hegel has now taught us that the theories of immediacy implied in these attitudes are one and all based on the well-nigh unconscious judgments which have been stealthily reared on the bare ex- istential judgment, now fully before us in its typical form. Thus we are beginning to see what he means by logic, and we are in a position to follow him without misunderstanding what he means by "pure thought." If to have immediate consciousness of external things 428 The Philosophy of the Spirit is "the slightest of cognitions," it would seem very important to see how far thought can go in the en- deavour to mediate in earnest. 1 in 36. We are now to consider precisely how the Logic begins, and what the assumptions are other than those which are carried over from the preliminary in- quiries. We soon obtain an idea of the relatively superior position which reason holds in the dialectic. The dialectic consists in negatively dealing with the apparently hard and fast determinations of the under- standing, in reducing them to naught : yet in positively developing the implied universal, and comprehending the particular contained therein. 2 Thus reason, al- though attaining a height where it is to be character- ised as Spirit, begins by reconstructing the concrete determinations of the ordinary understanding, i.e., with the first simple item of experience. Thus a productive activity of a high order is discovered in its simplicity, which proves to be the immanent de- velopment of the Begriff, the absolute method of cognition, as well as "the immanent soul" of the content. Only in this self-construing manner of development does Hegel believe it possible for phi- losophy to become a demonstrative science. In this way he has already investigated consciousness re- garded as concrete Spirit; to logic belongs the in- vestigation of the nature of the pure essences implied in the form-activity of the object of such consciousness, in the development of all natural and spiritual life. The problem of pure cognition thus discovered arose out of the consciousness of the phenomenal Spirit i Sec. 76 (3). 2 Vorrede zur ersten Auft., p. 7. Supplementary Essay 429 which, freeing itself from its immediacy and its ex- ternal concreteness, gradually arrived at the point where these pure essences came into view. Hence the conception of ''pure thought" was suggested by the mental history of the thinking Spirit. 37. In the preface to the second edition, Hegel again reverts to the rich content of our thoughts on natural and spiritual things, a content which possesses, as it were, a soul and a body, a Begriff and a relative reality. The deeper basis, the soul of such thoughts, is the pure Begriff, which is further characterised as the inmost life of the mind. 1 The problem is to bring to consciousness, make explicit, the logical nature which thus gives to the mind its profoundest life. The important consideration is not so much the re- lation of the implicit character of the mind to its actuality as its capacity for self-knowing. As matter of fact, this its self-cognition is the fundamental de- termination of its actuality. To bring into clear light, "to elevate into freedom and truth," the im- plied categories, which at first are like latent instincts, is the noblest undertaking of logic. In all this the beginnings of other meanings of the immediate are seen. 38. Ultimately speaking, it is not a question of things but of intelligible objects; and not an affair of concepts alone but of the Begriff itself through which the entire totality of things and thoughts is known. 2 The Begriff defined as thought in general, the universal, is an infinite representative of the individuality of things, in all their indeterminateness of perception and figurate thinking (Vorstellungen). But the Begriff is itself determinate, inasmuch as it makes the 1 Werke, zweite A.ufl., iii., 17. 2 P. 19. 430 The Philosophy of the Spirit completed system of reason possible. The Be griff, then, has these two aspects a representative power di- rectly referring to things as they are, and to the plain man's thought concerning them; and the power by which it possesses the categories as their unitary ground. The Be griff does not, then, create the things to which it refers; it possesses the capacity to think them in their full meaning. 39. The logic is made as formal and abstract, at the outset, as possible without overlooking the fact that the Be griff is concrete. Hegel is an entire dis- believer in the old-time logic, which undertook to be entirely formal. The object is never out yonder, devoid of all connection with thought; nor is thought ever merely subjective. Thought is always an aspect of experience and must know itself in relation to the object. As the Phenomenology started with the first antithesis between thought and experience, so the logical investigation begins with an antithetical relation which in a sense persists to the end as an empirical relation. Hegel indeed declares that with no other aid than its own immanent dialectic the system of the Begriff is able to erect and complete itself. But, taking our clue from Hegel's references to the Phenomenology, we have seen * that this im- manent dialectic is discovered by an analysis of experience, with its given implications. The dialectic is not, then, an a priori construct out of which the data of experience are to be deduced. It is highly important, therefore, to understand from the outset precisely what Hegel's conception of logic is. 40. It is also important to refrain from reading too much into the beginning of the Logic. Hegel's 1 Sec. 19. Supplementary Essay 431 Absolute is by no means the "solid block, " to which nothing is added, which it is popularly supposed to be. On general principles it is well not to take the terms, "Absolute," "Idea," and Begriff to mean aught more than the text in question makes explicit. It will be time to consider to what extent the end of the Logic is the same as the beginning when we reach the end. 1 Nor is it justifiable to introduce assump- tions until the text shows them to be made. There are tacit assumptions, such as those of the preliminary inquiries, for example, (i) that reason in the logician corresponds to reason in that which is to be mediated ; and (2) the implication that the barest aspect of the dialectic bears some relation to the Absolute. But whatever the assumptions in regard to the immediate, they imply a temporary point of view, demanding the correction which is the fate of everything im- mediate. The fear that Hegel is stealthily introducing, in some of these immediates, a principle out of which he pretends that nature is deduced, is a suspicion that may be left to its own destruction. 41. Our inquiry begins, then, with a logical object, which reflection selects as its starting-point. Looking from the point now reached back into the Phenome- nology, there is mediation, to be sure. But looking forward, there is as yet no distinction, hence simply the pure Being of this logical object of thought. The presupposition in so far belongs to another universe of discourse that we can in large part ignore it, and insist that we now have before us indeterminate im- mediacy in its purest (logical) form. The beginning is not determinate until specified as the beginning of the Logic. See Sec. 96 ff. 432 The Philosophy of the Spirit For logic the beginning is absolute, the beginning of an entire science, which need not, however, be proved at the outset, since the science which rests on this foundation is the proof. The immediate or " first" in question is Unmittelbarkeit selbst, that is, not a special immediacy, such as we have considered, but the fundamental logical aspect of all immediates. The category of Being, which proved to be the im- plication of immediacy, however we regarded it, is now to be taken in its simplest guise, as reine Seyn. Being may indeed be far more than now appears, but it is our part at first to regard it as it appears. The beginning is, however, by no means merely provisional, problematical, or hypothetical, but is rendered positive by the character of the subject-matter when fully developed. Nor is it an arbitrary beginning, as much as to say, the logician starts where he wills; for the primary category proves to be such by analysis of given experience and thought. The beginning is of course necessarily regarded as one-sided at first, else were it no beginning, no immediate. To regard the beginning in its full wealth, or even from the point of view of the barest contrast, would not be to regard it as the "first." The beginning is not a first and an other. 1 It has not yet undergone contradiction. But the beginning is by no means the differenceless unity of the I dentitdts system. Perhaps one could best characterise it as adequate, as sufficiently rich to enable the dialectic to proceed, but not so wealthy as some critics suppose, since wealth is to be added along the way. Trendelenburg deems this added wealth a theft from experience, after the dialectic has severed connection with experience. 'P. 65. Supplementary Essay 433 He overlooks the fact that the empirical connection is never wholly broken, hence that there is nothing illegitimate in the development of empirical content. The very Becoming which enables Being to be some- thing more than Nichts, 1 and to escape from Nichts, is the movement which in the presupposed universe of discourse was the life of the psychological analysis. This Becoming is the bearer of more items in the one case as truly as in the other ; nobody doubts its wealth- bringing power in the psychic sense of the term; there is no valid reason against the contributions of its logical development. 42. What, now, is the "pure thought" in question? A principle or procedure no more to be suspected than any study of concepts in the light of their sys- tematic meanings. The term "pure" implies a certain objectivity, the point of view of an impartial ob- server, concerned with truth for its own sake. Hegel has a remarkable power of abstracting, hence of ob- jectifying, as if the principle or item under considera- tion were a thing of flesh and blood by itself. He is able to select a specific aspect of an abstruse determi- nation and make it speak, as it were. But one should be no more disconcerted by the abstraction than by the seeming personification. It is because of this unusual power that Hegel is able so successfully to treat the concept of immediacy. Knowing well that there is no immediate which is really what the im- mediate pretends to be, that is, independent, real by itself, directly authoritative; and knowing well that he cannot abstract all empiric references, Hegel The term Nichts will be used in the following pages to show that Hegel means a dialectic moment, not "nothing," as this word is ordinarily employed. 28 434 The Philosophy of the Spirit is free to speak as if the determination in question were literally "pure." The implied principle of movement (Werderi) is once for all of decidedly em- pirical origin, as we have already seen. For we made the acquaintance of pure thought in our attempt to regard sense-certainty as what it appears to be. 1 Hegel is so well aware of these retrospective references that he never forgets that it is self-consciousness which gives the type of all cognition. With all this in mind he may well regard the beginning of the Logic in as abstract a fashion as possible. It is the end of the Logic which shows what the abstractions mean, and precisely in what sense they are abstractions. In general, then, the "pure" determination is one which for the moment is regarded by itself in its own universe of discourse, in order to discover how it develops from this its immediacy into the relation- ships which it possessed all along. At large, pure thought is logical thought in dialectic development. The interest is not so much to discover how knowledge is possible, as to learn what knowledge implies, granted its existence. Pure thought in sheer dialectic ex- ercise likes to regard a determination as "pure," unmittelbar (immediate). But this thought is not content until it mediates that which for the moment was taken as if it were independent. Hence the term "pure" has a close connection with our concept. But it is often synonymous with "mere," and Hegel knows as well as his English devotees who use this term that there is no "mere" thought. Hence one must be on the alert for the deeper meaning. We shall see how faithfully Hegel follows the possibilities of all mereness, and how poor a thing a "pure" determination often is. i See above, Sec. 19. Supplementary Essay 435 43. It is obviously necessary to assume that some- thing is, in order to consider immediacy as it at first appears to be. But having tacitly or otherwise as- sumed your something, you are at liberty to regard the "is" as if it were independent. Hence reine Seyn (pure Being) becomes an object of "pure thought." Thus, as Stirling says, "Our Werden is the pure thought of all actual Werdens. " * "Logic," says Wallace, "becomes the all-embracing research of 'first prin- ciples.' . . . But these first principles were only an abstraction from complete reality the reality which nature was when unified by mind and they presuppose the total from which they were derived. " 2 In the same illuminating spirit, McTaggart says: Of course Hegel is not dealing, in the Logic, with the concrete activities of cognition and volition, any more than he is dealing, rather earlier in the Logic, with the concrete activities of mechanism and chemistry. The Logic deals only with the element of pure thought in reality ; and when its categories bear the names of concrete relations, this only means that the pure idea, which is the category in question, is the idea which comes most prominently forward in that concrete relation, and which therefore can be usefully and significantly called by its name. 3 This explanation applies in particular to the moments of pure thought which seem most remote from concrete experience. But even if pure thought could start from itself in the strictest sense of the word, its own .existence would in some sense be a fact of brute immediacy, and to this extent it would be unlike the function 1 The Secret of Hegel, p. 45. 2 Hegel's Philos. of Mind, p. xvii, 3 Stud, in Heg. Dial, p. 226, 43 6 The Philosophy of the Spirit peculiar to thought, namely, mediation of the given. In this brute givenness the first category would be involved; and thought would have the same problem on its hands which actually confronts it in the Hegelian logic. In any event, then, "the existence of thought requires the existence of something given. It is un- deniable that we think. But we could not think unless there were something to think about. This is all the world of Nature and Spirit which we can deduce from the Logic.' 1 1 44. We are to understand, then, that the pure thought of Hegel's Logic derives its content partly from its empirical presuppositions and partly from its own immanent developments and later empirical references, that the form is not to be entirely dis- tinguished from the content, and that the content makes a difference to the form. The implied judg- ments are not developed in isolation from what is real and what is true, but constructively develop the true and the real. The judgments do not literally create the world, for judgment derives both its matter and its clues from the given which it must accept. When one clearly faces the issue between logic and the other sciences it is evident that logic is in a far worse plight than they are in. It is not necessary for a special science to make good its foundations in the ultimate sense of the word. A special science starts with certain postulates and a method of inquiry and proceeds to the development of its particular data. In logic, however, the content and method are at the same time the ultimate principles. There is no envi- roning field which one may take for granted. Logic's field is the very home of all sciences which begin with Heg. Dial., p. 114. Supplementary Essay 437 unscrutinised postulates. Hence there is every reason why the one self-dependent science should receive the most searching examination. The very idea of science is logic. What logic is, then, cannot be stated in advance of those considerations which prove it to be at once its own content and its own law, the science of sciences, the demonstration of all demonstrations. The utmost which one can hope to accomplish in ad- vance is to show wherein logic, as thus conceived, differs from logic considered in a far more restricted sense. 1 45. According to the view that logic is concerned with the bare form of cognition, while the matter must be found elsewhere, logic can by no means show what the truth really is. This view involves the assumption that logic is able to abstract from all content, and is concerned merely with the laws of thought. That this is a false assumption is clear from the fact that thought and its laws are part of the content of logic. Hence, to deprive logic of all content would be to make logic impossible. It is a decidedly uncritical view which holds that the form of thought is somehow filled with content by an outlying matter ready at hand. If the separation of form and content is arti- ficial, unwarranted, the separation of form and cer- tainty, or truth, is no less so. Thought refers to an object, and it is as thus referring, as possessing content, that we are concerned with it, hence with the truth of that reference. Thought, regarded as receiving content, does not come down from some abstract height and become different from what it conceivably was as form. To possess content is for thought to be thus far modified. Obviously, then, if we are to discover Op. cit., p. 25. The Philosophy of the Spirit the laws and character of thought we must consider it as actually engaged in that activity which specifically constitutes it. The old metaphysic, with all its defects, had a higher notion of thought than the abstract doctrine which we are considering. 1 That is, according to that meta- physic, that which thought knows regarding things is true, not as things are immediately given but as thought about. Thought and its categories are not alien to objects, but are rather their essence. Things and thought are harmonious, possess one and the same content. But reflective understanding broke into this position by insisting that thoughts are only thoughts; what things are in themselves is not known. The result of the critique of the forms of the under- standing was that those forms have no application to things. This can only mean that those forms are some- what untrue. If not determinations of things, the forms are still less determinations of the understand- ing. Evidently there is need of entire reconsideration of the place, scope, and ultimate value of logic, if escape is to be made from the maze of difficulties which this sort of criticism implies. 46. While, then, Hegel does not pretend to justify his conception of logic in advance of its actual demon- stration, it is plain that for him there is the closest relation between thought and its object. The object is no Kantian Ding an sich, nor does it even remain impervious to thought's judgments; but both con- tributes and is contributed to. If logic cannot get behind, or break free from the whole in which both content and form, both data and laws, are found, it can at least break into the whole somewhere and begin P. 27. Supplementary Essay 439 to justify its fundamental character by its works. The Phenomenology contained such a justification of its particular undertaking. It is the necessity of the science that proves logic. Hegel says explicitly that the notion of pure science and its deduction in so far as it involves presuppositions needs no other justification than that which the Phenomenology con- tains; and this explicit difference would no doubt alone justify the prominence which we have given to that work. 1 The development traced in that work from "the first immediate antithesis" of consciousness and its object is, as we have seen, an illustration of the logical method now to be pursued. The absolute cognition is the truth of that psychological history just because it developed out of the concrete inquiry itself, and was able to overcome the antitheses of the successive stages. Since the present "pure science" presupposes this victory over the antitheses, it obviously begins with thought taken in intimate relation with its object. It contains thought in so far as it is precisely the in- telligible object, or the intelligible object in so far as it is pure thought. 2 Truth, thus regarded as science, is pure self-developing self-consciousness and has the form of the self. The cognitive side of the Begriff and its being are in closest relation in the objective thought which is the content of pure science. This science is hence so little formal, it disregards so little the matter of actual and true cognition, that its content is rather absolute truth itself. The matter is not in any way external to the form, its form is the absolute form of pure thought. Logic is thus to be regarded as both the system of pure reason and the kingdom of pure 1 P. 32- ' P. 33- 440 The Philosophy of the Spirit thought the kingdom of the truth, revealed in all its glory, without let or hindrance. Hence its content even bears reference to God, regarded in His eternal essence before the creation of nature and of a finite spirit. Hence Hegel's Logic aims to discover the First in the strictest sense of the word, to refer to God in His eternal nature and, as it were, endeavours to think His thoughts after Him; hence there will be neither content nor form left out of account. God, if He were thinking as we finite creatures think, would begin with the same category. In this sense the beginning of the Logic is with the Immediate of im- mediates. Yet, once more, this is the beginning of pure science, not of theology or the philosophy of religion. It is with the most barren aspect of the divine Being that this . brief reference is concerned. Logic, then, is the pure form of the ultimate prin- ciple of the universe. It does not deal with thought about this principle simply, but with the principle itself. There is no need to look beyond; there is no beyond not already implied in our science in so far as it properly has place in the science. The principle of movement is inherent in the necessity which drives the science forth through all the stages of its develop- ment; the solution of its problems, the resolution of its difficulties, is implied in the immanent dialectic itself. The content is immanent, the law is inherent, and the whole coheres within itself. No system could find itself in the end in possession of the truth unless it thus possessed everything requisite to make it absolutely complete. To deny its verity must be at the same time to affirm it, and thereby to pass to a higher, truer insight into that which was denied. Any Supplementary Essay 441 objection that can be raised must make the logical structure the stronger. 47. One of the distinguishing features of Hegel's Logic is this endeavour to penetrate farther than most logical analyses in quest for the absolute beginning. One might almost say that Hegel seeks to penetrate back of God Himself, for only by the endeavour to carry the search for an ultimate category as far as the minutest analysis makes possible is one able to point to the result as an absolute demonstration. Insist, if you will, that such thought moves in a realm of pure fancy. Nevertheless, it is by starting far out on thin air, as it were, before Being becomes in any respect determinate, that one is able to discover where that which is substantial begins; or, more accurately, where Being eternally is, as the basis of all qualities. If pure thought resorts to such devices, it is merely to make its hold 1 upon truth the more secure. An important part, then, of Hegel's dialectic in the opening passages of Book I, and its transition to Book II, is the logical excursion which he makes into a realm that is confessedly ''pure" in the negative sense of the word. Hence the apparently absurd identification of Seyn and Nichts, the seemingly contentless movement from Nothing into Something. Only by the strict process of demonstration which this dialectic involves is Hegel able to show that he possesses the absolute science, the ultimate category. Pure thought must do its utmost to take the immediate seriously, must regard it from all sides in its barest aspects, before it wins the right to proceed with the rich implications which these dialectic excursions involve. To see the signifi- cance of this dialectic is to remove the last of the objections which have been made regarding Hegel's 44 2 The Philosophy of the Spirit beginning, also to see how important for him is the concept of immediacy. 48. We may now regard the account as closed, so far as the derivation of the concept of immediacy is concerned. It seemed necessary to dwell at length upon the preliminary inquiries in order to point out the empirical relationships of the concept; to show that it is the analysis of the given that supplies the clues and suggests the logical inquiry; to show why Hegel rejects all theories which try to rear themselves on the mere immediate; and to remove the objections which have been made by those who overlooked the signifi- cance of Hegel's references to the Phenomenology. It was also necessary to explain what is meant by "pure thought," and thus to justify the beginning of the Logic, that is, the investigations which, while starting with a confessedly mediate result that has had a long history, must in its own interest regard that result as "an immediate" in the strictest sense of the word. The immediacy with which the Logic begins is explicitly another aspect of an empirically given consideration which can never be wholly sundered from mediation. The difficulty with previous attempts on the part of philosophers to make a beginning has been their endeavour to start with either a determin- ate principle of physical things, or with a specific subjective determination. Or, again, there has been an attempt to start either with the immediate in a particular sense (ein Unmittelbares) , or with a particu- lar mediate. Now it is clear, in the first place, that the beginning must be absolutely universal; and, in the second place, that there is nothing in heaven or on earth that is not at once mediate and immediate. 