m^. A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA • MADRAS MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO A FAITH ^' THAT ENQUIRES THE GIFFORD LECTURES DELIVERED IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW IN THE YEARS ig20 AND ig2I BY SIR HENRY JONES MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1922 COPYRIGHT First Edition February 1922. Reprinted September 1922. PRINTED I\ GREAT BRITAIN THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED WITH AFFECTION AND LASTING GRATITUDE, TO MY OLD PUPILS IN WALES AND SCOTLAND, THE PARTNERS OF MY ETHICAL ENQUIRIES PREFACE I HAVE had one main purpose before me throughout this course of lectures. It is that of awakening and fostering the spirit of research in questions of reHgious faith. If I read our times aright, there are many thousands of thoughtful men in this country whose interest in religion is sincere, but who can neither accept the ordinary teaching of the Church, nor subject them- selves to its dogmatic ways. I would fain demonstrate to these men, both by example and by precept, that the enquiry which makes the fullest use of the severe intellectual methods, supports those beliefs upon which a religion that is worth having rests. Let man seek God by the way of pure reason, and he will find him. As to the Churches, I could wish them no better fate than that henceforth they shall regard the articles of their creeds, not as authoritative dogmas, but as objects of unsparing intellectual enquiry. Enquiry not only establishes the truth of the main elements of the doctrines which the Churches inculcate, it trans- mutes and enriches their meaning. Enquiry is the way of Evolution ; His " Kingdom will come " pari passu with the development of the more secular forces on which the well-being of mankind depends. And, I believe, that our spiritual knowledge and practice, vii viii ^ PREFACE both individual and social, is so crude and rudimentary that we cannot even imagine the splendour of the results which an enquiring religious faith can bring to man. I hope that the Church will accept my service of its greater ends in the spirit in which it is offered. I have received from Principal Hetherington, of Exeter University College, and from Mr. Knox White, Mr. Alexander Macbeath and Mr. Idris Phillips most valuable help in the way of the correction of proofs, and take this opportunity of expressing my indebtedness to them. And I wish especially to thank Professor Kemp Smith, of the University of Edin- burgh, for the minuteness and fullness of his helpful care. It is the expression of the affection of the earliest of my pupils, who has attained philosophical eminence. CONTENTS LECTURE I PAGE The Value and Need of Free Enquiry in Religion i LECTURE II The Sceptical Objections to Enquiry in Religion Stated and Examined 17 LECTURE III The Nature of Religion 31 LECTURE IV The Contrast of the Finite and Infinite - - 47 LECTURE V The Way we Know 62 LECTURE VI Scientific Hypothesis and Religious Faith - - 79 LECTURE VII Religious Life and Religious Theory - - - 106 LECTURE VIII Morality and Religion 121 LECTURE IX Morality and Religion 133 ix X CONTENTS LECTURE X PAGE Morality a Process that always attains - - 152 LECTURE XI The World of the Individualist ... - 174 LECTURE XII The World of the Idealist 194 LECTURE XIII The Standard of Value 214 LECTURE XIV The Perfect as Spiritual Process - - - - 235 LECTURE XV The Absolute and the Natural World - - - 256 LECTURE XVI God and Man's Freedom 277 LECTURE XVII Contingencies 295 LECTURE XVIII God and the Absolute 3^3 LECTURE XIX The Immortality of the Soul 333 LECTURE XX The Results of our Enquiry 349 LECTURE I THE VALUE AND NEED OF FREE ENQUIRY IN RELIGION Nearly thirty years ago I was entrusted by this University with the office vacated by a very great teacher, one of the greatest teachers of philosophy given to the world in modern times. The burden of the trust was almost beyond bearing ; for the daily life of Edward Caird was even more flawless in its wisdom and peace than his doctrine. But, as usual, the responsibilities of the office were also an inspira- tion, and its duties have been a continuous privilege. I have for a long time been grateful for them, and recog- nized that 1 can repay the University neither for my life-task as a teacher nor for my nurture as a student. And to-day my debt is deepened further still. My colleagues, moved by their kindliness and judging most gently, have given me a new opportunity of being of use. They have placed in my hands, for helpful treatment if I can, a theme which every thoughtful man knows to have an interest that is at once universal and intensely personal, and a significance, both specu- lative and practical, which the wise observer of human history would hesitate to limit. I think I may say that to justify their trust in some measure were the crowning happiness of my life. G.L. A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Lord Gifford's wishes. A science of religion as having supreme value. The Gifford Lecturer is expressly relieved of the necessity of " making any promise of any kind." I make none — not even to do my best ; for I might fall short of that also. But the Founder of the Lectureship expressed one wish which was evidently deep in his spirit, and made one injunction which he rightly expected to be followed. " I wish the lecturers," he said, " to treat their subject as a strictly natural science . . . without reference to or reliance upon any supposed special exceptional or so-called miraculous revelation. I wish it considered just as astronomy or chemistry is." Then he enjoins that the lectures " shall be public and popular ... as I think that the subject should be studied and known by all ... I think such knowledge, if real, lies at the root of all well-being." Lord Gifford's aim was thus thoroughly and directly practical. He desired free discussion with a view to the knowledge of the truth, and he desired knowledge of the truth with a view to the well-being of man. The science of religion was to him " the greatest of all possible sciences, indeed, in one sense, the only science." He considered that it deals with matters which are ultimate, by means of conceptions that either illuminate and explain, or distort and falsify all things : for whatever principles are ultimate are also all-com- prehensive. And its practical consequences seemed to him no less vital than the theoretical. " The science of religion " was, he thought, the science of human destiny. If valid, if " the knowledge is real," the greatest good of all follows from it, namely, a good lifel in harmony with the nature of things : if unreal, then it is doubtful if there be anywhere or in anything any real or finally reliable worth. RELIGION, IF REAL 3 Will you note, as we pass, two things? ist. The Doubts il it be r63.1 high value he attributes to religion. 2nd. The strong accent thrown on Knowledge^ on the Science of religion, as contributory to religion itself. But both are quali- fied by the ominous words — " if real T These words, " if real," are evidently not meant to apply merely to some particular form of religion or religious belief. They suggest the possibility that all so-called religious knowledge may, in its very nature, be delusive. Its objects may be unreal, or they may be above or beyond the reach of human intelligence. The suspicion im- plied in the phrase spreads over the whole domain of religion from the lowest and crudest to the highest, and like mist on the countryside, it at once exaggerates everything and makes everything seem unsubstantial. If the Knowledge is not real, then both affirmation and denial are out of place ; they must be out of place where nothing is certain. Doubt itself is absurd under such conditions ; enquiry is vain, all criticism baseless; there can be neither truth nor error; the intelligence is dismissed as futile. It would seem, therefore, that there can be no greater necessity than that of making decisively clear, if this be possible, whether in professing to know religious facts we are dealing with realities that are intelligible, or with the fictitious products of our imagination and the confused emanations of our desires. And there can be no necessity more urgent if, as most men would confess, a man's religion ex- presses and determines his attitude towards life as a whole. Whatever else religion has meant to man — and it is difficult to say what it has not meant — it may be said that where the religious issue has never been 4 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES raised, man's life drifts. He has not faced its mean- ing, nor has his life any dominant purpose. He has not fixed its standard of values, nor determined what must be sought first. He is like one storm-driven in mid-ocean without a star whereby to steer, or any land in any direction for which to make. His little boat changes its course with every passing breeze, and points in a new way with the rise and fall of every wave. His life is at the mercy of details, it is indeter- minate and ineffective and without a home. Religious faith cannot be otiose, nor can religious doubt or error be innocuous. For religion is a practical matter, and so indeed is irreligion. Uncertainty in religion means hesitancy in action, and paralyses the will the more tragically the more far-reaching the issues. Verily, the condition of man is not enviable if the last words he can honestly say of religious knowledge are the words used by Lord Gifford — " Such knowledge, if reaiy " Would that I could be certain " is the language of the inmost heart of men when they are tried to the uttermost. And there are not many men who, some time or another, are not tried to the utter- most. The removal The purpose of the Gifford lectureship and the first doubt by *^^ty °^ ^^^ lecturer are thus quite plain — to enquiry— examine the causes, and if possible to remove this un- the mam ^ . . purpose of certainty as to the validity of religious faith. The the Lectures. ; . .. ^ ^ . . ° a j i enterprise is as difficult as it is great. And the re- sponsibility of the lecturer is the more full, inasmuch as his liberty is complete. For he is invited to reach no prescribed conclusion, either positive or negative, on any religious issue. He is committed to nothing except to honest dealing with his subject. He may THE VALUE OF ENQUIRY 5 sail to any distance in any direction, provided only the love of truth sits at the helm. Now, in entering upon this adventure there is one The value thought that, but for one consideration, would give me in general. complete confidence. Were the results of religious research analogous to those which are attained by scientific research in other fields, I should be tempted to say that mankind may even yet use the words of Paracelsus, and say " I go to prove my soul, I see my way as birds their trackless way, I shall arrive ! What time, what circuit first, I ask not. But unless God send his hail. Or blinding fire-balls, sleet or stifling snow. In some time, his good time, I shall arrive ! He guides me and the bird." Honest enquiry in every " secular " region, whether of nature or spirit, of mere theory or of practice, char- acter and conduct, is always in itself rich in reward. So far as I know there are no secular facts that do not challenge the intelligence and ask to be understood, and no forces, natural or moral, which are not better understood than unknown or misunderstood. And I am not convinced that it is otherwise with the facts of the religious life. We are told, of course, that there are facts which in their nature are unintelligible ; not merely unknown up to the present time, but intrinsi- cally unknowable, and religious facts hold high rank amongst these unintelligibles. But I doubt whether there can be anything unintelligible except that which is irrational, and I doubt if anything real is irrational except as misunderstood. Look to the assumptions that lurk in your problems before you call them insoluble or condemn human reason. In any case, we need 6 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Doubts of the value of enquiry in religion. not believe in an unintelligible fact until we meet it, or are told about it by persons who have visited the ultimate boundaries of human knowledge and looked over the edge of its limitations into fields which it cannot enter. As a matter of experience, within the fields of natural science no fixed limits are held to bar enquiry in any direction ; nor is there any doubt that enquiry is the condition, first, of further knowledge, and, secondly, of effective practical pur- pose and progress in the mastery of the means of civilized life. Prima facie one might expect the same results to accrue in regard to religion. One would expect that, however opposed religious interests may be to the secular, it were well to enquire into their meaning and value if they have either true meaning or real value, and to expose their emptiness and delusiveness if they have not. But enquiry in this matter has been held to be vain. Religion has been made to consist in mystic rites and ceremonies ; and even by our own Protestant teachers its appeal has been directed often to the whole of man except his intelligence — to his feelings, to his emotions, his aesthetic temperament, his prudence, and even to his ** will-to-believe " ; and enquiry, it has been said, engenders rather than removes doubt. Now I do not wish to enter with any fulness, at least at present, upon a discussion of these difficulties as to the possibility and value of religious knowledge. But there is one element in the situation that gives it additional seriousness, and we cannot well pass it by. It is, that doubt of the validity of religious knowledge and of the uses of enquiry is not, as it would be in any CARLYLE'S SUBSTITUTE FOR ENQUIRY 7 other field, confined to the sceptics or to men who have not learned by " experience " the worth of religious faith. It is shared, and most fully, by devout believers. They condemn doubt as a symbol of spiritual disease, and denial as not only an error but a sin : moreover, they maintain that the disease cannot be cured and the sin cannot be cleansed away by enquiry. Religion is not, they say, an affair of the intellect. However they may trust the intelligence and depend upon its light (or twilight) in other matters, in the matters of religious faith its activities are out of place, and even mischievous. They believe with Cariyie's Carlyle, probably one of the greatest spiritual forces for enquiry, in this country in the nineteenth century, that, as he said, " Man is sent hither not to question but to work ; the end of man, it was long ago written, is an Action not a Thought." ^ Knowledge by itself, however true, is, they contend, a mere looking-on at life. The very attempt to seek it in this province of faith is unwhole- some self-scrutiny. What has value is not knowledge but the volition that passes into deeds. " Experience," distinguished by them from Knowledge, and assumed to be independent of it, must take its place. " Faith, conviction," as Carlyle tells us, " were it never so excellent, is worthless till it convert itself into Conduct. Nay properly conviction is not possible till ^ then : inasmuch as all Speculation is by nature endless, form- less, a vortex amid vortices. . . . Doubt of any kind can not be removed except by action. . . . Let him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light lay this precept well to heart — * Do the duty which lies * Characteristics, p. 13. 2 Anticipating the Pragmatists both in their truth and error. 8 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES The failure of Carlyle's remedy for doubt. nearest thee. . . . Thy second duty will already have become clearer.' " ^ " Here on earth," he adds, " we are soldiers fighting in a foreign land, that understand not the plan of campaign and have no need to under- stand it ; seeing well what is at our hand to be done. Let us do it like soldiers, with submission, with courage, with a heroic joy." ^ But, supposing that the one thing which we cannot see is " the duty " at hand to be done ? Supposing ** the soldier fighting in a foreign land " is ignorant not only of the plan of campaign but of the cause and country he is fighting for ? Supposing that so far from comprehending the plan, and trusting the Commander, he finds no evidence anywhere that any plan exists or any Commander ? Supposing he sees in the whole troubled history of mankind nothing but a confused, purposeless, execrable welter, the result of " the fiat of a malignant Destiny, or the unintentioned stab of chance " .'' And such is the outlook upon the Universe of the man who has lost his religious faith. Momentous happenings within our inner life — an intoxicating suc- cess, or a failure that brings despair, deep sorrow, a devastating sin, a consuming hate or disappointed love — may not only disturb old values, rearranging the order of priority among life's aims, but destroy all values. Then does not only the natural life of man become meaningless, and " his days pass away as the swift ships," leaving no trace, but the moral world itself ceases to matter, and right and wrong become terms not to be used by such a being as he is — a wisp tossed about by homeless winds. *' If I be wicked, why then labour I in vain ? If I wash myself with 1 Sartor Resartus, p. 135. * Characteristics, p. 38. JOHN BUNYAN'S BETTER METHOD 9 snow water and make my hands never so clean, yet wilt thou plunge me in the ditch and mine own clothes shall abhor me." ^ Job was acquainted with deeper doubt and darker despair than Carlyle ; and so was Shakespeare. His Othello, so far from knowing his duty when lago had poisoned his soul with doubts of Desdemona, bade farewell to " the tranquil mind." " Farewell content, farewell the plumed troop and the big wars. Othello' s occupation s gone " — the most pathetic line in all Shakespeare it has always seemed to me. There was no duty next to hand for Othello. The cure suggested by Carlyle is both ineffective and inapplicable. The doubts which can be cured by plunging into action are shallow ; the evil is local. Moreover, they are neither removed nor cured by that method. They are only silenced ; and silenced doubts fester. The cure is ineffective. But, further, deep doubt leaves man incapable of action : it para- lyses, we say, so that the cure cannot be applied. Bunyan, in his incomparable way, teaches us a better John truth and offers a better remedy than Carlyle. He better shows us Christian in the fields just outside the City ™^ ° ' of Destruction distracted with fear " lest the burden on his back should sink him lower than the grave." " He looked this way and that way, as if he would run, yet he stood still, because (as I perceived) he could not tell which way to go. ' Why standest thou still ? ' said Evangelist to him. He answered, ' Be- cause I know not whither to go.' Then he gave him a parchment roll, and there was written within, ' Fly from the wrath to come.' The man, therefore, read ^ Job ix. 29-31. 10 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Honest enquiry in Religion never fails. it, and looking upon Evangelist very carefully, said * Whither must I fly ? ' Then said Evangelist, point- ing with his finger over a very wide field, ' Do you see yonder wicket gate ? ' The man said, ' No.' Then said the other, * Do you see yonder shining light ? ' He said, ' I think I do.' Then said Evangelist, * Keep that light in your eye and go up directly thereto, so shalt thou see the gate, at which when thou knockest, it shall be told thee what to do.' " When a man discovers that his past has been spent in the pursuit of a false good, and the fruit he has plucked off the tree of life turns into ashes in his mouth ; when even its good things prove evanescent and unreliable, and snap under the strain of experience, then he is passing through his first course of instruction. A light has already begun to break upon him, which is hidden from those who dwell at peace in the city of Destruction. He has known enough to go outside its gates and look to the horizon. And his first need is | for more light. He begins to ask questions. Is there any healing } Can my broken life be made whole again } Is loss, bereavement, failure, the last word in my history } Or are there grounds for believing that they are but ways of awakening my soul and revealing an eternally benevolent will } Old convictions have been on their trial and are condemned ; enquiry is inevitable. So far from doubting the value of the plain and honest and earnest pursuit of truth in matters of religious faith, I believe that, like the pursuit of moral good, it never utterly fails. The process of enquiry, the very attempt to know, like the process of doing or A TRIED AND A FACILE FAITH 11 trying to do what is right, is itself achievement, alto- gether apart from what comes afterwards. I know nothing better than to be engaged and immersed in the process of trying to know spiritual truths and of acting upon them. Mankind, when it comes of age, will be engaged in this spiritual business even when it is handling the so-called secular concerns of life. And it will handle these all the more securely. Religion will be the permanent background of life — as the love of his wife and bairns is for a good man. The very meaning and purpose of our " circumstances," as we call the claims of the things and persons that stand around and press upon us, may be to induce and to sustain this double process of knowing the true and doing the right. It is the method — the only natural and successful method — by which men make them- selves : and I understand that the final business of man is this of making himself. We must learn yet to estimate men by the fortune they take with them, not • by the fortune they leave behind ; that is, if religion is true, and if morality and its laws are not fictions of man's vanity. Inasmuch as the process of striving to know has, contrast of in my opinion, this intrinsic value, I should be glad ^ trie/ *° if I could help were it merely to incite, or sustain the ^^^*^- search into, and within, the truths of our religious faith. I would, if I could, awaken enquiry where there has been indifference ; foster, strengthen and em- bolden it wherever there has been doubt or denial, and above all where there has been blind belief and facile confidence. Unless my convictions as to both the possibility and the reward of a religious faith based upon knowledge are altogether false, the man who 12 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES would gain most from fearless search is the devout believer, and especially the believer who challenges the sceptic on his own ground and invites the strain of actual experience by living his beliefs, welcoming the rain that descends and the winds that never fail to blow and beat upon the house of life. The doubt that a man confronts purifies his faith from error, sub- stantiates the truth it contains, and strengthens his hold. Valid belief has nothing to fear from the play of the world's forces upon it ; and a delusive faith is better exposed and washed away. Truth accepted without enquiry, from that hearsay which we call tradition, has an ominous analogy to principles of conduct never put in practice. Man's hold of them is insecure, for strength unexercised becomes feeble- ness. Moreover, no kind of truth yields its richest meaning except under stress and strain. The instance that the scientific man prizes most highly is that which places his hypothesis under the severest test : no in- stance can either prove or disprove, either effectively expose falsity or ratify truth, except the instance he calls " crucial." It is the crucial instance also that expands the application and deepens the significance of the hypothesis. And the same results follow in regard to religious faith. The words " I know Whom I have believed," when they are uttered by one who has walked hand in hand with his own pettiness and ill-doing, carry a strange convincing and relieving power ; and such simple utterances as " The Lord is my Shepherd ; I shall not want " have marvellous wealth of meaning when they come from the lips of one who knows what it is to be resourceless and undeserving. FALSE DOUBT 13 Now, in thus affirming the value of the search for False doubt, religious truth and of the doubts and trials that test a religious faith, I do not wish to be understood to advocate the fabrication of artificial difficulties, either in ourselves or others. Wantonly to excite or foster doubt is not a part that an honest seeker after truth can stoop to play. An earnest believer would as soon make a plaything of life itself as of a religious faith ; for faith is the inspiration of life. Such a simple faith as Tennyson describes when he bids him whose faith has centre everywhere, to *' Leave his sister when she prays," has not the splendour of the centuries-old, storm-tossed oak, but it has the beauty of the moss and violet. Besides, there is no need of fabricating doubts. Growing truth and a maturing experience bring their own doubts ; for honest doubt is a new aspect of truth standing at the door and knocking, seeking a place in the system of rational experience. Life can be trusted to bring trials : man's part is to meet them as new opportunities of moving " onward." Nor, in the second place, would I be understood Religion and to imply that Religion and the knowledge of Religion about "" are one and the same thing. Knowledge and the ^z^^^- object known are never identical : Astronomy, even if it were perfect as a Science, would not consist of stars and planets, nor would a sound Physiology be sound physical health. Nevertheless, religious know- ledge may be a condition of a religious faith and a religious life. Knowledge is certainly the condition of all the spiritual experiences which men, rightly or wrongly, distinguish from religion. However true it may be that knowledge of what is right is far from 14 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES being the doing of it, that which is done in ignor- ance cannot be called morally good. The moral life is impossible in the degree in which knowledge of what is right or wrong is lacking. Though the ideal is not the deed, the deed that is not first an ideal known and valued and chosen cannot have any spiritual worth. The relation between religious knowledge, religious faith and religious life will demand fuller consideration later. It may be sufficient at present to insist that, like vital organs of a living body, they derive their value and meaning, if not their very existence, from their mutual involution. If we sever knowledge from faith, or faith from conduct, we have on the one hand otiose and impotent conceptions, and on the other hand a behaviour that knows not what it is doing or whom it is serving. We are left, I think, with self-contra-j dictory fictions — things that can neither be understood) nor even exist. It follows that if religious knowledge is thus a vital condition of religious experience, then that which hinders the pursuit of this knowledge imperils religion. And if I were asked from what direction come the graver dangers that threaten religious life in these times and in this country of Britain, I should answer, without any hesitation, that they come from the causes which turn aside the minds of men from reflection upon the things of the spirit and arrest or impede enquiry. For what occupies the mind determines conduct. Tell me what a man thinks about and I will come near telling you what he will do. " His delight is in the law of the Lord ; and in his law doth he medi- tate day and night." What about him ? "He shall BASIS OF FAITH IN ENQUIRY 15 be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season ; his leaf also shall not wither." Believing with all my heart that in the last resort The articles there is only one way of knowing, and that there is no enquiry, form of human experience where knowledge is not better than ignorance, or where error is not dangerous and costly ; believing, secondly, that the more pro- found and fundamental the practical issues which are at stake, the higher the value of truth and the deeper the tragedies of falsehood, and therefore the more impera- tive the duty of pursuing the former and exposing the latter ; and believing, lastly, that there is no direction in which humble, simple, sincere and at the same time trustful, intrepid and even adventurous research can bring so rich a harvest as that of religion, — possessed by such a creed, how can I but deplore the timid methods of the chief, nay, the only official guardian of the spiritual interests of our people, and yearn for the day when the Church shall wholly entrust the guardianship of the divine authority of its doctrines to their intrinsic truth ? " So truth be in the field," said John Milton, ** we do injuriously ... to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple," " who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter ? " " For who knows not that Truth is strong, next to the Almighty ? She needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings to make her victorious, those are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power. Give her but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps." ^ Freedom is the condition of every spiritual good — ^ Areopagitica, p. 96. 