1 *Op. cit., p. 56. Supplementary Essay 443 Since these two determinations are unseparated and inseparable, what is more reasonable than to start, not with a theoretic principle, but with precisely the prin- ciple which experience itself yields ? Instead of invent- ing a world of "pure thought" from whose artificial immediate the cosmos of logic and of nature shall be deduced, it is just at this point that Hegel refers to the Phenomenology, in which immediate and mediate have been found inseparable. 1 The preliminary science has already begun where all thinking naturally would begin, i. e. with empirical, sensuous consciousness. At the close of that inquiry a point was reached where the Idea was no longer set over against itself as object in an alien sense, but where it contained the object within itself. Hence it is that the Logic can start with an object with which the Idea is already at home, with the first question regarding immediacy finally settled. But, granted an immediate-mediate which it must accept, and hence give over its vain wanderings, pure thought is now free to regard that gift of earlier thought as a "new immediate" in which all reference to an other and all mediation (of the preliminary type) have been taken up into itself (aufgehoben) . The only pos- sible beginning is already (immediately) at hand, and the Absolute itself could not make it aught less than both the mediate and the immediate. 49. The term "simple immediacy," then, is con- fessedly an expression employed by reflection, and should not be taken to mean the negation of the em- pirical content of the presupposed mediation. For purposes of reflection it is permissible to treat the new beginning as if it were merely immediate, hence to regard it as devoid of all differences; and to speak of 1 P. 57. See above, Sec. 19 ff. 444 The Philosophy of the Spirit it as a unity in which pure knowledge "goes together with itself," ceases to be knowledge and becomes simple immediacy in the strictest sense of the word. 1 That is, this expression which reflection makes use of " simple immediacy " (the absence of all differences) is the foundation of another inquiry (reine Seyn), regarded as devoid of all determination and "filling." From one point of view, our beginning has the utmost possible fulness of content ; yet from another it has no content at all, no determination other than the sim- ple consideration that it is just Being, since we are not entitled to consider the "filling" except so far as it is progressively developed in the course of the dialectic. 2 50. We are prepared, therefore, to accept Hegel's peculiar terminology and follow the developments of the dialectic. Plainly, the beginning must be regarded as absolute, i. e. the first immediate, beyond which thought cannot go. The beginning can take nothing for granted beyond this its now well marked universe of discourse, it is mediated through nothing. Or rather, it is itself the ground of all scientific mediation. As such, then, the beginning is strictly the immediate. Since it can have no determination with reference to an- other, it can at first have none within itself; for that were to possess difference, and hence mediation: and we are now taking the beginning as the unmediate. 51. It may occur to the reader that if the logical beginning is at once mediate and immediate in such wise that there is naught beyond it, even speculatively prior, the movement away from it is in reality a return 1 Ibid., p. 58. 2 Compare our analysis of the preliminary description of psychic immediacy; see above, Sec. 19 ff. Supplementary Essay 445 to itself. Hegel is ready to admit this. 1 Implicitness is one of the great principles of the Logic, a highly important characteristic of immediacy. Absolute truth is already the inmost truth of the logical begin- ning; were it otherwise the beginning would not be what it claims to be. But it is retrospect that discovers in what sense the first is last, and the derived result is to be understood in another sense than that of the one-sided point of view which first concerns us. Strictly speaking, the beginning is the undeveloped. Not until the close of Book III is it possible adequately to mediate the beginning. 2 52. At certain points the description of the begin- ning approaches the notion of a differenceless unity, and one sees why the beginning has been taken to be the same as Schelling's. The difficulty is that the beginning is a twofold principle, and a differentiated ground ; that what it is as an immediate we are unable to state until we have begun to mediate this its two- fold wealth. Only in retrospect, once more, can we state what we meant. Yet it is important to try repeatedly to state what we mean, for we hereby exhibit one of the chief characteristics of immediacy. To catch it in the act, as it were, of revealing itself by passing over into the mediation which is well-nigh indistinguishable from it, is to see that prior to its first moment it was really implicitly what in that moment it explicitly became. Hence Hegel is right in clinging to the differentiation-pole of his concept, rather than to the differenceless; and when he says that "only the beginning is present" he means a pregnant beginning, 3 as we shall see by running over 1 Op. cit., pp. 60, 61. 2 See below, Sec. 100 ff. 3 Op. cit., p. 63. 446 The Philosophy of the Spirit a few of the details of his minutely descriptive pages. The differentiation of the beginning is not as such statable, because the beginning is not yet contrasted with any of the determinations which are presently to appear. There is no Etwas (content) wherewith to make the beginning aught more explicit than it is as simply the beginning. If we term the beginning Seyn, it is still true that anything which might give determinateness to Being is excluded. Only the beginning is posited, and it remains to be seen what the beginning is. We have as yet no object in particular, yet the beginning of all objects in general. Our beginning is simply Nichts, and is about to become something. The beginning is not, however, pure nothing, but a Nichts from which something is to go forth. 1 Being is thus already contained in the begin- ning. The beginning contains both Being and Nichts ; it is not Nichts in general but nothing which already so far is that something shall come out of it. It is thus in a sense the unity of Being and Nichts, since it already has two aspects. Or, if you please, it is at once Being and non-Being; it is not mere nothing, yet as a Nichts which is to become it can be said to be something only so far as it simply is. It is not abso- lute non-Being. Still it is not yet Being in any sense which is to be more explicitly differentiated from non- Being. Without positing its non-Beingness, one could not fully state what it is and what it is not. Thus Being already refers to an other (Nichts or non- Being) ; and Nichts (or non-Being) plays its part as referring to its other (Being). Hence we find Being moving forward through the postulation of its own K* M p. 63. Supplementary Essay 447 antitheses, the sublation (transmutation) of that which it is not. That which begins is then already not somewhat else. The antithetical propositions, Seyn ist, Seyn ist nichts, are fundamentally one, an immediate unity; or, again, a differentiated unity, in view of the way in which we have defined Nichts. The analysis of our beginning thus makes known the unity of Being and Nichts as "a form of reflection." This action may be regarded as the first, most abstract definition of the Absolute. All further definitions may then be deemed the further development of this conception. The conception of the beginning is the first point. The analysis of the conception as presupposed is the second. No sooner do we recognise it as immediate, as seemingly simple unity, than we pass beyond what we thought we possessed to its first stage of mediation. To analyse the beginning is to find that after all it is no absolute unit implying nothing, but is already synthetic, cannot even be posited as absolute beginning without involv- ing the exposition of what it is not ; it what sense it is and is not Nichts, and in what sense its other (Nichts) produces it, in the reference which tries to show that it is not mere nothing but implicitly Being in the ab- stractest sense of the word. The beginning considered as simply itself is unana- lysable, unfilled immediacy, utterly empty Being. When it is a question of the implications of Being in this its most abstract form, we have already left the beginning as such and taken the first step in the long dialectic which leads to the absolute Idea. We must then distinguish the beginning from that which starts with it. Yet we are free to note how rich the beginning proves to be when we begin to move away from it. 448 The Philosophy of the Spirit 53. Hegel devotes a few paragraphs to an alleged beginning with the Ego. l This conception arose partly out of the reflection that from the first truth all that follows must be derived ; and partly from the need that the first truth must be well known and immediate (unmittelbar Gewisses). But the alleged immediate beginning does not prove to be the immediate it seems to be. Hegel shows that there is much more mediation in this conception than is suspected, and that the term "Ego" is used with a number of meanings: as simple self -certitude (as distinguished from the content of self-consciousness) ; as the most concrete ; and as not immediate, but the familiar "self" of our every-day consciousness. To pursue these mediations would be to run back into the Phenomenology and take up again the various attitudes of self-consciousness from which Hegel has already derived the prevailing implication, the category of Being. 54. If, as a final resort, it be contended that the beginning should be made with the intuition of God, since in this conception there is richer content than in pure Being, our reply in behalf of Hegel is, Let the content be as rich as it may, it is determinate ; whereas the beginning must be simple immediacy. Our start is made with an "empty word." Let the critic not forget this explicit statement by Hegel. Devotees of Fichte and others who propose beginnings of phi- losophy may well consider the profundity of what at first glance seems so empty. As McTaggart suggests, Hegel may not have been fully aware of the deep sig- nificance of his own beginning with the category of Being. 2 But, starting as we have with the introductory Ibid., p. 66 ff. * Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic, introductory chapters. Supplementary Essay 449 analysis and gradually leading to the present point, we have had opportunity to see the thoroughness of Hegel's demonstration. If we have at certain points made Hegel more explicit than his text, it has been by making use of the material implied in his own refer- ences to other works. Hegel gives hints enough, and one is inclined to believe that he saw the full signifi- cance of his "voyage of discovery." Examination of the literature produced by those who have struggled into Hegel shows that they, too, went upon a voy- age of discovery; and it is not clear how many of them except Wallace ever succeeded in putting their results together. Hence even the friends of Hegel sometimes put the inquirer on the wrong track by unduly emphasising the thought-element in Hegel. If our own " voyage" has brought forth the result that one must take full account of the empirical presup- positions which guided Hegel in formulating his logic, the way is clear for an impartial consideration of the significance of the dialectic element with which we have been concerned from first to last. For we have to do not with a mere thought-idealism, but with a logical investigation which seeks to penetrate beneath all mere thought and all mere experience, while at the same time taking account of the category implied in all such starting-points. The personal " voyage" of the logician himself is itself indicative of the subtle meaning of our concept. IV 55. One important meaning of immediacy now lies definitely before us. Stated in abstract terms, the dialectic of the logical beginning is barren enough, 39 450 The Philosophy of the Spirit and it is no wonder that Hegel has been ridiculed for alleging that Being and Nothing are the same. Looked at from the point of view of its references backwards and forwards to reality, the dialectic proves rich in content. For Hegel is unable to abstract real Being, that is, exclude it from the Logic. He resolutely tries to think out into thin air. But, lo and behold, even the naught which he finds is essential to the conception of Being. The most barren reference to an alleged somewhat lying beyond is in fact a vitally rich reference to the First, beyond which there is no other. The very dryness and wearisomeness of the argument show the utter futility of the attempt to pass beyond the concrete; all this is a part of the absolute demonstration. The baffled endeavours of the argument are like the vain flutterings of a caged bird. The confines of the Absolute are given once for all ; the attempt to pass beyond them is comparable to the attempt to find a mere immediacy in the Phenom- enology. It is not until thought turns about and dis- covers that what it has is Werden (becoming) that the profound significance of what appeared to be so futile is seen. The abstractions do not exist outside of pure thought in experimental exercise. What is really present is the activity of thought which, amidst the apparent barrenness, is all the time making head- way. There is no pure immediacy and there is no mere mediation. But there is a developing moment which contains both immediacy and mediation, and what we really meant all along now begins to be plain. 56. Thought can indeed exercise some choice in the details of its mediating activities, but nothing could be sterner than the ultimate law within which it moves. It reaches, as it were, the point where the majestic Supplementary Essay 45 1 voice of the Almighty is heard: Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther. But just because one has attained the majestic height, one can turn about with absolute surety and think even as God might think with the principle of principles. That principle one must start with. It is the absolute gift. Without it there were no thinker and no thought. One need not prove it, for it is the ground of all proof. One cannot deny it, for to deny is to affirm. The same intuitive insight that shows it to be the ultimate of ulti mates also shows it to be the ground of all existence and of all thinking. For in that principle one finds both the world of ob- jects and the world of judgments concerning them. The whole universe is given in that moment, and in that moment's insight one sees the true unity of thought and Being. But that unity is so far from being what some critics suppose it to be that the utmost we are permitted to say about it is that it exhibits the prin- ciple which makes our science possible, gives the barest starting-point for logical thought. If we did not begin with our object, if we did not first possess our universal, we should never find it; and should be at sea, like the philosopher of "pure experience" who never passes beyond detached particularity. 57. Yet the genius of a Hegel is needed to show how poor a thing our starting-point is. The signifi- cance lies so little in the immediacy that the first moment of mediation has barely life enough to move away from Nichts. But when at last it has moved far enough away from the abyss over the edge of which nothing lies, to look about and discover where it is, it finds itself possessed of a warm, pulsing life which will in due course lead to profound knowledge. Hence we must again warn the critic not to read too much 452 The Philosophy of the Spirit into Hegel's Seyn : rather he should see as little in it as he can. On the other hand, if he sees all there is in it he is prepared to take up the Logic in detail with- out likelihood of misunderstanding. Briefly speaking, the immediate of our absolute science (i) makes that science possible, gives what we should not otherwise possess, that which reason in its supremest "pure" moment could not invent; and (2) exhibits the beginnings of the dialectic activity which, if followed, will make all else clear that is essen- tial. For our purposes it is not important to follow the endless shades of meaning of the dialectic. Our first interest was to discover immediacy in its incipi- ency. The account is no doubt inadequate, but it is the nature of the immediate to reveal itself only little by little. Not until the end of Book III of the Logic, when the absolute method is under discussion, will it be possible to make a final estimate of the immediacy of the beginning. 1 58. Are we to understand, then, that the imme- diacy of Book I has many empirical references? That would be to mistake the significance of this part of our inquiry. The initial analysis of the Phenomenology is in close relation with consciousness as directly presented. From that point there is a gradual ascent to the heights of pure thought. At the point where the logical analysis makes Being theoretically identical with Nichts the discussion reaches the extreme summit of dialectic abstraction. What we have there as concrete reference is only the pure thought of imme- diacy, hence the sort that is least psychical. We dwelt at length on that point in the discussion in order to show what Hegel means by pure thought, and to See below, Sec. 99, Supplementary Essay 453 remove all misconceptions. But from that pinnacle there is a descent to the richer concreteness of the immediate, until at an important point in Book II the dialectic touches the levels of contingency and irrationality. Not until our discussion has attained that point shall we see how empirically rich in concrete references the Logic is. 59. The secondary meanings of immediacy do not here concern us. In general, immediacy as a first moment is negated in the second or mediating moment, and the third moment is both a synthesis of the two that preceded and a new immediate requiring further mediation. The movement from Being, regarded as not yet determined, through Nichts and Werden to Daseyn (determinate Being) is typical in the funda- mental sense of the detailed secondary movements, as the dialectic proceeds from Quality through Quan- tity to Measure. In due time, the entire category of Being proves to be the immediate with respect to the threefold division of the dialectic. Before explicitly considering the negating category of Wesen (Essence) it may be well to pause a moment to consider the general significance of immediacy. 60. We first distinguish between immediacy as it really is, and immediacy as it is temporarily in dia- lectic description. Generally speaking, the immediate claims to be that which is not pre-related. It is the first of its kind, if not of all kinds. As such it seems to be an absolute gift. It is dialectically prof- itable to treat immediacy as if it were what it claims to be. Thus Hegel regards psychical immediacy when, in the Phenomenology, he for the moment ignores the varied pre-relationships of the sensuously presented The result we have seen. There is no such immediate. 454 The Philosophy of the Spirit But, again, the limitations of mediation are such that without immediacy, regarded as presentness, there is naught to mediate. Immediacy in the dependent sense is therefore decidedly real. It is through the transitions of its own dependency that immediacy shows what it really is. Yet further, we have seen that out of the wealth of the directly presented, when inspected still more closely, the life of all dialectic is discovered. Immediacy, then, has a psychical and a logical Becoming that is remarkably fruitful. 61. In the Logic Hegel follows the same method. He confessedly approaches the immediate presup- position which has given the critics so much difficulty as if it were what his critics take it to be. 1 For the time being Hegel ignores the fact that his presuppo- sition is a mediated result, and once more takes it as a first or "pure" immediate. Hence he takes pure thought as much in earnest as possible. The alleged pure immediate proves to be the same as Nichts, and well it might. But there is no pure immediate, and this preliminary dialectic was meant to prove it. It is only in transition (Werden) that the genuine Unmit- telbar (the not-yet-mediated) is discovered. On the other hand, what could be more satisfactory than Hegel's attempt to find what is not? The first moment of pure Being is an abstraction: there is no such entity. Let no one think that Hegel tries to deduce the world from that. Let no Trendelenburg allege that Hegel must borrow from experience, or have naught to mediate. What went before was merely a preliminary skirmish. For the moment Hegel has said that he would ignore the fact that this simple, logical imme- diate was a highly mediate affair, freshly brought over i See above, Sec. 5. Supplementary Essay 455 from the stream of consciousness. He was endeavour- ing to make an absolute start. But so far from rinding the logical immediate what it pretended to be, he dis- covered that its implicit category (Being) is connected with every item of experience. 62. There could be an absolute first only in the sense which every one since Aristotle must admit, namely, that since something is, something eternally has been; nobody can penetrate behind Being as in some sense eternal. But what one must postulate in order to make a beginning at all, one learns only after persistent mediation. The real first is the Being implied in all presentness, whether of experience or of thought ; and it is that real presentness that makes known the Becoming whose moments of transition exhibit the truth of immediacy. The unreal first was an hypothetical immediate which claimed to have no p re-relations. 63. Even when taken at its apparent face value, then, immediacy is ambiguous. For (i) it refers to the psychical presentness in what proves to be an illusory sense; (2) it claims a psychological independence which no analysis can substantiate ; and (3) it assumes a logical independence which proves to be a myth. As a result of the attempt to take immediacy for what it appears to be, we are compelled to conclude that no fact, whether regarded psychically or in any other way, is knowable apart from its relations. Things that seem immediately to stand alone prove to be, (i) results of relations; (2) existing in relations; (3) appre- hended through relations (sensation, etc.) ; (4) known by means of relations (perception, and so on) ; and (5) thinkable in terms of relations (categories, logic, metaphysic, etc.). 456 The Philosophy of the Spirit 64. Taken, then, as what it appears to be, the entire category of immediacy is imperfect, as Professor Royce points out. 1 As contrasted with the mediate, immediacy claims to be the unrelated, the given, elementary, initial ; but is more accurately describable in Royce's terms as the " unwon," the " unearned." 2 Hence the transiency of every finite fact. Hence the utter abstraction of "pure immediacy." Yet such is the surprising character of immediacy that, although entirely illusory in its independence, it nevertheless involves a quality inseparable from all experience and from all knowledge. Mediation, regarded as constituting an independent category, would prove to be no less one-sided. It is futile to seek any category that stands by itself. If you want the truth at all you must accept it in the related form in which it comes. But what does this mean if not that the conditions of thinking are as undeniably given as the hardest fact of the world of sense? Rationalise the given, if you will, and labour unceasingly to show that the connec- tion of all this which we are compelled to know relat- edly is through and through rational. But do not forget that the initial items of thought were gifts of that wonderful somewhat called "experience" which thought characterises as well as it may. 65. Thus far we have found that immediacy is an irreducible element of all sentiency and all thought. More strictly speaking, the immediate is the matter of thought, while thought is the mediate form. Fur- thermore, it is a first way of taking any determination as what it appears to be, however that appearance must be qualified. Hence immediacy is the first step in a method, and this method is capable of the widest application. 1 Baldwin's Dictionary of Philos., i., 456. 2 Ibid., p. 458. Supplementary Essay 457 66. Illustrations of this starting-point as applied to concrete inquiries are found, for example, in the Encyclopedia, where the ethical spirit in its immediacy is the first moment of an investigation which begins with the individual as a "natural factor." Again, the sensuous externality pertains to the beautiful; the "form of immediacy as such" is a starting-point in the study of art. 1 But, again, the immediate may be a much higher starting-point. Thus the considera- tion (moment) which was abstract and formal in the Logic now becomes more concrete. "The finite from which the start is now made is the real ethical self- consciousness. " 2 67. In general, Hegel is inclined to take things as they appear at first the point of view of common thought. The whole category of Seyn (Being) stands for an external way of thinking. Hegel could not make this explicit at first, for he was dialectically com- pelled to take Being for what it appeared to be, and it claims to be strictly immediate, hence independent. But when we pass to the next general division of the Logic, we discover an internal method of thought which undermines the pretensions of mere Being. Taken by itself, Being is what it externally appears to be; regarded from the point of view of its essence, it is condemned as "show." But its reality is by no means denied in this process of negation. The " show" is indeed transmuted, but that transmutation is only one phase of the first moment of dialectical transmu- tation. Being is to remain with us to the end and its defensible truth is to be seen. In general the entire 1 See Sections 518, 552, 557, Wallace's translation, HegeVs P kilos- of Mind, pp. 121, 154, 169. 2 Sec. 552. 458 The Philosophy of the Spirit category of Being is immediate, in comparison with which Wesen (Essence) is the category of mediation. In attempting thus early to characterise immediacy as one-sided and dependent, we have anticipated results for which we must now find a more explicit place. 68. At the beginning of Book II, we find the sug- gestive sentence, "The truth of Being is Essence." 