16 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES of religious truth not less than of moral virtue — and it is a plea for free enquiry that I find in the second matter emphasized by Lord Gifford when he said, " I wish the lecturers to treat their subject as a strictly natural science. ... I wish it considered just as astronomy or chemistry is." LECTURE II THE SCEPTICAL OBJECTIONS TO ENQUIRY IN RELIGION STATED AND EXAMINED The main purpose of our first lecture was to advocate enquiry in matters of religious faith and experience. In any other field of man's interests nothing could be less necessary. Whatever may be the relation between in all man's knowledge and conduct, and between his con- matters we duct and his well-being, enquiry is regarded as the way bSt use we to knowledge in temporal matters. The nature ^^ demand that not even when we recognize the mdiviaual s except on true nature, as a member of a spiritual system and Tor the which comprises him and his fellows, and which lives ^^°^^' in and qualifies them all, can we make claims on his behalf or condemn God as unjust if his fortune is not proportionate to his merit. We have not to ask whether or not God has been just in his dealings with A, B, or C, however suffused they may be by their relations to their fellows and the world, but whether the universe as a whole is justly ruled. " The propor- tion of fortune to merit is not really an idea which has a strong hold on healthy minds." ^ But justice on the whole and to the whole, which is not justice to any constituent of that whole, seems to me unsatisfactory from every point of view. There is no whole except that which exists in the related parts, and no justice can be done to either the parts or the whole except by way of the opposite of each. Such empty and disembodied universals as Mr. Bosanquet seems to refer to do not and cannot exist. Least of all can they exist if it be true that the rational indi- vidual is a self-conscious focus of the universe ; or if the whole is a rational whole ; or if the universe throbs in his thinking and willing. I am the more reluctant to understand Mr. Bosanquet in this way, because his vision of the 1 Ihid. p. 152. - Ibid. p. 156. G,L. M 178 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES difference between the individualistic world of claims and counter-claims and " the world to which really and in the end we belong " is so clear. Nor would I do so were it not that Mr. Bosanquet has on other occasions also left the claim of finite existence, and of men and women as they stand and go in this world of space and time amid trifling as well as serious issues, in an analogous position. They are appear- Mr. ances, we are told. But what is an " appearance " } Bosanquet's ,. .. ^ ambiguous Is it real, or IS It a mental ngment : — real like one or treatment of c i i j i • * i • the finite ohakespeare s heroines or a unicorn ; real in one sense individual. ^^^^ ^^^ j.g^l -j^ another sense, both senses remaining undefined ; real to-day and unreal to-morrow when the Absolute will swallow it — these things I have never been able to understand. Indeed, I am not convinced that Mr. Bosanquet's individuals ought to be intelligible, for according to him they are " con- tradictions." Predication concerning them is quite unsafe ; for they fall " within the great ultimate contradiction of the finite-infinite nature." ^ That His ultimate is Mr. Bosanquet's last word concerning man. He man is that is finite and he is infinite, and being both, he is contra- neither finite nor infinite ; for apparently finite and infinite contradict each other. But if they contradict each other, they must supplant each other ; and they must owe their existence to that negative function. Now, I do not deny the dual nature of man ; but I refuse to regard opposites which are supplementary and positive aspects of the same reality as being con- tradictory ; contradiction, as a last word, is a confes- sion of failure. If the theory that ends in a con- tradiction rests on it as its final hypothesis, is it not 'TfiP Value and Destiny of the Individual, p. 170. diction. THE FINITE AND INFINITE 179 thereby proved false ? I should like to ask what other test of falsehood is possible ? It seems to me that " the great ultimate contradiction of the finite-infinite nature " is, in truth, a challenge to the intelligence to effect the reconciliation which the fact itself presents. And the possibility is suggested that here, as else- where, the opposites which seemed to contradict and therefore supplant each other, really supplement and fulfil each other. Surely the infinite that stands merely opposed to the finite must be another finite. The true infinite must be that which reveals and realizes itself in the finite. On the other hand, the finite in which, and by which, the infinite is thus revealed and realized has its own reality in the infinite, and exists in virtue of it. But such a process is impossible where the opposites are merely contra- dictory, as Mr. Bosanquet assumes. The possibility that the finite is the infinite in endless process of self-realization has, I think, not been realized by Mr. Bosanquet. He assumes that what is complete, The perfect, must be static ; and that the Absolute has dSon of this static perfection. Separated from that Absolute, finite and the finite disappears, but the complementary and questioned, consequent truth that the infinite cannot be separated from the finite does not seem to have held for him. Hence to him the Absolute is not immanent. It is not the reality that is revealing itself in all the variety and changes of finite things, but an otiose substance behind the processes. I am in thorough agreement with Mr. Bosanquet's description of " the world of claims and counter- claims," which is the moral world as ordinarily con- ceived and the world of the individualist. It is an 180 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES The " moral world " in the sense of external rights and duties is a pure figment. Man is born of and into relations to his fellows. " appearance," in the sense that it is a misrepresenta- tion of the actual social world in which all of us alike live and move and have our being. In other words, the world of the ordinary moralist and religious man, in which every separate man, as separate, does his own right and wrong deeds, the world out of which God is shut, or which he governs as an autocrat, and in which moral obligations are declarations of his will, has the cardinal aspect of not being real. It is as much the creation of imagination as Prospero's island. It would be a world in which individual men and women are separate and distinct and exclusive, and clink against one another like seaside pebbles. No one could owe any man anything. A man would fulfil his whole duty provided he let his neighbour alone. But such is not the world in which we live. It is a fiction of the individualist. Social solitariness is impossible. Men are born of social antecedents ; and they also form and enter into social relations. They come to stand to each other as master and servant, teacher and pupil, seller and buyer, landlord and tenant, man and wife, parent and child, and so on. The relations vary as to their permanence and im- portance, but according to these thinkers all alike leave the personalities, conceived as the true selves of the individuals, untouched. It cannot be other- wise ; for it is taken for granted that all relations are external and contingent — pure creations of more or less capricious and entirely separate wills. Of course it cannot be denied that men do form and enter into transient relations ; and that many relations (that all open-eyed agreements) are the creation of the wills of the individuals who enter into the compact. MAN A SOCIAL BEING 181 The blunder lies in assuming that all relations come about in this way ; and that they make no difference but leave the selves unaffected. But the root error is that of overlooking the fundamental affinities which unite men from the first and make later agreements possible. Men no more come out of their par- ticularity in order to form society* than the leaves of a tree come together and fix themselves upon its branches. Society is in a sense prior to the individual. He is not only born into it, but born of it. I do not think it is necessary to dwell much on this truth. Recent thought has detected the fanciful and unreal character of the individualistic social schemes. As a matter of experience we have never met a Mel- chisedec. All the men and women we have ever known, or expect to know, had a father and mother and very long ancestry ; and they bore physical and mental traces of their descent in their very make and structure. The world into which they were born is one complex system of interrelated human beings, every one of whom is structurally affected in mind, body and soul by that system, and finds in the mutual obligations between himself and his fellows the con- ditions of living the life of a rational being. We know now that wise men never did run wild in woods, and that a life according to nature, in Rousseau's sense, is as impossible to us as the return into the form of molluscs. Man, in short, as Aristotle taught long ago, is " a social animal." The social But while this is now acknowledged, the conse- ^an^il now quences are not realized. That is to say, the univer- ^dmitted, . . '' ' but the sahty and mevitability of the social relations within results of 1 • 1 ,..-,. , , doing so are which a man must live, if he is to become and to live not seen. 182 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES the life of a rational being, are not seen to be incon- sistent with their contingency and externality. The self that I am is still supposed to be in itself secluded, and not in any relations positive or negative to my fellows or to the world. My self is a separate thing. I can peep at those relations from the privacy where I dwell, and I can throw them off when I please, or put them on and still remain the same self. There can be no relation more obligatory and binding than that which I call my duty to my neighbour or his duty to me. If any claim or counter-claim is valid, it is that of duty. Nevertheless, on this view, even our duties are merely external obligations. They are imposed by another being whom we usually regard as " higher." We have no part in making them binding, and consequently our obedience to the command is not free, nor our conduct moral. The But I shall return to this aspect of the matter. In woddTs*^ the meantime I wish to indicate that we have in the proximately economic world something that approaches this indi- individual- _ _ . istic. vidualist's conception of society. There the units are supposed to be indifferent to each other, and no one is under obligations to any one else or can make claims upon him, or in any way participate in his destiny except economically. Nothing counts in this social state of things except material values, and one man's money, so far as " business " is concerned, is as good as another's. Justice in such a world would consist in equality, and equality would mean equal possession of material wealth. That is to say, the standard by which desert would be measured and claims acknow- ledged would have no ethical significance of any kind. The human and spiritual contents of personality have A MERELY ECONOMIC WORLD 183 all been spilled out of the economic man. They are its spiritual not required and do not count. The workman in a large factory or yard is not personally known by his employer nor is he of any personal interest to him. The employer drops his name and calls him by a number. And similarly, on the other side, the employer to the workman is a capitalist, more or less just, and nothing else — a money-bag kept rather closely shut. But materialistic as we have become in these times, not even in Glasgow and its neighbourhood has society taken an exclusively economic character. Most men have other interests as well. When the But no workman goes home to his mother or his wife and sodety— children, or when he joins his fellow-workmen in y\°^ ^'^^^ . ' •> the economic pursuit of political ends or the purposes of his union, —can come in every exchange of kindliness and consideration and exist except personal regard, the crudeness of the economic world ethical is left behind. Relations that are ethical are found to '^^ ^ ^°"^" exist in every human society, even the lowest, and these at the same time sweeten and exalt individual life and secure social unity. Above all, it must be observed that these more or less artificial and superficial economic relations, indeed, economic society itself, could not come into being except for the action, prolonged through many cen- turies, of relations that are either consciously or uncon- sciously moral. After all, economic relations imply a mutual trust amongst men, and a stability of will and purpose which are beyond their reach so long as they are uncivilized. Our conclusion, then, as to the purely fictitious character of the individualistic world agrees with 184 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES If the world of claims is a fiction, why pass judgment on it, or on God's treatment of it ? Mr. Bosanquet's. No such society ever did nor can exist. Why, then, I must ask, pass judgment on such a figment and call it either just or unjust, good or bad, in any sense ? It is not worthy even of condem- nation. It would seem to me that to make claims on behalf of a detected fiction, the pure creation of incorrect thinking, is absurd. And such a fiction the individual member of this society is. To call God unjust because there exists no constant proportion between the deserts and the destiny of the social atoms of an individualistic, and therefore impossible, community is absurd. Having discovered and ex- posed the error, the philosophers ought to let it lie. It is not a matter that can concern anyone whose interest is wholly in the real and the true. If he finds it " the general fact that when we regard each other as finite units in a world of externality, we tend to frame schemes of apportionment according to which, by some rule or other, each separate unitary being has some claim to a separate unitary allotment of happiness or opportunity or reward — of something which should be added to him, it seems to us, by God or man, or nature or fortune,"-^ he surely can have nothing to do with such schemes, known to be pure fiction, a thing in the clouds. Such schemes ought to interest no one. If no such beings as the individualist conceives are to be found, how can they be treated either justly or unjustly ? There is no ground for pessimism in their unheeded claims. Nor, it seems to me, can the existence of such beings be desired. Verily, the world of claims would be a hard world — it would be a world ^The Value and Destiny of the Individual, pp. 145-6. THE WORLD OF THE INDIVIDUALIST 185 where no mother cared for her child, or child for its mother, and no one shared another's joys or sorrows — a world without sympathy and without love — deprived of all the deeper spiritual supports both of morality and religion. It is not man's doom to live in such a world. The world in which he does live is an incomparably better one ; at the lowest it has spiritual possibilities and human features. I have said that the individualist's world can have such a no moral character of any kind. In the first place, ^ave luf" as already indicated, the claims and counter-claims ^^^^^acter are external in character. Even a divine command- ment, in so far as it is external, can have no moral value. It does not obtain free obedience. So long as the claim is not imposed, or re-imposed, by the agent upon himself, his acknowledgment of it has no ethical value. In the next place, it would seem to me that, except personal fear or gain, that is, except some directly self-regarding motive be in operation, neither claims nor counter-claims could be recognized. " Why should I be moral ? " or rather " How can I be moral ? " unless moral imperatives appear to me to be the demands of what is Best. The moral good must have objective value. Duty becomes a moral obligation only when it ceases to matter who has made the demand, provided the agent endorses it : the demand itself must be just. It would thus seem to me that a world of in- dividualistic claims and counter-claims lacks all that can make the claims and counter-claims binding, or even operative at all. The constituents of such a world, as Mr. Bosanquet suggests, would hold 186 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES It is only " the good " that can supply social impulse to progress — really only the Best. Hence morality and religion, the finite and infinite, are reconciled. one another at arm's length ; or they would seek solitude. And most certainly no progressive or spiritual impulse would be present. That impulse comes when the fulfilment of duty is recognized in both its aspects ; when it seems to be at the same moment the realization of what is objectively best and the attainment of one's own true good. For man is not doing what is wrong in seeking his own well- being. His error springs from conceiving and seeking a personal well-being which is not at the same time a universal objective good. Every action has its own personal and even subjective and private aspect : willing what is right or wrong is always a lonely matter. But the exclusive features of it are in the background. They form no part of the motive and, in fact, do not count. For the good man is good just because he has given his self away, dedicated it, and saved it by the dedication. It is, after the act, a better " self " than it ever was before. Its life is more full and it moves on a higher level. Now, this means to me, in one word, the reconcilia- tion of morality and religion, for morality becomes the active operation of the Best, that is, the religious life. But this also means a victory over the contradiction of the finite and infinite aspects of man's nature. It not only affirms the immanence of God in the volitions of men, but shows the grounds of its possibility. The ultimate ethical force which the individual individuates, that is, turns into elements of his own personality, is God's. Just in the same way the physical force which man exerts and spends is that of his world. Mr. Bosanquet ought therefore to have nothing to do with a world of exclusive wills, or with an Abso- MR. BOSANQUET'S ABSOLUTE 187 lute which stands over against the finite and in contradiction to it. It is " beyond," " impossible," and so on, and should be left to Herbert Spencer. The infinite that we do know and have a right to call just or unjust, is the power which manifests itself in the events of the world, natural and spiritual, in which we live. That infinite is a process which never rests. Like all else it is what it does ; and to know what it is we must consider its works. If man will but lift his eyes he will find that the Universe is the daily and constant revelation of this ultimate reality, and that the reality which it reveals is spiritual. Mv contention, then, is that Mr. Bosanquet's Aloofness Absolute is no less a fiction than the world or claims Bosanquet's and counter-claims, whose existence he rejects. In yi^I° " ^~ it the finite is either lost, or transmuted beyond spencer's, recognition. The process of constant change, which on such a view the finite appears to be, is lawless and chaotic enough to satisfy the wildest Pragmatism. But we have no reliable evidence of uncaused happen- ings. Every event points back to conditions out of No evidence which it has arisen, and if we observe it, we shall find possible, not it gives rise to, or rather takes the form of still other e^Impie^o/ conditions. This means that what is changing is jg^^^^eiy finite something that is also constant. The detachment of events is only one aspect of them ; or more truly, this one aspect, closely observed, will prove to be the reality itself in process. But Mr. Bosanquet keeps these two characters asunder. The events of our life stand for Mr. Bosanquet " in a temporal series " over against the fixity of what is eternal ; and " the ultimate triumph," that is, of the good, can take place only " in the Absolute." " The 188 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Hence the relation of finite and infinite is negative for Mr. Bosanquet. total expression of it within the temporal series is inconceivable." ^ And yet it would appear that the things of time express the Absolute. " One thing seems to me certain," he says. " The expression of the Absolute cannot be wholly reserved for the future. The past must have had its share. What else can it have been than such an expression ? And some- thing is certainly dropped as we proceed, by the nature of finiteness, though it is open to any one to argue that what is added must be of greater value." ^ From this it would appear that Mr. Bosanquet's Absolute contains something that the finite cannot hold ; and, on the other hand, there seems to be something in finite facts which has to be left behind as " not capable of Salvation." They are " dropped," and never recovered. The infinite is not the whole, and the Absolute is not all-inclusive. Mr. Bosanquet's doctrine on this matter is somewhat ambiguous, but his last pronouncement and final one seems to affirm the essential separateness of the finite and infinite, or the relative and absolute. And yet they are not so separate as to be incapable of clashing. " The finite- infinite creature " is " always in a condition of self- transcendence. . . . He is always endeavouring to pass beyond himself in achievement. . . . He is always a fragmentary being, inspired by an infinite whole, which he is for ever striving to express in terms of his limited range of externality. In this, ex hypothesis he can never succeed. But this effort of his is not wasted or futile. It is a factor of the self-maintenance of the Universe; it constitutes ... an element in the Absolute."^ * The Value and, Destiny of the Individual, p. 326. 2 Ibid. p. 313. ^ Ibid. p. 304. BECOMING ONE'S SELF 189 What more do you require, the reader may ask, in the way of bringing the infinite and finite together in the nature of man ? I reply that for " self-tran- scendence " I would write " self-realization " or " self- attainment." Instead of saying that man is always endeavouring to " pass beyond himself," I would say that he is endeavouring to reach or become himself. I cannot admit that man is a fore-doomed failure : Man for Mr. A • ■ r r^ Bosanquet that were too cruel an mvention tor any ^^reator. ig in truth Instead of affirming that in his ethical actions he is ^^^' ^°^ always failing, I would say that he is always succeeding JJjJy^^"^® — even when he " learns through evil, that good is troubling ° T T • aspiration. best." And I would add that the gam of the Universe consists in the increased value of the individual selves which are evolved ; and would refuse to regard man, the self-conscious and therefore infinite individual, as a mere element, even in the Absolute. What reaches over its other is more than an " element." All through Mr. Bosanquet's argument the supposition runs that man's real nature is finite. He has to pass " beyond " himself in order to achieve the infinite — an obvious impossibility. The consequence is that, if and when man does pass beyond himself (and he is lifted above himself by his religion), man's self disappears. Mr. Bosanquet speaks of the absorption of the self by will and conviction in the perfection which inspires it and belongs to it " ; ^ as if in becoming real the self ceased to be, or at least to be itselj. At this point the difference of view becomes clear and significant. Man has not to go beyond himself in order to reach the infinite. Nor does he need to be 1 The Value and Destiny of the Individual, p. 306. Vide also Mr. Bradley's Appearance and Reality. 190 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Man is the infinite in process, for he is self- conscious. The double result of moral progress. transmuted in order to become an item in the Absolute. He is the infinite in process. A mere finite could not aspire or in any way seek to go beyond itself, any more than a cow can be moral. Man can seek to become only that which he potentially is : and what a man is potentially he is most truly — only we must permit what is potential to reveal itself in the process of becoming. To be a rational self means to be self- determined, and what is self-determined is at once both infinite and absolute. Nothing is alien to it. It is in its nature all-inclusive. This fundamental characteristic belongs to the narrowest and most ignorant and least virtuous self we can conceive, so long as it is held to be sane and rational, capable of doing either what is right or what is wrong and there- fore free. It is in him to " acquire," and what he is capable of becoming is that which he most truly is. When I read man's history, therefore, what I find is not a finite creature tr)4ng to transcend himself and necessarily failing, but a potency that is infinite in its nature, operating as a spiritual being at a certain stage of its actuality, and in response to certain circumstances. If either side of the human self had to be called unreal, or deceptive, I should call it his finite, fixed, exclusive side. But the conception of the finite as the self- revealing and self-realizing process of what is in its nature absolute and infinite, averts the need of fixed and static entities, and avoids the difficulties which spring therefrom. Hence, to me, every step in spiritual well-doing is at once the actual attainment of the Best, the realization, as demanded and made possible by the circumstances of the moment, of a good that is moral and therefore THE CHANGELESS ABSOLUTE 191 Absolute, and also it is the building up of the indi- vidual as an individual. He means more, and is more, and has more worth, after the deed, than before. " The Absolute is all-inclusive by transmutation," says Mr. Bosanquet, " and is thus no mere aggregate," ^ but the transmutation is supposed to be confined to its finite content. The Absolute cannot change. What is perfect must remain fixed in order to be real — a pure assumption if the conflict of good and evil is admitted. Such a view which rules out real perfection, rules out the whole content and inspiration of progress. It sug- gests to Mr. Bosanquet an ever-receding goal, which verily is not inspiring. That it could be a succession of achievements has not appeared probable to him. " There is no Interpreter's House or Palace Beauti- ful " on the way, for Mr. Bosanquet's Pilgrim, where he can be refitted and refreshed and sent forth singing. Mr. Bosanquet, in a v/ord, " objects to the conception of change in the ultimate real." ^ The Absolute stands aloof, after all, from the world of finite happenings, of which, by the by, this world is crammed full. It does not express itself in the changes. It is not that which does emit the changes ; it is not a perfection which never rests or ceases to throw out its rays. It is a dead Absolute, like the static substance of Spinoza. The living turmoil is all elsewhere. The relation be- tween finite and infinite, the relative and the absolute, God and the world, is in the end negative, exclusive, contradictory. The moral world is the world in which every man tries to go beyond himself, and, of course, fails. Failure attends the efforts of him who has, no less than of him who has not, identified his will with ir/ic Value and Destiny of ike Individual, p. 307. ^Ibid. p. 308. 192 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES The contra- diction is ultimate for Mr. Bosanquet and pessimism the legiti- mate result. that of God, ratified, adopted, loved his commands and found in his service perfect freedom ; for he has had to leave his self out and become something or some- body else. As a moral being in this world he does not do justice, and he does not receive justice, in any full sense. There is no such actual achievement any- where. On all hands, at the best, there is only a striving after " a beyond." Man is doomed to carry with his consciousness of " I ought " and " I would " the conviction of " I cannot." As a moral being he must not expect to perform an act which can satisfy his sense of what is right. If, being religious, he is satis- fied, it is because his self has been transcended. Religion is God's presence and action in him, and, be it noted, not a man's own action also ; for these two are exclusive. Contradiction is thus, for Mr. Bosanquet, the ulti- mate word regarding this world of time and tears. It is a contradiction between two things, each of which is fixed. It is therefore not soluble. It can only be removed by treating either the one or the other of the opposites as unreal. And this is what he does. In this life it is the infinite or absolute or perfect which is unreal. In the next it is the finite that has to disappear or, what comes to the same thing, to be transmuted. This world, the world in which we live and which we help to make, the moral world, is the sphere of the unavailing eflFort to reach a solution, and the scene of a double failure. It is a world in which man is condemned to failure, and in which God is not called upon to be just, except " on the whole." The next world is the scene of such transmutation that nothing is any longer recognizable. FIXED OPPOSITES 193 So far as I can see, such fixed opposites as Mr. Bosanquet employs are not capable of yielding any satisfying result. I reserve for our next lecture the defence of a less despairing view. G.L. N I.ECTURE XII Idealism in modern poetry and philosophy. THE WORLD OF THE IDEALIST The substance of the view, which I would demonstrate by irrefragable proof if I could, is suggested by Words- worth in the opening words of the Ninth Book of The Excursion, " To every Form of being is assigned, An active Principle : — howe'er removed From sense and observation, it subsists In all things, in all natures ; in the stars Of azure heaven, the unenduring clouds, In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone That paves the brooks, the stationary rocks. The moving waters, and the invisible air. Unfolded still the more, more visible, The more we know ; and yet is reverenced least, And least respected in the human Mind, Its most apparent home." I have quoted Wordsworth because we accept optimistic utterances from the poets more readily than from philosophers ; and we are less ready to charge them with taking a shallow view of life and treating evil too lightly. Moreover, if I have not misapprehended the whole mission of modern Idealism, I should say that it is to give a reasoned and definite expression to this poetic faith and to justify it in the face of the 194 KANT'S ETHICAL VIEW 195 facts of life — justify it, that is to say, to the under- standing of men who will neither reduce the reality of these facts by calling them appearances nor proceed by a method which selects convenient and favourable facts and passes all others by. Idealism received its inspiration from Wordsworth and Coleridge and their fellow-poets, no less than it received its specific problem from Kant. Kant introduced what he called the Copernican change by giving the necessities of spirit logical priority over those of sense and natural facts. But the change which he introduced carries far more consequences than he foresaw, or, indeed, • than have even yet been realized, whether in the theories or in the practice of mankind. It implies Kant's not only that religion and morality, and all the rights change— his and privileges of a nature that is rational, can be affirmation placed beyond the reach of the engines of scepticism, priority of r r 11 111- • • ^ - ! practical sate rrom all attack, but have to be remterpretea ana reason. to take a wider meaning. In the last resort, for Kant, the interests of man are moral ; the truth is to be known for the sake of the good ; the knowable universe exists in order to furnish a fit frame for the moral life ; and the ultimate necessity for the existence of God lies in the demand for the realization of a com- plete good. But the moral life for Kant is ultimately intensely individualistic. Every man is set to seek his own perfection. The pursuit is solitary. He stands alone, with no strength save his own, under the thunder of the categorical imperative. And his strength is sufficient. " He can, because he ought," although he is never complete victor over his own desires, and requires infinite time. If, in one sense, he may be held to be an ephemeral pheno- 196 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES The Idealistic re-affirma- tion of the kinship of man and his world and the spiritualiza- tion of the latter. menon amongst phenomena, in another the whole natural scheme is a thing lighter than vanity in the presence of his spirit. And if he has intercourse with his fellows in society, it is that of a king with kings.^ But all this Kantian teaching had to be changed in being adopted. The individual had to suffer at least temporary dethronement. Psychology was to cease to play the role of metaphysics ; man had to be derived and to appear as mediated by the natural scheme. Morality had to be both naturalized and socialized : it must cease to be either an exception or an antagonist to the scheme of things, and lose its defiant character. Moral goodness, which is the becoming morally good, must itself be a process of the real. The movement must be seen as the very best thing that could take place, and as that in which the world of the real reveals its true character and reaches its full fruition. Hence, religion too must attain a new character. It must derive its value not from the failure of morality, but from its success : it must be recognized as that which inspires morality, being the sense of infinite companionship — " If God be for us, who can be against us .^ " Now this change, though it involves the whole outlook of philosophy, morality and religion, comes in the last resort to one thing only : man, as an indi- vidual, instead of being the centre around which the Universe revolves, is now caught up in its career. But the Universe itself is spiritual, relative to mind and, therefore, to man in every item. It verily is a Copernican change, a new spiritual astronomy destined ^ Kant's doctrine in this matter was inconsistent. DUAL HUMAN NATURE 197 to make many beliefs obsolete, and to be received reluctantly. Man is man, on this view, in virtue of his kinship with the world ; not because his self is private, but for the very opposite reason. But it is difficult for man to give up, or even to post- pone, his self in any department. He seems to stand naturally at the centre of things : East and West, and North and South seem inevitably to begin where he is, and the zenith is always immediately above his head. The difficulty is especially great if the promise that he will receive his self back enriched is uncertain and given in indefinite language. And that the promise has, thus far, not been free from these defects is hard to deny ; for the votaries of this way of thinking are not seldom given to accentuate the negative side of the process of morality, and to make much of its contra- dictions, and pains, and perils ; while the Absolute, in which is the ultimate truth and reality of things, is apt to be an empty maw, where finite things are trans- muted. This is the substance of our criticism of Mr. Bosanquet. He over-accentuates the merely negative side of morality and emphasizes its hazards and hard- ships. Man's self is " a finite being which is infinite Apparent without realizing it, and so ... is always beyond diction of itself." " It is this double being which necessitates nature, the atmosphere of hazard and hardship which sur- rounds the finite self when it tries to take itself as such."^ If it could " take itself" as more than finite, if it could realize its infinitude by completely iden- tifying itself with the perfect, thinking no imperfect thoughts, seeking no imperfect good, doing no deed in an imperfect way, then all would be well. But to ^The ]'alne and Destiny of the Individual, p. 132. 198 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES do this the finite being would be obliged to pass beyond itself, that is, I presume, it would have to leave its self behind and become something or some- body else — which is plainly impossible. This, I think, is not merely contradiction but con- fusion. In the face of it one is disposed to ask some plain questions, and to make some plain statements. Presumably man's life would have as little " hazard " or " hardship " as the animal's, if he had no moral aspirations, that is to say, if the aim of his being were not the attainment of the perfect, which means the doing of what is morally right. Expunge his higher nature and there would remain, not a being acquainted with hazards and hardships, but a con- tented animal chewing its cud. Presumably, on the other hand, " hazard and hardship " would not fitly characterize a life which actually attained the perfect. It is no longer necessary to discuss the first of these two alternatives. However close the kinship between men and animals, we are not disposed to overlook the fact that, somehow or another, the process of evolution culminates in converting man's natural needs into spiritual ideals freely sought. The second alternative remains, I think, even for Mr. Bosanquet himself, provided he keeps running the hazards and facing the hardships. He has detected the unreality of the " world of claims and counter-claims." Bad as our world is, in many ways, it is not so hopelessly bad as that — not even the economic part of it. The What world is real, then } Or how are we to diction is characterize truly what we falsely viewed as a world fo°r morality of claims and counter-claims ? Evidently as a world in practice, in which morality is re-interpreted in the light of MAN'S REAL WORLD 199 religion ; and in which man is recognized as having claims and fulfilling them (or as a being with rights and duties) because he is already in the service of the Best. His rights are conclusive and his claims are sound only because the good actually is at their back ; and his duties are binding for the same reason. But this is nothing more nor less than to attribute both the demands that men make upon one another and upon their God, and the mutual service they render each other in this world of space and time, to the activity of what is Perfect. The world of human intercourse, of mutual help and hindrance, the ordinary social or moral world, we thus trace first to the volitions of men. It is their continued volitions that keep it in existence. Let man cease to will^ and the moral world, as known to us, disappears. And if we take up the volitions of men, we shall find (not seldom under deep obscuration) that nothing could call them into being except a vision of a good end — nay, of the best — or what he conceives to be the Best, though it may not by any means be regarded by him as morally best. That vision incites the will, receives the assent of the head and heart, and becomes the object of a choice which is free. If we want further to trace his right or wrong interpretations of what is best, we shall have a long road to travel. We must bring in all that went to the making of his dis- position, all his past history. But we should not have to go beyond his personality, for all these things are gathered into him, and the choice in the end is his own. But his world has co-operated. If you are asked who did this deed, you must answer in the same way as you would answer a question regarding 200 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES physical movement. Whose forces are employed when I walk ? Are they mine and not the physical world's, or the world's and not mine ? We can deny the part therein neither of the individual nor of the physical world. An action Why should we judge spiritual facts otherwise, and and°my™^ Conclude that an action must cease to be mine, if I am world's. |.Q regard it as inspired by my religious attitude and the result of " God's working in me " ? The reason is that spiritual deeds are, as already observed, more obviously private, individual ; and that we overlook the fact that they are the result of the individuation of common elements. The spiritual as compared with the natural universe is a closer unity, for the members enter into each other's life and fate ; and yet the unity is made up of more independent elements. The intensely individual character of moral responsibility cannot be compromised. Man does what is right or what is wrong as if he were the sole living being in the Universe. His action is the result of his own interpretation of his self and its needs, and of that A man's which can satisfy. His antecedents and his environ- poStive*^^ ment are not forces operating upon him. They are content of elements of his concrete self. His individuality has his person- _ _ -' aiity. absorbed, incorporated them, and they are active only because they are elements in his personality and are therefore participant in his volitions. The difference that separated the self and the not-self is overcome through the inclusion or absorption of the latter in the former. It is the nature of the rational self to negate the strangeness of the not-self and to deprive it of its alien character. All that is spiritual must be in- dividual. Human life, on this view, is a process in MAN'S NATURE NOT MERELY FINITE 201 which what appears at first glance to be finite and ex- clusive, is found to be infinite. That which actually works as rational life is that which has no fixed limits. It is engaged in overpassing them ; that is to say, in showing that they are not limits. Man is the infinite in the process of demonstrating his infinitude. Hence, so far from transcending himself through the His self is activities of his life, he is becoming himself. The realizing human world is, to me, a moral world in the making. ^^^^" ^°^^' In the last resort nothing, or nothing of consequence, takes place except that men here are slowly learning goodness. This is the same thing as to say that what is operative everywhere in, and through and as, the wills of men is the infinite goodness of God — human history is " God's working," as we say. The process is both moral and religious, both human and divine, both finite and infinite. So intimately are these related, so truly are they inseparable aspects of one whole, that the moment we do separate them each becomes an abstract nonentity and unintelligible. The aspirations of the finite, the moral movement Hence the of the world, becomes impossible. Not even the fj^^^te^iJ effort can take place. There were for man nothing: "^^° ^^\ i _ ^ to not contra- but pure stagnancy if the ideals of reason did not dictory but translate his natural desires. And, on the other hand, mentary to the infinite or absolute would be distant, " beyond," out of touch with finitude. The finite could not reach it without "going beyond itself" — a feat it cannot perform. These are the conclusions to which Mr. Bosanquet is driven, and so long as the distinc- tion between the finite and infinite is regarded as the opposition of contradictory facts, they are not avoidable. 202 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Can this optimistic faith be justified ? Only on the whole : in the sense, that we cannot fully know the individual. What he regards as contradictory I would repre- sent as complementary. The opposites, if we so call them, maintain and exist and act in virtue of each other. The infinite reveals and realizes itself in the finite ; and the finite is real and not an appearance. It is a final and ultimate real, retaining its individuality through all changes, because and in so far as it is the operation of the whole. The whole, on its part, is the infinite articulated and, in man, individuated. But can this view be proved ? Does not such a faith carry with it consequences which are obviously inad- missible ? The advantages of reconciling the sacred and the secular, religion and morality, the claims of the spiritual and of the natural self, and of finding in what is perfect the impulse that moves the universe on its course would be to establish a priceless con- fidence, and bring that Peace of which the greatest optimist the world ever saw is said to have spoken. But even that optimism is too dearly bought if bought at the expense of either denying imperfection and reducing evil into a temporary appearance, or, on the other hand, of making God participate in the evil doings of men and responsible for the inequalities under which they live and the injustice they suffer. The answer which, as we saw, has been offered is that we are not concerned with the destiny of the individual, but with the character of the scheme of things as a whole. We rejected this answer in a summary fashion. The parts we thought must in- evitably share the character of the whole, and, in justice, ought also to share its destiny. And this is true above all of a system which is spiritual, and OUR KNOWLEDGE IS INCOMPLETE 208 which is focussed more or less fully in every individual member of it. But there is another sense in which we are not called upon to justify God's dealing with the indi- vidual, or to maintain a religious faith except in view of the scheme as a whole. We are not called upon to perform a task which exceeds our capacities ; and it does exceed the capacity of man, who is only in process of realizing his infinitude, finally to prove or disprove anything concerning the individual. That can be done only when knowledge is complete ; and complete knowledge of the individual, that is, of the concrete individual who alone is real, implies complete knowledge of his relations to the universe which give him the elements of his personality. To pass judg- ment on a man's action we must know the man ; indeed, know everything in him or about him which either palliated or aggravated his act — his circum- stances, his history, his parentage, his disposition, his tastes, instincts, and all the advantages and disabilities under which he lives. But such exhaustive knowledge is evidently beyond our power to attain. Our state- ments must therefore be general and applicable only on the whole ; for the consequences of an omission of any item were to render our verdict insecure and possibly unjust. Evidently, under such circumstances we should not pass any judgment on our fellows. But that is not practicable, and in this, as in other matters, we must do the best we can. To live together, we must form estimates of one another. Social life implies different degrees of mutual reliance. As a rule, we pass moral judgments ; but not always, by any means. Indeed, / 204 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Practical necessity of passing judgment on individuals. These judgments, if religious, are universal ; hence not demon- strably right or wrong. nothing is more vague or uncertain than the standard of values which men employ, and no vital matter has received less consideration. In our ordinary life of more or less useful mutual service, which human society is, the problems we have practically to solve are problems of priority. That is to say, in order to play our part as members of the social system, we must judge, not so much between the decisive opposites, good and evil, as between the good and the better, or between the bad and the worse. Plain opposites do not often present themselves. The questions we decide are questions of degree, and of what is, or is not, opportune. But the religious attitude is different. There our judgments must be comprehensive and final, and our approval or disapproval is in nowise limited. It applies to the whole man, and it is a pronouncement upon his spiritual, i.e. his true and ultimate, worth or worthlessness. All judgments inspired by the re- ligious point of view have this comprehensive and final character. All is right or all is wrong. If " God's in his heaven, all's right with the world." If there be no God, or if he lacks either power or goodness, then nothing is right. The religious man's experience of the world may be limited, his observation of man's life may have been external and superficial, but if his enquiry concerns the existence and character of God, and is made in the interest and from the point of view of religion, the conclusion at which he arrives is an affirmation or a denial of the validity of a faith, which is all-inclusive and final. But his judgments, whether valid or not, are insecure. Their truth has not been demonstrated. He has drawn a conclusion AN ABANDONED WORLD 205 which is universal in its character from premisses which are particular and incomplete. From this point of view I am in entire agree- ment with Mr. Bosanquet that we cannot justify a scheme that equalizes, on any principles, the destiny and the deserts of individuals. There can be no doubt as to the evidence which is offered by the world in which we live. Taken as simply " given," or at its face value, it favours scepticism. The circum- stances of the life of good individuals do not furnish grounds for believing that a loving God has them in his special care. What such observation presents to our view is a world apparently left to itself. And if we observe the ways of men from the purely secular point of view, and without admitting the truth of the presuppositions of a religious faith, the best we can see is a moral struggle. And, from this point of view, the moral struggle is not merely full of hazards and hardships, but tragical to the last degree ; for it is the hopeless struggle of finite beings to " transcend themselves." And what worse can there be than the necessary failure of the pursuit of the best } Whether the world is not better " left to itself," and whether the moral struggle is the attempt of men to trans- cend or to reach themselves, are further questions. These we postpone for the moment. But one thing must be clearly recognized : if we cannot approve, neither can we condemn, the actual world from mere observation of the particulars of the lives of individuals. If the religious conclusion is insecure, the opposite is in nowise better founded. We can, in fact, convict scepticism of the omission of a ruling factor. It overlooks the fact that external 206 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES External aspect of the world favours scepticism ; but it is a scepticism that omits and is untrust- worthy. We cannot draw either religious or sceptical conclusions from observation of the world and man's history. circumstances owe the value that they have to the use which is made of them. Their value is not intrinsic, as is the value of moral facts. Whether a man's poverty, or ill-health, or misfortunes are his loss or gain, we cannot know except by relating them to his life and its aims. And what is true of individual men is true of the whole scheme. It, too, must be set in its spiritual context if we would find its final value. Should it happen that the present world, abandoned to itself as it seems to be, and full of inequalities — wealth, health, the respect of men, and every form of prosperity, and their opposites, distributed without any reference to the deserts of men — should it happen that it furnishes to mankind as a whole the best opportunity for learning goodness, then the sceptical condemnation of it, and the denial of the existence and perfection of God are wrong. But they are wrong only if a still further condition is fulfilled. They are wrong if the process of learning to do what is right, or, in the language of religion, if " the service of God " has itself a worth which is neither conditional nor limited. It would appear, then, that we are as little entitled to justify or condemn the scheme of things as a whole as we are to justify or condemn its details. Neither side to this controversy has a right to draw universal inferences from particular data, and the affirmation or denial of the existence of God is such a universal. This was suggested by Kant, so far as he denies our right to conclude anything but a finite Creator from a finite world. But we can go further. The particulars of human experience, even if we could exhaust their meaning, would not furnish OUR SYSTEMATIZING CONCEPTIONS 207 grounds for theological deductions. In their logical applications the particulars are not premisses so much as tests. We do not draw from our observa- tion of the world, or of the ways and destiny of men, our conception of either the being or the character of God : we try to discover whether facts do or do not justify our religious belief or unbelief. In short, we employ the same method as the scientific man does in his enquiries. He does not go to the facts he wishes to understand with an open-mouth and an empty-mind, nor wait in the laboratory on anything that may happen. He is endeavouring to discover whether facts corroborate, that is, exemplify, some presupposition or hypothesis which he brings with him. Strictly speaking, inference from par- ticulars can yield, not explanatory principles, but generalizations. Newton might, though most un- safely, have inferred from the fall of one apple that other apples would also fall under similar circum- stances. But the idea which explained the fall, the Particular conception of the active principle which produced the furnish, not fall, he had to bring with him. We may call this g^^^'^g^^J^' power of anticipating the meaning of facts imagination °f our con- ^ , . . . . . ceptions. or intuition, and make it seem miraculous and inex- plicable. My view, as I have already indicated, is that our intuitions and hypothetical preconceptions have their origin, like other ideas, in our experience. In any case we employ them in all our enquiries. And in so far as our conception of the being and of the character of God — the religious or sceptical attitude, in which we approach the world and the doings of men in order to observe them — in so far as this is not merely traditional, we owe it not so much to external 208 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Our religious beliefs or disbeliefs spring from reflexion on our spiritual and inner experience. That we cannot trace spiritual law in the particular does not disprove its presence. observation as to reflexion upon our own inner experience — upon our nature, our needs, our yearn- ings, our disappointments and satisfaction. We dis- cover our need of God when we come to our selves. The evidence must be spiritual if our conclusion is the acceptance or rejection of a religious faith. In this controversy, or enquiry, only spiritual values can count. If the scheme of things is such as to maintain these, then all is well ; if not, then all is wrong. Does the scheme of things, then, justify religious faith, even when we judge of it only as a whole, and make use of no standard of measurement except that which is strictly spiritual ? This is the question we have now to face. I would recall to your minds the limits within which our answer is offered : first, that, with Mr. Bosanquet, we judge only of the scheme as a whole (I am not saying on the whole) ; and, secondly, that the conclusion is made to rest and religious faith accepted or rejected on spiritual grounds. As to the first of these two conditions, I think it has been made plain that we speak of the scheme as a whole, and not of its particulars, not because we admit that the benevolent will of God may not be operative in the latter, but because we cannot know them through and through, and, therefore, cannot draw from our observation of them any conclusion either religious or sceptical. My attitude in this differs radically from that of Mr. Bosanquet, who does not merely suspend judgment, but considers that the evidence of the divine benevolence is to be found only in the scheme as a whole. The second point — the employment of purely spiritual standards in the matter of religious belief or MORAL CONSEQUENCES 209 unbelief — needs some explanation. It means that in this enquiry we really ask and try to answer only one question. Do the morallaws — the laws which demand The purely justice between man and man, and man and God, and criterion of not only justice but "love," and every other prin- ^"^^S""^"*' ciple of spiritual excellence — do these hold in our world ? Is the relation of deed and result, or ante- cedent and consequent, reliable, universal, necessary, as we consider it to be in the natural world } Or are there any instances in which the doing of a good action leaves the doer a worse man ? Expressed in a more general way, has right-doing ever been known to inflict moral loss, or wrong-doing to bring moral gain } One such case would be as destructive of religious faith and as justly negate the existence, power and goodness of God, and the effective operation of his will, as one instance of the failure of natural law would be a conclusive negation of that law. But two conditions must be fulfilled before the sceptic could draw his negative conclusion. He must not only have failed to trace the operation of the spiritual law, but he must have succeeded in tracing its failure. The first case would only justify suspension of judg- ment : scepticism, in order to deny, must prove the second. The second condition must be the exclusion of all considerations which are not directly moral or spiritual. It is not for a moment to be denied that as things are, and have been in the past, and will be till that distant future comes when social life attains a high degree of perfection, men, by doing what is right, have brought and will bring tragic misfortune upon themselves and upon those who depend on them. This, indeed, is the most frequent theme of tragedy. G.L, O 210 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES The reflective scrupulousness of Kamlet, the intensity of Othello's love for Desdemona, the headlong trust- fulness of Lear — in short, the apparent failure of some form of good is at the heart of every great tragedy. If it be true that, in the long run, natural well-being follows moral good conduct, it is not true so far as the history of mankind has proceeded that " all these things are added " to those who " seek first the king- No evident dom of God and his righteousness." Spiritual ex- between°" cellence and material prosperity — good health, wealth, right action gocial esteem and so on — seem to be related to each and external well-being, other by no law of any kind. If the demand for such a sequence be right, then the sceptic's case is, so far, to all appearance, in process of being proved by man's experience. But on the assumption that spiritual excellence is supreme excellence, that moral or spiritual good is the only final and absolute good — good in its own right and good whatever else occurs — and that all material things derive their value, positive or negative, from this final good, according as they con- Assumption tribute to it or hinder it — on that assumption the spkituai demand that " good men should have a good time," supreme and ^"^ ^^^^ pain. Suffering, loss, sorrow, should be con- the source centrated on bad men, would be irrelevant and even of all other values. wrong. The religious spirit has no difficulties over this question. It finds no insuperable obstacle to counting " all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus." It says with Paul, I " do count them but dung that I may win Christ." And there are considerations which go far to show that its conviction is valid. In the first place, there are yery many undeniable EXTERNAL CONDITIONS 211 instances of the conversion by the spiritual-minded man of all manner of apparently unfavourable circum- stances into means of further religious progress. External circumstances of all kinds have been made into opportunities for learning goodness ; and there are hardly any limits to the power of character over circumstance. The praise of God has arisen, at times, from strange conditions — given a love of the Highest that fills the soul, it will find fuel in every- thing and break into the brighter flame for pain, poverty, and other natural ills. On the other hand, the secondary and derivative and conditional character of natural goods is in constant process of being demonstrated. The most miserable men, the blankest failures, the lives which become most weary of themselves, the men whose career has all along its course had low value and ends in defeat, are, I believe, as a rule, " the men of pleasure." From both sides the same conclusion is pressed if this • r , 11 r • • 1 1 '-ni • assumption upon us, ir we are at all rair-mmded. i he experience is true then of the former, and especially their " peace" of soul ^^^^.^niig '^ and happiness, indicate that they have been making p!