1 That is, if one wishes to know what Being is, in and for itself, one must not remain at the stage of the immediate and its determinations, but press through these with the presupposition that behind or beyond there is an "other" which will make known its truth. The inquiry thus enlarges, for the truth as found in the sphere of Essence is not found in Essence alone, but starts with an other (Seyn), passes through this preliminary stage, and leads to the discovery that in the immediate the truth is nowhere to be found. To pass beyond Being is to see how inadequate it was. Yet even in that which has been one recognises an aspect of that truth which now is discovered in this mediate category. The beginning is still seen to be necessary, but the departure from it was no less neces- sary; it is the absolute beginning only in case thought actually begins. When the beginning is already behind, the truth is more fully seen that it was ab- solutely the beginning, yet consequently nothing more. Yet in another sense this movement away from Seyn is the activity of Being itself. To discover its nature is to see that it implies far more than as Being i Werke, iv., 3 Supplementary Essay 459 it is; hence to pass to the category which exhibits its fuller truth. 69. We sen (Essence) stands between Being and the Begriff (the Notion which reveals the Idea), con- stitutes the middle category of the latter and its transition from Being to the Begriff proper. Essence (i) "shines" in itself, is reflection; (2) it appears; and (3) it reveals itself. Hence there is movement towards more and more explicitness, a movement in which three determinations are distinguished. In the first, Essence is "simple," immediate; in the second, it "steps forth" into determinate Being, Existenz (merely immediate existence), appearance; and in the third, it is one with its appearance, is Wirklichkeit (actuality). It is the transition from the second to the third of these determinations that has special significance for us. 70. Essence at first simply "shines into itself," but presently becomes an existent somewhat, or thing. When all the conditions of a thing are present, it steps forth into Existenz. The thing is (possesses Being in the sense in which we have found this de- termination dialectically serviceable) before it "exists" in the technical sense in which Hegel employs the term Existenz. 1 Everything, then, that possesses Be- ing (is not simply an item of pure dialectic) exists. Essence has now "gone forth" from the dialectic stage which so long concerned us (mere unqualified immediacy) and has become determinate as an existent Ding. The thing regarded apart from this its determinate existence would be merely "possible," the Gedankending which as such is not said to exist. 2 But taken objectively, the thing may now be regarded iQp. cit., p. 113. , * Ibid., p. 121. 460 The Philosophy of the Spirit by itself (that is, as immediate) as possessing prop- erties. The multiplicity of things exist in reciprocity through their properties, and a thing is naught without these its properties existing in reciprocal relation. 71. Note, then, that while immediacy has all along possessed the implied empiric references for which we have pleaded, the dialectic has been so far concerned with abstractions that it is not until the point is reached where Existenz appears that immediacy refers to things as you and I know them in ordinary ex- perience. This is a highly important point. It has taken all this time for the dialectic to reach the stage where, having gradually worked away from pure Being, at first postulated as identical with Nichts, it is possible to connect the dialectic explicitly with experience. The references to things in their im- mediacy is now legitimate inasmuch as the immediacy with which we are really concerned has never been divorced from experience, but has been treated as if it were devoid of the mediation of .the preliminary inquiries, taken in its most abstract form ; and then, by a progressive dialectic, has been restored, has had its content given back. We have all along analysed the same rich immediacy which we met at the outset, save that we have concealed its deeper significance until our investigation had reached the proper point to make it known. Under the head of Existenz, Hegel is now able at last to give a more complete recognition to immediacy. Let us, then, discover precisely what Existenz means, before we reach the stage where immediacy passes from mere appearance to actuality. 72. To consider a thing apart from its properties, the stuff of which it consists, would obviously be Supplementary Essay 461 to regard it abstractly, not as ordinary experience reveals it. Hence Hegel moves forward to the notion of diversity, manifoldness in the thing, the "matters" through which it subsists, and attains the stage where it is possible to particularise this thing. 1 Existenz, then, attains completion in the specific thing, becomes Erscheinung (appearance). That is, in popular speech, the thing is said to exist out yonder as if wholly in- dependent. Hegel dialect ically accords the thing its full seeming immediacy, as if it wholly consisted of self-subsistent "stuff." But having said thus much he is compelled to declare that the thing possesses only unwesentliches Existenz (non-essential, insignifi- cant, or merely apparent existence), that is, what we have before us is a set of appearances. Existenz, therefore, stands for the immediate, external, seem- ingly independent existence of things. The house out yonder, for example, possesses Ex- istenz, has a slate roof, two chimneys, and so on. Or Existenz is my own moment of psychic immediacy: the present state of consciousness brings a sense of fatigue which I describe precisely as it comes in wholly unscientific terms. I can say of the house, It is (Seyn), or I may specify its existence in detail. I may speak now of the slate roof, and now of the two chimneys; and finally characterise it as one existent object (Daseyn). There is being, a thing, I affirm. Here is my fatigue. But have I uttered the truth of the ex- istence of this house or of this moment of feeling? No, according to Hegel, for I have merely stated its appearance, the guise in which it is first apprehended. The existent thing does not yet (as merely immedi- ate) possess complete Essence. What I have said 1 Quantitative reference, p. 133. 462 The Philosophy of the Spirit concerning it is rather unwesentlich than significant; for the thing does not in reality thus exist by itself, but only in an other. 1 When we carry the alleged independence of things as far as possible, we are ready to enter another stage of the dialectic and discover the real character of the thing, its Wirklickkeit (ac- tuality) when seen in the light of its (dependent) relationships. 73. The dialectic has abundant room, then, for Existenz as a subordinate category, hence for the data on which the ardent advocate of objective indepen- dence insists. It is when one undertakes to mediate the detached particularity which delights the em- piricist, that one sees the utter inadequacy of the categories which stop with the merely existential. The utmost we can say of Existenz as such is that it is "reflected" immediacy, that is, immediacy so far rendered explicit as to merit the name of "appearance.'" There is a respect, then, in which Existenz may rightly be regarded as a phenomenon, namely, in so far as it is postulated as independent. 2 When Essence merely "shines," it returns to itself with nothing achieved. But when it erscheint (appears) it is realer Schein, and when appearance (the unity of Schein and Ex- istenz) is mediated, it is found to possess diversity of content and a law. Hence Hegel discriminates between the abiding and the reciprocally acting (changing). The positive, abiding aspect of phenom- ena is law. Law and appearances have the same content; the identical content is the foundation of ap- pearances. 3 The law is not then beyond or outside of the appearances, but is immediately present in them; the two constitute one totality. The world 'P. 135. 2 P. 140. 3 Pp. 144,145. Supplementary Essay 463 which we have just been characterising as possessing mere Existenz is now regarded from the point of view of a higher category, which proves to be Actuality, when the dialectic has fully made the transition. The existent world is now known as the kingdom of law; the appearances exemplify the law, and the law gives unity to the appearances. There are many appearances and many laws, yet both in the kingdom of appearances and in the reign of law the same Essence everywhere exists, abides. The world regarded as in and for itself is the totality of Existenz, and there is no other beyond it. But regarded as referring to itself antithetically, the world divides itself into (i) the essential world, and (2) the world of its own otherness, the world of appearances or phenomena. 1 The es- sential world is the determinate ground of the phe- nomenal. It is possible, then, to pass logically from appearance to ground, and from ground to diversity of appearance ; the relationship is everywhere intimate. The world-in-and-for-itself is one in the totality of the manifold content of the worlds above distinguished. The world-in-and-for-itself is also termed the "super- sensible" in contrast with the apparently existent, defined as the sensible, the realm of perception, in immediate relation to consciousness. 2 There is a sense in which the term Existenz is still applicable to the supersensible world, but the Existence now in question is "reflected," whereas sensible existence is not yet in reflected form. Das Ding ist der Beginn der reflectirten Existenz, it is an immediacy whose meaning has not yet been made explicit. It is not until the sensuous representation has been overcome when thought passes beyond the immediacy of i P. 148. 2 P. 150.'- 464 The Philosophy of the Spirit Gefuhl and Anschauung that its real character is discovered. 74. Thus Hegel's dialectic provides for various stages of apprehension of sensible objects, namely, as (i) things, possessing seeming independence, and supplying thought with its first data; (2) as sensuously apprehended, namely, the subjective aspect of im- mediacy, Anschauung, Gefuhl; (3) as detached, par- ticular, disparate phenomena; (4) as unified in terms of law, mediated with reference to system, totality; (5) and as grounded in the supersensible (essential) order of the universe. Note that the transition is made from the given aspects of things as they appear, into the realm of law ; that the things which give the "essential'' cosmos its content are precisely the same things which were formerly said to be merely existent. The sensible world is not, then, created out of or deduced from the realm of Actuality, but the world of things when no longer regarded as the sphere of mere appearances is the world of actual meanings. What is left behind, as we shall soon see more clearly, is the unessential (merely existential) aspects of things, their contingency, irrationality. The point of view of the immediate (the irrational) is one aspect of things; their rationality, or actuality, is another. To regard things from the point of view of their totality is obviously to view them from one side, merely, and is by no means to deny their particular, sensuous aspects, or to declare that everything is actual, or rational. There are two poles, two points of view that is the chief consideration just now to be noted. The law is realised, the meaning exemplified by the particulars. The particulars do not as yet possess actuality. There is far more in the mere particularity, Supplementary Essay 465 the detachedness of things, than need be taken account of in the idealistic reconstruction; the unimportant particulars remain behind, below, as non-essential; yet the significant whole of things is precisely this erstwhile insignificant collection, but considered now in the light of system, connectedness. 75. Otherwise stated, we have before dealt with various elements in unorganised guises; we now, having reached the turning-point in the dialectic, begin to organise our data in terms of law. The law is the unity or identity in the manifold of appearances. We began with the least degree of determinateness (reine Seyn), we brought Daseyn (determinate Being) into view, then Existenz (or grounded Daseyn), and Existenz in its most highly organised form (wesent- liche Existenz). The relativities of immediacy extend far into the second book of the Logic, and if the dia- lectic were unable to pass beyond immediacy mere relativity would endure to the end. Without the relativities there could be no absolute, yet the rela- tivities as such abound in irrelevances. Or, as Bradley puts it, "Existence is not reality, and reality must exist. Each of these truths is essential to an under- standing of the whole, and each of them, necessarily in the end, is implied in the other." 1 76. One who has not understood the dialectic bearings of immediacy at the beginning of the Logic would indeed fail to see how Seyn could have any empiric references whatever. But to understand what Hegel means by pure thought is to see why Being must so long be barren. Through all the details of Book I, and well into Book II, Hegel has gathered by pro- gressive analyses the determinations of the concrete, 1 Appearance and Reality, p. 400. 30 466 The Philosophy of the Spirit immediate thing. When all the materials are at hand, the thing "steps forth, " as we have seen, into Existenz. The thing is the typical immediate. Hence the dia- lectic has reached the point where any one can discover the empiric references, and retrospectively learn what was meant by pure thought in its most abstract guise. But having apprehended what is meant by immediacy the reader is in a position to mediate in earnest those determinations which, while con- cretely present, "real " for the plain man, have nevertheless shown their inability to be more than appearances. 77. Returning to our text, we note that the law under which the phenomena are gathered is char- acterised as "the essential relation," that is, the com- pletion of the "form-unity" of the totality of objects. The "truth" of appearance is the essential relation, which is not a third with respect to Essence and Ex- istenz, but the determinate unity of both, further mediated as the whole and the parts. The whole is self-dependent, constitutes the world-in-and-for-itself ; the parts are the immediate existences which con- stitute the phenomenal world. 1 From one point of view, the whole is self-dependent, and the parts exist only in this unity. From another point of view, the parts are self-dependent (that is, immediate), and their reflected unity (their idealistic reconstruction in terms of law, meaning) is merely a moment. The whole consists out of the parts, and is naught without them (note this) ; that which constitutes the totality is its (the whole's) other, and it therefore subsists not in itself but in its other. The whole is not an abstract unity, but the unity of distinguished manifoldness, * Op. cit,, p. 158. Supplementary Essay 467 the determinateness whereby the part is part. 1 By das Ganze Hegel does not, then, mean a whole into which the parts, the items of particular experience, are "absorbed" (as the English Hegelians are fond of saying), but a determinate ground of the parts without which the whole would not be; and a unity of "reflection" which still leaves room for the con- sideration of the parts as they severally appear to be. 2 The parts supply the content without which there were naught to unify. They constitute the determi- nate moments of our thinking. The whole is con- fessedly for a point of view. The parts still "exist" in a subordinate category. It is perfectly legitimate to regard them as isolated up to a certain point then equally legitimate to take them together. The parts as parts are not the whole; they are in a sense "indifferent" to one another; each of the sides (aspects) refers merely to itself. Taken entirely by themselves they "destroy" one another. The whole which is "in- different" to the parts is of course abstract. "Each [side] has its independence not in itself but in the other." 3 The truth of their relation is not discovered in their mere givenness, but in their mediation. Thus the relation of the whole and the parts passes over into the relation of force and its manifestations, a relation which involves still further reference to con- crete existence in our natural world. Hegel at first considers force as it ordinarily seems to exist, as ex- ternal (immediate), related to detached things (durch eine fremde Gewalt eingedruckt) . 4 The activity of force consists in this, that it externalises itself. Yet i On the conception of the Totalitdt, see Royce, Spirit of Mod. Philos., p. 502. *Ibid., p. 161. 3 p. 162. P. 166. 468 The Philosophy of the Spirit its externality is, from another point of view, its internality. Hence the dialectic passes to the relation of inner and outer. 1 Being, formerly posited as external (immediate), now returns to its ground as "inner"; that is, that which a thing really is, in its externality, is what "reflection" shows it to be, through the Essence which it exhibits. Hence the essential relation is regarded from the higher point of view which we have several times approached in our exposition of the dialectic. 78. At first glance, it might seem like hair-splitting to distinguish between Existenz and Wirklichkeit, and apparently most students of Hegel have passed by the transition from the one determination to the other without giving much attention to it. Yet not only has the dialectic led up to and made such a distinction necessary, but the analysis of all systematic thinking, as contrasted with a mere succession of thoughts, shows that the distinction is founded on a real differ- ence. In the living world of everyday events, we find an abundance of facts which, as presented (im- mediate, detached, seemingly independent), appear to be utterly out of keeping with law, order, and righteous- ness; and so indeed they are while they are regarded as merely existential, until we ask, What universal principles do they exemplify? How may the de- tached facts be ordered? What ought to be? Our studies in immediacy have taught us little if they have not enforced this distinction between the appearance of the directly presented and its truth as mediately discovered. Hegel's dialectic would indeed be far from true to life and to human thinking if it did not 171 Supplementary Essay 469 leave a large place for the mere givenness of things in all their barbarous nakedness. 79. The fundamental category implied in all this bruteness of presented fact is the category of Being. These things are. No sane man would deny that, and in various parts of his system Hegel gives recog- nition to the darker facts of life. 1 The existential judgment (Seyri) stands first, then the qualitative, then the quantitative, and so on. But in due course it becomes a question of the sub- stance and power present in the given phenomena. Hence reflection passes more and more into the sphere of theoretic reconstruction. All determinations ex- cept the constructively important are forthwith left out of account as irrelevant. That does not imply their entire rejection, I insist. What makes possible the given events is what is actual; that which is es- sential to their rationalisation is their relationship when taken together. What else could one say of the actual, as thus defined, than that it is rational? Having passed beyond the sphere of mere Existenz, we are explicitly searching for the rationality of things, for their value when taken as a whole. That the parts possess other values in themselves is just now another matter. If a man prefers mere disparateness, the detached values of individual facts, that is an affair of his own interests, of his own will to believe; and if he is sceptical about the point of view of the Begriff, we do not propose to coerce him into "absolutism." 80. Hegel has opened nearly half of his dialectic to the interests of the merely immediate. It is now time to narrow the issues. Even if it were a question just now of the problem of evil and this is surely For example, in the Philosophic des Rechts. See below, Sec. 115. 470 The Philosophy of the Spirit the most difficult problem of bare immediacy one would not desire to linger for ever at the stage of immediacy. 1 It is not the province of the Logic to specify the given data, but to supply a basis of thought sufficiently broad to conduct any givenness through all the details of precisely its own dialectic to the end, where its Begriff is seen. While, therefore, the Logic seems to have no particular reference to real experience, just because it is dispassionately general, it applies to all experience whatsoever. The only danger is that one shall read into its terms more than Hegel intended, and hence miss his meaning. 81. Actuality is briefly definable as the unity of Essence and Existenz. That is, formless Essence and unstable appearance are brought into intelligible shape, their "truth" is made known. We have seen that there is one identical basis throughout, a totality which, involving both inner and outer, we now dis- cover to be absolute. The term "absolute" as here used has little significance for our present purposes. In a sense, the entire logical movement is the ex- position of the absolute. But what is meant by the term in the larger sense the sequel must show; here the term means little save the bare identity of the totality which occupies us all along. It is rather the content of the absolute that now concerns us, not the mere identity of form; and this content is actuality. 3 Actuality is not the total absolute, but its manifes- tation. It belongs on a higher level, however, than Existenz: for actuality manifests itself, it really is in its manifestation, its own externality. 4 More 1 With reference to Hegel's recognition of evil, see below, Sec. "5- 2 Op. cit., p. 178. * P. 187. 4 P. 194. Supplementary Essay 47 * explicitly, it is actual as contrasted with possibility. The reference of actuality and possibility to each other constitutes a third, namely, necessity. In the first place, actuality is immediate, unreflected. From the point of view of its implicitness it is, however, already possible. Actuality is the reflected unity of itself and possibility. Possibility is not yet all actuality, for of real and absolute actuality it is not yet a question. All we are entitled to say is, all that is possible in general has Being or Existenz. 1 82. This unity of actuality and possibility is con- tingency (Zufdlligkeit). The contingent is an actual that is determined as only possible, whose other or opposite is equally possible. This actuality is there- fore mere Being or Existenz. Yet it is posited in its truth, and shown to possess the value of explicitness. On the other hand, possibility regarded as reflection - into-itself, or as implicit, is posited as explicit: what is possible is actual in this sense of actuality, it pos- sesses only the value of contingent actuality, is itself contingent. The contingent is thus found to possess two aspects. In so far as it immediately contains possibility it is not in a state of explicitness, is un- mediate actuality, has no ground. 2 Hence even the actual is to be characterised as contingent, groundless. In the Enclycopedia Hegel says, "The contingent, roughly speaking, is what has the ground of its being, not in itself, but in somewhat else." 3 McTaggart explains, "contingency consists in explanation from the outside. ' 4 83. The contingent has no ground in so far as it is contingent. But it also has a ground precisely because p. 198. 2 P. 199. Sec. 145, note. Heg. Dial., p. 66. 47 2 The Philosophy of the Spirit it is contingent, must have a basis for its occurrence. Whatever happens has Seyn, for it exists, is thus far no mere possibility but is actual, cannot be undone. To trace it to its ground is therefore to discover that in a sense it was necessary. The possibility of a thing is the determinate manifoldness of the circumstances. Necessity, then, is at first regarded as relative, since it starts with the contingent. The merely necessary is merely because it is, it has as yet no condition or ground. 1 It is not until we pass to absolute necessity that we discover the truth and unity of actuality and possibility. In short, contingency is an aspect of the dialectic until the higher stage of the absolute relation is attained. 84. It might seem paradoxical to characterise con- tingency as that which is groundless yet possesses a ground. But contingency regarded as groundless pertains to the immediate, to Existenz, is purely external. To regard it as possessing a ground is to pass to the actuality in question, hence to pass beyond the immediate. Contingency is the most external aspect of things; it stands for the attempt to explain things precisely as they appear. Hence this category is representative, first of all, of the givenness of things, their Eocistenz. Under this head are to be classified not only the ordinary aspects of things as at first apprehended, but the most contradictory and ap- parently alien items of human experience. All such items are to be taken at first precisely as they appear, even though they seem to be utterly irrational. For only by frankly admitting the irrationality of things may we hope to prove their essential rationality. The merely given is, as such, irrational; and the only i Werke, iv., 208. Supplementary Essay 473 explanation that can be offered for it when viewed from the outside, as immediate is a contingent explanation, a statement of its irrationality. Our whole concept of immediacy is, then, a concept of the irrational; and we undertook this long and minute inquiry in order to bring immediacy into view in its own unrationalised aspects. The element of irration- ality which we started out to find we have had with us all along. It was not an element produced by reason, but .reason, face to face with it, given it given its own existence, too, has been seeking to organise it by first permitting it to make its characteristics known. 85. We shall find reason, after a consideration of the Idea, to distinguish between contingency and immediacy for we are to have immediacy with us to the end, but not Existenz, not Zufdlligkeit hence we shall be able to differentiate irrationality more sharply. 1 But already we are so far anticipating as to point out that immediacy (as Existenz) is contingent, the irrational, in comparison with Wirklichkeit. As immediacy is in general a first way of taking things, and as things vary in apparent independence, ob- viously there are grades of irrationality. We are unable to mediate, hence to grade the various imme- diacies, until we reach the point in the dialectic where Existenz fully gives place to Actuality. We then see more and more clearly the empirical character of immediacy, and learn that by the term Wirklichkeit Hegel does not mean things as they ordinarily appear, but their significant totality as they exist for highly mediate thinking. As men of affairs we are interested in tangible things. As men of science we seek their rationality. Hence it is Actuality which brings us 1 See below, Sec. 119. 