^^ ^"^ the right use of the external circumstances of life. That of the second is a frank confession that the cir- cumstances have been misused. And, for my part, I have never heard the verdict of either withdrawn. And the right use of a thing always implies a right understanding of its nature. Those who make the best use of the changes and chances of the present life must thus have rightly interpreted their purpose ; those who have made a wrong, foolish, disappointing use have wrongly interpreted them. I do not see how this conclusion can be avoided ; nor the value 212 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES A moral good that is not supreme is an absurdity. The moral process is itself a triumph. Summary of results. of the testimony, coming as it does from both sides, be denied. It seems that the natural world is the instrument of a spiritual end. In the next place, the very existence of moral good must imply its supremacy. It cannot be means to anything above or beyond itself. To use what is moral as means is to destroy its moral character. To be good in order to " get on," either here or hereafter, is not a precept that the moral consciousness can enforce. The final value of spiritual excellence is so obvious that I need not dwell upon it. What remains is this — that in this world of ours, confused as it often seems, lawless and abandoned, there is in operation a force making for ends whose value is unconditional. We may say that its victory has not arrived as yet, but I do not think that we can deny that it is in process. The history of the world in the past may possibly be regarded as giving ambiguous evidence of the pres- ence of the Best. One is not always able to be certain that " the world is becoming better." Nevertheless, it seems to me that the intrinsic nature of the moral process makes it in itself a triumph ; or, in other words, that while both good and bad are real, and both a process, the former is a process of growth and of attain- ment, the latter a process of self-refutation and deletion. I may conclude the present lecture by summarizing our results. Firstly : The particular events and experiences of individual lives cannot furnish to us the grounds for concluding either the truth or falsity of religious faith. These furnish not premisses but tests. Secondly : We approach the facts of life with a pre- conception, favourable or unfavourable, of the existence RESULTS 213 and nature of God, which is the result, not so much of external observation, as of reflexion upon our own nature and needs. Thirdly : Hence our religious faith or scepticism has the same ultimate use and character as a scientific hypothesis, and its validity must be tested in the same way. Fourthly : The test must be spiritual, for the con- ception whose truth we wish to prove or disprove is spiritual. Fifthly : No other test is final ; no values other than spiritual values are unconditional. Sixthly : Subjected to such a test, the world in which we live appears to have one supreme purpose ; that is, to furnish mankind with the opportunity for learn- ing goodness. Lastly : The confessions of the religious spirit and of the pleasure-loving, corroborate each other in that the former has rightly interpreted and rightly used the natural circumstances of life while the latter has done the opposite. The moral victory is in process, and the nature alike of moral good and of moral evil is such as to make it secure. LECTURE XIII THE STANDARD OF VALUE If the old doctrine that nature is in antagonism to spirit, and that man's natural desires are sinful, is now seen to verge on blasphemy, the opposite doctrine which finds favour at present may well seem pre- posterous. We can tolerate and even enjoy the view that all men seek the best and, as Browning says, have " All with a touch of nobleness, despite Their error, upward tending all though weak- Like plants in mines which never saw the sun, But dream of him, and guess where he may be, And do their best to climb and get to him." The That view is offered as a poetic vision. But as a sober faith. " doctrine, the result of the unprejudiced observation of the facts of human life, it will seem to many to be totally indefensible, even although no criterion is employed except that which is moral or spiritual. It will be admitted that the law which connects ante- cedent and consequent within the moral region may be as invariable as it is within the physical world. I believe it will be admitted also that the circumstances of life are rightly understood by those who build up a good character in dealing with them, and both mis- 214 NATURE FAVOURS MORALITY 215 understood and misused by those who turn them into opportunities for doing what is wrong. And if this is true, it must follow that the natural scheme is not impartial, but favours morality, and is, in truth, its instrument. But both of these admissions, even when taken together, fall short of justifying a faith that can satisfy the religious spirit. For that faith affirms the omni- presence of the divine benevolence, which means that it is present at the heart of the most unsound lives as well as of the best. Its operation is in every individual life, however great its squalor. The difficulty of believing in the universality of Divine Love is very great to many. Not only the cases of individuals, but certain general features of modern life seem to make such a faith untenable. It is difficult to become familiar with the slums of our big cities without being convinced that there are many thou- sands who neither in themselves nor in their en- vironment give evidence of any such divine operation, or have any stimulus to virtue of any kind. Chil- Difficulty of ^ , J , . . • 1 1 maintaining dren are born into the world brmgmg with them it in face of inherited diseases or physical and mental feebleness : sium^iife.° they are the descendants of men and women who never made any pretence to either physical or char- acter cleanliness, and they are brought up in a social environment in which moral judgment is hopelessly perverted. As they grow up, the vicious and criminal life seems as natural to them, and even as respectable, as his apprenticeship to a trade is to a working man's boy. And it is a life much more full of adventure — a constant game of wits between them and the police. 216 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES The believer's defence of his faith. He can make the same claim in dealing with these facts as the scientific man does in dealing with physical facts. Is it not better to say at once that for such persons the opportunities of a good life do not exist ? If a benevolent power is operative elsewhere in the world, is it not plain that it has overlooked the claims of such persons as these ? What can justify the world as a school of virtue in their case ? The readiest answer and the answer most frequently given is — " Nothing justifies it. It had been better had they never been born." What answer can we make ? What answer must we make if we are not to give up that trust in the Love and Power of God which, we admit, cannot be limited without virtually being denied ? (i) I would fain make precisely the same answer as a scientific man makes when he fails to trace, in par- ticular instances, the operation of the universal and necessary laws of which he speaks. As we have already seen, the physicist does not profess to give an account of the magnitude and direction of all the forces operative in the ordinary physical changes, such as those which occur amongst the clouds or falling forest leaves. It is in his laboratory, after excluding all manner of irrelevances and thereby setting up an artificial case, that he actually traces the operation of the material law. His affirmation of the working of the law in other cases, and the world's acceptance of his affirmation, are matters of trust or faith. Judg- ment is not suspended though the evidence has not been given. It is confidently affirmative of the law, although the law has not been actually traced. And no one demurs. The scientist knows that to fail to trace the law is one thing and to deny its existence is another. *' Not proven is not disproved." So far as I can see, the religious man can justly THE SLUM CHILD 217 make a strictly analogous claim in the case of the slum child. Nay, if I rightly judge, he must make it ; for, as we have seen, the full knowledge of the particular is not possible, least of all the knowledge of all that has gone to the making and upbringing of such an infinitely complex phenomenon as a slum child. And the sceptic ought to accede to the claim, and recognize that his only logical right in the case is the right to suspend judgment. Instead of doing so, he usually rushes to his conclusion, and denies either the existence of God or his benevolent interest in human affairs. (2) The negative conclusion from individual in- stances is generally as hasty and ill-informed as it is illogical. Is it quite certain, for instance, that the conception usually formed of these slum children is even proximately correct ? Or are we not prone to demand from them the same kind of behaviour as from other more fortunate children .'' To do so were as unjust as it is natural. I can conceive skill in lying and deception, courage and resource in housebreaking, ingenuity in misleading and eluding the police, bring- ing social respect to their owner, and being regarded, in such a social environment, simply as virtues. Every- thing depends upon the criterion by reference to which approval is given or refused ; and men employ the most various and inconstant and sometimes absurd criteria. As a rule, the standard of values is not con- sidered at all by those who pass judgment and approve or condemn the action of either God or man. Like the friends of Job, we either mingle at random moral and natural considerations, or expect physical pros- perity as a consequence of an antecedent that is moral. 218 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Least of all does the unbeliever in his condemnation of God on the ground of the prosperity of the wicked or the calamities of the virtuous recognize that all non- ethical values are purely conditional. Indeed, this is much too rarely remembered by believers as well ; and the controversy as to divine governance is carried on in a blind fashion. Unconscious assumptions are made, and some of the things taken for granted are not true ; and, in consequence, evidence that is really irrelevant is admitted and taken as conclusive. No absolute Now, in this fundamental question of the validity except of the religious faith it would seem to me that no spiritual valucs should be admitted as standards by which to values. ... judge the assumed divine dealings except values which are absolute. And, for my part, I know no values which are absolute except spiritual values. That is to say, everything that contributes to the spiritual pro- gress of man I would call good, everything that tends to hinder it I would call bad. And evidently if moral values verily are absolute, as Plato and most other great teachers have maintained, then no price at which moral progress is secured can be too high. And if pain and suffering, poverty and need, and the contempt of men contribute to this end more than their opposites could, then they are better than good health and plenty and the honour of men. This means that, instead of making secular prosperity the standard of judgment, prosperity must itself be evaluated from the point of view of its spiritual effects. Prosperity before now has ruined men, and calamity has been the making of them. If this be true, if spiritual values are alone final and absolute, if the purpose of man's life is to acquire these. GOD'S IMMANENCE 219 and the aim of its changing circumstances is to help The 1 • 1 • 1 1 religious him, then it is evident that what is highest, best, equivalent ,. . . . , • • > J . • of this divine, IS in power and operative in man s destiny, or, moral in the language of religion, that God is immanent in estimate, the world as its ultimate principle. And vice versa : if God is immanent, these spiritual values must be supreme. On the other hand, if this is not true, then the alternative must be either the rule of chaos and unreason — which in truth is the absence of all rule — or else the rule of a power to whom the difference between right and wrong is secondary — a power whose ends are finite and secular. Now, the denial of the existence or working of a God who is perfect in moral qualities as in power, is equivalent, it seems to me, to the affirmation of some non-ethical force as that which has brought the universe into being, sustains it, and controls it. And The the question now is — How does this secular hypo- implied thesis work ? Supposing we apply the same tests to ^y^pothesis it, one by one, as have been applied to the believer's P^^^ to the " faith " or counter-hypothesis ? If the secularist is frank and faithful to the facts which he observes, he will admit at once that, in this world of ours, warring against its evils, there is to be He must found a great deal of that which we can only call moral ?he°°^ ^ ^^ goodness. There are just men, and unselfish men, betweTn^ and men courageous for what they deem right or ™*J^\?°°a^jjd true ; and they cannot but be distinguished from the account men who are selfish and cowardly and filthy. Now, the secularist must account for that goodness, or — if he likes — that seeming goodness ; and give his own theory of the origin of these apparently moral phenomena. And his task does not seem to be an easy one. It is 220 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES The order of the universe on this hypothesis. The beauty of the universe. not obvious, to say the least, that no moral struggle enters into the history of mankind, or that good men differ from bad men only in the success of their hypocrisy. A few decades ago, as I have already sug- gested, the secularist might attribute to nature the moral character and the benevolent purpose which he denies to God. But now it is seen that such a device merely clothes nature with divinity. The truth is that the secularist, as a rule, has nothing to offer. He has never faced the problem presented by the obvious significance attached by mankind to the difference between right and wrong, and the part which ethical conceptions have played in its history. The order and the beauty of nature are generally first felt to be a test of his scepticism. That these exist he neither dares nor desires to deny. The evidence of order is always multiplying and deepen- ing ; and the marvel of the universe grows every day in the hands of science. So subtle is the equilibration of nature's forces that the practical man hesitates in his dealings with her, even as his power over her forces grows. What he has called pests have proved to be his helpers, and he has become afraid to meddle with nature's harmonies. In fact, it has now become practically impossible to most reflective men to assign the order of the natural universe to an unintelligent cause. For a cause must manifestly be proportionate to the effects attributed to it. The beauty of the natural world seems to carry one further even than its obvious order. Beauty comes as something gratuitously generous. It is a benevo- lent redundancy, having a value that is quite different from mere utility. The natural endowments usually THE APPEAL OF BEAUTY 221 spoken of are those calculated to equip man, or beast, for " the struggle for existence." But beauty, presumably appealing to man only and not to animals, has value of another kind. Its purpose seems to be to enrich and not merely to preserve life, and its appeal is to reason. It is thus difficult to conceive of beauty as proceeding from an unintelligent source. We seem forced to conclude that, if not God, then surely some other kind of cause at once intelligent and benevolent has brought it about that the world shall be clothed in beauty, and thus fill humanity's cup till it runs over. It is difficult to sympathize with a naturalism to which the marvels of colour, form and musical sound give no pause. Their intrinsic value is at once unique and very great. Scepticism finds more natural nutriment in the world of man than in the physical world. In that domain chaos and unreason mav well seem to bear unquestioned rule. What, except unreason, could have placea the lives of many thousands of young men and the happiness of thousands of homes at the mercy of a petty, pompous, self-adoring individual who happened to have been born the eldest son of a crowned parentage } How often has this question not been asked, in some form, during the late war } And there was, as a rule, no answer except that of the un- believer : "There is no God." " If God is, he does not care for man." " He is an evil being : for by permitting evil he is guilty of complicity." " If God is there, and is worthy of man's service and worship, then let him show himself." The demand, as a rule, is for some special inter- vention, and the absence of evidence of a meddling 222 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES The demand for the special intervention of God, if he verily is and is good. Intermittent providential intervention implies God's heedlessness at ordinary times. It would be a poor substitute for divine immanence. Providence has often been the source, not only of the scepticism of the unbeliever, but of the doubt of the faithful. I should like to show that the demand is, in truth, a demand for that which is not desirable. It is obvious that the demand for the inter- vention of the divine being in special circumstances implies his non-intervention in ordinary times. It is a demand that cannot be made by any one who believes either in the permanence of the relation of antecedent and consequent in the natural and moral world, or in the divine omnipresence, finding evidence of it on all hands in the world's ordinary course. The fulfilment of the demand would yield a far less satis- fying religious experience than the consciousness of the nearness of God through his love, at all times and in every kind of circumstance. And it is that consciousness which sustains devout men. " Provi- dential " interference implies a separateness which is intolerable to the spirit that knows the longing of devoted love and its constant need of God. No con- ception can meet the demands of such a spirit, once it understands itself, except the conception of Divine Immanence : the idea of the permanent indwelling of God in human history. The conception has its own difficulties, as we shall amply see ; but it has become an article in the creed of the reflective religious spirit of modern times. And the issues which are raised by it are decisive. On the other hand it is not an implicit scepticism masquerading as religious faith, which the conception of divine occasional interven- tion always is. But, in the second place, the demand that God should " show Himself" by special providential inter- DEISM 223 ference is open to a still more grave objection. It is incompatible with the conception of man's life as an ethical enterprise, and of his world as furnishing the means and opportunity, and, in that sense, as man's working partner. The Deism of the eighteenth The demand ,..,,, • J IT J ^s ^^^ com- century denied both the permanent mdwellmg and patibie with the intermittent intervention of the Deity. It main- ™°^^ ^ ^' tained that God, having called the world into being, stood aloof and apart. There are many objections to this view which I need not mention. But it was not altogether false. With all its errors Deism taught one permanent truth, or at least implied it : the truth that the moral life must be wholly entrusted to the moral agent ; and that if man is here to learn good- ness, or if the meaning of his life and the purpose of his world is, as we have assumed, ultimately ethical, then he must be left to carry out the ethical experi- ment in his own way. What use he shall make of his powers and his circumstances must be left to him. For, as we have seen, there is a sense in which morality is a most solitary enterprise. I do not in the least mean to imply the severance of The ■,. ^ !•• r /^j .!• loneliness of morality trom religion, or man rrom CjOq, or that in the moral the pursuit of his moral ends man is thrown upon his of thl'"^^ own resources. On the contrary, the relisfion that ^dividual •' ' ^ ^ compatible does not break out into the highest moral life, and the with moral life that is not guided and inspired by a religious faith in that which is perfect, are both unsatisfactory. Moreover, man possesses no resources which are his own in any exclusive sense. He is a debtor to that which went before him and to that which works all round him for all that he is and all that he possesses. He is as much the product of the world as a fruit tree. 224 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES God's infinite giving : man's freedom in the use of His gifts. The transforma- tion of the natural into the spiritual in man and the implications of " spirit." This Is too obvious to be denied by anyone, so far as man's physical frame and physical powers are con- cerned. He appears on the scene as a very temporary focus in which those forces are found together as elements in a single life. And the analogy holds of his spiritual equipment. His faculties are gifts, and the opportunities of employing and realizing them are endowments. His reason, his very self, his dis- position, proclivities, taste, and above all the funda- mental necessity he is under to conceive and seek what, in some sense, he thinks good, appear in him rather than begin with him. His individuality is due to the intense unity of these forces. It means that he is conscious of and, in that sense, in possession and command of himself. As such a unity or individuality, man is in a very real sense something new, and has no history. His self is traceable to no antecedents, as its elements are. But these elements, on the other hand, are impotent and meaningless until they are united in a rational self-consciousness. We err in our account of man if we overlook his indebtedness, or in any manner weaken his affinity and continuity with the physical and spiritual world. To detach him from the Universe is to empty his personality and deprive it of its constitutive elements. On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that it is only as meeting, uniting and operating in him that these capacities are realized. Only as employed by a rational being do these capacities and tendencies, the impulses, desires, needs, etc., acquire any spiritual character at all. The instinct of self-preservation, characteristic of all life, is transmuted into a conscious purpose and acquires the character of a moral duty or RATIONAL IMPLICATIONS 225 opportunity. The blind impulse becomes a conscious desire ; the natural need becomes a rational purpose. It has acquired an ethical character. And as man learns to know the truth and to love and do what is right, he realizes for the first time the sleeping potencies of his personality and exhibits the characters of a rational being. A rational nature means much. In the first place it implies universality, or, shall I say, a potential omnipresence. If the rational subject, on the one hand, holds every object over against itself at arm's length, by the same act it overpowers all that is alien or foreign in its object, and turns its meaning and uses into possessions of its own — as personal increase of power. A man's world is his objective self. In the second place, that which is in its nature universal, or at home everywhere, is virtually self- directing, and the world around it is but its instrument and means. The forces that move it must be its own. It is impossible for rational beings to act except in order to realize conceptions of which they themselves are the authors. They are the creators of their motives, and the motives are the forces of the self as it breaks out into deeds. Now, in the presence of these facts, the intermittent interference of providence in the course of events reveals itself plainly as irrational, (a) Given a world which endows man with all that he is and has, a world which, on the other hand, reveals its full character only in man's spiritual activities ; (J?) let reason be established as intrinsically universal, or as a power that ever comes upon its own content in every object which it interprets ; (c) make it, as we are doing, G.L. P 226 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Occasional divine interference would arrest human effort. The stable outer order as much a condition of the moral life as freedom is. Browning's view. the meaning of man's life and the purpose of the world to realize in knowledge a*nd behaviour these rational and spiritual capacities, then the occasional benevolent intervention of a well-meaning but ordi- narily uninterested Deity becomes not only absurd, but obstructive. Stability, rational connections be- tween fact and fact, are unconditional characteristics of a religious scheme. Moreover, they are the only conditions under which a rational being would choose to act at all. A rational being would hardly exercise his rational powers within an environment of con- tingencies. No one can employ these powers except in virtue of his individuality ; but his employment of them would be frustrated, if not arrested altogether, were the results of his action made uncertain by being flung amongst circumstances which are dependent upon an interfering benevolence that occasionally suspends the operation of law. The stable order of the world in which man lives is thus as vital a condition of his moral life as is his freedom. Freedom cannot exist in a world of contin- gencies. Man in his action must presume the rational stability of the universe ; indeed, he always does so, consciously or unconsciously ; and his presumption must be valid. There must be no providential inter- ventions. God, as Browning said, " Stands away, as it were a hand's breadth off " in order " To give room for the newly made to hve And look at him from a place apart." In speaking of man we must not sever man's very elements from him, and think of him as " Made perfect as a thing of course." MAN'S INHERITANCE 227 The spiritual life must be an object of choice amidst rational and stable circumstances, and the moral world must be called into and sustained in existence by the exercise of the human will. That man must be endowed for the moral enterprise, that other hands than his own must clasp on this spiritual armour is true. He by no means, as Browning thought, " Stands on his own stock Of love and power as a pin-point rock." Man, in that case, would have a very scanty and insecure foothold. I conceive of him rather as the The better heir to an inheritance whose value is without limit. ^°^^' As I have tried to show, reason is by its very nature universal, and man as rational has the whole realm of the real as the potential object of his know- ledge and means of his ends. Let him but attain himself, he will find " the world at his feet." But the process of attaining himself must be left to himself. The use of his powers must be in his own hands. His actions, good or bad, must be allowed to bring their own consequences, and the tree of his life must bear its own fruit. If the testimony of the religious consciousness be true, God has given himself to man, surely a most ample endowment, and man can need nothing more. If the testimony of the moral con- sciousness be true, man makes his own use of his endowments and may turn his gifts into losses. In this respect he is left to himself, that is, treated as a rational being capable of free choice. Nor is there anything incompatible in these dissimilar convictions. On the contrary, both alike are essential to the best life ; and they are reconciled with one another in every 228 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES To accede to the demand for intervention would not settle the dispute. We arrive at the idea of God in another way, and the proof of the truth is of another kind. life which finds that the service of God is perfect freedom. The demand for providential intervention made by the sceptic as ground for believing in the existence and benevolence of the Deity, however excusable when man seems to be tried beyond his strength — as in the great war — is inconsistent with man's spiritual well-being and with divine benevolence and wisdom. I should like to point out further that the demand implies a wrong notion of man's knowledge of God. Even were the demand conceded, the doubt would not be allayed, nor its grounds removed. Sup- posing, for instance, that some change of circum- stances took place, which at the same time favoured our wishes and seemed inexplicable — e.g. the German reverse at Mons, at the beginning of the war, as it appeared to those who sympathized with the allies — that favourable and inexplicable change would furnish nothing more than an opportunity for making an inference. One observer might infer providential interference and the special presence of a benevolent deity ; his neighbour would infer some error of judgment or defective execution on the part of the Germans. The matter would still be in dispute. The demand rests on the assumption that God himself is an object of perception. The sceptic seems to expect to come upon him, and catch him in the act of interfering as he would catch a workman at his tools. But we arrive at the idea of God in quite another way, and we base our faith in his power and goodness on other grounds. The idea of God comes as a possible, or probable and convincing, explanation of the universe and of man's life and THE EVIDENCE OF PERFECTION 229 destiny. If you like to call the idea a hypothetical conjecture, I cannot object. But I would remind you that every other conception that brings order into our experience has the same history and the same char- acter. Kant called such conceptions regulative : with- out them experience would have no systematic coher- ence, and even perception would be blind. Hume, looking into himself, failed to come across his soul. His failure was inevitable. The soul is not an object of internal perception, but a name we give to the living unity of man's rational powers. We see the process ot the operation of these powers, infer their existence, and call their unity a " soul." Now, as an " inference " or " hypothesis " it would seem, at first sight, that the evidence of God is insecure — much more insecure than if He were an object of perception, which, so to speak, we could knock up against. But it is not so. The surest truths are those whose denial would render all truth impossible ; the safest conceptions are those without which the order of experience would be broken. We do not prove a thing by saying that it is an object of per- ception. On the contrary, our perceptions have themselves to be correlated and tested by reference to the system of knowledge as a whole, if they are to have meaning and to convince. Ancient scepticism has demonstrated once for all the untrustworthiness of sensible perception, and modern philosophy has shown that in and of itself, and apart from the correlating and systematizing principles of experience, it has no meaning. Moreover, as I have tried to show, the particulars which are objects of perception are in truth not pre- 230 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Conclusion as to the believer's God, and the value of morality. Neither the sciences nor sceptical philosophy offer any effective alternative theory. misses from which deductions may be made, but tests of fundamental explanations. And undoubtedly it is as such a fundamental explanation that the idea of God is offered. Man derives it mainly from his inter- pretation of his own nature and needs. God is man's refuge from himself. He is strength as against his own weakness ; purity as against his own sinfulness ; the fulness of plenty as against his own poverty ; and, in a word, perfection as against his own imperfection. Having found his refuge and given himself to his God, and found in him the meaning and purpose of life, the religious spirit finds him everywhere. And so far as I know there is no better explanation of the nature of things than as the outcome of the Divine Will ; and no better conception of God, or the Absolute, than as the inexhaustible source of the spiritual energy operative in the world and manifesting itself in man's moral and religious life. Nor, on the other hand, could Divine Love itself make a more generous gift to mankind than that of the spirit that strives towards virtues and seeks self-realization in the morality which is at the same time the service of God. It remains both to explain and to defend this con- ception of the Divine Being and his relation to finite existence. Meantime it may be observed that it is a hypothesis which has no worthy rival. Spiritualistic Idealism, in some one or other of its forms, holds the field. Connections within the natural scheme are growing apace in the hands of science : that nature as a whole is the expression of one single principle is deemed certain. But the sciences refrain from forming even conjectures as to the nature of that principle. The continuity of the natural and spiritual, THE LONG RUN 231 and their interdependence, are recognized as so intimate that the ordinary dualistic view is no longer authoritative. Nevertheless no theory now occupies in the scientific mind the place once held by naturalistic materialism. Science leaves these matters to the philosopher. As to the sceptic, he is quite helpless, and offers no positive suggestion of any kind. The evil, natural and moral, which he has observed in the world, has raised his indignation, but not the spirit of persistent enquiry. He is, as a rule, liable to be impatient of explanations offered by others, and too ready to assume that to explain, and especially to justify this fundamental article of religious faith as to the being and nature of God, must be to reduce the reality of sin and to take the sting out of human wrong. And some forms of modern Idealism have, one must confess, gone far to justify this conclusion. What defence, then, can be offered ? How, in particular, are the difficulties as to natural and moral evil to be met ? I have made two main assertions as But our to the relation between natural and spiritual good and doctrine evil : first, that " in the long run " right behaviour JelL^ce^^ brings physical and material well-being, and wrong behaviour the opposite ; second, that only in the light of their spiritual value can natural events be estimated. But one can imagine the sceptic replying. Why " in the long run " ? Why is the relation between right conduct and material or physical prosperity not direct and immediate ? If it is granted that the value of natural facts does not lie in themselves, and that we do not know whether a natural circumstance is to be called good or bad until we know its bearing upon human life, and, ultimately, upon human character, 232 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES First as to then it must be admitted that the " nature of things " between the IS moral. Why, then, is nature's response to right moraT^ ^^'^ ^^^ wrong action not direct ? Why does the con- sequence arrive only " in the long run " ? In one word, why is man not rapped over the fingers at once when he does wrong ? Why are the consequences of right or wrong doing so long postponed ? And, above all, why do they often fall upon some one else than the person who has done the right or the wrong deed ? The results of actions do not appear, one often observes, till the third or fourth generation : they " take time " to ripen into their consequences. In the meanwhile the second and third generations escape. The delayed Reasons have already been shown for refraining ??nslquences ^^om the attempt to explain "particular" instances, and the unless the concessions made to science are refused in immediate moral matters of religion. The answer, if any, as in science, consequences i r r i i i • of right and takes the rorm or a general hypothesis. TcTion tend If the wrong act were followed by physical disaster the^morai ^""^ ^^^ right act by material prosperity as promptly li*®- as the roll of thunder follows the lightning what would result .'' As things are, it is the mora/ con- sequence of right or wrong action which is immediate, taking the form of either the improvement or the deterioration of the character. That ethical result, moreover, always falls to the agent himself, and affects others only indirectly and remotely. In both of these ways the dift'erence is clear. And the contrast between these two conditions seems to me to favour the moralizing process in mankind, and to be the result of benevolent wisdom. The scheme of things, if its purpose is spiritual (as we assume), stops short of terrifying or bribing man into good behaviour ; but NATURE'S "DON'T" 233 at the same time it invites reflexion and persuades. The freedom of man is respected, and, at the same time, the fact that he himself may escape the consequences of wrong-doing which fall upon others who are guilt- less ought to be, and is, an appeal to his ethical spirit. We are not compelled. The imperative '* don't " or " do this " is not an external forcing, as it would be on the secularist's scheme. The answer to the sceptical objections seems, there- Pain an [. J J 1 ? 1 indicator of tore, once more to depend upon me moral character broken law. and values of natural events. And the same moral naming. considerations account for the existence, at all, of natural evil. For the sceptic might ask — " Why, after all, is there pain and suffering of body, soul, or both " } Could not the spiritual advance of mankind be secured by some less costly method } Physical pain, I believe, is nature's way of indicating that a • law of physical well-being has been violated, and of saying " Don't do it again." To abolish pain so that, for instance, a child might look at his foot burning off in the flames and enjoy the sight, would be to deprive man of the most potent safeguard. Physical pain is a language so plain that everyone hears and understands. And as to the suffering of others from our deeds, it is the same kind of warning but on another plane ; and except when the instincts of motherhood come into play, rebellion against its injustice is usual. Once Fidelity to , J . , ^1 , r ^ • the ethical more the educative character or the scheme or thmgs, standards of and its share in the ethical progress of man, reveal Imp^erative. themselves. Everything that involves the well-being of men in one another favours morality. One conclusion seems to me to be valid. The difliculties are met if, and in so far as, our estimate 234 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES of good and evil rests loyally on the moral nature and purpose of the world. But this involves that events must not be valued at all as separate or in themselves. They must be regarded in their relation to the self-justifying process of the whole. LECTURE XIV THE PERFECT AS SPIRITUAL PROCESS At the close of our last lecture we were considering the sceptical objections which are drawn from the existence of natural evil. We concluded primarily conclusions that natural events and facts cannot, as such, be called natural evil, either good or bad. Their value is conditional and derivative. It depends on the contribution they make to the moral well-being of man. Secondly, as to the relation between moral behaviour and temporal and natural prosperity, we maintained (a) that as right conduct means the best use of natural circumstance, and as the best use involves a right understanding, there does exist a necessary connection ; that is to say, natural well-being does follow right behaviour and disaster dogs the footsteps of the ill-doer, (b) To the objection that these results often appear only in " the long run," I answered that " a thunder-clap " — or immediate consequence — would obscure the moral issues, which are primary and should be recognized as such. The postponement and indirectness of the natural consequences, and their falling frequently not on the doer of the deed but on those connected with him, and, on the other hand, the immediacy and 235 236 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES inevitability of the moral improvement or self-degrada- tion, favours this recognition, (c) Finally, to the objection that it is wholly unjustifiable that one man should do the wrong thing and another suffer the consequence, or that one man should do the right thing and another reap the advantage, we replied by referring to the same principle, namely, that it favours morality. Everything favours morality which involves the life of all in the life of each, and the welfare of each in the well-being of all. To learn goodness men must be members of one another, and if they are members of one another they must share the same destiny. Thus, it seems, strict fidelity to the view that the purpose of man's life and of the world is moral (or spiritual) progress, meets the difficulties of the exist- ence of natural evil. And possibly the most effective and convincing way of proving this were to consider the consequences that would accrue if all natural evil were abolished, and if men did not suffer at all, whether from their own actions or from the actions of others. Devotion to pleasure in a beer and skittles environ- ment does not seem likely to conduce to spiritual endeavour. But the solution of the difficulty of natural evil, namely, that it is a means to a further good, and, in truth, has no intrinsic value or character of its own — that solution is wholly inapplicable to moral evil. Moral good Moral values are final. In this spiritual region, as cannoVbe I h^-ve already insisted, we are dealing with that which regarded as jg • j^ itself Pood or bad. What is morally right respects, means, and & ^ ... they present and what is morally wrong violates, a principle that is graver difficulties, absolute. A morally wrong action cannot, like a A NON-MORAL WORLD 237 natural misfortune, be made a stepping-stone or an instrument of well-being. In the spiritual sense the character of the act, as it stands, is final and irre- mediable. And the question we have to answer is : How, if God is verily perfect in power and goodness, the existence of moral evil can be accounted for. That moral evil of all kinds and degrees of enormity exists at all stages of human civilization cannot be denied. Must we not, therefore, limit the range and moderate the confidence of our religious faith ? Must not the existence of God and his power and goodness be denied, or, what is virtually the same thing, must we not consider him incapable of coping with the evil of the world ? Once more our answer must depend upon the standard of values which we employ. We have stated a static that the standard must be moral or spiritual ; but no no rooirTfor explanation of the meaning of these terms has been ^qo^ m^°^^^ given. On what grounds, or for what reason, is an ""'oi^'i ^^i'- action or an individual approved or disapproved morally ? What is it that constitutes its good or its evil ? What kind of a world would that be which were perfect in the changeless sense ? Would it offer to any- one the opportunity of doing any good action ? Would there be anything of which we could say that it " ought to be," and which invited the choice and decision of a good will ? So far as I can see, the call of duty would not be heard in such a world. The good man could sit down with his hands in its lap, and, at best, idly contemplate the past. All action would, in fact, be wrong. It would take away from the change- less perfection which all alike have, as a matter of course. In one word, such a world would not be moral or 238 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES spiritual at all. The enterprise of morality would not exist. The conception of static perfection in matters of the mind and spirit will not bear examination. The difficulties of attributing any other kind of perfection than that which is static to the deity are very great — possibly insuperable ; but, that static categories can be applied to man, a finite being, the law of whose life is change and progress, it is not possible to maintain. Can they, in the last resort, be applied to any finite Are static object ? Is fixity, changelessness true of anything appifc^w"^ even in the natural sphere. That life when it appears thatX^reaf? ii^creases the range and significance of change is obvious. Life is always renewing itself, and affirming itself in fresh ways as its circumstances alter. The objects of the inorganic world are relatively fixed. However true it may be that " An active principle . . . subsists In all things," The answer that principle is less active in inanimate objects than in to phvsicar^ living beings. But even in the former there is no static facts. fixity. Science teaches us that objects are the temporary meeting-places, or foci, of different kinds of physical energy. The weight, the colour, the softness or hardness — all the qualities of a stone are its responses to other objects, or its interaction with them. It is what it does. Its apparently static or fixed character is due to the fact that its activities are reiterative, or repetitive. We do not expect a stone to break into flower in spring, any more than we expect a plant not to change with the seasons, although we do expect it to reflect the rays of light according to constant BOTH SAMENESS AND CHANGE 239 laws. Conceptions of fixity, which are never strictly valid of any fact, become less and less applicable as we ascend the scale of being. They mislead, if strictly used, when applied to plants or animals, for the power of variation implied in their growth cannot be overlooked ; but, as we shall see, they are least of all predicable of the facts of the life of spirit. This signifies that process is universal, or that Process is everything is in process. And usually this is taken to mean the same thing as that change is the law of things. But process implies sameness as well as change. An object owes its (apparently) separate, or distinct being, in virtue of which we can refer to it as an " it," to the sameness or continuity of the process which it carries on. After all, the many are the different forms of the one. The physicist, in Process the last resort, considers that his task is to measure sameness° the transformations of the same ultimate energy. ^°^ change. These transformations are the truth and the being of particular physical facts, and, so far as they go, they manifest the nature of the ultimate reality. The problem of the biologist is much more complex. Once life arises the variety of the activities increases ; new functions are performed, such as digestion ; new relations and responses to the environment emerge ; and that static sameness which, with comparative truth, we attribute to physical facts becomes quite false. At the same time a living thing affirms its unity, unites the destiny of the parts with the whole, and of the whole with the elements, in a way to which there is nothing analogous in inorganic objects. Sensation intensifies the unity still further ; and the unity culminates in self-consciousness. It is a great 240 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Spirit as double process : example, (i) The community. truth that integration and differentiation increase together. And it is borne out, not only by the history of the biological kingdom, but by that of mankind. Now, it is too obvious to need showing that these opposite but complementary processes culminate in the activity of spirit. The different stages of human civi- lization and of individual development exemplify this truth. Rudimentary civilization permits few social services, and the bonds which connect its elements are very superficial. The Red Indian tribes were of little mutual help in times of peace, and they easily fell into fighting. Their unity was slender and shallow, and it usually lasted only so long as they fought side by side. Moreover, the variety of functions which such communities could perform, whether for each other or for their members, was very limited. On the other hand, it is difficult to estimate the variety of the interests of a civilized people, or of the ways in which the weal of the citizen is either directly sought or protected by the State. From the cradle to the grave, whether the individual be in poverty or in wealth, the community serves him, meeting all manner of needs. Its members on their part stand in their station, fulfil the duties of it more or less adequately, and offer each of them some single kind of return. But these kinds fit into each other. One man feeds the ox, another kills and skins it, a third curries the skin, a fourth makes shoes of it ; and there is between every pair of makers one whose business is to buy and sell. Other services, less direct, enter in. The merchandise has to be taken from one place to another ; someone must have made the roads, and someone else must have constructed the con- MAN AND SOCIETY 241 veyances ; still others must have dug up or grown the material out of which the conveyances are con- structed ; and all alike have entered into the inheri- tance of skill, tradition, beliefs, which it has taken many ages to accumulate. Nothing in this world can show such diversity of interests or such a degree of differentiation of function as civilized society. And its unity corresponds. It is vmiversal. We are all members of it, and we come into touch with some of its activities at every turn of our lives. Its influence permeates all the lives of all its members. It is also intense, that is to say, its significance to the individual is immeasurable. We find that to sever man from society is to empty his life of all value and interest and to make him hopeless ; while to break up the unity of a society is to do him the worst of all injuries. Civil war has before now proved the only available means of rectifying social wrongs ; but it has also proved both the most costly and the most dangerous of remedies. If we turn from the story of the community and its (2) The ■I • ^ • 1 1 . 1 ,.,..,, individual. relation to its elements, and consider the individuals which constitute it, we shall find the same process with the same double aspect. Men differ from one another in all manner of ways : in strength of body and soul : in skill, taste, temperament, interests, purposes and character. No other beings of the same species differ so deeply or in so many qualities. Nevertheless, as we have seen, no animals unite so intimately as men do, or in so many ways, or for such permanent ends. Or again, if we follow the story of the same individual from infancy to old age, unless he has wronged himself, his life has been one continuous and G.L. Q is the process 242 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES yet ever new and ever varying process. The variety of his interests has multiplied. His spirit is responsive to more truth, and he is more sensitive to the forms of beauty, and more sympathetic with the interests of his fellow-men ; yet his aims have become more and more congruent, his views more and more harmonious, and his character has attained singleness and sim- plicity. Its unity has become more and more obvious. The object There can be no doubt, I think, of either the univer- sality or the law of the process that is always going on in the natural world, and in the soul of man. The next thing is to realize (what Nettleship so per- sistently accentuated) that the reality is the process, and that there is no other reality except the reality which is active as the process. That a thing is ' what it does is a cardinal principle of philosophy, and I make the less apology for recurring to it in that its significance is so far-reaching and has not so far been realized. It looks so simple. A thing that does nothing is nothing. Strip an object of its activities, and see what remains : you will find nothing. Usually an object is given a more or less static character, and none of its activities are marked except those which it exhibits in new relations ; but the constitutive activities are the constant ones, and the object has no permanence or reality save the constancy of the process. The Universe, then, is not a unity of correlated and more or less fixed and separate objects, but the scene of a constant process, endless in the variety of its activities which yet so fit into one another as to con- stitute and maintain the unity of the whole. And, not only does the kind of process express the nature of MANY FORMS OF THE PROCESS 243 objects, but the different objects are simply the different processes. Now, in the next place, I would observe that the Unity of the unity of the natural world, or rather the unity of to the the world as not merely natural, but — seeing it is th^procSs! relative to mind and exhibits itself in the activities of PJ^® ^*^^^^*y throughout mind, also spiritual — is due to the fundamental single- all the ness of the process of the real. The ultimate reality is one : the process which that reality is, is one. There is one universe because there is one process at all stages of complexity : one reality revealing itself in the endless variety of activities. Modern science is no doubt less dogmatic in many ways than it was in the past. It is more ready to say simply " I do not know." But, on the other hand, it is becoming more confident of the unity of the real ; and it no longer resists the view that, as Edward Caird used to express, " the world comes into self-con- . sciousness in man." We cannot always see how the elements of the real are fitted into each other — or why the marvel of harmony should arise from a variety of separate notes — but we can see how the elements lose meaning and reality when they are separated, and we feel when the music stops. The nature of the world-energy that breaks out into the processes which at different levels the physicist, the biologist, the psychologist and the student of human history observe, is liable to be defined in accordance with the special province of the scientific man's enquiry. To the physicist it is apt to be Different . . 1 1 • c 11, view of that physical energy always m process or measurable trans- reality, mutation — so long, at least, as you omit mind. To the biologist the pristine and universal energy is likely 244 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES to appear as life ; it is a vital force. To the psycho- The religious logist it is mind. But no conception of the world- ^' energy can satisfy the religious spirit or the philo- sophic, except that which reveals itself in spiritual activities. The whole enterprise of the real must be simply the achievement of all the conditions of the amplest moral goodness. The religious spirit identi- fies this fundamental, ever operative universal energy with God — the Christian religion pre-eminently with a God who is Love. Philosophy finds it to be the active energy of a' rational perfection which includes with moral goodness, beauty and truth. To both alike it is universal, immanent and active in all that happens, and it is perfect. The God of religion is the same as the Absolute of philosophy ; and for both alike the universe in the last resort is the scene of a self-manifesting perfection. What, then, of evil ? We can postpone the diffi- culty no longer, and I trust that we have now reached a point of view from which it can be dealt with. The problem The problem is that of mora/ evil. That of natural eviL°''^^ evil is relatively easy. All that is natural is but means of the spiritual, and its value, whether positive or negative, is, as we have found, both derived or secondary and conditional. We do not as a matter of - fact know whether a man's bad health, or other « natural evil, may not be the most priceless element in his life. It may be conducive, as nothing else could be, to his spiritual good. Finality of gut moral evil — to restate the point at which our argument had arrived — has a certain finality of character, just as moral good has. We cannot revalue it in the light of something else. Its value is intrinsic MORAL EVIL LS FINAL 245 and negative. A bad act stands condemned at a court from which there is no appeal. It appears as a final flaw in the scheme of things ; as something that ought not to have taken place, but, having taken place, remains unredeemed, even if forgiven. The conclusion usually drawn from this final char- Conclusions acter of spiritual evil, a conclusion which looks inevit- divine being able, is that God is imperfect. He is either respon- ^J'^^? ^ r r therefrom. sible for the scheme of things that includes evil or he is not. The latter alternative obviously implies that he is a finite being ; the former, that he either cannot or will not exclude evil from the scheme and express himself in a flawless universe. Both alternatives alike deprive God of his perfection, and, in fact, stultify the conception upon the truth of which religion depends. But another conclusion is possible. Let it be granted that moral evil is final and unalterable, if the world is to serve the spiritual process whereby man attains moral goodness the possibility of doing what is morally wrong must remain. The world, we The have said, is the manifestation of a never-resting of'morai ^ process which is spiritual. Every act is a step or ^^^^,\^^.^ ^ i^ I _ J i^ condition of Stage in this process, and it acquires its value there- the moral ^ life and from. That which is ultimate operates in it ; but it therefore of 1 . 1 the best operates in man in such a way as to permit the possible possibility of moral choice and therefore of moral evil. '^'^^^'^• A world that excluded this possibility would not be the best, indeed it would not be spiritual at all. But granted that such a world is best, then it justifies what is incidental to it. This argument may, perhaps, be put more simply thus. God has called into being the best possible world : the best possible world is a world in which the 246 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES But the " best possible " world seems most imperfect. The demand for a better than the best possible is irrational. conditions of moral choice and therefore of moral evil exist : moral evil is thus justified in the sense that its possibility is necessary as a condition of what is best. But the objection to this view seems obvious and fatal. The best world is not a perfect world. The flaw, we are told, remains ; the fact that the possi- bility of evil must remain, if morality is to remain, does not justify the evil which is done. If that possibility were never or seldom realized ; if men always or generally chose the right when they might have chosen what is wrong, criticism might be silenced. But, alas, who can look either into himself or out upon the world without recognizing the presence of evil, its terrible power, the variety of its forms, its mercilessness, and its inexhaustible resources ? It is only by a flight from such a vision that a good man who pities his fellows can renew his faith in the goodness of God. The argument, it is insisted, leaves us with our problem unsolved in our hands. It means simply that this most im- perfect world is the best possible : God could do no better. Before admitting this sceptical conclusion it were well to examine some of the conceptions that are employed. And, first, what is to be said of the dis- tinction between the best possible and the perfect ? A better than the perfect is neither possible nor desirable ; neither is a better than the best possible. Are they, then, not " one and the same " ? And is not the demand for a world that is better than the best possible an irrational demand ? It is certainly a demand for that which cannot be at all. It is, in truth, a demand for an empty and meaningless non- WHAT IS A PERFECT WORLD ? 247 entity. The impossible is that the conditions of whose existence do not themselves exist. The con- ditions are not only not real, but they would be incompatible with those which are real. The demand for a better than the best possible world being irrational, ought not to be made, or, if made, heeded. Now the demand for a world in which wrong-doing is not possible has all these characteristics. It is not only a demand for that whose conditions do not exist, but for that whose conditions would be inconsistent with what is deemed best — namely, the process of the moral life, the spiritual enterprise. It is no proof of Nor does either power or wisdom not to bring about the self- power^mpiy contradictory. God is not imperfect, nor is his power ^o brino-^^ limited because he cannot bring about that which about the • 1 r /-r-ii 1 impossible. contradicts itself. That were to do and undo at once. It is evident that the value of the whole argument xhe only which is advanced depends upon the idea which is ™°J^^g ^^^^ entertained of perfection. Is a perfect world a world t^at seems "to S-lTCSil in which nothing ought to be that is not ; or in which the process no change is either desirable or possible ? Then " our goodness" world " is manifestly, once for all, most mperfect. Such a static world, however, we have said, cannot be spiritual in character, nor give man the opportunity of learning and practising goodness. But the learning and practising of goodness, the active willing and doing of what is right, is, we maintain, the best life possible for man ; and the world which most favours this end, or which invites these activities, calling upon man with the voice of Duty, is the best world. In a word, the perfect world is dynamic : the scene of the working of the good. Hence evil, the only final evil, 248 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Has the evil we know that character ? Good and evil are not facts, but estimates of facts. Good and evil are the right and wrong process of volition. would be that which arrested this process. Accord- ingly the question now before us is whether moral evil, as we know it in ourselves and others, does arrest this process, or is itself overcome, and, in the last resort, constrained to enter into the service of the good. This question is a question of fact. Is it a fact that moral evil is a fixed finality, or does it, when it comes full round, destroy itself, leaving behind it distrust of itself and incentives to another way of life ? This question is often put in a way that permits only one answer. Evil is assumed to be something objective and real, standing over against another objective and real fact that we call the good. But neither evil nor good exists in this sense. They are characteristics of what is real but not themselves sepa- rate realities. In short, moral good and moral evil are ways in which the will operates, characteristics of man's aims and efforts. They are evaluations, or estimates of facts, true or false ; and they exist only when, and as long as, the process of willing goes on. The question of the permanence of evil becomes thus the question of the permanence of evil volitions or of the succession of human beings who perform bad actions. At first sight, at least, there seems to be but one answer to it. There is no lack of evidence of unrepentant bad wills. Men not only do not give up their evil ways, but they become less and less capable of doing so. Their enslavement, so far as our observation goes, becomes more and more hope- less. Nor must it be forgotten that one genuine instance of a will that remains unalterably evil — a will that like Milton's Satan makes evil its good — NOT-PROVEN AND DISPROVED 249 would destroy the hypothesis of divine perfection on which religion rests. That instance would mean that the limits of the goodness or power of God had been reached and that they had been found inadequate. It were the defeat of the will of a God who is Love. Can such an instance be produced ? Or is this, once more, not a case in which scepticism (or at least doubt) is apt to be hasty, and to take not-proven for disproved ? Has the hypothesis failed, or has it merely not been found true in such cases, because observation has been incomplete ? It seems to me that the religious man can claim for Only such his hypothesis the same trust as we accord to science. beTnade a° He can claim the right to suspend judgment on the a^gcientific" ground that the evidence is not complete. He can enquiry, cling to his hypothesis, as a hypothesis, or as a possible and sane general law, if he can produce instances in which it appears to hold. We admit the universality of the laws of nature, although there are endless instances in which we cannot trace their operation ; we can admit the universality of the operation of the divine will without asking