474 The Philosophy of the Spirit in sight of our goal. From the point of view of Ac- tuality we can say unqualifiedly, What is actual is rational, for we know that it forms part of one system. 86. By the term "actual," then, Hegel means, 4 ' not what is at any time found existing, but the under- lying spirit by which the movement of history is carried on. It is the business of ethics to bring this clearly to light." 1 The concept of actuality is hard-won. The long dialectic which leads up to it is needed to make the demonstration complete. The dialectic which went before is no less important than that which follows; for the rational is such only in contrast with the irrational. The rational is progressively dis- covered amidst the given ; it is a conclusion, established by a series of progressive inferences, that the ultimate principle of the universe is rational. If in a certain sense Reason is at last discovered to have been the underlying principle which gave appearances their connection, it by no means follows that Reason is an immediate. The Reason which is discovered at the close of the Logic (as implicit from the start), is the essential, or universal. But one cannot deduce par- ticular occurrences from this principle. The particular is always the given ; as such it belongs to the category of Being. The universal is discovered by reflection ; hence it belongs to the category of interpretation, the Idea. No logic of the Idea would be complete which should fail to reserve a permanent place for the appar- ent; hence even the category of the contingent is permanently significant. The universal is, therefore from first to last a concrete universal, with respect to the particulars which at once supply the necessary content and the contrast by virtue of which it is in 1 Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics, p. 284, note. Supplementary Essay 475 very truth seen to be the universal. The universal is a selective principle which explains the unessentials left behind as irrelevant and assimilates the particulars which give it content. It no more absorbs or denies the data which gave it content than it assumes to have created the immediacies which give fulness to the essential. Hence the concept of the immediate in general, of the contingent in particular, and of the irrational as opposed to actuality, is germane to the system. 87. There are two ways, then, of taking immediacy: (i) it may represent that which is accepted as it ap- pears to be, and (2) it may be regarded from the point of view of the dialectic form which assimilates it. Taken in the former sense, it is specifically characterised by Hegel as the contingent. That is, as Kuno Fischer explains, the contingent belongs to the realm of external actuality, it pertains to the surfaces of things, which refer to one an- other externally, and affect one another contingently. . . . Such an occurrence has no inner ground; hence the con- tingent is groundless. Since, however, nothing happens without a ground every chance or happening has its ground. It arises out of the connection of things. l Hegel says in the Encyclopedia: "An important step has been taken, when we cease in our thinking to use phrases like: Of course something else is also possible. While we so speak, we are still tainted with contin- gency; and all true thinking, we have already said, is a thinking of necessity." 2 Again, w r hen expounding Existenz, he says, " In this motley play of the world, if we may so call the sum of existent s, there is nowhere 1 Hegel's Leben Werke u-nd Lehre, ii., 519. 2 Sec. 119, Wallace's trans., p. 222. 47 6 The Philosophy of the Spirit a firm footing to be found : everything bears an aspect of relativity, conditioned by and conditioning some- thing else." 1 88. In connection with a reference to Plato and Aristotle, Hegel mentions "the vulgar conception of actuality which mistakes for it what is palpable and directly obvious to the senses"; whereas philosophic actuality is the Idea. 2 Finally, the exposition in the Encyclopedia reaches the point we have attained in the Logic: Whether a thing is possible or impossible, depends al- together upon the subject-matter; that is, on the total elements in actuality, which, as it opens out, discloses itself to be necessity. . . . When . . . valued at the rate of mere possibility, the actual is Contingent or Acciden- tal, and conversely, possibility is mere Accident itself, or Chance. 3 Hegel believes it to be the province of science to overcome "the actuality which first comes before consciousness, and which is often mistaken for Wirk- lichkeit, "just as it is the end of action to rise above the Zufdlligkeit des W aliens oder der Wilkiir." In what follows he gives abundant recognition to the contingency so often admired in nature, "a contin- gency losing itself in vagueness." He then discusses contingency in the inner world, and contrasts the opinion, will, caprice, and arbitrary humour of man with the decrees of God, which express necessity and are superior to accident from within and from without. The contingent is contrasted with the personality of man as something "not to be denied or nullified" but 1 Ibid., Sec. 123, note; Wallace, p. 231. 2 Ibid., Sec. 142, note; Wallace, p. 259. 3 Sec. 143, note; Wallace, p. 262. Supplementary Essay 477 to be "preserved." "No doubt," says Hegel, "there is much chance in what befalls us. This chance ele- ment is grounded in the naturality of man." These passages speak for themselves, and go far towards elu- cidating the less explicit statements of the Logic. 1 VI 89. Now that we have made the dialectic transi- tion into Actuality, and discovered that immediacy as such is the irrational, we might pass at once to the consideration of evidences of the irrational in other parts of the system. But in order to make our demon- stration complete it is necessary briefly to examine the Begriff. This is necessary for two reasons: we have seen that what immediacy is, is to be known in its fulness only through insight into its meaning; and the impression is prevalent that the end of the Logic is the same as the beginning. It might seem that, however much Hegel has said regarding con- tingency, all this is a mere "concession" to finite thought, and is presently to be "overcome" by the Idea. Now, this is a far more shallow opinion than any we have considered, and hardly need be examined in detail. We have already intimated that the place assigned to the irrational is permanently significant, that the transition from Existenz to Actuality is profoundly important to the end. To understand this transition is to admit the main point for which we are contending, hence to see precisely why the end cannot be merely what the beginning was. Yet, having considered the existential portion of the I* V AAAtj V^V^iJ-WJAVJ-V^X X^V-i. V.L.A.V \_^.JLVJ VN^AA VAU** k. See op. cit., Sec. 147, note; Wallace, p. 267 ff. 478 The Philosophy of the Spirit dialectic, it behooves us to turn to the interpretative. Only by understanding the rational, the actual, may one truly understand the irrational, the existential. We beg leave, then, to give still further attention to wearisome detail, with the prospect before us that complete demonstration is to be our reward. 90. We have warned the reader not to see too much in Hegel's beginning. We must now warn him against attributing too many absorbing powers to the Begrifj. " The true meaning of the Begriff, " says Stirling, "must be seen into; and he who understands Hegel's Begrifj understands Hegel." 1 "What the character of the Begrifj is," says Hegel, "can as little be conveyed immediately as the conception of any other object." 2 The Begrifj is a result, yet it is far more. Seyn and Wesen have not only "gone over into it," but are therein "contained," "preserved." Regarded as hav- ing "gone over," Being and Essence are of course no longer merely Seyn and Wesen: but they retain their essential places in the organic unity. To illustrate, Hegel devotes considerable space to an analysis of "Substance," and he is free to acknowledge the place it holds in Spinoza's system. But the reality which the conception stands for he carries forward and restates from a higher point of view. 91. Such -a statement as Harris's concerning the Begriff, namely, that if Hegel had called it "person or personality" at the outset "the student would have seen the drift of the entire system," is exceedingly misleading. 3 Hegel does indeed use the term in reference to the ego, 4 and then he makes an acute analysis of the Kantian significance of the term as 1 The Secret of Hegel, p. 52. 2 Werke, v., 5. 3 Hegel's Logic, p. 349- * Op. cit., p. 13. Supplementary Essay 479 applied to the transcendental unity of apperception. One may very well, he holds, speak of the Begrif) of the ego, and refer to the ego as possessing Begriffe. But these meanings of the term are only partial. 1 Being and Essence are in general the larger moments of approach. We are concerned not alone with the act of self-consciousness, not with the subjective under- standing alone, but with the Begriff (in-and-f or- itself ), which includes both the Spirit and Nature. 2 Not until we pass forward to the Idea are we entitled to say what the Begriff is. We shall then see how superficial is Shadworth Hodgson's classification of the Logic as "the psychology of that vast self-conscious mind (Begriff) into which he [Hegel] imagines he has re- solved the universe." 3 And we shall be surprised that an Hegelian could speak of the Logic as "psy- chological ontology." 4 92. To allege that the Begriff is a mere "notion," as much as to say, "There is far more in the real world of sensible objects than your abstract concepts take into account," is once more to miss the point. To allege that the fleeting and superficial appearance of things is the important consideration, is to neglect the comprehensive insight which reveals the reality of the sensibly presented. 5 The Begriff is precisely a seizing (begriffen) of the reality of the directly given. Yet although Anschauung conditions the Begriff, it is now a question of the truth, not of the natural history. 6 93. There is much important detail in the dis- cussion of the Begriff which we must pass by, with P. 16. a P. 19. 3 The Metaph. of Exper., i., pref., x. 4 Harris, Hegel's Logic, p. 44. Werke, v., p. 20. *P. 21. 480 The Philosophy of the Spirit the remark that it tends to confirm our conclusions, notably the sections devoted to formal logic. 1 It is clear that much depends on Hegel's theory of the judgment, and the place assigned to the particular and the universal. 2 Hegel's insight into the fundamental character of the judgment lies at the root of our in- quiry. We have found him ready to admit the ex- istential immediacy of the given. Hence for him the existential judgment is fundamental. But when the devotee of immediacy of whatever type tries to enter the world of exact thinking with either his particular or his general immediacy, and put it forward as if it were complete in itself and untampered with, Hegel remorselessly exposes the tacit mediation and shows that there is no true universal. He shows that there is judgment from the start. Simply to judge that a psychosis is, is already to begin to reconstruct. What seems like a priori formalism in Hegel is an explication of the process which we are constantly employing when we consider the immediate. He is exhibiting to thought, as well as to feeling, its own unsuspected wealth. He is not attempting to impose the syllogism on the world, and deduce all nature's content there- from. He discovers that nature and thought exhibit the same principle. Nature has an evolution. Man, in relation to nature, observes, collects data, and in- ductively reconstructs what he has perceived. Hence it is natural that the dialectic should make explicit the laws and resemblances. To understand what Hegel means by induction, is to have a direct clue to the significance of immediacy. Op. tit., p. 63 ff. 2 On Hegel's theory of the universal, see Royce, Spirit of Mod- Philos., p. 493 ff. Supplementary Essay 481 94. Passing by the instructive section devoted to Objectivity, where the familiar determinations of immediacy are still more fully exemplified, we turn to a brief consideration of the Idea, the adequate Be griff. The highest kind of Actuality belongs under this head. 1 Anything that possesses truth has it in so far as it is Idea. The actuality or truth is not some far-off, unapproachable thing, remaining jenseits: but everything possesses actuality by virtue of the Idea. The objective and subjective world is not merely con- gruent with the Idea, but is itself the congruence of the Be griff and reality. Any reality which did not corre- spond with the Be griff would be appearance, con- tingent. If it should be said that there is nothing in experience which is completely congruent with the Idea, that would be to set up a subjective standard over against actuality. What sort of thing anything actual would be which should not have the Begriff in it, would be impossible to say, because there is no such thing. The mechanical and chemical ob- jects, likewise the spiritless subject, do not possess their particular characteristics through their own free forms; but contain something true only so far as they are the union of the Begriff and reality. Otherwise they would, as it were, be bodies without souls. The whole, the state, the church if the unity of their Begriff with reality is resolved, thereby cease to exist. Yea, the Spirit itself, were it not the Idea, were dead, a mere material object. 2 Thus explicitly is the Idea linked with the concrete. Finite things are finite in so far as they do not possess the reality of the Begriff completely an ihnen selbst, but re- quire an other, to be complete. The highest point i Op. dt., p. 231. 8 P. 232. 31 482 The Philosophy of the Spirit which they can attain, as finite, is external pur- posiveness. 95. The absolute Idea is in the stricter sense of the word the object and content of philosophy, since it is the essence and contains all determinateness. The logical method of regarding the Idea is the univer- sal method in which all particulars are revealed. The determinateness of the Idea, and the whole course of this determinateness, constitutes the object of logical science. Regarded entirely as form, the Idea is strictly universal. Hence in this last stage of the inquiry we are no longer concerned with the content as such, but with the universal of the form of the Idea, that is, with the method, the final form of the logical immediate. 96. Hegel refers back to the whole course of the logical Idea, "wherein all forms of a given content were present." It is no longer a question of "ex- ternal and contingent determinations," but of far higher truth. Object is no longer set over against subject in an external sort of way. "Die Methode ist daraus als der sick selbst wissende, sick als das Absolute, sowokl subjective als objective, zum Gegenstande kabende Begriff, somit als das reine Entsprecken des Begriffs und seiner Realitat . . . kervorgegangen. ' ' l 97. It is this peculiar phraseology, wherein the Begriff is well-nigh personified, and the method said to "know itself," that so easily permits of misin- terpretation. Unless one bear in mind the precise limitations of the whole inquiry, and the specific character of its beginnings, one may charge Hegel with the reduction of every determination to an artificial type of "pure thought," as if thought, method, and P. 320. Supplementary Essay 483 logician were identical. The difficulty is in part due to the fact that as the dialectic draws to a close there is less distinction between the nature of the dialectic, the nature of the self and the Absolute. Yet the fact that there is intimate relationship is no reason for concluding that there is absorption or identification. 98. Already in the Phenomenology, the preliminary inquiry began with consciousness, and a way was sought whereby the fundamental category of con- sciousness could be mediated in ultimate terms. 1 It is reasonable to expect the type of ultimate knowledge to be found in self -consciousness, inasmuch as the Phenomenology showed that to be the highest type of experience. There was, then, an intimate con- nection with the self in the presupposition wherewith the Logic began. In a sense we have been defining the self and the Absolute all along. The logician is precisely such a self as to have this categorising experience. The same Essence resides in him, in his logical processes, in nature, and in the ultimate Ground of all. The dialectic exhibits that Essence in its de- velopment from simple to complex. But that de- velopment involves both nature and inner human experience, both the dialectic movement and the life of the Absolute. What is more natural, then, than this gradual drawing together at the end when the external as such is behind of the various determina- tions that are well-nigh indistinguishable? For did we not explicitly start out to observe the activities of immediacy, while permitting the concept to exhibit its own immanent dialectic? We agreed to isolate it, as if it had an independent life. But as we pro- ceeded we were compelled to point out its limitations. Werke, ii. t 71; see above, Sec. 19. 484 The Philosophy of the Spirit We now continue the work of mediation still further. 99. By the term " method " Hegel means, in general, the entire movement of the Begriff, whose immanent life is absolute self-activity, self-determining and self- realising. Hence the method is without qualification universal. As completely infinite power, this activity meets no object that can withstand it, that is, no object remains external to it, as merely immediate. The method is therefore the "soul and substance," and nothing is to be comprehended in its truth except as completely subject to the method. Here we have the true significance of its universality. Here, too, we have not only the absolute power of reason, but its highest and most individual tendency (Trieb), namely, through itself to find and cognise itself in all things. 1 The method is constituted by the determinations and references of the Begriff, and it consists, first of all, as we have seen, in starting with the immediate. Since the Logic starts at the beginning, its content is an immediate such that it has the meaning and form of abstract universality. Be it a content either of Being, Essence, or the Begriff, it is so far received, found, postulated as the immediate (Aufgenommenes, Vorgefundenes, Assertorisches) , and all this in the sense of an unmediate of thought, that is, "simple"; whereas if it were an object of sensuous intuition it would be manifold, individual. 2 The immediate as thought P. 321. 2 The best that Hegel could do in the Phenomenology was to differentiate the one psychic instant amidst a psychically immediate manifold; but thought starts with the simplicity of the immediate as such, disregards the psychic singleness, and considers the general character of immediacy in all moments. Supplementary Essay 485 regards it, then, has first the significance of Being in abstract self-reference (requiring no derivation other than the one which the Logic gives it), and is so poor "an sick' 1 that there is scarcely anything to sublate. 1 Literally, the universal itself is this immediate, since as abstract it is just this abstract self-reference which Being is. (Thus we learn more definitely that im- mediacy is in an abstract sense the universal wherewith all logical thinking necessarily begins. It was not, after all, the mere presentness of psychic immediacy which was so important; but the fact that in the givenness of the immediate there was already implied the great treasure which philosophers go out to seek the universal. Hence the Logic began, not merely with particularity, but already with universality, the first proposition concerning which was, It is.) It was first a question of the form of the beginning, then of its determinateness. The credentials of the content seemed to lie behind it; as matter of fact, its authen- ticity lay in the forth-going. 100. Thus we begin to see the complete meaning of the movement from immediacy which for the dia- lectic is so important. The "consciousness of the Begriff," its method, begins in a formal, external reflection. Since the form is objective, the immediacy of the beginning (an ihm) is defective, endowed with a desire to press on. The universal wherewith the movement begins is not the mere abstraction it seemed to be, but is already the ''object-universal." That is, it is implicitly (an sich) concrete totality; although not yet explicit, nor yet set forth as what it really is (fur sich). Even the predicate "einfache" must be qualified, for the universal as abstract is already ' 7. e., to transmute, p. 323. 486 The Philosophy of the Spirit postulated as possessing a negation. There is, then, says Hegel, neither in actuality nor in thought any such "Einf aches" or " Abstractes " \ such a "Simple" is a mere meaning for purposes of logical abstraction. What is meant by the immediacy of the universal is the implicitness without the explicitness. Hegel is ready to admit, then, that every beginning must be made with the Absolute, just as all advance is only exposition of the same. Yet he is obliged explicitly to qualify, inasmuch as the implicitness is merely an abstract, one-sided moment; hence not the Absolute, not the explicit Begriff, not the Idea. The advance (forth -going) is not a kind of "overflow." It might be this were the beginning already the Ab- solute in the complete sense of the term. The advance consists rather in this, that the universal determines itself, and seeks to become explicit (fiir sick das All- gemeine): only in its completion is it the Absolute. 1 All this in Hegel's clearest language is highly im- portant. For him, the Absolute hence the im- mediacy of the logical beginning is not a "First" in Plotinus's sense of the term a "One" from whose fulness an "overflow" occurs which is indifferent to it and adds nothing to reality; and from which there must be an escape (that is, from the world caused by the overflow) by an ecstasy in which all mediation has been transcended. For firstness in this sense there is no place in the Hegelian system. There is genuine need of mediation of the first immediate. The return to union with the immediate is not mystical, but is analytically intelligible in the highest degree. The Absolute is obviously such that whatever came out of it could have come forth an Absolute which 'P. 3*5. Supplementary Essay 487 makes experience and knowledge possible, a real Universal. But this is only " ansichseyende" possi- bility as compared with that which comes forth. The concept of immediacy is therefore cleared of any possible misconception at both ends of the line. A mere overflow would imply a sort of accidental, superfluous activity, in which the Absolute had no purposive part. But for Hegel the Absolute is chiefly made through its forth-going. What that advance from implicitness to explicitness means it is the prov- ince of the Idea to show. Hence a reference is already implied beyond the mere formality of the dialectic to the Absolute as actual Being. And when we pause to ask what that Being is, there is no excuse for falling back on mere immediacy, for we are already in pos- session of a highly mediate result. 10 1. In order finally to estimate and classify the logical immediate, we turn now to the more minute account of the method, and gradually approach the point where even the method must be sublated, when it passes into "system." This is one of the most important transitions in the dialectic. Briefly outlined, the progress of the dialectic is as follows: A universal First is considered in and for itself as the other of itself. 1 Thus universally re- garded, the immediacy therein involved may be taken as a mediate referring to an other. The Second is the negative of the First, the first negative. The im- mediate is thus negatively regarded as having gone over into the other. The other is not a mere (leere) negative, but is the other of the First. It is also determined as mediate. As thus determined, it con- tains the negative, but retains and preserves the * Ibid., p. 330. 488 The Philosophy of the Spirit determination of the First. That is, even in the first observation regarding immediacy we begin to take it as the other of itself. We then take this other in a mediate sense, and regard it as the second stage of the dialectic. The "other" is the negative of the immediate, but explicitly as containing its determina- tion, not as mere negation. Hence we are entitled to restate it positively. We do not then lose im- mediacy, but immediacy itself becomes mediate as soon as we regard it. Well may Hegel say that the positive held fast in its negative, the result (the con- tent of the presupposition), is "the most important step in rational cognition." In the second stage, then, the mediate becomes in turn an immediate and passes into the third stage in which the truth of the contrast, the contradiction, is made explicit. The negative is not an "other" in an indifferent sense; else were it no true other. It is the other of an other. Thereby it includes its own other in itself. The negativity constitutes the turning of the movement of the dialectic; it is the innermost spring of all activity, the dialectic "soul" which con- tains all truth. For on this alone rests the subla- tion (transmutation) of the antithesis between the Be griff and reality. 102. At this turning-point in the method, the course of cognition returns into itself. This second immediacy is in the whole course of the dialectic the third to the first immediacy, and to the mediation. Since the result is unity, the whole form of the triple method is in a sense superficial and external. 1 The reference to numbers is not the fundamental con- sideration. While the dialectic is passing through 1 P. 334- Supplementary Essay 489 the threefold form, there is still a truth that is more "inner." The truth is found in the total dialectic (as we began to see when Hegel's account passed from Existenz to Actuality) . To stop at the first immediacy is surely not to possess the truth. To attain the second stage is to be nearer. When the dialectic passes to the third stage in the final movement we at last see the law of the threefold form. To possess the whole truth is to comprehend the unity which the entire dialectic expresses. This truth is as much immediacy as mediation. 