for any further concessions. In the first place, our observation of moral facts is demonstrably incomplete. We, no doubt, call certain cases hopeless. The man's persistent evil ways are manifestly destroying him, and he " dies in his sins." But can anyone be certain that matters end so ? Can it be that his demonstration of the ugliness and barrenness of evil-doing has been on the whole a gain to the world ; and is the real result of his life — now, let us say, finally extinguished — a warning against evil and a strengthening of the resolve towards goodness ? In that case, although the individual has 250 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES been deleted, his life so far from arresting the spiritual process has strengthened it. It may have strengthened the process in others, I imagine the critic replies ; but his own life " taken as it stands " remains a blot and a blur, and a final failure of God's goodness. I admit the validity of the infer- ence if the premisses on which it rests are true. The failure is assumed to be final because it is assumed Does death that death ends matters. But does it ? If so, if a man's whole career ends with death, then I cannot justify the existence and destiny of that man nor retain my religious faith. For I consider it is not enough that his blundering life should be a gain to others. The individual himself must come out victor. But who is entitled to affirm that death ends all ? Browning conjectured that Death might flash the truth on Guido, as the lightning at blackest night revealed Naples — for an instant. " So may the truth be flashed out by one blow, And Guido see, one instant, and be saved. Else I avert my face, not follow him Into that sad obscure sequestered state Where God unmakes but to remake the soul He else made first in vain ; which must not be." ^ It is a choice of conjectures or of hypotheses ; and to me, as to Browning, the hypothesis of the ultimate failure of Divine Power and Goodness is more im- probable than that of human life continued after death. The merely natural arena of this short, fragile, changing, restless life seems to me to be too small to decide issues that are moral, and the destiny of beings whose nature is spiritual. Death may be a mere ^ The Ring and the Book, "The Pope," 2127-2132. THE NATURE OF EVIL 251 incident in their history, a natural event and nothing more ; and a quite different kind of environment may be necessary to elicit and give play to the possibilities of spirit. But I must leave aside the problem of immortality for the present, and merely deny the right to assume the finality of death and the consequent failure of the divine purpose. So far we have referred only to the cases in which the bad will is persistent and the evil ways last till the life that follows them sinks below the horizon out of our sight. But what is to be said of those other Repentance, human lives in which we cannot but discern a com- over^ora?' plete change — sorrow and bitter repentance for the ®^^^' past, a rededication for the future ? There the evil is not only overcome and deleted but made into a stepping-stone of the new life. Its deceptiveness and falsity have been exposed. It is not possible to deny that both men and nations learn thoroughly only when they learn through experience. Indeed, we are often tempted to believe that nothing less than the bitterness of the unworthy life can convince man of the wrong he is doing his rational nature by his pursuit of bad purposes. Now, this fact throws light upon the nature of moral evil. Left to work itself out and ripen, it will prove to be self-contradictory and ultimately self- deleting. The rational nature, the law of whose activities is to seek to realize what it values as good, finds in evil a false good. Evil never tempted anyone unless it disguised itself. Man has never willed to bring about what he recognizes as dead loss. The nature of evil is thus to make itself impossible. Not 252 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES The good cannot be turned against itself. There is neither hazard nor hardship in following the good. only is moral evil capable of being overcome, and of being supplanted by the opposite good, it is converted into it. The impulse towards what is wrong is turned into distrust and hatred of that wrong, and into a desire to serve the right more faithfully. The same passions and powers are turned to an opposite purpose. Moral evil can thus be turned completely against itself; and this truth as to the nature of evil remains, though the change may occur only rarely. At first sight the good may seem to be capable of being defeated in the same way. But this is not the case. No doubt the good purpose is often frustrated and the good act often seems to leave things as they were. But the moral effect of the volition and the deed are not lost upon the doer. He has gained by his resolve, and is the better man for his effort. Never does the moral good fail. Far less does it negate itself, disappointing the agent who does the good act by proving empty or delusory. And this is one of the main grounds why the emphasis thrown upon the hazard and hardship of the moral life is misleading. There is present in every good a necessity that cannot be turned aside or overcome. It is that good results shall follow efforts after the good ; that character is built up ; that there is positive moral advance on the part of the agent. In a sense, there is neither hazard nor hardship. The moral gain is certain. It is inevitable. All the powers of darkness resist it in vain. And, unless the standard of value is wrong, no hardship can be affirmed in learning goodness any more than in any other progressive effort. The difficulty of doing what is right may be real and very EVIL WIPES ITSELF OUT 253 great, but the attempt is a joy. I cannot pity anyone for trying to be good, however " arduous " and unre- lenting " reality " may be. It is in this invincible positive character of moral good that the contrast between good and evil, or, rather, between the good and the bad man, is most manifest. The good man acts more and more con- sistently with his own rational nature, and in accord- ance with the scheme to which he belongs. He goes from strength to strength ; and that the conditions of permanent well-being are at his back becomes more and more conclusively evident. But evil tends to wipe itself out — to demonstrate its futility. Some kinds of ill-conduct destroy the physical conditions of life. The putrescence in other cases seems confined to the soul — whose sympathies become sluggish, and whose ends become ever narrower and meaner and more selfish. Moral evil, or wrong-doing, is the wrong use of Evil gifts that are good. It is a turning of them against it°se?/Tnd themselves. And the fact that it is thus intrinsically to overcome . ^t IS not to self-contradictory, so far from justifying it, leaves it justify it. self-condemned. It is never justified. When by its failure it warns, when having learnt its lesson a nation or an individual devotes itself with new resolve to good ends, the evil, the perverse activity of the bad will, has already passed away. If the difficulties of religious faith are to be met, it is not by denying the reality or lessening the significance of evil, but by comprehending its nature. In its own negative fashion, by its own self-contradictoriness, evil also bears witness to the divine government of the world — a government which permits and sustains, and 254 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES in the end furnishes the force that declares itself in the spiritual enterprise of mankind. It is not an easy optimism that can maintain the final triumph of what is best. On the contrary, it is the concep- tion of a will which, by making the well-being of mankind its end, has challenged all the powers of evil. Conclusion. Our own nature's bent is towards goodness : it is only beings endowed richly, endowed, that is to say, with the gifts of the spirit, that can do what is morally right or wrong. To be able to err and do wrong is a trust and responsibility beyond the reach of the animal ; and the world in which man is called upon and given the opportunity of using his gifts, supports and rewards their right use, and puts obstacles in the way of the evil-doer by exposing the ruinous folly of his ways of life. The world in its own way shows that the purposes of God are those of a Love that is perfect, and although they are not always seen to triumph in the lives of men, they are never seen defeated. Never has anyone been sorry for having tried to do what seemed right or mourned over his attempted obedience to the will of God. If it cannot be said that " The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound," it may be maintained that " There shall never be one lost good ! What was, shall live as before " ; and it may even be added that " What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more," NOT ONE LOST GOOD 255 " All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist ; Not its semblance, but itself ; no beauty, nor good, nor power Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist When eternity affirms the conception of an hour," ^ That the pov^^er and love of God are unlimited remains after every test the most reasonable and probable hypothesis. 1 Browning's Abt Vogler. LECTURE XV THE ABSOLUTE AND THE NATURAL WORLD Before moving on, it may be well to mark the main stages of the way we have travelled. There is Lord Gifford desired to apply the methods of the only one , . ,. . . , method of natural sciences to religion with a view to proving knowing. ^-^^ possibility of establishing what he called " Natural Religion." Certain difficulties were encountered which arose from the fact that the methods of the sciences differ. They vary according to the subject- matter. This difficulty seemed to be more serious when the subject was that of religion. But in the last resort it was found that there is, in truth, only one method of knowing. The sciences, philosophy, even ordinary thought, are engaged in forming and testing conceptions or hypotheses in the light of which facts are disclosed and become intelligible. And the hypo- thesis with which philosophy is engaged is proffered by it as the ultimate explanatory principle of all reality. It is the Absolute. And the relation of the Absolute of philosophy to the God of religion is one of the problems we must consider hereafter. The We then enquired into the nature of religion. We naturrof^^' found it to be man's refuge from the disappointments rehgion. ^£ finitude, and, above all, from the shortcomings 256 MORALITY AND RELIGION 257 which he discovers in himself. Over against the limitations, weaknesses, f^iilures, there stands for the religious spirit the fulness of infinitude, strength and security. " Over against," however, is a misleading phrase, for religion places a divine plenitude in man's own reach. It unites God and man, and unites them so intimately, as it would seem, that a man's very self appears to cease to count. His life is not his own. It is not he that lives, but his God lives in him. But the claims of religion, thus uncompromisingly urged, seemed to be incompatible with man's moral life. For it can hardly be questioned that one of the The essential conditions of morality is the responsibility of hSSiSst- the moral agent for his actions, as the results of his rJugion and own choice and the free expression of his personality, morality. Man's moral destiny is exclusively in his own hands. It is for him, and for him only and alone, to make or to mar his moral character. Neither man nor God himself can do this for, or instead of, him. This moral demand we stated as uncompromisingly as the apparently opposite demand of religion. In the next place we sought, and I believe found, a way of reconciling religion and morality. Morality is the process of realizing the principle of religion. It is religion in practice, and only as religion in prac- tice is morality at its highest and best, or religion itself a reality. To effect this reconciliation the ordinary view both The recon- of religion and of morality had to be modified. Re- ligion ceases to be a satisfaction that brings idle rest ; the rest it brings is that of devoted activity in the service of a Perfection with which man has unre- servedly identified his own well-being. Morality G.L. R 258 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES ceases to be the hopeless pursuit of an ever-receding ought to be, and becomes a process of continued, successive attainment. Every good act becomes, in turn, an inspiration to a better, and brings insight into wider purposes. From this point of view one would hear as little of the hardships and hazards of the moral life as we do in the case of intellectual progress. Morality is continued self-realization through self- sacrifice — the consciousness of sacrificing the self in doing one's duty being most evanescent, and its illusoriness easily exposed. It is the way to the moral act, not the act itself, that is sometimes, though by no means always, rough. And there are lives whose dedication to the Highest, their God, is so complete that He is with them at every step of the journey. The We were then confronted with the problem of evil eiiL^^The^ — both natural and spiritual ; for there can be no denial easy escape ^f ^^^ f^^^ ^j^^^ observation of the ways of men shows from it. -^ them to be often irreligious and secular, even when not immoral. It is not everyone who is in pursuit of moral goodness, or who is designedly converting the circumstances of his daily life into means of moral growth. On the contrary there are extremities of wickedness and of suffering, which it would be hard indeed to justify, if we considered them as specific parts of a deliberate plan. There has seemed, there- fore, to be no option, except to say that there are " unplanned " occurrences or " contingencies," things which have crept into the scheme unpermitted, or, at least, unforeseen. But it is harder still to justify them (or anything else) except as parts of a plan. So we rejected this very obvious way of running away from the difficulty. Nor was it lack of acquaintance NATURAL AND MORAL EVIL 259 with pain, or sorrow, or, alas, sin, that enabled us to look the problem in the face, and to seek for a place within the plan even for these evils. We therefore tried anew to determine the essential character of evil. Natural evil, such as sickness, pain, bereavement, No natural poverty, absence of the friendly regard of neighbours, has an"^ ^^^ offered comparatively little difficulty. Natural good JJ^J'J^^J.gj. and evil, we found, are not good or evil in their own right. If the moral standard of value is the correct stanciard, then we must wait for the moral issue of natural occurrences before calling them good or bad. The difficulty as to moral evil is much more serious. Moral evil. Events in the moral world have a finality of character which natural events do not possess. The good or the evil is intrinsic. There is, as we say, no getting over it. Its existence must simply be acknowledged. There were, however, certain considerations which prevented the need of acknowledging its final triumph, or its existence as limiting or annulling either the power or the goodness of God, and thereby stultifying religious faith. [a) First, while it is true that the observation of the lives of men yield instances in which the evil will grows in power unto the end of the individual's life, it is also possible that the end has not as yet arrived. There are other possibilities ; and they may This life's well seem to amount to probabilities. It was pointed be^too"^^^ narrow to out that the destiny of beings whose nature is spiritual decide its may be a matter whose issues are too great to be ^"^^ nature. decided by and in this transitory and uncertain physically conditioned life. The absence of adequate premisses ought to arrest judgment on the matter ; 260 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES This world may be a school of virtue, and the best world for that reason. If so, the possibility of moral evil must remain. Can philosophy meet the demands of religion ? and the right to deny is in no way stronger than the right to affirm. (F) Secondly, and this was our main argument, if the present world can be regarded as a school of virtue and if learning goodness is worthy of every sacrifice, then to permit man to choose between right and v/rong (having first provided him with spiritual capacity for making such a choice ; and, secondly, given him such a bent towards goodness that he never chooses evil because of its evil ; and finally, having placed him in a world which favours good conduct) is a supreme expression of Divine Love. God has given to man a chance of attaining what is highest and best : and God's benevolence could go no further. If these things are true, then the existence of evil is not equivalent to a refutation of religious faith. We can still believe in the unlimited goodness of God and can recognize the possibility of evil as one of the conditions of its operation. These were the main conclusions to which our argument seemed to point. We must now examine them, and in particular decide whether philosophic enquiry verily does in this way ratif)^ religious faith and satisfy its demands. Can the Absolute of philo- sophy be identified with the God of religion ; and can the religious needs of men be met in that way } Will the intelligence of man provide what his heart desires } Can the consideration of finite facts lead to the knowledge of God } Our investigation must set out from the consideration of such facts and events. We seek to discover that which explains finite things and shows them real ; THE ACxNOSTIC 261 for they are real, though not in virtue of themselves. In the first place, the isolated finite fact is a figment. It is in relation to other facts, and only in that relation, that facts act and are ; and it is only in their activities that they reveal and actualize themselves. It cannot be too often or emphatically affirmed that things are what they do. Now this relational process could conceivably be either endless and therefore incon- clusive ; or it could culminate in the affirmation of that which is at once real in virtue of its own nature and that from which all else derives its reality. I mean that all objects and events when examined would in that case point to it as the ultimate real, from which they are derived and only in relation to which they have themselves meaning, value or reality. The first course is, in practice, adopted by the The agnostic. He despairs of knowing the self-justif)^ing ^^t°i°u^'enot real, and he recognizes that, in consequence, no part p^fs^^ie^ of his knowledge has unconditional validity and finality. His attitude, if he could maintain it, is that of one who refrains from committing himself. But such an attitude cannot be maintained. At the heart of every person's experience there are principles which are taken to be true. At least, they are not questioned. But while a cognitive attitude which can say nothing except " I don't know " is not practically or theoreti- cally defensible, there are, on the other hand, varying degrees of certitude. And, in one sense at least, the Degrees of , r • . , 1 . • • 1 certitude. degree of certamty that is required grows as we move from science to philosophy and from philosophy to religion. The scientific man can afford to be less reserved than the others in his confession that his ultimate principles are only his best guesses, and that 262 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Religion demands complete certainty. his laws are merely hypotheses, and apply only to a limited region, or to some single aspect of objects. But the philosopher stakes the whole of his mental life on his doctrine. The failure of a fundamental philo- sophical conviction brings into experience universal chaos. But the ruin that the breakdown of a philosophy brings to the intellectual life is in its turn far less complete than that which follows the loss of religious faith. There is a refuge in the former case in the field of practice : it is possible, by narrowing one's life, to silence the questionings of the intelligence. But in the second case, that of religion, no way of escape is left : in no direction is it worth while for the spirit of man to seek to move. Conviction must be complete ; faith must in every practical sense be equivalent to certainty. The impatience of the re- ligious spirit with those who seem to place (as I have done) the faith of religion on the same level as the hypotheses of a science, is quite intelligible. Religion demands certainty that it can trust ; philosophy offers what is, at best, only the most reasonable conjecture, the likeliest guess. And it would thus appear that the demands of "the heart "^ cannot be met by the use of the intelligence. A vast difference seems to separate the conception of the whole or Absolute as the ultimate focus of all finite things which philo- sophy offers, and the conception of a Divine Being to whose goodness and power there is no limit, which religion demands. We have, on the one hand, a philosophical certainty that looks very empty, seeing 1 I am using the word " heart " in its usual sense, which, so far as I know, has never been clearly stated. In this connexion, however, the word " heart " seems to stand for the whole man. GOD AND THE ABSOLUTE 263 that it only affirms the wholeness of the universe and the ultimate dependence of things on an Absolute of which nothing except its absoluteness is known ; and, on the other hand, we have an ample and satisfying but utterly defenceless religious faith. Can they not be brought together and made supplementary ? There is one sense in which philosophy offers more Difference . ... . . , between the than religion wants. The religious spirit can be con- Absolute of tent to escape from the world for the sake of being P^dX^^'^' one with its God. It has no direct concern in ^^ny- God of^_ thing except the redemption of the soul, and once the assurance is reached that the sin has been forgiven, the sin passes out of sight, and is as if it had never been. But the whole or Absolute which philosophy affirms must be all-inclusive and must carry the past with it. There can be no reality of any kind out- side of the scheme. This means, in the first place, that there can be The J ., /-pi 1- 1 comprehen- no contingencies, not even in detail. ine im^s giveness of that connect the detail with the whole scheme are ^^^ ^^'°^"*^- there, whether we find them or not, if the conception of the harmonious whole which reason seems to demand is valid. And unless we can presuppose an order that is universal we can affirm it securely no- where. Every loss must be convertible into gain by the alchemy of the spirit, and every tragedy must on this view contribute to the triumph of order over con- tingency and of good over evil ; otherwise we cannot speak of the Universe as a whole or of the Absolute as its principle. It is one thing to admit that we do not know a law^ and another to affirm that no law exists. We do the latter in affirming " contingencies." In the next place the all-inclusive Absolute which 264 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES philosophy establishes, and, indeed, which thought presupposes, must be such as to cherish and maintain, and in nowise obliterate, or obscure, or extinguish the differences of the elements which have a place The Absolute in it. It must be adequate to the Universe for leaves room , . , . . . , for differ- wliich it IS an experience — adequate to its variety wdtMn its ^s Well as to its unity. And the universe is wonder- unity. fully rich in meaning and beauty and spiritual worth could we but escape from our littleness and let it inundate the soul. The poet helps us at times, and with his aid we catch a glimpse of the world's splen- dour. Then the spring-wind reveals itself as a dancing psaltress passing over the wintry earth's breast to waken it, and is much more than a senseless gust. " The herded pines commune and have deep thoughts, A secret they assemble to discuss." They are not merely a group of trees to the poet ; and he helps us to rejoice in nature's munificence. Science comes, too, with its steady light. And the artist in colour and form indicates — for he can do little more — the details of the beauty of natural objects in new ways. Nor must we think that poetry is pure invention. It is part of the nature of things which the poet sets free. There is beauty everywhere, not only in the butterfly's wing, but at the very heart of the pebble. Finally, the musician intervenes. He brings with him, perhaps, the most miraculous of all the benevolent intrusions into our commonplace life, and sets free an altogether new feature of the real. The The Absolute must not merely contain these, but oTth?idSf permit them to retain within it, nay, it must con- of sameness, tribute, their distinctive character. It is not a blank THE ABSOLUTE AND FINITE 265 sameness, as of ultimate substance in which all differences disappear, that the conception of " whole- ness " implies. Sameness of this kind implies im- poverishment : not inclusion, but exclusion. When it is attained it is found to be empty ; and being empty, to have itself neither reality nor meaning. The finite objects within the Absolute whole must be themselves expressions of it. There is no least evidence of the existence of the Absolute except in that which it furnishes itself and as it operates in finite objects. They are processes of the Abso- The Absolute lute, and the Absolute is the process, or the con- ft^eiTirthe stant creative activity, which appears to us as the fixed ^atur?^and order of the scheme of things. For the static char- pore fully . . . . "1 those of acter of objects is, I believe, an illusion. Their man's - . . , ^ . .J nature. apparent nxity is that or an operation ever carried on in accordance with law. The scientific man accounts for an object by discovering its law ; and a law is the mode of operation of a universal. Physics knows no reality except some form of energy, and nature is for science the scene of its transformations. And when we pass from inanimate objects to living things, and from living things onwards to beings that live the life of reason, and have cognitive, aesthetic and volitional experiences, the evidences of process ac- cumulate. It is obvious that when rational acti- vities cease, nothing remains ; even their objects, whether they be beauty, goodness or truth, pass away. The facts of the world of spirit are ways in which spirit acts, and spirit is what it does. When spirit does not act, nothing spiritual can exist. Truth does not exist as an entity, nor does goodness, nor beauty. To speak of them as taken up into the 266 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES The continuity of nature and spirit, and the re- interpreta- tion of the former in the light of the latter. absolute, or contained in it, or as transformed and transcended on admission into it, is to attribute to them an actuality separate from spirit which they do not possess, and to forget that they are its processes. They are, I repeat, the Absolute in process of self- revelation ; and its existence consists in this process of self-manifestation in finite objects. I have spoken of the spiritual manifestations of the Absolute as if they were other than its expressions in the constant processes of nature. But it cannot any longer be doubted that, account for it as we may, mankind is as much a natural growth as a forest of pines. Spiritual activities are not possible to man except in correspondence with a natural environment ; and these borrow characteristics from their interaction. More accurately, perhaps, we might say that the kinship of nature and spirit is the primary fact. The distinction between them is that of aspects or elements of the same real. Morality derives its worth from its eliciting a higher meaning and use from secular objects, and the practical trials and tests of a religious faith are its defence and strength and security. The environment has its own function to fulfil ; it partici- pates in the spiritual process. The natural region is a stage or degree of the self-manifestation of spirit. Some of the attributes of the indwelling reality are ex- pressed and realized in it. Power we can discern and a power that, unlike our own, is creative. The power which we can exercise over objects is extraordinarily limited. In the last resort we can only move them into and out of contact with one another, and then leave them to operate upon one another. So far from calling them into being, we cannot even alter MAN REINTERPRETS THE WORLD 267 their qualities : we can only change their position in space. Besides a power quite other than our own, we can discern in the natural scheme something of the resources of infinite wisdom, or evidences of perfect in- telligence ; and we cannot cite the beauty of the natural world or the perfection of its order, or the variety and greatness of its uses, without recognizing something that we can hardly distinguish from the limitless benevolence of a munificent will. But it is not merely prejudice that attributes the highest value and signifi- cance to the spiritual manifestations of the real — as when it appears as self-consciousness in nature's highest product, namely, man. In the light of man's nature the whole scheme must be reinterpreted. " Man, once descried, imprints for ever His presence on all lifeless things : the winds Are henceforth voices, waihng or a shout, A querulous mutter or a quick gay laugh, Never a senseless gust now man is born." ^ There are, it seems to me, two series of reliable conclusions to which philosophy leads by its per- sistent enquiry into the nature and meaning and reality of finite things. The first series of con- clusions relates to the character of the Absolute : the second series concerns the nature of its relations to its parts, or elements, or finite content. As to the nature of the Absolute, it seems to be evident that it must contain all the conditions of all the finite phenomena. No one contends that the natural scheme produced itself : it manifestly points beyond itself for its explanation. And as to the ^ Browning's " Paracelsus." 268 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Summary of conclusions as to the nature of the Absolute (a) It is a spiritual reality. (6) Hence it is an active process, culminating in the activities of a perfect humanity Implications of a complete anthropo- morphism. Spiritual capacities that manifest themselves in the cognitive, aesthetic and moral activities of man (like everything else that is to be found in him), they have a history which passes beyond his individual existence. No one attributes these capacities to the individual himself in the sense that he discovered or invented them. Even their social origin is only secondary. They have been at the making of society, and are, in fact, forms of the real, and have come to man as a gift. It is only the use made of them that belongs to the individual. These spiritual qualities were, at one time, attributed to matter : but now it is seen that matter does not contain the conditions and cannot produce them. That which is spiritual can have no adequate source except in that which is itself spiritual. The Absolute therefore must be spiritual. The process of its self-revelation in the Universe is a spiritual process. Nature is but the earlier and less complete stage of that self-revelation. Man, as spirit or as a self- conscious, free being, making for perfection — man at his best is a truer and fuller revelation. A perfect man were the incarnated God. This is the truth to which Christianity bears witness. The doctrine is undisguisedly and thoroughly anthropomorphic. Its God must therefore be a person or self-conscious individual to whom there is nothing which is finally strange or alien. Spirit that is not individual means nothing. But individuality implies a more intimate and deep relationship between the Absolute and its finite appearances than is conveyed in the phrases usually employed to express it. It is not enough to say that the Absolute contains finite facts ; nor even that it transmutes them by relating them to one another FAILURE OF MONOTHEISM 269 through its own unity. Facts are not first given as isolated and then linked together in a system. They are not at one time separate from, and at another taken up into, the Absolute. The Absolute permanently sustains them. But to regard God as a Being which somehow sustains the different modes of finite exist- ence without implicating itself in their destiny, is also inadequate. If we admit the spiritual character of the power that expresses itself in the Universe, we at the same time admit its individuality and its self- consciousness : if we admit its self-conscious indi- viduality, we admit that which is for itself and gives everything a turn inwards as subjective experience, and, at the same time and for the same reason, that which finds itself everywhere and is veritably omni- present. But no purely monotheistic conception can meet these requirements : not even that of a creator who projects its products and then lets them be. Self-consciousness inextricably entangles the indi- vidual in its object. The self-conscious being is immanent in his world. Every discovery of the meaning or of the use of an object is a refutation of first appearances. For the object at first appears to be purely external and exclusive. It is there ; I as subject am here. But in the degree in which it is known, its oneness with myself by which it both enriches me and acquires meaning and value, becomes more and more indisputable. My world, in fact, thinks and wills in me, because I have overcome its strangeness. Nevertheless even the idea of im- inadequacy ^ . . , ... ^ of the manence is madequate to express the relations or ideas of the Absolute to its elements. For the Absolute |nd^ ^^^^ not merely dwells in their midst like the peace at the ^nimanence. 270 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES depths of an ocean whose surface is storm-tossed. The Absolute which philosophy affirms, is one with them. It shares in the activities of the finite object, and is a doer and sufferer in the world's life. I have repeatedly urged that if we desire to know what an object is we must observe what it does. In order to bring out the whole of its characters we must vary the environment by reference to which it acts. The For all the actions of an object are reactions — a solitary tioJof*God object would show no activity, and, in fact, never be wodd-^*^ known. To him, then, who would know God, the process. answer of philosophy would be : Observe this never- resting Universe as it moves from change to change, nor forget the troubled, tragic, sin-stained, shameless elements in the world of man, and you will find God working his purpose and manifesting himself through it all. Identify him with the power that sustains the processes of this natural-spiritual world and you identify him with that which, as we have seen, makes for fuller spiritual excellence. You identify him with something that is better than any static perfection. But, it will be answered, to identif)^ the Divine Being with the Absolute of philosophy and the Absolute of philosophy with the world process is to represent the Divine Being himself as passing from one imperfect form of existence to another. Religion, it has been admitted, demands perfection in the object of its devotion. How can such a conception, then, meet its requirements ? The answer is twofold. In the first place we might examine the static conception ; in the second place, we might ask whether there can be movement, not only from imperfection to imper- fection — the pursuit of a receding ideal with which STATIC PERFECTION 271 ethical teaching has made us familiar — but from per- fection to perfection, a movement which is positive attainment all the way. Can the perfect be for ever radiating forth new perfections ? As to the static conception of the perfect, I The idea of have already indicated how changelessness means perfection absolute inactivity ; and how inactivity can be attri- ^^^™"^^^- buted to nothing real which we know, and least of all to spiritual reality. For it to be at all is to be operative, outgoing, losing itself to find itself immersed in the Universe and returning to itself through the Universe. I cannot call that which does nothing — which for ever stands aloof from the world-process in eternal fixity — God. Such a God could not at least be a God of Love, for love identifies the lover and the loved. Love cannot stand aloof : love lives in the life of its object and shares its fate. Even the isolation of the moral agent does not shut out love. It shares the sorrow, though not the guilt, of ill-doing, and the joy of righteous living. Bearing in mind what I have tried to prove, namely, that the Universe which makes for fuller spiritual goodness is the best possible, I cannot hesitate to identify the God of religion and the Absolute of philosophy. Nevertheless, as absolute self-conscious- The divine , , . 1 , ^ .... movement ness and as knowmg the end trom the begmnmg, from per- God is more than the world-process. That pro- p^g'rfection. cess fulfils his purpose. But God, as having purposed the process from the beginning, or as not acting blindly not knowing what he doeth, is greater than and transcends the Universe. He is already perfect and possesses the future, for it is his Will which is being realized in the world. 272 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES The suggestions of man's moral history. All the same there is movement from purpose to fulfilment, or from possibility to actuality, and the perfection of the instant may be the condition and inspiration of a new perfection. Something of that kind seems to me to be presented by the spiritual history of man. Nothing in the world can be better than the doing of a right deed. In its own way, it is obedience to and realization of the absolute law of goodness ; nevertheless it is a stepping-stone to some better action still. A wider view of duty ensues, or a deeper and more joyous loyalty. Morality is acquirement all the way^ and, in spite of the limited range of every human action, in so far as what is right is done, there is movement from perfection to perfection. Right actions are perfect actions in their place, provided they elicit the best that the circumstances permit. They are often done by very imperfect men, and still they stand unstained. Yet every such action is a stepping-stone only ; once done it yields its result in the character of the agent, and he carries that result within him ever afterwards as an element of his personality and the condition of further service. And every stage has its own worth. The seed of a living plant may be perfect, so may its bud and its flower and its fruit. Its history is not the story of a movement from failure to failure. And it seems to me that we can say the same thing of the succession of the stages of the spiritual life. Looking back, it is true, makes any stage preparatory — a thing essentially imperfect in itself; but all the same, every stage has its own character, and had its right to be, and was justified as it stood. LOVE IS NEVER ALOOF 273 I admit that the conception of a moving perfection, The God of or of God as a being who ever expresses himself in new perfections, has its difficulties ; but, unlike those of the conception of a static Deity, they are not insur- mountable. Every least addition to our knowledge we welcome as a lasting attainment. We accentuate the positive aspect of the process. What reasons have we for regarding our moral actions as failures or morality as anything else than what is best of all in process .f" I know of none. Our unexamined assump- tion of a static perfection, our habit of postponing the triumph of the life of spirit to an end, which we have never attempted to define, has blinded us to the possibility of a growing perfection and of a best in process. Still less have we taken the process itself as the evidence of perfection. And yet these things are implied in the conception of spirit, and of God as a God of Love. For no one will for a moment admit that love can stand aloof from its object unconcerned by its fate. The religious man, like Enoch, " walks with God." A light, like that of the Shekinah, always shines upon his path. He has no will of his own in an exclusive sense ; and there is a sense in which not even his personality is any longer his own. These are familiar experiences. Are they possible if God dwells apart and contemplates for ever his own per- fection ? Would they be possible were God the monarchic Ruler, or the Stern Judge demanding a quid pro quo in the blood of a redeemer in return for forgiveness of sins ? Or are not all these con- ceptions irreconcilable with the fundamental truth of the religion of love } Philosophy has performed only a portion of its task G.L, s 274 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES in showing how the finite world implies the Absolute. It must also show what necessities, if any, dwell in the absolute, and account for its eternal outgoing and expression of itself in objects. It is not only true that " the finite world cannot be conceived to be complete and independent, and that its existence must therefore be referred back to God," but also, as Caird said, that " in the nature of God there is a necessity and reason for the existence of the world." To the ques- tion sometimes asked, " Why did God come out of his isolated perfection so as to complete himself only through the medium of the Universe ? " the answer is relatively simple. It is given in the conception of As conscious- God as Love. Love must have an object. Philosophy ness imp les g-^^g ^^ answer which, in the last resort, is the same. Absoluteness undoubtedly implies that self-complete- ness, that positive and commanding relation to objects, that possession of its own experience, which are in- volved in self-consciousness. A self-conscious being which has no object and does not possess its opposite, and affirm its unity in terms of it, is impossible. Hence an Absolute without a world is empty nothing- ness, just as a world without the Absolute is impossible. Nature is the experience, the living operation of the Absolute, and the Absolute is not only omnipresent in it, but real in virtue of it. It is as manifesting itself that the Absolute, on its part, lives and moves and has its being. The religious consciousness, as we have seen, may almost be said to consist in this conviction of the omnipresence of what is most divine, namely, perfect and unlimited Love. Those who can rise to the sublime attitude of Wordsworth find no difficulty in its object, so must the Absolute express itself in the Universe. FALSITY OF THE COMMONPLACE 275 ciple the conception. It is in no exaggerated mood of The emotional exaltation that he found an " Active Prin- and poetic acceptance of this " Subsist view. In all things, in all natures ; in the stars Of azure heaven, the unenduring clouds, In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone That paves the brooks ..." and even where it is *' least respected, its most apparent home, the human mind." Wordsworth affirmed this as " a matter of fact " — and philosophy finds in the conception of a self-con- scious Absolute the same plain truth. The erroneous The ^1 , , , . . . ,. . J ordinary versions or the world s meanmg are the irreligious and view of the prose versions : not that of the devout, nor that of the maifisTalse poet, nor that of the idealist philosopher, but the ^g^^^^gg ^^ version of the plain man. Where omits their '- highest " Moral dignity, and strength of mind, qualities. Are wanting : and simplicity of life And reverence for one's [him] self : and last and best Confiding thoughts, through love and fear of Him - Before whose sight the troubles of this world Are vain, as billows on a tossing sea " : in these cases the truth may be hidden for a time. It is beyond the reach of the unprepared spirit ; which is left the victim of its own shallow deceptions. It is not enough that the world's harmonies should be divine ; the soul that can hear must be musical. It is in the awareness of this deeper significance of the world and of life, in this glimpse of the essentially spiritual character of the commonest experience, that religious conversion consists. And it is not the language of exaggeration to speak of " The eyes being opened, or the blind seeing." Ordinary 276 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES experience is abstract, and what is omitted in our ordinary moods is the best, the most true and the most beautiful. I take it, then, quite literally, that the character of the relation that holds between the Absolute of philo- sophy, or the God of religion, and the facts and events of nature is most accurately rendered in our deeper religious convictions, in such poetry as Wordsworth's, and in the philosophic rendering of it by our great Idealists. The poet, the philosopher and the religious man, each in his own way, helps us to know the natural world in its truth, or as it verily is. They set free its limitless suggestiveness, reveal its beauty, expose its purpose and its meaning — helped herein, I need hardly say, by science. Except in the light of their teaching, we do not know the scheme as it is. What we are apt to miss are its splendour and its final significance ; and what we recognize is an im- poverished remnant, the commonplace counterpart of our own life and interests. But the relation of the Absolute to the natural Universe is relatively simple : much simpler than its relation to man. We do no violence to the natural scheme by regarding it simply as the expression of the divine will and the mere instrument of a divine purpose. But to represent man as the effect of any kind of anterior cause or the implement of any foreign aim is to do him vital wrong. This deeper problem must be the theme of our next lecture. LECTURE XVI GOD AND MAN'S FREEDOM I HAVE said that the relation between God and the world is much more simple than his relation to man. The world referred us back to him as the ground of its possibility : and, on the other hand, in his nature as self-conscious there is an outgoing necessity to which the religious consciousness testifies in its own way, when it declares that the final reality, the ultimate The relation energy, is limitless and all-powerful Love. But the man°raises relation of God to man raises new questions. For, ^J^^^j^ as we have seen more than once during this course, problems ^ . than his that relation must be such as to leave the privacy, the relation to freedom, the responsibility of man's personality un- touched. And it would appear at first that such non-interference necessarily implies that man is shut up within himself and isolated. Participation in anything that is common or universal seems to be impossible to spiritually responsible beings. If we admit both the testimony of morality to the responsibility of the individual, and that of religion to his oneness with God, we do so, we are told, at the expense of the intelligence. To believe both these opposite conceptions we must turn reason out of doors. 277 278 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Opposing I should like to show, however, that this very may both commoii attitude, which forces us to a choice between ^ ^^^ ' these two alternatives, is an unexamined and untrue prejudice. The assertion of man's unity with others or of divine immanence in him does not necessarily violate the independence of man. The differences between one self-conscious individual and another, between man and man, as well as between man and the Absolute, are real : the activities of every subject are us own : no one thing ever ceases to be itself so long as it is at all, nor does it perform the function of another. I am not concerned to deny or to lessen their differences. But I do deny the implied assumption, namely, that the assertion of difference and distinctions is tantamount to the denial of unity, and that we are shut up to the choice between Facts refuse abstract unity and abstract difference.^ The efforts separated or of the philosophers to provc that all is appearance reduced into g^^^ ^j^^ universal substance in the background, or, pure o '5 sameness. on the Other hand, to show that particulars are the only realia, have, fortunately, proved unsuccessful. The Universe refuses to be reduced either to blank sameness or to a collection (even if a collection !) of unrelated facts and incidents. In the face of such a refusal it may be well to ask whether the Universe may not realize and reveal itself in the particulars, and whether divine immanence in every element of finite being may not make the latter all the more real. 1 find no evidence to support the " either — or " Examples of attitude. Physics will attribute the fact it would ^fgg^g^ncein explain neither to the operation of the world-forces in^tSr ?t? ^part from the particular object nor to the latter apart ' See my article on " Divine Immanence " in the Hibhert Journal. SYSTEMATIC UNITY 279 from the Universe. The flower needs the help of all the world if it is to bloom ; but not all the world can make it bloom if the plant has no co-operating life of its own. If we observe the manifestations of the spirit of man — his knowledge, or his art, or his per- sonal character, or his social world, — we shall find on all hands what look like universals immanent in par- ticulars, unities existing in and by virtue of differences, and differences deriving their very nature from the unities. A piece of music is not an aggregate of sounds ; nor is a picture a collection of colours ; nor is a geometrical demonstration a succession of state- ments and nothing more. The demonstration is the exhibition of the truth of one hypothesis and of only one ; the work of art is the embodiment of one con- ception and the expression of one mood. Hence one artist cannot take up another's work, nor even always complete his own, if the mood has passed. There are poems, like some of those of Coleridge, which will remain fragments to the end of time, " The Campanile is still to finish." The elements or parts of a poem or proof, or of any other product of the intelligence of man, derive their value and their significance from the unity which dwells in them, and which all alike serve to express. The How the , ... ^1 ^- 1 unity of the particular note makes its joyous or pathetic appeal whole gives because it is part of, and belongs to, a great musical mianing1;o movement. Take it out of the movement and you ^^^ parts. deprive it of its beauty : it becomes a meaningless shout. Put a different note in its place and you may ruin the movement. The particular curve or arch or turret lends its beauty to, and it also borrows its beauty from, the edifice as a whole. Tear the porter 280 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Can man's nature as self- conscious separate him from all else ? scene in Macbeth out of its context and it sinks into poor comedy ; leave it in its context, where it repre- sents the idle, common world in contact with the terror and the tension of the scene of murder, and it both retains and gives tragic value. I do not see how it can be denied that in all these instances the unitv of the whole is immanent in all the parts ; or that the unity is as real as the particulars in which it is expressed ; or that, when sundered from one another, they are aught but unreal abstractions. Nor do I see how the topic of exclusion, the " either — or " attitude of mind, can do justice to such facts. But, it will be replied, in all these instances, culled from the various arts, the particulars, or elements, make no claim to independence that is in the least analogous to that of self-conscious individuals. The mutual exclusiveness and isolation are but faint shadows of the exclusiveness and isolation of persons. That is true. Nothing is so shut up within itself, and barred and bolted against invasion from without, as the self-conscious individual. But it is not the whole truth. If the subjective differences are deeper and more decisive, the unity of rational beings, that is, of self-conscious persons, is also fuller and more significant. The elements that are common to them all, and constitutive of them, mean more, and are more numerous. Moreover, both their differences and independence on the one hand, and their unity and community on the other, grow with their own growth. Once more, I do not deny or minimize the privacy, or the independence, or the exclusiveness of rational selves: but our concern for the moment is their unity — the universals that express themselves in the separate lives. WELDING SOCIAL ELEMENTS 281 I must first insist on a truth which, I trust, is fast Society , . , r 1 • 1 J • T • prior to the becoming a commonplace or ethical doctrine. It is individual, that man's ethical powers are rooted in the social community into which he is born and within which he is brought up. He is anteceded, I should even say " anticipated," by it in a spiritual sense, just as the materials of his physical health and growth are prior to him. They are there ready for him to assimi- late and appropriate, and convert into living forces within his spiritual structure. Aristotle insisted on this truth, but not even yet is it definitely and clearly recognized that apart from the contribution made to the individual by the social whole he is quite meaning- less, impotent and, indeed, unreal. Now, all these social elements, from amongst which The elements the individual selects and appropriates those which he common to can assimilate, are common elements ; that is to say, they uni^e^it^' are forces within the lives of the members of the social world. They weld the individuals into a single unity by endowing them all with the same qualities. They give to the life of the society its main features and direction. It is owing to them that a community is controlled by the same impulse and, at times, swept by the same passion. Their common elements are, in truth, the controlling powers, although they are both impotent and meaningless except as entering into the characters of the individual members. The indi- vidual is their living unity. They are in and through him, and he is in and through them. The inter- penetration of whole and part, unity and differences, universal and particulars, is beyond dispute and of essential significance to both. So full is this interpenetration that we can attribute 282 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Narrow nothing whatsoever original or creative to the indi- limits of . ^ , . . , . . , . . . individual viQual. He brings With him into his social, as into oiigina 1 y. |^jg physical world, nothing but a power of appro- priating, that is, of converting the social forces which play around him, or at least some of them, into personal forces, into opinions, convictions, volitions. The language he speaks is his country's ; the thoughts which he expresses are its traditions ; the habits he forms are its customs ; he is its product almost as the fruit is of a tree. Misbeliefs During the first part of the individual's life, nay, being during the whole of the life of the plain man, that are^mo°e^ is, of the man who has not made the beliefs he enter- societ^^s tains and the principles he has adopted into objects of than his own. his reflective and reconstructive thought, these con- stitutive elements of mind and character belong more to the community than they do to the individual him- self. His appropriation of them being uncritical, his life being ruled by hearsay, it is also incomplete. He follows their guidance, and is the instrument of the social fabric rather than his own master and guide. Most of the mental operations of the plain man are his own only in the superficial sense in which we say that a machine makes a particular article. He is, in truth, the means through which his society operates. His thoughts are merely its traditions, accepted, assimi- lated, understood to some extent ; but never tested, never brought before the bar of the individual's own judgment and justified there. His religion, for instance, is apt to be very much a matter of hearsay, and its profounder truths to be on that account facile opinions and nothing more. Even his moral judgments, which of all things should be the most independent WHEN IS MAN FREE ? 283 and intensely personal, have the same character. It has never even occurred to him to criticize the moral code of this society of which he is a member ; but he goes with it the whole way without a moment's hesitation when he approves actions as right, condemns them as wrong or tolerates them as indifferent. The methods that he employs in his trade or profession — the way in which the carpenter handles his tools, or the farmer tills his land and gathers in the harvest — all these things have been accepted as matters of course, and have never been objects of free choice. In a word, human life, in so far as it is subject to traditional ways, is not free. Perhaps I ought to dwell for a moment on this matter. We usually speak of human freedom as a thing to be either affirmed or denied in its entirety and fulness. The alternatives, we consider, are fixed and final : man, we say, is either free or not free. But this is not true. There are no fixed elements in human character. Man has to acquire, or " win " his Freedom ■ freedom, just as he has to acquire knowledge or ^"ned.^and goodness ; and there are degrees or stages of freedom li^fig^by^ as there are degrees of knowledge and virtue. In so little. far as man is not master of his own thoughts, in the sense of having convinced himself by rational methods of their validity, he is not free. He is in their service : they are not in his. He is the instrument by means of which the society of which he is a member con- tinues to exist ; and he carries onward its moral customs, its religious beliefs, and its methods of industry, commerce, and of every other form of activity. But an instrument is not a free agent. As a rule, we do not in the least realize how limited our 284 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Mr. Balfour on Tradition and Reason. freedom is, or the extent to which we are the instru- ments of social purposes and exponents of social views and nothing more. The range of our creative activities is very small. The new contributions we make to our social inheritance are very limited. When the end of life comes, we discover that, after all, we are leaving our world very much where we found it. If we have made a contribution, it is confined to some single aspect : we have discovered a scientific truth, or invented an engine, or introduced some fresh element into the commercial and industrial methods of the day, or possibly given our times reasons for recon- sidering some of their ethical or religious opinions ; and we have done this single service by devoting our lives to it. The vast remainder we found in our world, accepted uncritically, and left unchanged. It is a social possession rather than our own. Mr. Balfour in his Foundations of Belief quite justly accentuates the part played by tradition in securing the unity and the continued existence of society. The less reflective a community is the more conservative and repetitive it is. The higher the level of civiliza- tion, the greater the progress it makes from age to age. There is nothing more static than contented and uncritical ignorance. In this respect our social life is quite safe — such is the extent of our ignorance and our traditional servitude. Besides, even those who do outgrow the traditions and customs of their times do so by the help of their times. They must assimilate its wisdom before they can surpass it. Where Mr. Balfour errs is in representing tradition and reason as essentially in opposition and conflict, whereas their conflict is just an accident of their growth. For MAN'S SOCIAL DEBTS 285 tradition is the product of reason. There never was a tradition which was not at an earlier stage a bold, original idea, whose propounder was, probably enough, persecuted. And the employment of reason upon a tradition generally deepens its meaning and trans- figures rather than supplants it. But one wonders what reason means for Mr. Balfour. He seems to have identified its operations with those which are described in the Formal Logic^ which every teacher • condemns and none discards. All these considerations point in the same direc- tion. They indicate the significance of the common elements to which society owes its unity in the lives of individual men, and illustrate the operation of universal forces in men's theoretical and practical ways. No one can measure the debt of a man to the society into which he is born. The range The ^ , . - , . intensity of of the elements or the common lire, their compre- the unity hensiveness — which is such as to leave out only a ^gj^ minimum of petty personal peculiarities — is hardly together, more arresting than the intensity with which they unite. Rational beings enter into, possess, live in and for and by means of one another, to a degree that is nowhere rivalled. We matter more to one another than outward circumstances, except perhaps when a man is reduced into an animal by the urgency of his physical needs, and can, for instance, think of nothing except of his hunger, or thirst, or physical pain. We share in more things, and these are, as a rule, the most vital. Moreover, we share in spiritual matters without breaking them up or partitioning them. I may own a field similar in size and shape and soil to my neighbour ; but his field is not mine nor is 286 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES mine his. But both of us may acquire knowledge of the same truths, obey the same principles of conduct, entertain the same religious beliefs. Truth always is universal in character, and so indeed is goodness. In physical matters the unity is never quite complete : an element of exclusiveness survives, and though goodwill and generosity may overcome it, they cannot delete it. Property in material things necessarily has this exclusive characteristic. What is mine is not yours, and what is yours is not mine. But in spiritual matters the privacy of ownership goes along with the opposite quality, so that to say " I in you, and ye in me " is not merely the exaggerated utterance of religious emotion, but the daily experience of man- kind. It is a truth illustrated constantly on every happy hearth and in every other harmonious human society. The union But our critic may reply that while the unity and God. mutual interpenetration of men in society is plain and indisputable, man's oneness with his God is another matter. I agree, but it differs through being deeper and more comprehensive. A man's religion is a man's life — the chief, the dominant, and all-pervasive element of it. It is that to which he is unreservedly devoted. In this case his very self is involved — given utterly away to the object of its devotion. Self- But it is recovered at the same instant. In fact, bacri cean ^^^ giving of the Self and the receiving of it back are^^^arts of ^^^^owed with the priceless consciousness of being at the same peace with God, forgiven, united with him in love, constitute one single movement. The self returns to itself as if completing a circle. It is a grave error to break up the act, as if self-sacrifice came first, and the FINDING GOD EVERYWHERE 287 recovery of the self, the reward of the act of devo- tion, lagged behind and followed afterwards. The dedication is not possible without the simultaneous consciousness of a purified, strengthened, " saved " self: nor these without the dedication. To give our- selves to God is to have God with us and in us. Here, then, we have precisely that for which we have been seeking, namely, the coincidence, nay, the inseparableness of the independence and individuality of man and his unity with his God. This truth will To find God be denied by no one who has felt the personal «/)//// him in which comes from adopting some great cause as a life everytnng. object. In fact, man does not gain possession of himself in any complete sense until he gives himself. His infinitude escapes him until he discovers a worthy end of life. And this is as much as to say that he cannot do without a God. Till he finds him, his life is a thing of shreds and patches. Once he does find him, he will find him everywhere. Even an unworthy . God has this omnipresence. The worshipper of Mammon is never really out of the service of his deity. Everything is valued by him from the point of view of material wealth. Consideration of material wealth will direct the course of his life, fill his thoughts, make and rule his home, and thoroughly cramp his soul. But worthier Gods have the same character. They are present and operative throughout every detail of the religious man's life. The good man, in the midst of his deepest sorrows and most painful sufferings — if he does not lose courage and let go his hold — recog- nizes the will of his God, and wills that " His will be done." " If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there ; if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art 288 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES That moral freedom implies an eternal self. Spiritual pluralism. The Eternal Republic. there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea ; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me."