1 For it is the Begrif), and we have seen that this is the comprehending Idea which possesses truth without externality. Hence the immediacy as we have previously regarded it is now completely assimilated into a unity where the full truth of the former alleged independency is seen. The method all along remained the same up to this point. Thought all along started with the given. But now we are able to point to the result as derived and proved. 103. The method broadens through this important result into a system. 2 Hegel now throws new light on the immediacy of the beginning, which we regarded as if it were as independent and indeterminate as it claimed to be. The determinateness which the dia- lectic has been developing now "denounces" as "in- complete" the beginning as at first regarded. Since the beginning when compared with the determinate- ness proves to be determined, it was not strictly speaking immediate, but already derived and mediate. 3 For the method it is indeed matter of indifference that the beginning must thus be negated, whether the determinateness appertain to form or to content. 1 P. 335- *P. 336. *P. 337- 490 The Philosophy of the Spirit But from the point of view of system, the conclusions we are now reaching are highly important. It is not the contentlessness, the alleged indetermi- nateness of the beginning which constitutes it abso- lute. No sooner did we regard that most abstract of all moments than it proved to have determinateness with respect to its own first moment, previously deemed indeterminate. If the beginning had no content, thought could not begin with it. The barest im- mediate, then, which pure thought was able to dis- cover proves to have possessed content. Hence it was not strictly speaking an original but a derived moment. Therefore it must be accounted for. But Hegel had already accounted for it in this its largest sense by his references to the Phenomenology, which gave us the clue to all the considerations with which this discussion was at the outset concerned. We stated explicitly that in the Logic he was abstracting from the immediate-mediate and regarding it for di- alectic purposes as if it were a "leere" "reine" im- mediate. We also warned the reader that we could not explain this until the last. 1 104. The first discovery about the beginning, then, told us something about the alleged indeterminate first moment, and we learned that it was not really indeterminate. We then developed the implied wealth, and proceeded with the dialectic. So much for the method. But in another sense of the inquiry we were constantly returning to the first immediacy, and learning more about it, when viewed in the to- tality of its relationships. This totality is a far more comprehensive consideration than simply the steps of the method. This totality is system. To find a ' See above, Sec. 48 ft. Supplementary Essay 491 way to interpret this totality was really our interest at the outset. We found a way to make the absolute beginning for methodological purposes. But we omit- ted considerations which pointed beyond the method. The beginning was in simplest determinateness ; the succeeding moments brought richer determina- tions into view, and carried them forward so that nothing was lost but everything was borne along enriched. 1 This enlargement may be regarded as the moment of the content, and in the whole as the first premise. The universal is communicated in the kingdom of the content, is immediately preserved in it. The enrichment proceeds through the necessity of the Begrifj; each new step of the outgoing is also an ingoing; the greater extension is the higher in- tension. The wealthiest result is at the same time the most concrete and the most subjective. The highest point attained is pure personality, which, through the Absolute, comprehends and contains all in itself. Each step of the forth -going is a further determina- tion, more removed from the beginning, yet in a sense a nearer approach to it, since the dialectic is a pro- gressive discovery of the ground of the beginning. The method moves in a circle from the complete to the complete, yet cannot anticipate the truth that the beginning is already as such derived. For purposes of logical science, the beginning was the indeterminate immediate, the simple universal. Hence the start was provisional. But in the end, from the point of view of the totality, we discover that there was nothing provisional. The beginning was incomplete, because it was the beginning. But this incompleteness iOp.cit.,p. 339, 492 The Philosophy of the Spirit was essential; the truth is to be won only through the negativity of immediacy. In reality our science is a circle of circles which includes all sciences, the ground of the presuppositions of the special sciences. Thus the Logic returns in the absolute Idea to the unity which is its beginning. Pure Being is now understood through the Idea; but it is now "filled" Being, concrete. Absolute science now possesses its complete Begriff. In the Idea of absolute cognition it comes to its content in the largest sense. 1 It is the pure Begriff which has itself for object, which penetrates the totality of its determinations. 105. There is a profound sense, then, in which the immediate persists throughout. The real Being implied in the beginning was far more than was then clear, was more intimately connected with experience than was apparent. What we sought was the Idea of all experience. We suspected that the truth was obtainable only through knowledge of the whole. But we agreed to take each determination for what it appeared to be. Therefore we began with the most elementary category and followed its implications to the end. Our method gradually changed from analysis, in so far as analysis proved to pertain to appearances only. The seemingly detached imme- diate lost its independence only to reveal its higher truth in the third or synthetic stage of the dialectic. Every new " third" proved to be a fresh starting- point until it became clear that Werden (transition) ihust itself be sublated, or the process would be infinite. While, then the meaning of the first imme- diate was found only through transition, the sig- nificance of transition was discovered through the 1 Ibid., p. 342. Supplementary Essay 493 abiding, the actual. The immediate as such was only an element, a moment. But the final truth is no moment, nor is it a mere collection of moments or elements. The endeavour to give immediacy in its abstract form liberty to be its own independent self was confessedly a device of external reflection. But reflection itself is no device; it is a living activity which, when complete, is as much inner as outer, for there is no longer any unmediated item. Only the Idea is really independent. But the Idea is no mere immediate. Nor is pure mediation to be identified with the Idea. It is the third, mediate-immediate, stage which comprehends the totality of actuality, that pertains essentially to the Idea. Thus, although the Idea was in a sense implied from the first, what it is can be understood only through this highest synthesis at the end where the total wealth gained along the way is made explicit. 1 06. To insist that the immediacy of the end of the Logic is the same as that of its beginning would be to miss the significance of immediacy from first to last. If the end added nothing, the one identical content of the dialectic would be, either like the First of the Neo-Platonic system, the differenceless unity of the I dentitdts system and this we have shown to be essentially different from the Hegelian conception, or an all-sufficient Thought which deduces all con- tent out of itself in a way that renders all induction superfluous. In either case, the alleged differences which " flowed out" from, or were produced out of the One, would be illusions; there would be no additive mediation. But in the Hegelian system it is precisely the additive determinations that are of most worth That is, it is the dialectic with its criticism and 494 The Philosophy of the Spirit development of the immediate, its transition into Act- uality, and its profound principle of negation, which at last brings us into possession of the Idea with its highly differentiated totality. 107. Hegel's return, at the close of the Phenom- enology, and again in the Logic, is not a mystical union, not a relapse or "collapse." The differences are not overcome or "destroyed." These differences remain, in the first place, to give meaning to Existenz, as a subordinate category; and in the second place, to give content to Actuality, hence to the Idea. What is overcome is the antithesis of subject and object which, so long as the dialectic remains below the stage of Actuality, sunders things in their im- mediacy from the Idea. The antitheses which keep the significance of objects from being discerned must of course be sublated. But if the differences were "swallowed up," as the English Hegelians carelessly say, the Idea would be meaningless. The immediate of the end of the Logic is no longer the dialectically experimental immediacy of the beginning the unwon, the independent, the merely existential. At the end, the Wander jahre of thought are over and the systematic period has begun. The limitations of the detached, the finite, the simply presented, are seen once for all. The door is closed into the sort of pure- thought world in which the dialectic is supposed to move. Thought has been shown to be dependent upon the givenness which first supplies it with content. But that givenness is now seen to be akin to the me- diation which makes it explicit, hence what remains is the mediate-immediate. The truth is immanent in the net-work of relativities which, when regarded merely as appearances, seem so perplexing. There Supplementary Essay 495 is no other than this immediate world and it were futile to seek another. That world seems wholly contingent at first, if not irrational; and the plain man explains it contingently. Contingent or ir- rational it will always seem from external points of view, as a mass of fragments, appearances. The Idea recognises this result as part of its meaning, when it stands over against the world, still seeking that meaning. But the Idea finds that meaning in deepest truth only when it learns at last through much toiling that the rationale of the world is its own self. If by a sudden insight one recognises that the Idea at the end is the Idea implied in the beginning, this insight marks a great advance, namely, to the higher stage of reflection which was entered at the level of Actuality. The transition from method to system is by no means a denial of the validity of the method, but the discovery of the rich content which has now raised itself into intelligible totality. However quick the insight is, it is the work of logic, the compelling power of reason; not a "feeling" that this is true, not a popular "intuition." It would be strange indeed if one should " feel" any great sense of kinship with the Idea, beyond that which cool logic involves. For the Idea is not as the Logic exhibits it the com- plete Absolute, the entire God of truth and reality. It is once more a "new immediate," demanding further mediation. It is an immediate in the sense of system, a completely rational whole. As thus differentiated it is the starting-point of other inquiries. The reference is forward, not back. Having com- pleted this the logically absolute science, it remains to develop the other divisions of the system, the science of nature, and the philosophy of Spirit. 49 6 The Philosophy of the Spirit The Idea regarded as logical is still in a measure subjective, shut into the realm of thought, howbeit that realm is the sphere of the divine Begriff. 1 Since the Idea is thus " eingeschlossen" it still possesses desire (Trieb) to sublate this its subjectivity and be- come explicitly what it is implicitly, "the beginning of another sphere and science." The Idea is therefore to be regarded in another guise as nature; not as a totality which has become (ein Gewordenseyn) , or a mere transition, but as an objectivity which the Idea freely permits itself to possess, while still remaining secure within itself. The point of view of freedom, resolve (Entschluss) carries our inquiry forward to the philosophy of Spirit. The Idea once more seems well-nigh personal. There is no determination above or beyond; else were this not the absolute science; else were philosophy not higher than religion. But having attained the highest logical form, it remains for other sciences to complete the logical content of this all-sufficient form; and by the same method made more concrete, that is, by beginning with the imme- diate, the particular facts. Hence the Logic proceeds as far as it properly can and as properly comes to a close. 1 08. Only in a very slight sense, then, is the end of the Logic the same as the beginning. The dialectic has steadily advanced to the higher stage of (syn- thetic) immediacy. Such immediacy refers back to the immediacies of the Phenomenology and the En- cyclopedia, since it has been found impossible to deny the original source of logical content; and, further, because the Logic seeks to include all the determinations of reality. But the synthetic type is by no means Ibid., p. 342. Supplementary Essay 497 identical, let us repeat, with the existential type. In the latter determination, there was an express interest in "mere," hence in external, immediacy. But the subtle mediations of the preliminary inquiries, and of the Logic, forbid a return to the immediate merely as immediate; for no such immediacy, devoid of mediating judgments, has been found to exist. Yet this by no means precludes the reference to immediacy as experienced. As matter of fact, the dialectic ends with a reference to immediacy as experienced, namely, to the world of nature, which is first to be regarded as external, contingent. Moreover, the transition from method to system showed that the profounder bearings of the immediacy of the beginning of the Logic had been ignored, that there really was no such one-sided immediate. There was, however, a deeper implication present, namely, a genuine First, the Idea. Inasmuch as what the Idea proves to be it must already have been poten- tially, there is a sense in which the beginning is the same as the end ; and it would be strange if there were not an identity of this sort. For there is one and the same system throughout. Unless the circuit were complete, the demonstration would not be absolute. One must recognise in the end the truth one meant in the beginning. Yet, having said thus much, there is nothing more to admit, and there is nothing dama- ging in this admission. Therefore the critic who insists that the end is identical with the beginning, without understanding in precisely what sense the term identity is used by Hegel, will miss the point. The notion of identity does not carry us far. As opposed to contradiction, identity is merely the characteristic of the simple 498 The Philosophy of the Spirit immediate. Contradiction, on the other hand, is the source of activity and life; only so far as anything has contradiction in itself is it vital, capable of going forth into productive movement. It is negativity, not identity, which reveals the truth. It has been established that first immediates, whether of thought or of feeling, whether postulates or not, are a such untrue. The true point of view is retrospective (medi- ate-immediacy), comprehending the whole. The iden- tity that survives criticism is implied, preserved, in the discovery that the negativity has not destroyed the reality of the first immediate but has positively as- similated it, in true form. From the third moment back to the mere first there is no return. The firstness which " reine Unmittelbarkeit " meant to be, the reality of the third stage is. There has been great gain, and no, genuine loss. The true immediate has at last been won. There is no other, no beyond, no externality that has not been overcome so far as the logical principle is concerned. But the erstwhile abstruse dialectic of Being and Nothing retains its profound meaning to the end. The demonstration is absolute. As thus proving itself to be complete, the Idea looks forward rather than back to that which is to furnish verification in detail. Out from the height now at- tained there proceed, as it were, various lines of refer- ence, each of which exemplifies the Idea according to the principles of the dialectic. One who has under- stood thus far can hardly misunderstand the remain- der of the system. VII 109. Doubtless in our eagerness to bring forward the neglected concept of immediacy, and to defend Supplementary Essay 499 Hegel, the exposition has distorted the dialectic. Imperfect at best, immediacy is put in an unfortunate position by separate treatment, especially since the great lesson of a specific study of it is that it cannot be understood alone. But if the importance of the concept be clear, the leading point has been gained. For it is plain, in the first place, that the critics of Hegel have for the most part failed to take the signifi- cance of immediacy into account. Hence their con- clusions need revision from first to last. In the second place, it is plain that we are in possession of the clue to the understanding of "pure thought," and other apparently ambiguous principles, elements and cate- gories of the system. It is clear, for example, (i) that the dialectic is dependent upon material supplied by experience; (2) the initial clues of the dialectic are discovered by analysis of presented experience; (3) the central clue, namely, the conception of absolute science, is found by means of this initial analysis; (4) the universal through which all particulars are mediated is an implied necessary condition of mediating experience; (5) the empirical particulars are always essential to the mediating universal, under w r hich they are subsumed, even when it is no longer a question of Existenz ; (6) particular facts, historical events, and particular persons are not deducible from the Logic, but must always be given in and by experience, by real history; (7) inductions from experience will always have their place, inasmuch as the particulars of future experience are not deducible from " pure thought " ; (8) empirical deductions based upon the immediate, the given, the contingent, the irrational, are of permanent importance for the dialectic; (9) the Idea is itself a development of inductions based upon the mediation 500 The Philosophy of the Spirit of experience, as given, and is not an existential but an interpretative principle, not all-producing but all- explaining; and (10) the Logic is only the "pure thought" of a system, is incomplete, hence must be understood in relation to other parts of the system. no. Heretofore, our investigation has been mainly morphological, and we have been concerned with the Logic and its presupposition. We may now branch out somewhat freely in general interpretation of the element of irrationality, and make use of data dis- covered outside of the Logic. The reasons for this will become plain as we proceed. in. One of the chief points gained by our sum- mary of the meanings of immediacy that bear upon the nature of the Idea is the additional light thrown upon the nature of pure thought. Guided by this insight, we have been enabled to refer again to the beginnings of the Logic and discover precisely what Hegel meant by his formal beginning. But that dis- covery was a further justification of our reference to the empirical analysis of the Phenomenology. Hence we learned by contrast what Hegel meant by the "pure thought" of immediacy, also that a certain ambiguity lurked in the use of the term in the Logic. (i) It is a decidedly empirical concept and was developed, in the first place, by analysis of given, conscious experience; and it is empirical throughout, particularly when Existenz is under consideration. But (2) the character of Hegel's discussion precluded him from developing all the bearings of immediacy, for in the Logic he could be concerned only with the pure-thought aspects of even this empirical concept. Plainly, one must take into explicit account what is meant by immediacy in these its purest aspects, in order Supplementary Essay 501 to be prepared to consider outside of the Logic the bearings of the concepts which do not specifically belong within it. Already in our study of contingency we have found concrete references to the contingent in the empirical sense of the term, hence we are in sight of the fuller significance of the element of irra- tionality. But having now pursued the pure-thought aspect of our concept to the end, and found its rela- tionship to the Idea, we are in a position to refer beyond the Logic to other parts of the system. Already in noting the transition from Existenz to Actuality we came in sight of the notion of system. 1 The significance of the transition was in fact the change from particularity to law, meaning. Our summary of the idea brought out the larger meanings of system, but to a large extent pointed forward. It is important to notice these larger implications for two reasons. In the first place, we clearly see what questions can be settled by reference to the Logic, as containing the pure thought of whatever principle may be in question. Hence it becomes clear that some of the objections made to the Logic do not apply. In the second place, we discover the references which must be traced beyond the Logic, in order fully to understand what Hegel means. It would be unfair, then, to estimate Hegel's treatment of the irrational solely by reference to the Logic. While the Logic in a sense stands by itself, Hegel's system is so closely wrought that only by reference to the system at large can one be sure one possesses his complete meaning. That this is a just observation has already been shown in part by our references to the Phenomenology and the Encyclopedia. It will become more apparent when we refer beyond i Sec. 78. 502 The Philosophy of the Spirit the Logic in search of other evidences that Hegel's doctrine involves an element of irrationality. 112. In our references beyond the Logic we are not, be it noted, passing beyond the Idea. The Idea regarded as essentially concrete includes the totality of things, refers to all things. The Idea -is not all things; for, as we have seen, the unessential belongs to mere Existenz, not to significant actuality, and we are soon to see that there are other discarded contin- gencies. Nothing can exist wholly devoid of the Idea, 1 yet some things can be relatively separate. The Idea is the profound truth of the whole, the unity or system, in contrast with the apparent actuality and truth of detached things. The more acquainted we are with the finite wealth the better prepared are we to grasp the Idea. The Logic has made plain the form under which immediacy is to be reflected as a concept, it has shown the types of the immediate, and the dialectic structure of its contingencies. Hence it has supplied us with the pure Idea of the irrational, with its specific universe of discourse. But in order to grasp the pure or formal element in detail, we must follow the references of the pure-thought element into the realm of the more explicitly concrete, there to learn how Hegel applies his dialectic. 113. Before we turn, however, to other parts of the system it is well to remind ourselves that Hegel has been attacked at this point too. For there are those who, while admitting the validity of the dialectic within its own field, nevertheless maintain that Hegel has undertaken to deduce the worlds of Nature and Spirit from the pure thought of the Logic. It is hardly Ency., Sec. 213. Supplementary Essay 503 necessary to examine this criticism, for we have dis- carded the interpretation of pure thought on which it rests. The " pure thought" of Hegel's Logic is never divorced from reality, but involves as much reference to it from the beginning as is compatible with the character of the dialectic at its various stages, cul- minating in Existenz, in the first place, and in the Idea, in the second. The fact that such thought is confessedly an abstraction implies the existence of the remainder of reality, not for the moment included, but reserved for consideration at the proper point. An immediate element persists to the end and is never reduced to mere thought. Hegel makes no attempt to dispense with sentient reality and substitute another source of content for pure thought. From pure thought, general considerations can alone be deduced. To obtain particulars, it is necessary to refer to experience. Hence Hegel is justified in completing by means of more concrete inquiries that which can be considered only in the most general way in the Logic. 1 Caird justifies the transition to Nature at the end of the Logic as an exemplification of the Hegelian method, namely, the step from an imperfect conception to its opposite : McTaggart has minutely examined the objections which have been made regarding the transition to Nature and Spirit, and ad- mirably justified Hegel's position (Hegel. Dial., p. 55 ff., in refuta- tion of Seth, and p. 1 14 ff.). Seth most unwarrantably thinks that Hegel has made a deliberate attempt at the close of the Logic to 11 deduce Nature from the logical Idea." It is the characteristic, he holds, "of an absolute philosophy that everything must be de- duced or constructed as a necessity of thought. Hegel's system, accordingly, is so framed as to elude the necessity of resting any- where on mere fact. . . . The concrete existence of the categories (in Nature and Spirit) is to be deduced from their essence or thought- nature. " Hegelianism and Personality, pp. 113, 115, 117. 504 The Philosophy of the Spirit In truth we cannot separate the pure unity of self-con- sciousness from its correlate, the world in space and time. . . . Either the whole conception of the nature of thought as it is expressed in the Hegelian logic must be rejected, or this step must be taken as one of the most luminous and natural illustrations of it. ... This greatest of all antagonisms cannot be understood except as based upon a still more complex and concrete unity, . . . the con- sciousness of God. 1 114. As we turn, then, to other parts of the system, we may also remind ourselves that it is these specific portions of Hegel's doctrine, notably the Philosophy of History and the History of Philosophy, which have given rise to the opinions regarding the whole system to which we referred at the outset. Observing that Hegel connects the course of history with the pro- gressive development of the categories, and noticing that there is a discrepancy between real history and the order of the Hegelian categories, the critics have inferred that Hegel attempted to deduce the actual order of events from the world of pure a priori thought. Now, in the light of our investigation we have seen that it is unfair to judge the Hegelian dialectic by particular parts of the system, instead of studying the much neglected Logic, where the distinction between Exis- tenz and Wirklichkeit is made plain. On the other hand, it is to these portions of the system that we turn for light on specific aspects of irrationality, for example, the nature of evil, on which the Logic throws light only in the most general sort of way. 115. We may illustrate, in the first place, by a brief reference to the Philosophy of Right, where abundant evidence is found of the recognition given 1 Evolution of Theology in the Greek Phil., ii., 246-248. "Supplementary Essay 505 to contingency, hence to immediacy as irrationality. We note, in passing, Hegel's complaint of his age that "Theories now set themselves in opposition to reality, and make as though they were absolutely true and necessary." 1 As opposed to this kind of pure- thought or a priori procedure, Hegel declares that " Philosophy, as the thought of the world, does not appear until reality has completed its formative process, and made itself ready." 2 The ethical inquiry proper begins with the conception of freedom, and becomes significant for our purposes with the statement that man possesses free-will, hence caprice becomes possible. 3 Caprice is not freedom as Hegel rationally regards it, but is the contradiction of the will. The content of the caprice is not formed by the nature of the will but by contingency. 4 It is the man who acts perversely who exhibits particularity. In the opposition of the will lies the possibility of evil. 5 Hence the particular will, when governed by caprice, random desire, and insight, is the basis of wrong. 6 The particular, inde- pendent will is indeed capricious and erratic choice. 7 As we should expect, then, wrong is "external," temporary, belongs to the domain of appearance, the unessential; whereas right pertains to the intrinsi- cally universal will, to the realm of actuality. " Wrong is the mere outer appearance of essence, giving itself forth as independent." 8 "It is of the nature of the finite and particular to make room for accidents. Collisions must occur, since we are at the stage of the finite." 9 Once more, then, it is the universal, the essential, 1 Pref., xx., note, Eng. trans. 2 Ibid., xxx. 3 Pp. 11,24. *P. 26. s P. 70. 6 P. 85. ' P. 86. P. 88. P. 89. 506 The Philosophy of the Spirit which is of primary concern, and Hegel holds that when a man becomes rational, free in the true sense of the word, man wills the right. For Hegel, therefore, there is no ultimate element of evil which cannot be overcome. Hence he assigns evil to a lower grade of reality. But this should not blind us to the fact of his full and frank admission of it, as existential, together with an explanation of its existence, and a reason for its being from the point of view of the Idea. The least that one can say of Hegel's doctrine is that it is a typical, defensible point of view with respect to evil. For Hegel,' indeed, the entire conception of right would be impossible without the conception of wrong. Or, more technically, the universal cannot be achieved without the particular. And in the moral world this means that the particular will may set itself in opposi- tion to the universal. 1 Self -consciousness, affirming to be vanity all otherwise valid marks of action, and itself consisting of pure inward- ness of will, may possibly convert the absolute principle into mere caprice. It may make a principle out of what is peculiar to particularity, placing it over the universal, and realising it in action. This is evil. That is, evil is due to the particular setting itself up against the universal. The desires and impulses in their mere naturalness are contingent and might lead to either good or evil. But when the will sets itself against universality these tendencies eventuate in evil. Thus, according to Hegel, man is evil both by nature, or of himself, and through reflection within himself. Evil in a certain sense is a necessity. But just this necessity becomes the possibility of good- 1 P. 133- Supplementary Essay 507 ness. There is a respect in which evil pertains even to the Idea, for it is the nature of the Idea to find distinctions within itself and establish itself as negative. If the Idea remained merely good it would be forever one-sided, abstract. But having admitted that evil bears reference to the Idea, Hegel very care- fully guards himself from attributing too great a de- gree of reality to evil. After all, evil springs from the will of man. " It is of the nature of evil that man may will it, although he is not forced by necessity to do so. "* Evil is that which is to be superseded. In short, Hegel would have its possibility and exist- ence fully recognised, but he insists that "we must not remain at this standpoint, or cling to the par- ticular as though it in contrast with the universal were essential." 2 Thus having acknowledged a par- ticular case of immediacy, Hegel is as usual concerned to press forward to the Idea. In institutions, states, and laws, as they exist in the world, Hegel once more recognises the contingent element. " Since," he says "to constitute a thing is to give it outer reality, there may creep into the process a contingency due to self-will and other ele- ments of particularity." 3 "Reason itself recognises that contingency, contradiction, and appearance have their sphere or right, limited though it is, and is not at pains to rectify these contradictions." 4 "This contingency is itself necessary. If one were to argue from the presence of contingency that a code of laws was imperfect, he would overlook the fact that perfec- tion of such a kind is not to be attained. Law must, hence, be taken as it stands." In the world which each of us knows there is abundant imperfection. 1 P. 137. 2 P. 134. 3 P. 209. * P. 211. 508 The Philosophy of the Spirit "Ever not quite" is the result when we compare the world of things as they are with the world of the Idea. At best, our legislation endlessly approaches perfec- tion. 1 The essential, or ideal, state is indeed the march of God in the world. 2 When it is a question of the ideal, " we must not have in our mind any particular state, or particular institution, but must rather con- template the Idea, this actual God, by itself." But in the state as found there is caprice, it is " not a work of art. It is in the world, in the sphere of caprice, accident, and error." 3 It is in spite of such defects that the philosopher of the Idea is enabled to discover a perfect type towards which existent states may be said to be tending. The state as found is pre-emi- nently individual, particular. " Particularity belongs to history." Is is only when the Spirit, transcending the particularity of existent states, unites them, judges them, that the- Idea is seen. If, then, all history is particular, and it is "only Spirit which presents itself as the universal and effi- cient leaven of world-history," 4 it is clear that there is need of distinction from first to last between existent states and the interpretation of such states in terms of an ideal not yet achieved. These explicit statements by Hegel give a perfectly definite basis of discrimination of everything historical, and one wonders how Hegel's critics missed points so clear and illuminating. 1 1 6. The same principles are made clear in Hegel's History of Philosophy. Both in his inaugural address and in the lectures which follow, Hegel gives abundant recognition to the usual external points of view, but pleads for an inner principle of interpretation. Real philosophers have lived and thought, and histories i See p. 213 #. 2 P. 247. 3 p. 247 . 4 p. 24 8. Supplementary Essay 509 have been written narrating the facts connected with them. But thought has not yet arrived at full con- sciousness. Hence there is need of another sort of inquiry. Accordingly, Hegel begins with an exposi- tion of the historical point of view the principle of evolution whereby we have acquired what we now think. He treats the evolution of philosophy as the history of Thought finding itself; Thought only exists and is actual in thus rinding itself. By "Thought" Hegel of course means that which is essential, the rationally wrought-out elements of eternal truth. The aim of philosophy is to know this one truth as the immediate source from which all else proceeds. The Idea and it alone is truth. 1 Here by "immediate" Hegel means the necessary potentiality. It is essen- tially in the nature of the Idea to develop, and only through development to arrive at truth. Both the capacity, power, Being-in-itself, and the Being-for- itself, actuality, are needed. Change inevitably occurs in the process of development, yet the Idea remains essentially one and the same. In itself the Idea is concrete, for it is the union of the different determi- nations. The sequence of systems of philosophy in history is similar to the sequence in the logical deter- mination of the Begriff. To divest the fundamental conceptions of their outward forms is to discover the various stages in the logical determinations. Hence from Hegel's point of view every philosophy has been and still is essentially necessary, that is, fundamental principles are retained, the most recent philosophy being the result of all preceding. Hence no philosophy has ever been refuted. Whatever errors Hegel may have fallen into, in i Werke, zte. Aufl., xiii., 32; Eng. trans., i., 5, 19. 5 10 The Philosophy of the Spirit his zeal to trace the development of the Idea, as if history had really followed the dialectic stages of his own system, it is plain that he is concerned with the same distinctions which we have so often found reason to emphasise. That is, Hegel is concerned with the essentials which, taken in their logical order, constitute eternal truth. Logical analysis is not temporal analysis. On the other hand, the logic of history must find its data in the world of time. " Phi- losophy begins where the universal is comprehended as the all-bracing existence, or where the existence is laid hold of in a universal form, and where thinking about it commences. Where, then, has this occurred? . . . That is a question of history." 1 The central principle is this conceptual interpretation of the real history of real events and doctrines, a conception which has borne remarkable fruit. 2 117. Again, in the Philosophy of History Hegel begins with the contingently presented but is once more primarily interested in the Idea, which does not "create" but explains history. Granted the proper clue, he firmly believes that the history of the world presents us with a rational process, namely, reason is the essence and truth. He admits notice this admission that it is only an inference from the history of the world that its development has been a rational process. Hence he holds that the interpretation of history must proceed historically, empirically; must take history as it stands, and faithfully study all that is historical. He by no means denies the darker facts of life, but seeks their place in the whole, that he may set forth the ideal meaning of events, exhibit the 1 Ibid., Eng. trans., i., 94. ? Cf. Windelband, Gesch, der Phil. Supplementary Essay 511 coherent rationality that obtains, despite the evil and the strife. The history of the world is the record of the progress made in the consciousness of freedom. The means which freedom uses are external and phenomenal. The passion of man, the unreason, the vice and ruin, the taint of corruption all this is seen in a different light from the point of view of the Idea. Physical nature plays its part in this process. But the corrup- tion and vice are not the work of nature alone but also of the human will. Through all this process the Spirit is working out the knowledge of what it is. The Spirit is so far dependent on man that it needs his co-opera- tion in the widest sense of the word. Yea, the power which puts events in motion, and gives them deter- minate existence, is the need, instinct, inclination, passion, of men. Nothing great has been accomplished in the world without passion. 1 Hegel is not then concerned with the mere individual. In the individual there is much that is disappointing. The forms which states assume may be of a limited order, and consequently belong to the domain of nature, hence subject to the sway of chance. Hegel leaves plenty of room for the element of chance, caprice, passion. 2 The history of man does not begin with a conscious aim of any kind. Man has a real capacity for change. But what Hegel is concerned with, once more, is the essential considerations which exhibit the constructive development of the Idea. He gives abundant evidence of dependence upon historical data, and shows that his judgment is more or less conditioned by the facts at his disposal. 3 His 1 Einleitung, p. 21 ff.\ Eng. trans., p. 17 ff. 2 See, for example, Einleitung, p. 45. 3 McTaggart mentions other contingent aspects of the Philosophy of History in his Heg. Dial., pp. 237, 245. 512 The Philosophy of the Spirit own predilections are also in evidence and certain of his conclusions are decidedly dogmatic in tone. But taken as a whole his book is an interpretation of pre- cisely the history which we all know, with precisely the general distinction we make between the immediacy of fact and the meaning of fact. 1 1 8. Yet, again, in the Philosophy of Religion, the same principles are made clear. Hegel points out that in the act of knowledge man starts with the organisation and order of nature as something given; the content of his science is a material outside of him. Yet the natural world regarded as merely exist- ing is contingent, is only appearance; it is when we reflect, that nature is for us Idea. Hence to note the mere existence of nature is one thing; to show the necessity and meaning of nature is quite another. 1 The development of thought in the Logic is the devel- opment of the universal element. "The development of God in Himself is consequently the same logical necessity as that of the universe." 2 But there are other ways of regarding the world. To understand the identity of reason in God and in the world is to take up a special point of view. 119. But it is the Naturphilosophie which the critic is most likely to have in mind when he insists that Hegel has attempted to deduce the whole content of thought from abstract concepts. Space will not permit a detailed study of contingency in nature as interpreted by Hegel, but a few references to the literature of the subject are essential. Hegel does not in the Logic explicitly extend the study of contingency thus far. But to see how the Logic is applied is the better to understand the dialectic element of irrationality. i Eng., trans., i., in, 112. a Ibid., p. 114. Supplementary Essay 513 The subject of contingency in nature has been very little dwelt upon by Hegel's commentators. Wallace devotes ten instructive pages to the subject of the a-logical in nature, " the impotence of nature "- afterwards termed "the irrational will" by Schopen- hauer and other matters which tend to put the Natur philosophic in the right light. 1 In the smaller Logic Hegel says, " Nature is weak and fails to exhibit the logical forms in their purity." 2 Yet he does not for this reason reject knowledge of nature. " Physics also teaches us to see the universal or essence in nature : and the only difference between it and the Philosophy of Nature is that the latter brings before our mind the adequate forms of the Notion in the physical world." It is therefore a question of degrees of truth and reality. The following explicit sentence from the Naturphil- osophie might well be pondered by the critics of Hegel : " Not only must philosophy be in harmony with experience, but empirical natural science is the pre- supposition and condition of the rise and formation of the philosophical science of nature." 3 " Thought has in nature gone out of itself into its ' other' its extreme opposite irrationality; and that is why nature is like a wild Bacchantic god." 4 Ritchie admirably explains Hegel's preference for the emanation theory. 5 He traces the element of contingency and "weakness" in nature, as interpreted by Hegel, to a survival of the Platonic and Aristotelian theory of matter. 6 Possibly there is truth in Ritchie's explanation. i See his Prolegomena, ad ed., pp. 78-87. * Sec. 24 (2). * Quoted by Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel, p. 53. * \atiirphil., p. 24; Ritchie, p. 57. 5 Ibid., p. 47 ft* P. 57- 514 The Philosophy of the Spirit There are points of resemblance between Plato's critique of immediacy and Hegel's, and no doubt Hegel in part derived his dialectic from Plato. But both in regard to the Idea and with respect to the sensible world there are many points of divergence. When one compares the mythical interpretation of nature in the Timaeus with the systematic doctrine of the Natur philosophic, the difference becomes strongly marked. 1 For Aristotle there is an irrationality in the natural world which gives him much perplexity and intensifies his dualism (see Caird's discussion of the subject). 2 But this is not the irrationality of Hegel's system. For Hegel, there is a much closer relationship between the rational and the irrational than for Plato. We have found that in a sense everything immediate is irrational for Hegel, yet that immediacy gives place to a higher determination which resolves antitheses and solves problems which prove too difficult for Plato and Aristotle. The resemblance between Hegel and Aristotle is perhaps closest where logical immediacy is in question. 3 The irrational is immediate for both Hegel and Aristotle. For Aristotle, as for Hegel, there is contingency in the immediate. Both distin- guish the immediate in general, the givenness of matter, 1 In this connection one might note Hegel's explicit reference to Plato in Book III of the Logic. The subject there under dis- cussion is anthropology, with references to "the dark region of the terrestrial" and other influences. " Zu dieser unvernunftigen Seite gehort ferner das Verhdltniss des Vorstellens und der hohern geistigen Thatigkeit, insofern sie im einzelnen Subjects dem Spiele ganz zufdlliger korperlicher Beschaffenheit, dusserliche Einflusse und einzelner Umstdnde unterworfen ist. " Werke, v., 263. 2 Evolution of Theol. in the Greek Phil., chs. xiii. and xiv. 3 See Anal. Post., i, 3, 72b, 18, where Aristotle considers propo- sitions which are immediately certain. Supplementary Essay 515 from the accidents, enormities, etc., of nature. There are other distinctions made by Aristotle which might serve Hegel equally well. For example, Aristotle attributes the incidental results to the immediacy of matter, namely, the results which do not follow directly from the form. In this sense "matter" is the cause of the imperfect and the accidental in nature. But when it is a question of the interpretation of matter, Aristotle attributes an unruliness to matter with respect to the forms, which matter in part defeats, in such wise as to show that for him matter was more irrational than for Hegel. Matter for Hegel is not after all the Platonic- Aristotelian " matter, " discovered as persistently alien, if not eternal. Nor is it the source of evil as in the Neo- Platonic system. It is not a Ding an sick. It is not due to an inexplicable " fall " from the primal Being. According to Hegel God creates nature and all that it contains. Hence nature has from first to last the most explicit connection with the Idea. It is once more a question of the dialectic modes of regarding nature, first as direct externality abounding in irrelevant contingencies, and then in the light of its laws and meanings. The following from Rosenkranz in explanation of Hegel's doctrine throws light on the whole question : Nature is in itself rational, but it forms, by its externality in space and time, the opposition of the logical Idea, for contingency comes into existence with matter. With contingency, since it is inseparable from existence in space and time, comes into existence all the possibility of irrationality. Nature realises the conception of the Idea, but it remains contingent in the realisation itself. . . . Nature, for example, brings forth in the spring thousands of the most gorgeous blossoms, which ought to 5i 6 The Philosophy of the Spirit ripen into fruit, but a frost blights them. This is at bottom an irrational occurrence, but is on account of the externality of existence entirely possible. . . . Hegel calls it the impotence of Nature to hold firm the Idea. . . . The realisation of the Idea in the individual is exposed to chance. . . . Nature is, to be sure, existence rational in itself, but existing in unconsciousness. The mind knows what is rational, but makes use of Nature as a subordinate instrument. Freedom is its own absolute end in thinking and willing. In Nature there exists in- stinct but not will." 1 VIII 120. It is plainly necessary to distinguish between contingency in general, as pertaining to the whole of nature in immediate form, and contingency in the sense of capricious superfluity. That is, contingency is (i) a logical category, intimately related to im- mediacy in so far as it is a question of Existenz, and (2) is representative of the inability of Nature to realise the Idea. Contingency in the second sense of the term is not our primary interest in this thesis, except that the recognition given to it by Hegel is significant as indicating his fidelity to fact as opposed to Actuality. But contingency in the logical sense of the term very directly concerns us, inasmuch as all immediacy (to the point where Actuality is attained) is contingent. The immediate as such claims to be external and independent, and contingency consists in explanation from the outside. But when Actuality is attained, the given world is explained from within; hence, as McTaggart points out, the contingency is eliminated 1 Introd. to Hegel's Encyclopedia, Von Kirchmann's ed., trans, in Journal of Spec, Phil, v., 243. Supplementary Essay 517 but the immediacy is retained. 1 The immediate element could not be dispensed with without depriv- ing the Logic of all content. Hence the existence of the world is not denied when the actual is distinguished from the contingent. All sensuous immediacy is as such contingent, and ever will remain so; all such immediacy is given, not deduced. But granted the existence of such immediacy, dialectically regarded as what it really is, with the frank admission of its irrationality, immediacy may forthwith be treated from the point of view of its ultimate significance. 121. We may remark in passing that if Nature were the product of pure thought, we should not expect it to exhibit the superfluous contingency mentioned above. McTaggart points out that if Hegel really thought he was deducing Nature from pure thought he would hardly have " slipped by mistake into the assertion that thought, while producing the whole universe, was met in it by an alien element." 2 Were immediacy ''mere" immediacy, a brute element which could not be mediated, it would indeed be alien and irrational. There are insignificant respects in which immediacy does remain merely contingent, hence Existenz contains more data than Actuality. But we have seen that (i) the contingent world is not "matter" in the Platonic sense, but is created by Spirit; (2) it is not a Ding an sick, but exists in our real experience, hence is not alien in an utterly external sense ; and (3) its existence is essential to the very being of the dialectic, of the Idea, alike in the Logic and in the special Hegelian disci- plines. In short, the admission of the existence of an irrational element is not fatal to the dialectic. 122. We may also note that the irrationality of See Hegel. Dial., p. 65 ff. * Heg. Dial., p. 67. 518 The Philosophy of the Spirit Nature in the Hegelian system is to be distinguished from the caprice which is due to a wandering away of the will, a fortuitous " sinking into difference," in- asmuch as for Hegel Nature bears a decidedly rational relation to the teleology of the Idea: Nature is a sub- ordinate domain of manifestation, and its super- fluities and caprices are still more subordinate. As Nature mounts towards Spirit, it offers the rich fruits of its long activities, and reason selects what is germane to the Idea. In thus facing Nature, reason meets with that which for the moment is entirely external, almost alien. In that sense, Nature is distinctively the un- mediate. But reason possesses the true clue to all that it finds. Having acknowledged the gifts thus bountifully presented, reason proceeds with the neces- sary discriminations. Again, there is a radical difference between the relatively unimportant alienation of the temporarily un-rational, in the Hegelian doctrine, and the uncon- querable irrationality of many mysticisms. The immediate for Hegel is not a mystery. It is not unana- lysable. Nor is it due to a mystic union that must simply be stated as brute fact. However dark and obscure the first appearance, the obscure element proves to be the least consequential for Hegel; whereas it is fundamental for mysticism. 123. The stress put upon contingency and irration- ality obviously depends, as we have intimated, upon one's interests, upon the chosen or logical stopping- place. In a general way we have noted that contin- gency is formally representable as simple possibility; or, again, every item that is regarded by itself, merely as immediate. If one cared merely for facts, apart from their interpretation, if mere relativity or an Supplementary Essay 519 infinite regress sufficed, one would stop with Existenz. But one need not linger at the stage of the merely contingent. It is plainly one thing to recognise the irrational in the domain, for example, of history, and another logically to classify it, preparatory to passing on to its idealistic interpretation. " L'irrationel," says Noel, " est dans le compose V element essentiellement negatif; il doit de plus en plus se subordonner a VIdee, jusqu'a ce que celk-ci s'en affranchisse en Vabsorbant . . la pensee pure, loin d'exclure le monde materiel, le contient et le presuppose; que c'est en pensant la nature . . . que la pensee supreme se pense elle-meme." 1 Noel discusses in admirable fashion the temporary realism of Hegel, and shows how convenient yet how inadequate this point of view is. He points out that the opposition of Nature and Idea does not remain a " pure donnee" " La nature est en un sense la negation de VIdee, mais une negation dans VIdee et posee par VIdee, et VIdee, comme pensee absolue, reste consciente de cette relativite" 2 Noel's discussion, while recognising the dialectic element for which we have been pleading, also shows how far up into the realm of the Idea the irrational is carried, in such wise that the Idea itself is modified by the element which it finally assimilates. Noel regards 1 'la relativite universelle" as the central principle of the entire dialectic. In his discussion of the transition of the Idea into Nature, he points out that the concept of the absolute Idea as such is intrinsically incomplete. 3 " Ce concept a par suite pour complement necessaire celui de la nature, laquelk est tout d'abord particularisa- tion absolue, dispersion indefinie, eocleriorite de toute . La Logique de Hegel, p. 121. 2 Ibid., p. 124. 3 P. 126 ff. 520 The Philosophy of the Spirit chose a toute chose. Ainsi la chame diale clique est renoute. La nature continue La Logique. La contin- gence du sensible el son illogisme fondamental cessenl d'etre un scandal pour noire intelligence. . . Cette sphere d'ou tout d'abord la raison semblait absente, qui se posait devant elle comme sa negation, la raison elle-meme nous niontre la necessite." 1 While finding a certain incom- pleteness, then, in the dialectic of the contingently immediate, so far as the Logic is concerned, Noel finds the solution of this crucial problem of relativity in the Hegelian system as a whole. The immediacy which we have been pleading for throughout is shown to be germane to the system, but not fatal to its integrity. In other words, relativity pertains essentially to Existenz (so we have shown), and there is a sense in which relativity pertains to the entire dialectic; for, as we have also shown, immediacy persists to the last. But the incompleteness of the immediate as such proves advantageous to the Idea which, in turn, is forever dependent on the data which it transforms and which transform it. 124. Pure thought is in a sense as little free as immediacy itself. The same defect that runs through immediacy in a measure infects mediation also. Or, rather, it is precisely this ultimate givenness for which immediacy as a concept in general stands, which con- stitutes the hard and fast character of the dialectic process. There is a stern necessity in the world. This necessity proves to be freedom, when we pass to the third book of the Logic. But it is first important to recognise it for all that it immediately is. The character of the world is once for all given. Mediating thought is not responsible for that character. It is no ' P. 127. Supplementary Essay doubt disappointing for thought to acknowledge this, for it would fain be independent and free. Thought is profoundly dependent. It must learn this lesson once for all. It must acknowledge that it, too, is other than it has appeared, that thought also has its immediacy and its Wirklichkeit. But this fact once acknowledged, the situation in which thought finds itself is by no means unfortunate but precisely what might be expected. Thought, as well as the sensuous immediate, must deny itself to find itself. Negation is the profounder lesson of the Logic. Hence if thought will but bow in acquiescence and acknowledge what is given to it, it will find itself in a position to learn the nature and place of even the irrational. But no such discovery is lightly made. Thought must wrestle with the appearances of things and with its own claims, before it shall discover the true Idea. 125. One cannot agree with Seth that the admission of an element of contingency on Hegel's part is very serious, and amounts to a confession that rational philosophy has to that extent failed. 1 We have seen that the taint of contingency runs throughout im- mediacy and even infects thought itself; and that "the impotence of Nature" is only a greater degree of the weakness of all aspects of experience or thought in its first form. " To know that a thing exists, is to know it as immediate and contingent," says Mc- Taggart . 2 Only on the supposition that * 'pure thought ' ' endeavoured to create the world a priori would there be any reason to allege that rational philosophy has failed. Our entire discussion has shown the impos- sibility of the alleged "pure-thought" undertaking. 1 Hegelianism and Personality, 2d ed., p. 146. - Heg. Dial., p. 221. 522 The Philosophy of the Spirit Fundamentally at fault in his interpretation of Hegel, Seth concludes that the dialectic has failed because it is compelled to acknowledge the contingency of things. To find the right clue in regard to the dialectic is to form a different set of expectations in regard to rational philosophy, hence to see that Hegel has suc- ceeded. That reason should come into rude contact with the contingent, that it should be dependent on the given, is precisely what we should expect. No rational philosophy can expect to succeed unless it start with fact, then consider the implication of facts and their meaning, all the time taking the clue from further study of the given. And it may be added that no great philosopher ever undertook to start with "pure thought" alone and "suppress all reference to experience." 126. For every philosopher there is a brute element which he must set down as elementary in the ultimate sense of the word, that is, as "gegeben," "original." Even for Heraclitus, who makes a bold attempt to take mere flux in earnest, there is a brute " necessity of stopping," an immutable law of change. In the tychistic hypothesis of Pierce and James, there is necessarily an assumption that forces and "habit- forming tendencies" pre-existed, in order for a begin- ning to be conceivable. Here we have the brute element reduced to the minimum, but the pragmatists are unable to reduce their assumption to the point where they can first hurl the stone at the rationalists. No one can in fact first cast the stone. The ultimate given may be a whole or a collection, a Being, or a chaos of atoms ; but whatever it is, for the philosopher in question it is beyond appeal. Professor James, who tries to assume least, has the most difficulty in making Supplementary Essay 523 coherent headway. Now, in a situation which every one must make the best of, it w r ould seem rational to start with a universal which affords an adequate ground of explanation of experience and knowledge. A tychistic hypothesis puts an enormous strain upon belief by postulating an artificial principle which the facts do not demand. In the end, no explanation is given, for the good reason that the attempt is made to explain order by chaos, the higher by the lower. But for Hegel the ultimate immediate is taken in good earnest, that is, the start, instead of being made with a relatively unimportant or artificial immediacy, is made in and with given consciousness, with its implied relation to an object and its implicit universal of self- consciousness in its highest form. Hence there is no need of returning every little while to inflate the immediate with borrowed wind. For Hegel, the posses- sion of an immediate element, tinged with contingency and in a sense irrational, is no source of embarrass- ment, but a necessary condition of the entire rational process. For there is no mere brute element left over except the superfluous contingencies which prove to be " unwesentlich" The same Being that is the ground of the mediation is the basis of the im- mediacy, hence of all appearances, even the super- fluously contingent. The irrationality that is thrown out of account as unessential gives no basis for scepti- cism concerning the rational. The irrational can thus be taken in entire seriousness. 127. There are not two realities, two meanings to the world, the one rational, and the other irrational. The Idea, inasmuch as it is rational, absolute, com- prehends the irrational. There is no ultimate oppo- sition. The Idea contains, is the rationale of the 524 The Philosophy of the Spirit irrational; it is the justification of its own included element of irrationality. There is nothing that is not in some sense the Idea. There is nothing without God; for God is the Creator, the ultimate reality: there is no other, no rival reality. 128. For us finite creatures it might seem like a fatal admission that the world is tainted with irrational- ity. But once more there is no adequate finite point of view. When engaged in the dialectic process, we are inclined to judge by our mere finitude. But for each and all there is the one great lesson, if we will but learn it the lesson of negativity. To learn that lesson, even situated as we are, not yet in possession of absolute knowledge, is already to possess the principle which involves adequate rationalisation. To be com- pelled to start with, postulate, the ultimate Being of the world, is no hardship, when we learn what the character of that Being is. 129. Once more, then, it is a question of fact, then of logic. Things are put before us in such wise that they seem to be independent. We may regard them in the mere contingency of their disparateness, if we choose. We may dwell on the superfluous contin- gency of nature, in her wealth of over-production, her caprices, accidents, and the like. To remain at the stage of immediacy would be necessarily to confess that nature is irrational in the severest sense of the term. There is no rationality, ultimately speaking, in mere finitude. Hegel is fond of calling attention to the limitations and "untruth" of the finite. The merely detached is forever irrational. Rational phi- losophy would be impossible if thought could not transcend mere pluralism. But there is no "mere" detachedness in the actual world of the Idea; there Supplementary Essay 525 are no such ultimate facts as the radical empiricist creates by speculative abstraction. The real world is a world of manifold richness of presentations, forever linked within and without to the experience by which it is known, and to the ultimate Ground which makes it possible. 130. The acknowledgment of immediacy is in general no more, then, than the admission of a char- acteristic of this our rational universe. The disparate- ness is essential to the connectedness; contingency is a first mode of statement of necessity. Unless we first acknowledge the partedness we shall be unable to understand the organic unity. What is demanded of us is that we shall be true to the character of the world when regarded from its highest point of view, that is, as a logical, eternal whole, not merely in its temporal aspect; for true knowledge of things is a system. If there be no element that resists systematisation, there is no reason to complain that all elements as given are, as independent, irrational. That the Idea becomes known only through a progress from the irrational to the rational is no reason for disparaging the Idea, howbeit the dependence of the Idea is thereby shown. It is plainly one of the purposes of the dialectic to make just this inter-dependence clear. It is no objec- tion to point out that the world is what it is, provided one is also able to indicate that the Idea is what it is the triumphant principle of universal reason. 131. That it is possible to meet the objections to which we have repeatedly referred, yet fail to accept Hegel's treatment of irrationality as ultimately con- clusive, is clear from the case of McTaggart. Having defended Hegel against the charges of Trendelenburg, Hartmann, Seth, and others, McTaggart pauses when it 526 The Philosophy of the Spirit is a question of the imperfection of the world, and is at first rather strongly inclined to accept the relative, existential judgments of the plain man, rather than the optimism of Hegel. 1 McTaggart introduces an exceedingly profitable study of the alternative ways of regarding irrationality, and finds himself unable either to adopt Hegel's solution in regard to the exis- tence of imperfection or to reject it, inasmuch as all idealisms are in an equally bad plight; and there may be, after all, a higher synthesis of the contra- dictions. One is not convinced by McTaggart 's argu- ment because, in the first place, he fails to examine the contrast which we have found so important, between Existenz and Wirklichkeit; and, second, because he does not turn to those parts of the Hegelian system, notably the Philosophy of Right, in which, as we have seen, light is thrown on Hegel's solution. 2 But the whole discussion, turning as it does on the nature of time, lies for the most part beyond the province of the present discussion. The point to note for our purposes is the recognition given by this critic to the existence of an element of irrationality in the dialectic, together with the issues raised, the point of view with regard to Hegel, as con- trasted with the popular opinions quoted at the beginning of our discussion. Our first plea is for such recognition. The data once admitted, it is then a question of interpretation. One does not immediately know that a thing or event is imperfect or evil; to denominate it such is to interpret it. It is first a question, then, of the existence of the items adjudged evil. It remains to be determined whether the items in question are properly denominated evil. But even 1 Hegel. Dial., ch. v. 2 See above, Sec. 115. Supplementary Essay 527 granted that they are rightly classified as evil from a contingent point of view there remains the question of further interpretation in terms of higher categories. We have seen that Hegel admits the existential items, that he gives them their appropriate dialectic place, and that in his ethical theory he has a principle of ultimate interpretation. That is sufficient for our purposes. To defend Hegel's interpretation of imper- fection and evil is not within the province of our dis- cussion. Suffice it that in the evidence adduced from the Philosophy of Right the defence would not be so difficult as it seems to those who lack the clues which our investigation supplies. 132. Dissatisfied with the results of the dialectic, McTaggart undertakes to make an independent develop- ment of Hegelian categories. He questions, in the first place, whether philosophy be the highest stage of reality, and concludes that it is not. Since philosophy is at best intellectual, we must still learn from experi- ence; knowledge does not exhaust the nature of Spirit; Spirit is also feeling and will. The result for McTag- gart is that rational knowledge proves secondary to a mystical element, with a hint concerning which his book ends. Thus we find a supposed Hegelian, whose profound analysis of the dialectic has been of service to us throughout, deserting Hegel for mystical immediacy. To accept this conclusion would be to lend other meanings to the element of irrationality, to carry forward the category of Existenz far beyond its place in the dialectic. Here one cannot follow, for Hegel's analysis has shown that, whatever mystic immediacy may have to teach, it belongs as such below Wirklich- keit, and hence is to be interpreted as Hegel has already 528 The Philosophy of the Spirit suggested in his critique of intuitionism in the Ency- clopedia. 1 Philosophy necessarily has the last word, be the existential data as lofty as you please. Hence we must insist on the completion of the system beyond the Logic as the appropriate place for the consideration of the items for which McTaggart pleads. Reality is indeed more than thought, as we have found Hegel constantly acknowledging. But it is thought that mediates, and however many times one may revert to brute immediacy the final appeal is to the Idea. 133. Another critic of Hegel maintains that for Hegel reality is ' 'simply synonymous with immediacy." 2 "In immediate experience," Baillie maintains, "we are sharing in, are indeed fused with, the very being of the world. To be 'real' is to be absorbed in our direct living experience. We do not merely 'touch' reality there, we are real in that way, and reality is what it is in that aspect of experience." 3 Concerning this interpretation of Hegel we remark, in the first place, that it is interesting to contrast it with the con- ventional notion that for Hegel reality is Thought, for we see how widely interpreters differ. But even Baillie finds it difficult to maintain so one-sided an interpretation; for he so far modifies the statements quoted above as to identify immediacy with media- tion, hence to define Hegel's "reality" as "in essence a process of knowledge." 4 Baillie thereupon proceeds to assail Hegel, since "such an identification is abso- lutely groundless." Our critic holds that knowledge properly begins with "fragments," which "must come separately and in isolation." 5 Thus he misses the 1 See above, Sec. 30. 2 Baillie, The Origin and Significance of Hegel's Logic, p. 337. *Ibid., p. 338. *P. 340. s P. 341. Supplementary Essay 529 significance of the Logic, which indeed insists upon the fragmentary character of our knowledge, as immediate, but which by no means identifies immediacy with mediation. Baillie then goes on to say: This identification of knowledge and Reality was, we seem forced to maintain, a fundamental claim of Hegel's system, and this we must unhesitatingly regard as the Ttp&TOV i/>vSo$ of his philosophy. It is the root of much that ... is ambiguous in the system. The supposition that experience proceeds in its actual life by a method deliberately adopted for purposes of Science, makes it impossible for us to know in actual experience (as traced in the Phenomenology) we are dealing with Science; or again, whether in what is admittedly a pure science (the Logic) we are dealing with reality. . . . And the un- certainty is due solely to the gratuitious assumption that because knowledge deals with the immediate, therefore it is reality. * And so on through many pages, the gist of which is always Hegel's alleged " identification of mere imme- diacy for knowledge with Reality." 2 It seems incredible that a writer who shows so much insight into certain portions of the Phenomenology should so miss the point when he endeavors to criti- cise the Logic. From the outset, we noted how little knowledge Hegel attributes to immediacy, and at no point have we found him identifying knowledge and immediacy, or concluding that immediacy is reality. Not even in the case of the immediacy of the Idea is immediacy either the same as reality or identifiable with knowledge. Immediacy has proved to be a characteristic of all experience, and an element of all knowledge, hence an aspect of reality. But if it could i Pp. 342,343. 2 P. 347 . 34 53 The Philosophy of the Spirit be identified with knowledge or reality, the significance of the distinctions which Hegel draws from first to last between the given and its meaning, the irrational and the rational, would be lost. It would be more nearly correct to say that for Hegel knowledge and reality are synonymous with mediation. But it is not a question of synonyms. To be "real" is not to be " absorbed" either into immediacy or into mediation; but both to be and to be known by means of relations by virtue of which the differences between immediacy and mediation are preserved. In its mere immediacy the Idea is untried, inexperienced; it must go forth and be roughly handled, meet controversy, be brought to self-consciousness. The insight must be doubted. To meet the doubts, then to find the same essence both in things and in thoughts, is very far from identifying reality with knowledge. To be "in essence a process of knowledge," reality must be yet more fundamentally a process of Being. It is the dynamic relation of Being that gives thought the items of its knowledge. Hegel nowhere says or implies that experience follows a method which suits the needs of science, as if science imposed itself upon experience; he shows that experience when under- stood as an actuality exhibits the same principles which science develops in its processes of mediation. Nor does Hegel hold that because "knowledge deals with the immediate, therefore it is reality." We have found that the immediate is as such the "unwon," the irrational. To win it even in its higher form is not to possess reality, for only through the negativity of that moment may its reality be seen. It is the immediate- mediate that is reality. Baillie's objections therefore fall to the ground, Supplementary Essay 531 for he has failed to grasp either the Phenomenology or the Logic. If his conclusions were sound it would be dif- ficult to establish our thesis, for he charges Hegel with an inextricable blending of immediacy, reality, and science. Hegel is explicitly clear at precisely the point where he is said by Baillie to be hopelessly at fault. The understanding of the transition from Existenz to Wirklichkeit enables us to distinguish between empiri- cal reality and science. In fact, the distinction is implied in the entire concept of immediacy. Reality in the first sense of the word is sentient, immediate; and this reality is present to the end. But reality as reflected upon is distinguished from its external appearance and exhibited in the light of a meaning which also includes mediation as essentially a part of it. What reality is, finally, both immediacy and mediation must show; for reality is both describable and appreciable. There is no attempt to reduce all reality to knowledge. That would mean the denial of the content which gave the dialectic its progressive wealth. The main point is that mediacy and immedi- acy are found together, at the outset, and that they are kept together to the end. Hence the dialectic is a successful development of the interest which gave rise to it, namely, to make explicit the rich implicitness of that which was at the outset merely given. To understand Hegel's initial analysis in the Phenomenology is to find the enlightening clue which guides the student of the dialectic to the end. To understand the transi- tion from Existenz to Wirklichkeit is to be able to explain the difficulties which the critics have met who make mere generalisations. We find it impossible, then, to modify our results in the light of Baillie 's criticisms. 53 2 The Philosophy of the Spirit IX 134. Our main purpose as announced at the outset has been accomplished, and our thesis has been estab- lished, if we have shown the structural importance of immediacy throughout the dialectic, and hence indicated a central clue to the system as a whole. For, we have shown that to take account of the nature and scope of immediacy means, (i) to consider how Hegel comes by the fundamental interests of the Logic as a free conceptual development of principles which are more concretely investigated in other parts of the system. That is to say, taking our clue from Hegel's own reference to the Phenomenology as his presupposition, we have found that in the initial analysis of that work Hegel began with consciousness as given experience, and discriminated yet found inseparable the principles or determinations (im- mediacy, mediation, becoming) which he then pro- ceeded to develop dialectically in the Logic, beginning at the point which his own analysis of conscious experience indicated (with Seyn) and taking as ideal the highest determination which self-consciousness revealed. Thus we found that "pure thought," far from being an abstract principle out of which the world was to be deduced, was a principle of progressive analysis which began by ignoring empirical references as much as possible at first, and gradually restored those references up to the point where it again became a question of "things" as the plain man knows them. Thus we removed a fundamental misapprehension and earned the right to develop the meanings of im- mediacy as actually treated in the dialectic, as opposed to the allegations of Trendelenburg. By referring to Supplementary Essay 533 other parts of the system, we found that it is Hegel's customary procedure to begin with immediacy, what- ever the field, and however much stress he might thereafter put upon the Idea as an interpretative principle. The beginnings of the system made plain, we then found (2) that to take account of immediacy means to discriminate between the existential character of experience, objects, history, etc., and their meaning, their laws, purposes, when regarded as forming an actual whole or system. We found that the significance, if not the fact, of the transition from Existenz to Wirklichkeit had been generally overlooked. To take account of this transition, we saw, means to regard the remainder of the dialectic in an entirely different light. But (3) this was only the beginning; for we dis- covered that in general the recognition of immediacy, as the starting-point of all philosophic disciplines involves the admission of an element of the irrational, not merely in the sense of contingent superfluity and contingency as an external point of view (of Vorstellungen), but in the sense of a constant givenness which the Idea must accept. Hence we found that the (actual) rationality of things is their systematic unity when that unity is won in terms of the Idea. The merely existential is the not yet conquered, and reason must accept that which existentially is and discern its total significance, if it can. We found reason to believe that, despite the doubts of Hegelians such as McTaggart, for Hegel the irrationality of the world can be overcome, in such wise that the admission of its existence is by no means fatal to the completion of the work of the Idea. But having reached this point we found our thesis already established ; for it was not 534 The Philosophy of the Spirit our province to interpret the irrational, but to secure recognition for it. To find its existence admitted by writers so diverse in points of view as McTaggart and Seth greatly aided our task of demonstration. Incident- ally, however, we suggested that to return to the system with our own clues in mind, would be for Hegel's critics to arrive at quite other conclusions regarding his treatment of the irrational. On the whole our concept proved to be decidedly elementary, and the discovery of the nature and scope of irrational- ity merely introductory. To consider the profounder bearings of the dialectic would be to investigate the nature and significance of transition (Werden), negativity, the Absolute, and the like. But it was precisely because of the introductory character of our investigation that we chose it. One could hardly un- derstand the nature of these higher determinations without grasping the import of immediacy. But the way is clear if the beginning be clear. 135. It would still be possible to declare that "What is actual is rational." For the Wirklichkeit here in question is not the actuality of figurate think- ing (Vorstellungen), but the essentiality which, taken as a whole, constitutes the ultimate system of things interpreted from the point of view of law, meaning, the Idea. Hence it would be no (Hegelian) justification of history, for example, to allege that because an event takes place therefore it is rational. Hegel does not announce that "Whatever is, is right." His optimism is one that discerns in the course of events their ideal logical significance. But existing states may be very far from rational, as our reference to the Philosophy of Right has already indicated. 1 > See above, Sec. 115. Supplementary Essay 535 It is also true that "What is rational is actual." But this does not guarantee that whatever is rational already exists. Hegel has told us that the point where rationality begins is matter of history; he is unable to deduce particular exemplifications of the Idea. Hence the logical order of Wirklichkeit must be distinguished from the chronological. 136. Scientific induction might well proceed as usual, and it would then be a question of the idealistic interpretation of nature as part of a system, as reveal- ing essentially the same principles as those which the Idea embodies in other parts of the system. The richer the results of the special sciences the more one could avoid Hegel's errors of judgment, in secondary matters, while developing the primary principles which his theory of nature exemplifies. 137. As opposed to those who maintain that Hegel has read his own interpretation into the world, that is, has projected his temperament into things, one points out that he has made a remarkably dis- passionate attempt to state clearly, convincingly, and in strictly universal terms the procedure which a thor- ough-going mediation exemplifies. There is a strong rationalistic bent, if you please, but we protest that this is very far from being an " intellectualistic preju- dice." That reason is fundamental in the universe, in nature, in man, and that it is possible to develop a dialectic system in which the same rational principles are logically ordered which in the temporal world have their particular exemplification, we take to be an entirely defensible position. Whether it be a question of historical fact or of human volition, of immediacy of sentiment or of the divine will, we point out that the fact in question is particular, its rationale 53 6 The Philosophy of the Spirit is universal. In the nature of the case it must be the Idea which has the last word, inasmuch as the Idea makes explicit the implicitness of all determinations whatsoever. Insist as you may upon the primacy of the will, you still have before you the question, Granted the givenness, what is its meaning, as discovered through criticism, restatement, negation? It may be that the divine will is the divine love, hence that "God is love," and what love is is to be appreciatively discovered, not described. Or, it may well be that the will is through and through irrational, or supra- rational, as compared with the doctrine that the divine will is the divine purpose and that this purpose is rational. Assume whatever you like as true of the will in such wise that one must discern by intuition what the divine will is. Well, whatever you say, you have brought forward a rival set of first principles. To say the least, then, immediacy is ambiguous; and in all fairness one should be content to let the rival mediations undergo their own dialectic. Ignore if you will that you have mediated. Deny the content which gave life to your dialectic. Or, on the other hand, ignore the immediacy and insist that the media- tion is all-sufficient. But whatever you do, do not charge Hegel with having sought to maintain the absoluteness of either immediacy or mediation, either content or form, data or " pure thought." Insist, more- over, that in the last analysis, Hegel's ultimate principle is the source alike of the content and the form of the dialectic. But grant Hegel the privilege of stating what he understands this Absolute Being to be ; do not on the basis of the mere dialectic without reference to the Philosophy of Spirit and the Philosophy of Religion conclude that this first principle is " Thought" alone. Supplementary Essay 537 138. But no one knows more surely than an Hegelian that no mere summary or suggestion of further mean- ings at the close suffices to put a doctrine in the right light. We beg leave, then, to refer to our entire investi- gation. It is a great temptation to pass beyond the limits outlined at the beginning, and point out how grievously Seth has failed in his critique of Hegel from the standpoint of personality; to take sides against those who interpret Hegel pantheistically ; to point out the failures of various Neo- Hegelian thinkers who have lost sight of the central clues of the dialectic. Yet one must refrain, and be content to rest the case here. Suffice it that the new clue which the study here outlined affords demands reinterpreta- tion of the leading doctrines of the Hegelian system, and that one is prepared to defend the present interpre- tation by further references to Hegel's works, notably his Philosophy of Religion. It is a great merit of the Logic that one cannot resolve the ambiguities attaching, for example, to the term "Spirit," by reference to the Logic, for the Logic is meant to be strictly universal. If the problems not here discussed belong, then, beyond the dialectic and can only be resolved by reference to the special disciplines, we have a right to close the discus- sion thus abruptly, at the most engaging point, with the reminder that the included immediacy of the close of the Logic is rich in implications for further treatment. INDEX [The Supplementary Essay is indexed by pages, not by reference to sections.] A Absolute, the, 5, 43, 244, 250, .283; of Hegel, 407, 420, 431, 443, 447. 45. 47. 483 ff., 49 1 . 536 Absolute method, the, 428, 482- 498 Absolutism, 395, 399, 469 Actuality, 395, 399 ff., 462 ff.; relation to Existenz, 468 ff., 505 ff., 516 ff.; to Idea, 481, 493. 516-536 Agnosticism, 3, 7, 69, 72, 105, 261, 373 Amiel, 87 Aristotle, 141, 445. 47 6 5 I 3~5 I 5 Art, 87 Attitude, 26, 77, 89, 98, 102, 104, 150-152 Authority, 58-72, 138, 161, 166, 175, 180, 196, 247, 269 B Baillie,39i,4i9, 528 ff. Baldwin, 34, 190, 241, 390, 398, 456 Beauty, 50, 89 ff., 100, 356 Becoming, 269, 407, 414, 419, Begriff, 403, 407, 409, 428 ff., 439, 459> 469; character of, 477 ff- Being, as immediate, 243, 255, 270, 410, 424; as logical, 418 ff., 431, 440 ff., 450 ff., 469, 492, 522; relation to Nichts, 446 ff., to thought, 451, 528 ff.; to Essence, 458 ff. Belief, 228, 230 Bible, the, 9, 13, 58 ff., 136, 141, 166, 282 Bradley, 389, 399, 465 Browning, Mrs., 230 Caird, 388, 389, 503, 514 Calkins, 258, 388, 391 Clarke, 34, 36 Commonplace, the, 15, 145 ff. Communion, 154 ff., 219 ff., 282 Composure, 86, 96, 145 Conscience, 21, 22, 161-163, 175, !78, 297, 351 Consciousness, 18, 106, 252; Hegel on, 407 ff. Contingency, 464, 471 ff., 495, 504 ff. ; in nature, 512 ff. Conventionality, 144 Cosmic consciousness, 49, 173, 2OI Criticism, 8-12, 17, 32, 61-74, no, 368, 373,379 D Daseyn, 453, 461, 465 Detachment, 93, 103, 117, 140 Dialectic, 47, 73, 275, 393 ff.; discovery of, 417; in the Logic, 428 ff., 482 ff. Dictionary of Philosophy, 34, 190, 241, 390, 398, 456 Divine Order, the 47, 93, 107 ff., in-121, 314, 316 Ecstasy, 223, 227, 238, 246, 249, 35i, 357; mystical, 276 ff., 372 Emerson, 38, 105, 145, 201, 266, 368 Emotions, the, immediacy of, 22 , 169, 369; relation to friend- ship, 84; cosmic, 173; nature of, 199 ff.; Royce on, 200; relation to feeling, 205, 233; 539 54o Index Emotions, the (Continued) intellectual theory of, 206; James-Lange theory of, 207; Ribot on, 210; Irons on, 214; theories compared, 219; influ- ence of, 221; value of, 222; religious, 224, 275 ^F.; as a guide, 226, 229, 313, 331; con- trol of, 227; relation to reality, 228; to love, 230; estimate of , 232; primitive, 251; relation to mysticism, 275-295; when acceptable, 297 Empiricism, 421 Encyclopedia, 401, 402, 421 ff., 457, 47i, 475 Essence, 412, 453, 457 ff., 478, 534 Eternal and the temporal, the, 78 ff. Eternal order, see Divine Order Eternity, 120 Evil, 69, 121124, 54 ff-, 526 Evolution, 37, 53, 115; philos- ophy of, 8 10, 120 Existenz, 401 ff., 459 ff., 468 ff., SOS-SS 1 Experience, 14, 18, 19; "pure, 15, 240, 260; primacy of, 18, 6.1, 92, in, 196, 521; im- mediacy of, 22, 166 ff., 241, 248, 256 ff.', spiritual, 44, 45, 57,71,87, 128/7., 156 #.,372; mystical, 165, 249, 264, 275 ff. ; is particular, 364 Expression, 152 Faculty, the spiritual, 20-22,32, 154-164, 168, 179, 289, 351, 355 Faith, reawakening of, 2; tests of, 94, 96, 370; Christian, 107; reason and, 194, 334, 337; the life of, 324; place of, 330 ff.; practical, 335; character of, 335 #; power of, 341; postu- lates of, 345; preservation of, 347; a gift, 355, 359; a product, 365; Hegel on, 423 Fall, the 245, 515 Fatalism, 317, 322 Fate, 14, 312, 317 Favouritism, 133 ff., 306, 316 Feeling, spiritual, 26, 33, 51, 133, 164, 169 ff.' thought and, 167; intuition and, 180 ff. ; rela- tion to emotion, 205 ff. ; value of, 232/7.; Hegel on, 234, 423, 426; relation to ecstasy, 238; to immediacy, 247, 262, 264, 298, 369; surety of, 370 Fichte, 397, 448 First, the 486 ff. Fischer, 389, 475 Freedom, 92-98, 146, 319 Friendship, 2, 81 ff., 94, 320 Fullerton, 333 Future life, the, Si ff. Gardiner, 263 Genius, 133 ff. Gifts, 88, 93, 118, 131, 139 ff., 178, 191 ff., 197, 245, 267; spiritual, 87, 118, 133, 142 ff., 159^,320,355,371; relation to guidance, 306 God (see Spirit), as love, 2, 15, 40-43, 46, 55, 113, 125, 174, 330 statically conceived, 4, 380 as creator, 4, 8, 41, 53, as inscrutable, 4, 5, 43, as unknowable, 5, 9; as power, 5, 112, 121, 377; naive view of, 9-11, 142, 367; as Father, u, 45, 55, 94, 112, 319, 330; mystical idea of, u, 250, 275 ff.', as related to man, 12, 58, 1 7 5, 2 97; personality of, 15, 26, 35, 117, 171; as life, J 7> 73. 270, 361; knowledge of, 26, 28, 357; relation to evolution, 37, 41, 120; as wisdom, 40, 113; as trans- cendent, 42; mind of, 52; purpose of, 52-54, 57, 98, 115, 294; revelation of, 58 ff., 70, 136, 166; grace of, 58, 139, J 73> 308,372; as ground, 106; relation to space, 111-121, 371 as reality, 114; relation to evil, 12 iff. ; providence of, 121, 140, 299; relation to feeling, 133, 164 ff.; 170, 234 ff., 35 2 ; communion with, 154 ff., 282; relation to conscience, 161, 297; to sensibility, 171, 235, 351; to intuition, 178 ff., 297; Index 54i God (see Spirit) (Continued) doubt about existence of, 267, 373; Hegel on, 274; guidance of, 307, 330; relation to faith, 335-340; as object of thought, 349; as object of experience, 350; presence of compared to beauty, 355 ; relation to suffer- ing, 360; pragmatic idea of, 373 ff-> complete idea of, 376; as efficiency, 379; dependence on, 379; relation of presence of to reality, 381; Hegel on immanence of, 423-426; as ultimate immediate, 440, 450, 524, 53 6 God-sense, see Faculty Gomperz, 200 Good, the, 89, 100, 126, 506 Grace, see God Granger, 238 Greatness, 133 ff. Green, 52 Guidance, problem of, 22; sources of, 42, 51, 93, 94, 118, 131, 151, 157, 174, 364; rela- tion to plans, 148, 302, 319; impulse as, 167, 186, 313; intuition as, 197; emotion as, 202, 226, 229, 331; nature of, 298 ff. ; how obtained, 300; types of, 301, 308; angelic, 304; divine, 307, 330; ex- planation of, 309, 316; rela- tion to fate, 312; meaning of, 314; arrival of, 314; relation to experience, 315; is disin- terested, 317; relation to purpose, 318/7.; scope of, 321; relation to prayer, 323 ff. ; to faith, 328 ff.; a growth, 358; witness of the Spirit as, 363; test of, 370 H Harris, 390, 478, 479 Heart, the, 15, 94, 224, 233, 352 Heaven, 79, 80, in, 116, 137, 236, 274 Hegel, 24; on Spirit, 34, 61, 236, 270,274,481; on immediacy, 167, 268, 273 (see Immediacy) ; on evil, 123, 504 ff.; on feel- ing, 234; on the Idea, 274 (see Idea); on Nature, 274, 512 ff.; idealism of, 274, 395, 401; literature on, 387; dia- lectic of, 393; opinions on, 393, 396; on "pure thought," 398, 401; on the Phenomeno- logy, 404 ff., 439; postulates of, 409; on sense-certainty, 409 ff. ; on sensationalism, 415; on empiricism, 421; on faith- philosophy, 423 ff.; Logic of, 428 ff.; on metaphysics, 438; on Existenz, 460 ff. ; on law, 462; on "the whole," 467; on contingency, 471 (see Con- tingency; Irrational); on the Begriff, 478 ff.; on the judg- ment, 480; on the Idea, 481 ff. ; his doctrine of differences, 494; attacks on Logic of, 502 ; view of history, 504 ff.; of matter, 515; Seth and other critics on, 521-533 Heraclitus, 251, 253, 270, 273, 522 Hibben, 388, 390 Higher order, the, 78 ff., 107 ff., 196, 299, 371 History of Philosophy, 504, 508 Hobbes, 245 Hodgson, 479 Hoffding, 344, 396 Hume, 252 Huxley, 8 Idea, the, 270, 274, 395, 431, 443 474, 477 ff-, 481-535 Idealism, 17, 20, 31, 48, 54, 105, 106, no, 274, 375 ff.; of Hegel, 274, 395. 4io, 535 I dentitdts system, 432, 493 Identity, 497 Illumination, 132, 165, 308 Immanence, 4, 9, 13, 349, 371 Immediacy, of the Spirit, 13, 22, 128 ff., 150, 172, 380; scopeof, 20-23, 154 ff., 172, 178 /f., 239, 364 ff.; mediation and, 166; character of , 167, 250; spirit- ual, 1 68; relation to intuition, 178198; to emotion, 203, 230 369; to feeling, 233, 247, 262, 263, 369; definition of, 241, 542 Index Immediacy (Continued) psychological, 241, 269; psy- chical, 242, 246, 254 ff.; logical, 243, 258, 269; types of, 244; ethical, 247 (see Con- science); description of, 247; James on, 247; Martineau on, 248; religious, 248; mystical, 249, 275-295; of the self, 250; universality of, 250; primitive, 251; relation to activity, 2 53 , 2 56 ; as nextness, 255 ; relation to personal expe- rience, 259; relation to faith, 262, 332 ff. ; subject of, 263; order and laws of, 264; rela- tion to spontaneity, 266; sum- mary, 269; import of, 269- 2 75; three stages of, 2 70; rela- tion to absolute Thought, 274; to guidance, 298 ff., 364; its place in practical life, 365 ff., 377; relation to reality, 374; to universals, 380; in the Hegelian system, 402 ff.', thesis on, 402 ; dialectic prob- lem of, 404 ; in the Phenomen- ology, 404 ff.', relation to the Begriff, 409, 477 ff.; psychic meanings of, 410, 417; as "this," 411 ; as "now," 413; as activity, 414, 41 7 ; as sensuous presentation, 415; logically differentiated, 416; Kant on, 422; relation to divine im- manence, 425; conclusions, 425; moral, 426; logical, 427 ff.; as pure Being, 431, 43 5 De- lation to pure thought, 433 ff. ; God as, 440, 450; as absolute beginning, 44 1, 450; "simple," 443; as implicitness, 444; as determinate, 445; as Nichts, 446; as Ego, 448; logical sum- mary, 449-453; as absolute first, 455; ambiguities of, 455; Royce on, 455; Seyn as, 4575 Wesen as, 458; Existenz as, 459; relation to experi- ence, 460; as Daseyn, 461; as appearance, 462 ff. ; as parts, 466; relation to Wirklichkeit, 468 ff. ; as contingency, 471, 504-528, 533; as irrational, 472, 512-533; duality of, 475; relation to judgment, 480; to Idea 481; in absolute method, 481 ff. ; movement from, 485; not a First, 486, 493, 497; re- lation to stagesof method, 487 ; to system, 489; persistence of, 492; at end of Logic, 494-504; relation to identity, 49 7; mean- ings summarised, 499; be- yond Logic, 504 ff.; in nature, 512; as matter, 515; relation to relativity, 518-521; Seth's criticism of, 521; as " gege- ben," 522 ; relation to tychism, 522; to the rational, 523; to McTaggart's criticism, 525; to Baillie's, 528; thesis proved, 532-537 Immediatism, 269, 272, 276, 297, 375 Immortality, 81 ff., 100, 108, 1 19, 120 Impressions, 158, 185, 191, 326 Impulse, 167, 186, 187, 201, 203, 222, 226, 313, 365 Inner light, the, 45, 138, 237, 301 Innocence, 69, 245, 368, 423 Inscrutable, 4, 5, 43, 112 Insight, 70, 184, 192, 197, 230, 33 Inspiration, 70, 129 ff., 135, 166 Intellect, the, 21, 26, 58, 140, 192-195 Interpretation, 139, 166 ff., 180, 248 ff., 260, 298, 364 Intuition, spiritual, 32, 237; nature of, 178 ff.; relation to impulse, 186; denned, 189; as cognition, 190; to truth, 192; to intellect, 194 ff.; as a guide, 197, 300; to Spirit, 237; relation to mysticism, 289; Hegel on, 423 ff., 448 Irons, 214 ff. Irrational, the, 23, 274, 393 ff., 464, 472, 473, 477 ff-, 495. 501 ff., 512 ff. Jacobi, 425 James, 188, 207, 214, 228, 239, 247, 252, 256, 258, 261, 373, 397, 522 Index 543 Jesus, 58-60, 66, 141, 142, 151, 170, 280, 282, 285, 292, 339, 345 Journal of Speculative Philoso- phy, 390, 398, 516 Judgment, 59-65, 72, 167, 255, 302,415-427, 436, 480 K Kant, 7, 390, 422, 425, 438, 478 Karma, 104 Krauth-Fleming, 206 Law, 14, 50, 51, 105, 162, 369 ff., 462 ff. Life, i ff., 14, 17, 24, 270; the course of, 16, 96, ff.; the eternal, see Immortality Logic, 24, 270, 389, 398 ff. t 405, 417! problem of, 418; begin- ning of, 428 ff. t 442; import- ance of, 440; method of, 454; end of, 493 Love, 2, 83, 146, 151; divine, 40; relation to persons, 182; to feeling, 185, 237, 264; to emotion, 204, 222-233. 297; to doubt, 267; to immediacy, 273. 3 6 5; spiritual, 358 M Mackenzie, 474 Man (see Self), as spirit, 22, 26, 33,35,5154,57,237,297,353; higher nature of, 58, 175, 350, 354; temperamentally re- garded, 354 Man and the Divine Order, 107, 112, 277, 373 Martineau, 63. 163, 248, 288 McTaggart, 388, 391, 425, 435, 47 J 53, 5 11 . 5 l6 521, 525- Mediation, 166, 178, 187, 245, 255, 259 #., 364, 415-418 Meditation, 95, 132, 148, 354, 456, 520-536 Method, see Absolute method Moral order, the, 116 Mystery, 12, 290 Mystic experience, n, 22, 133, 165, 249, 264, 275 ff. Mysticism, n, 32, 48, 132, 238, 249-252, 262; character of 275; illustrated, 276; adverse views of, 282 ; misconceptions of, 284 ff.; practical, 291; lessons of, 293; truth in, 294; irrationality of, 518, 527 N Natural and the spiritual, the, 27, 78-98, 102-127, !74, 37i Nature, 48, no, 512 ff Naturphilosophie , 512 Negativity, 487-498, 521, 524, 53-553 Newton, 369 Nichts, 433, 44i, 446, 451 ft- Noel, 390, 519 Novalis, 200 Obedience, 29, 43, 320, 330, 353, 361, 377 Optimism. 317, 318 Over-soul, the, 38 Pantheism, 4, 31, 169, 250, 276, 282 Passion, 122, 125, 138, 146, 203, 354, 365, 5ii Passivity, 164, 246, 249 Pathetic fallacy, 44, 47, 61, 251 Paulsen, 389, 397 Perception, 254, 262, 415, 422 Personal equation, the, 21, 133 ., 182-191, 246, 298 nomenology, 389, 390; rela- tion to the Logic, 401 ff.. 417 430, 439; beginning of, 406, 419, 452, 453, 483, 484; sig- nificance of, 419, 430, 443, 449 Philosophy, 106, 334; of the Spirit, 6, 10, 14, 27-29, 32, 45, 50, 57, 71, 106, 124; idealistic, see Idealism Philosophy of History, 504, 510 Philosophy of Religion, 34, 61, 234-237, 512, 536, 537 544 Index Philosophy of Right, 395, 504 ff., 534 Plato, 91, 273, 423, 476, 513-515, 526 Plotinus, 486, 493 Point of view of God, the, 9,10, 13, 17. 367 Poise, 86, 88, 95, 96, 103, 325, 363 Power, 5, 14, 17, 41, 112, 121, 2I 5 Practicality, 91-93 Pragmatism, 13, 23, 44, 109, 373, 399, 522 Prayer, u, 128, 157, 168, 301, 323 # Providence, 121, 140, 299 Psychology of religion, the, 12, 2 39 Pure thought, see Thought Purpose, 15, 39, 52-54, 114 fi., Rational, the, 274, 395, 464, 469, 472-474, 47 8 Realisation of the divine pres- ence, 54, 55, 88, 129, 137 Reality, 16, 47, 51, 79, 109 ff., 352,3 6 4, 374-3 8 3 ;of evil, 123; emotions and, 228; of im- mediacy, 265, 269; in the Hegelian system, 395, 415, 421, 427, 481 ff., 523, 528-531 Reason, 7, 20, 32 ff., 59, 194, 298, 334 ff.; in Hegel's sys- tem, 418, 428^., 450, 473, 474, 5 I2 #-, 535 Receptivity, 28, 93, 95, 131, 160, 301, 320, 330 Relativity, 6, 43, 81, 105, 465, 494, 518-521 Religious experience, 12, 128, 156 ff., 166, 169 ff., 275 ff., 349 Revelation, 9, 12, 24, 58^., 150, 165, 172, 246, 249 Ribot, 210-214 Ritchie, 513 Romanticism, 105, 396 Rosenkranz, 389, 515 Royce, 200, 253, 387, 419, 456, 467, 480 Rousseau, 245 Sabatier, 60, 65 Santayana, 238, 251, 253, 275 Scepticism, 16, 25, 32, 107 ff. Schelling, 396, 397, 432, 445, 493 Schopenhauer, 397, 513 Self (see Soul), 15, 21, 35-43; duality of, 25; import of, 27- 29; spiritual, 39; as judge, 61; relation to Spirit, 147; as immediate, 250, 256, 263, 448; mystical idea of, 284, 290, 293 ; its finitude, 379; as psychical "this," 411 ff. Self-abandonment, 43, 164 Self-consciousness, 25, 68, 98, 131, 266, 483 Self-realisation, 80, 86, 294, 310, 378 Self-sacrifice, 80 Sensation, 171, 252-254, 352 Sensationalism, 260, 269, 274, Sense-certainty, 409-420 Sensibility, 93, 167, 171, 205, 35.1 Service, 80, 85, 94, 101, 150, 310 Seth, 390, 398, 503, 521, 534, 537 Seyn, see Being Shaftesbury, 163 Sigwart, 263 Sin, 123, 150 Socrates, 303 Soul (see Self), 119, 157 Space, 82, 1 1 1-114 Spencer, 8, 261 Spinoza, 478 Spirit the presence of, 3, 13, 28, 93, 128 ff., 140, 349, 356; idea of, 4, 14, 17; typified by life, 5, 53; immediacy of, 13, 22, 128 ff., 150, 172, 380; exis- tence of, 13, 24, 44-47, 62; relation to man, 22, 26, 54; in the universe, 31, 47, 52 ff.; definition of, 31-42, 131; Clarke on, 34; Hegel on, 34, 236, 274; character of, 39, 42 ff., 49, 131, 145, 355. 3 6 ; re- newing presence of, 46 ; in man, 5.i, 57, 237, 353; as guiding life, 51, 94 ff., 118, 133, 151, 319 ff.; reproduced in man, Index 545 Spirit (Continued} 52, 56, 103; realisation of , 55, 88; relation to criticism, 58- 74; the eternal life and, 77 ff. ; gifts of , 87 ; poise in, 88 ; and circumstance, 98; higher or- der of, 1 10 ff. ; activity of, 1 18; channels of, 128 ff. ; hypo- theses about, 154 ff. ; relation to reason, 194; witness of, 349 ff. (see Witness); scope of, 355; as one, 363, 374; sum- mary, 383 Spirituality, 25, 80 ff., 117, 147 Spiritual sense, see Faculty Spiritual world, the, 100, 117 Spontaneity, 28, 93,' 160, 164, 167, 191, 224, 262-267, 325, 361 Stirling, 388, 390, 435, 478 Staudenmier, 419 Stout, 271 Strong, 253 Subconsciousness, 157, 304 Supernatural, the, 79, 80, 308 Swedenborg, 40, in, 117, 204 Symbols, 70, 261, 286 Temperament, 136, 138, 158,164, 184, 354 Temporal, the, 27, 78 ff., 115- 119 Thought, 262, 274, 437, 45. 4Si, 456; "pure," 398 #., 408, 427 ff-,433ff-> 482, 49. 493. 499~ ^ 536 Time, 82, 115, 257 Tolerance, 151 Transcendence, 4, 42, 250, 285 Trendelenburg, 398, 432, 454, 525, 532 Transitivity, 253, 269, 274, 353, 454, 49 2 Trinity, The, 34, 290 Truth, 28, 89, 179-183, 201, 269, 377,440; of fact and hope, 99 Turner, 396 Tychism, 522 U Understanding, the, 2 1 , 338, 428 Universal, the, 90, 364, 380, 381, 413, 474, 486, 506, 522 Universe, the, 2, 14, 32, 47, 52- 56, 114 ft- Unknowable, 5-8, 261 Iv Values, 20, 41, 48, 77 ff., 99, 105, 108, no, 156, 290, 360, 379 Visions, 12, 70, 132, 169 ff., 281 345 Voices, 161-163, 175, 297 \V Wallace, 388, 389, 435. 449. 5i3 Weber, 396 Werden, see Becoming Wesen, see Essence Whole, the, 466 Will, 15, 21, 51, 87, 158, 262, 505, 536 Wirklichkeit, see Actuality Witness of the Spirit, the, 19, 44, 46, 57, 62-75, I02 X 94I re ! a " tion to scepticism, 109; signifi- cance of, 109, 125, 137, 299, 328; as guide, 138, 194, 326, 355 ft-'* relation to feeling, 233; authority of, 355; rela- tion to conduct, 363; intel- lectual character of, 370; rela- tion to reality, 374; ultimate value of, 379 Worship, 129, 150, 291, 350 BOOKS BY HORATIO W. DRESSER The Power of Silence A Study of the Values and Ideals of the Inner Life, Second Edition. Revised and Enlarged. 12. (By mail, $1.50.) Net, $1.35 CONTENTS. The Point of View ; The Immanent God ; The World of Manifestations ; The Nature of Existence ; Mental Life ; The Meaning of Suffering ; Duality of Self ; Adjust- ment ; Poise ; Self- Help ; Entering the Silence ; The Outlook. "At no time could such a revision be more favorable than now, when litera- ture in general has taken up the subject of * the simple life,' the life of peace and poise." Boston Transcript. The Perfect Whole An Essay on the Conduct and Meaning of Life. Fourth Impression. Gilt top. 12 . . $1.25 CONTENTS. Experience ; A Study of Self-Consciousness ; The Basis of Belief in a Spiritual Reality ; Mysticism ; Intuition; Fate ; Error and Evil ; The Ethical Life ; The Eternal Now. "A deeply religious essay upon the conduct and meaning of life. . . 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CONTENTS. The Spiritual Method ; The Kingdom of God ; The Kingdom of Man ; The Fall of Man ; The New Birth ; Christ and Nature ; The Ethics of Tesus ; The Denunciations ; The Christ Life. f "In this study of Christ's spiritual teachings Mr. Dresser is at his best. . . . There breathes through all his writings a spirit of warm human in- terest and a helpfulness that never fails to bring them near to the heart of the reader. No thoughtful reader can fail to derive strength and inspiration from a work of this character." Journal, Augusta, Ga. New York Q. P. PUTNAM'S SONS London BOOKS BY HORATIO W. DRESSER In Search of a Soul A Series of Essays in Interpretation of the Higher Nature of Man. Fourth Impression. Gilt top, 12 $1.25 CONTENTS. Laws and Problems of the Human Mind ; Has Man a Soul ? Absolute Being and the Higher Self ; Individu- ality ; Reincarnation and Receptivity ; The Unity of Life ; The Religious Aspects, of the New Thought ; Spiritual Poise ; Soul Growth. ". . . 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Voices of Freedom And Studies in the Philosophy of Individuality. Second Impression. 12 , portrait . . $1.25 CONTENTS. Voices of Freedom ; The New Thought; The Philosophy of Activity ; The Freedom of the Will ; An Inter- pretation of the Vedanta ; Is There An Absolute ; The Ideal Attitude ; Individualism and The Social Ideal. " The writer of this book has given us many volumes of great interest and power, but none equal to this last one. It is deep, yet clear. He takes us into the philosophical realm, but, unlike many writers on these themes, he does not mystify his readers." Baltimore Methodist. New York Q. P. PUTNAM'S SONS London BOOKS BY HORATIO W. DRESSER A Book of Secrets With Studies in the Art of Self-Control. Third Im- pression. Gilt topi 12 ... 2fee.$1.00 CONTENTS. 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Net, $1.35 In this volume two purposes have been fulfilled : it applies to the problems of human suffering a practical spiritual philosophy of the inner life, and it contains a discriminative exposition of the more permanent and rational principles which underlie the modern mental healing movement. As the title implies, it does not claim to be an exhaustive study of healing and disease. Nor is its spiritual healing theory brought forward as the one unfailing resource. The aim of the author has been to put the inquirer in possession of the necessary clues so that he can rightly estimate the various popular therapeutic doctrines of the day, and select the principles *"hich withstand the test of time, reason and experience. New York Q. P. PUTNAM'S SONS London -- t- 1.80695