^ The categories of exclusion break down utterly. So far from being weakened, the individuality of man is immeasurably strengthened by his consciousness of his oneness with his God. His victory is assured ; for God being with him, the whole scheme of things is with him. Both freedom and the consciousness of freedom grow as the individual comprehends more fully and makes a wiser use of the scheme of things and unites himself with its tendencies. In their anxiety to maintain man's freedom certain philosophers have been led to conclude to a community of finite spirits co-eternal with the infinite. To assign an origin to a self-conscious being in the sense of finding the conditions of his existence in something or somebody anterior to himself is, they maintain, to deprive him of his freedom. He becomes the agent and instrument of these prior conditions ; and his actions are in strictness not his own. In fact, they maintain that he has no self and is not a self. He is just a product and link in the chain of endless natural causation. The individual in order to be free must be new ; and either arise from nothing, or be brought into being by itself. But both of these alternatives are unreasonable. There remains a third, however, namely, that he shall have co-existed eternally with God as a member of a society of spirits which never had a beginning, or of an Eternal Republic of which God is President or, at least, the first among equals. And being spirits, they must express them- 1 Psalm cxxxix. 8, g, lo. AN ETERNAL REPUBLIC 289 selves in objects even as we conceive God to do, and make manifest their presence in the Universe and their operative part in the scheme of things. Such are the conclusions of the Pluralist. He is driven to this conclusion no less by ethical than by theological and philosophical considerations. He cannot entertain the conception of a solitary, monadic God, a God aloof from or without a world, a subject without any object. God expresses and eternally realizes himself in the world process ; that process is his working, the revelation of his nature, his nature being so to work. On the other hand, neither can the Pluralist entertain the idea of selves which are the outcome of previous conditions and nevertheless free. And the conception of an Eternal Republic of spirits seems to meet both requirements. It makes God a member of a com- munity of spirits instead of being solitary, and it secures man's freedom — the condition of a moral life. Now, this view contains truths that it is well to accentuate. I sympathize fully with the refusal of^^J^^Y the Pluralists to compromise man's freedom, or in nature and , . 1 has had his any way to betray the apparent creativeness that antecedents, is involved in moral responsibility. But their refusal is made on grounds which are not tenable. They give a wrong account of those powers of origination which we must attribute to a will which is free. These spring from the nature of mind, not from the absence of antecedent conditions. Mind may be as much a natural product as the acorns of the oak-tree. All the evidence we can get of any individual mind points in that direction. There is no doubt that the child, at his birth, brings with him, as a part of his disposition, all manner of conditions that were anterior to his G.U T 290 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES arrival. He is a mixture even at his birth, and the meeting-place of many forces — not a bare " mind " or self. Selfhood has to be acquired. The evidence already ample to common experience is supported by- modern science, which is every day exposing more fully the continuity of man with his antecedents, and his affinity and ultimate oneness with the world into which he has come. We may still be unable to give a con- vincing account of the nature of the relation between mind and body, or nature and spirit, and may be driven one day towards, and the next away from, Pampsychism ; but the existence of the relation, that is, of some kind of continuity, is not a matter of doubt even to the parallelists, who would fain neither affirm nor deny the unity. In a word, man must be regarded as a natural product. What we have still to do is to determine more clearly the character of a natural world which could have man as its product. Man's freedom cannot be maintained if, in order to be free, he must have no antecedents. He is new only in the same sense as the bud or the flower is new, which is on the tree to-day and was not there yesterday. In that sense the whole scheme of things is new at every succeeding instant. Man's freedom must be accounted for in some other way than that of denying his origin and making him eternal. The true In the first place, I would again urge, what is con- freedom, stantly overlooked, that man is not born free. He is born capable of becoming more and more free by his intercourse with his fellows and his experience of the world. He exhibits this capacity of becoming free when he first gives his own interpretation of a fact, and assigns to it his own value. He is free in the MAN'S RATIONAL RECOIL 291 degree in which he has realized a self that is rational, and in regard to those matters on which his judgments have universal validity and are true to the nature of things. No doubt this world, both within and with- out him, partakes in his acts of judgment, as in all else that he is and does, whether as a physical or as a spiritual being. Apart from his world, as I have frequently urged, he is nothing and can do nothing. We may even say that his world breaks into self- consciousness, and thinks and wills in, and through, him. But that constitutes rather than destrovs the conditions of his freedom. That is to say, he is free by the help of his world, and in virtue of the rational activities which he performs ; even though nature also performs them in and through him. For the world becomes an object of his experience and the content of his self, as he interprets its meaning and determines its value and use. And it is this rational recoil upon the world which makes it his object, and constitutes the individual freedom. What was outer becomes inner. The authority that was alien and external be- comes a personal conviction, and the rule of behaviour is self-imposed. Nor are the rules less original in that they are r^-imposed, or that he makes them out of provided material, by the help of an experience that was uncritical and only half-conscious. They are derived from the objective world, for man must borrow every item of his experience as well as make it ; but he does borrow, and in borrowing he re-constitutes. For the purpose is the individual's, and so also is the estimate of relative values, and therefore the approval or disapproval of actions as right or wrong. The stan- dard of value, the purpose, and therefore the motive are 292 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES introduced by man. They depend upon his inter- pretation of the needs and nature of the self, and of the means of realizing it. And it is the motive, the good which the individual seeks as his end, which ripens unto the act and makes it an expression of spiritual freedom. The Pluralists have missed the meaning of self-consciousness, and they have sought freedom in isolation from circumstances, instead of by the use of them. In the next place, the refusal of the Idealistic Pluralist to isolate God, thereby making the existence of the Universe contingent on a capricious will, is The justified. The Pluralist finds in God's nature his need cosmSr"^ of an object. Nevertheless, it does not follow that ^^^^.- J. we are entitled to conclude to a multiplicity of eternal Pluralist. _ ^ ■' ^ spirits, whether finite or infinite, nor to constitute an Eternal Republic with God as President. Neither ordinary experience nor science supports such a view. For science there is one Universe. It forms a single system in which all things have their place and func- tion ; and it implies one ultimate reality, whose process of self-manifestation the Universe is. Of course the question is altered if there are contingent happenings, or events which have had no antecedents. But, on the other hand, if it be true, as James held at one time, that " the negative, the alogical is never wholly banished," or that there are real indeterminations, real beginnings, real ends, real crises, catastrophes and escapes, then there is an end to al/ reasoning. We cannot say that 2X2 = 4 if, now and then, or in some places, 2 X 10=4. That neither philosophy nor science has traced any absolute unity in the details of events and facts is true : the conception of unity remains a hypo- NO PROOF OF MINOR DEITIES 293 thesis. But it is a hypothesis, without faith in which the attempt to know, which is to discover the relation of facts to facts within a system, would not take place. James's own remedy for the situation is a condem- nation of it. Belief is to be made a matter of " will," a violation of the value of the rational use of evidence which would be admitted in practice by no one. The fact is, however, that with every advance in every form and department of knowledge, and indeed of civilization, the hypothesis of a single power, which expresses itself in the harmonies of a Universe whose marvels ever grow with our insight, is being steadily substantiated as valid. And, on the other hand, the conjecture of a multiplicity of minor deities, or of a finite and limited God who is first amongst other finite spirits, is revealed more and more as the creation of the imagination. There are no premisses — unless we admit a pluralistic, that is, a chaotic universe — -from which any such conclusion can be drawn. All the premisses we can have are derived from our ex- perience of the world as it now is ; and our experience, whether cognitive, or practical and ethical, rests on the assumption of a Universe which is a single rational cosmos. All the probabilities point to a Deity who is immanent and operative, and ever expressing himself in the ever-changing continuity of the world-process. Nor can there be any doubt that the fullest revela- Man the tion of the nature of the Deity is man at his best, the reveStion perfect man. We can conceive nothing higher or °^ ^°^- better than a life devoted to right doing. Nothing except what is morally right finally justifies itself or has absolute worth. Hence, in making God partake in the movement, and in regarding him as the ultimate 294 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES source of the impulse towards the best ; and, on the other hand, in regarding man, at his duty, as re- enacting the will of God and realizing it anew in every good action, we are affirming that unity of the divine and human which at the same time preserves the independence and freedom of finite spirits. The alternative to this view is obviouslv untenable. A God severed from the course of the Universe becomes an empty name, as the history of theology amply proves ; and, on the other hand, it is not possible to account for the Universe except by reference to ante- cedents which are adequate. And no antecedent is adequate except a God who is spirit, and perfect in power and goodness. Again, to sever man from the Universe is to reduce him into helpless nothingness, and at the same time it is to make the moral world a human invention. The sceptic would find a remedy for some of his doubts in the attempt to give his own positive theory of The his world. But now that naturalism and materialism are alternative, silent, no such theory is offered to us, and we are flung back upon our anthropological views as our ultimate theoretical and working conceptions. But if the problem of the relation of God to man is more difficult than that of his relation to the natural world, the discussion of it is also more illuminating. LECTURE XVII CONTINGENCIES The faithful analysis of the nature of self-consciousness The unity overcomes the main difficulty of the relation between indepen- God and man. We saw, in the last lecture, that the ^^^^^ ° unity of men, as rational beings, is deeper and more intimate than any other. They can be moved by the same forces, know the same truths, and pursue the same ends. Things spiritual are by nature common to all. Yet, on the other hand, each man as rational is moved only by inner forces ; the truths are elements in his own knowledge, and his ends are his own and as private as if he alone willed them. The unity and independence of men not only exist together, but grow by means of each other. The more rational liberty men enjoy, the stronger the unity that binds them ; the more they individually acquire universal views and adopt universal ends, the more they live for society and society lives in them, the stronger and the more sig- nificant is their individuality. A great man is the voice of his people and his time. Though the same truths hold of the relation of man The unity , . ^ 1 n . ^ 1 . , 1 1 • -of God and to his God, difficulties emerge when the relation is man, and considered from the point of view of the latter. The pendence^. way from the finite to the infinite has been always 295 296 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES more easy for the feet of the pilgrims than the way from the infinite to the finite. We readily adopt the view that represents the world-process as a manifesta- tion of the nature of the will of the Absolute ; we are slow to identify the Absolute with that process, or to acknowledge that the Absolute partakes in any way in the vagaries of the volitions of mankind. Surely, we are told, the divine being is no shareholder in man's sinfulness ! Two ways are advocated by which the difficulty may be avoided : one is to represent man and all finite existence as, in the last resort, phenomenal and temporary appearance and nothing more ; the other is to refrain from the complete identification of the world's course with the Absolute. The accent Idealists are agreed in regarding man as a *' finite- finitude.^ infinite " being. But they differ as to the signifi- cance in man's case of these two aspects. On one view man's final and distinctive characteristic is his "* finitude. He is a finite being ; but he is troubled with aims that are infinite. He is doomed to a spiritual unrest of which other finite beings, such as the animals, know nothing. He aims at spiritual perfection. To attain it is his only mission ; and he exhibits his true nature, or reveals his true self, only in the pursuit of it. But he never does attain. Not one act of man has yet hit the mark. If he did attain, he would collapse qua individual. He would become one with the Absolute in such a way as to be tran- scended and to disappear. He thus remains an unsolved contradiction, and, as such, bound to pass away. He is only an element in the Absolute, and has only an adjectival existence on this view ; and his THE INFINITUDE OF MAN 297 deeds, right and wrong, have the same dubious reality. He has his own place, but only as part of a passing show. On the other view, and in direct opposition to the The accent ^ '- '- . . on man s former, the last and distinctive feature of man is his infinitude, infinitude. Ideally, there is nothing anywhere which is to him simply an alien or exclusive other. All that is or can be may be his object ; for he is an intel- ligent or rational being, and his counterpart is the Universe as a whole. But, like all other beings who are subject to the law of evolution, man is only the process of becoming that which he verily is. His deepest reality lies in his possibilities. They are possibilities of greater spiritual excellence, and so of fuller justice to the self, and therefore come to him in the form of obligations. He is under an obligation be it noted, not to be, but to become. That is to say, it is the process that is imperative : the movement from less to more. He has to make good his infinite nature ; to become more and more Godlike ; to unify himself with God ; and in these very acts of unification to stand out more and more as an inde- pendent individual. In these lectures the view adopted has been the The identi- • r • 1 /^ J • u fication of second. The union of man with God, or, m other God with words, the immanence of God not only in the natural pj-oc^^! world, as its final truth and reality, but also in man- kind, has been held uncompromisingly. I have repeatedly affirmed that " a thing is what it does " — , quoting Mr. Nettleship's great saying ; and I have rejected the notion that a thing is a being which lurks somewhere in the background behind its deeds, and is therefore unknown and unknowable. Hence it 298 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Can " the whole " be in process ? follows that if we cannot account for the Universe — including man — save by referring it to the sus- tained action of the Absolute and by representing it as the process by which the Absolute reveals itself, no option remains except to identify the Absolute with the world-process. It is in its light that the Universe is comprehensible ; and it is in the light of the Universe that the Absolute is comprehensible. But this is a step which philosophers no less than theologians hesitate to take ; and that for reasons which certainly deserve attention. It is insisted that process within a whole — the process of growth, for instance — is possible when process of the whole would be unthinkable. The part or element of a whole may evidently appropriate its environment and grow by means of it ; but for the whole or Absolute there can be no environment — nothing by reference to which it could change. The difficulty is real, but Process of a it is not insuperable. Self-conscious beings are from within. Capable of changes purely from within. Man, as a spiritual or rational being, has within himself, and apart from all intercourse with his outer world, an experience on which he may reflect and resources on which he may draw. Spiritual experience sometimes discovers its own meaning and enriches it greatly by doing so. There is a transition from an experience that is traditional, imitative, uncritical, partly conscious and partly instinctive into an experience that is re- flective. By this transition experience achieves fuller meaning, but it takes place without reference to any environment. Whether in this matter we can draw any inference regarding an absolute experience, it is difficult to say. In one aspect the transition is THE CHANGING PERSISTS 299 plainly impossible ; for we cannot attribute to an absolute experience the traditional character and that ignorance of itself which are characteristic of the ordinary human consciousness. The Absolute knows the end — were there an end ! — from the beginning ; and fuller knowledge thereof cannot be acquired. Nevertheless, one may ask, what is involved in the transition from the cognitive or intellectual foresight and anticipation of events, on the one side, to the experience of them, on the other, as actually taking place ? The distinction is quite real ; and there may be in the actual participation of the Absolute in finite processes, or of the God of Love in the doings and destiny of his children, more than there can be in the mere foresight of them. That participation cannot lack meaning and value, as we readily see if we con- ceive the opposite, namely, a God who sits aloof from the world-course and looks on. A second difficulty is found in the fact that any process implies temporal succession ; but an Absolute which is subject to temporal conditions, or which changes, is held to be a confused and self-contradictory conception. Such an Absolute would differ to-day from what it was yesterday and from what it will be to-morrow ; and that, we are told, is impossible for the Whole, the perfect. This difficulty, I believe, springs from taking a half truth as the whole truth. For that which changes also persists. Succession implies permanence, and it can take place only in that which has duration. It is a succession of instants or nows which issue from the same permanent reality. Time as mere succession is an aspect of a fact and nothing more, and can exist 300 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Time and Only in relation to its opposite, namely, eternity. But aspects of a eternity, also, as ordinarily understood, is an unreal process. abstraction. For it is taken to be extended and fixed — stretched out endlessly, like space, before and also after the flux of time. But eternity is that which ex- presses itself in an endless succession of instants. It is the possibility of endless nows. And every now for the rational being, at least, carries within it some- thing both of the past and of the future, and there- fore " transcends " time. Eternity is not a spatial expanse, nor when we speak of God as living in eternity, or of our fellow mortals as entering therein, should we think of eternity as a fixed separate region. Eternity does not exist except as breaking out into an endless succession of Nows ; and there is nothing except what is now. What was is not now : nor is what will be. Thus each successive Now is all comprehensive. The meaning and value of the past are gathered into it, and the possibilities of the future exist in it. In a word, the Whole it is big with is in process. Reality reveals itself in a successive series of finite facts. By this I do not mean to imply that the succession constitutes the facts ; or that, in the last resort, things consist of time, so that " time is the essence of the life of a living being and the whole meaning of its Concrete reality." It is one thing to say that everything that not reducible IS movcs or changes, and another that it consists or aUhough"^' motion and change. Motion, change, taken by them- they are selvcs are abstractions. They are not reality, but never at j j ^ rest. ways in which reality exists and behaves. To say, for instance, as modern physics does, that a stone is not a fixed and static thing but a temporary PROCESS IS EVERYWHERE 301 meeting-place of different activities is not to reduce it into a succession of movements of time, although all its activities take place in time. The weight of the stone is its active relation to the earth, an instance of attraction ; its colour means that it reflects some rays and absorbs others ; its hardness or softness indicate the amount of energy with which its particles attract each other. There is activity and therefore change at every turn, and change implies time though it is not itself time. Nothing is reducible into time. Time is itself, as I have insisted, an abstraction. We do not explain things by running them back into single, simple elements ; we drop their qualities. To make time the essence of reality we must drop all qualities. Even change would not survive. Similarly, although process is real, process is not reality any more than a static condition is. But the consistent adoption of the idea of process, instead of the static and spatial conceptions now assumed, is possibly the deepest speculative need of our time. With it should be placed the conviction that explanation is to be found in the most concrete, and not in the most simple and abstract, conceptions. It is the whole that matters for knowledge ; the function which each thing performs within the whole, the character it gains by its relation to it, these constitute its reality. And the whole itself must be regarded as functioning, declaring, and realizing itself in its elements. " To me," says Mr. Bradley, "as to every one else, the world is throughout full of change. Change is no illusion, although apart from that which persists in, through and by the change, it is nothing." Philosophy must, I believe, change its accent. 302 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Explanation in the light of the most concrete, not of what is most simple, that is, of self- conscious- ness. Explanation by the more concrete, not by the more simple — by the idea of spirit and not to that of time. That helplessness which a fixed and static perfection implies, that eternally immobile substance with which theology in the past has identified its perfect God must give way to the most concrete and active Whole which we can conceive. And that Whole is the con- ception of self-conscious individuality — the absolute self-consciousness. It is necessarily all-comprehensive, for it has no complete other ; and it is essentially an outgoing activity. The conception of Absolute spirit or subject, gives to religion a God who is living, and to philosophy an Absolute that sustains the Universe and expresses its perfection in its changes. Spirit implies an objective content ; and Absolute spirit implies the Universe. Hence to explain that Universe we need this most concrete of all our hypo- theses, instead of such abstract notions as those of substance and time. It is by reference to a more and more comprehensive whole that we explain, and there alone should we seek the ultimately real — in a direction directly opposite to that of the Bergsonian philosophers, as I understand them. It follows that the main problem of philosophy and the central concern for theology is the possibility of identifying the world-process as we know it with our conception of the Absolute or of God. And, I have indicated, both theologians and philosophers hesitate to do this, except under qualifying conditions and with reservations. There are, for them, in the world- process facts and events that are outwith the will of the Absolute. God has allowed them to be — possibly because he could not help it, being himself finite ; possibly as the best means of securing the conditions necessary for the moral adventure. A FINITE GOD 303 The view that there are occurrences which God cannot prevent, or which happened without his wilHng them, impHes, of course, that there exists another additional cause and that he is limited. On some theories, not only is his power limited, but his goodness. He is a A finite God. finite being in the same sense as men are finite, though he has much more power than man, and is man's leader in the moral battle as well as his comrade in arms ; and he has to become good. And the issue of that battle, so far from being a foregone conclusion, is quite uncertain. It depends upon our doing our best and playing our part, no less than upon him. And the uncertainty of victory is supposed to be capable of inspiring the fight with an earnestness which otherwise it could not have. Moreover, the view that God shares our infirmities is held to bring him nearer to us than the conception of a God eternally perfect ; and it is maintained that it is impossible to maintain both the perfection of God and his genuine participation in the fate of mankind. I intended to dismiss the view of a limited God as not worthy of serious criticism ; but it may be well to point to one or two reasons for holding that it is unsatisfactory. In the first place, it is not at all certain that the The uncertainty of victory will add earnestness to the moral In^ncertSn strueele, whatever it may do in others. If it does, it victory is o° ' •' ' question- is at the cost of the purity of the moral motive, able. which never does consider or calculate consequences. Duty calls a man to his post, and he comes — without making any prudent calculations of proba- bilities beforehand. The religious man, moreover, has already committed himself to the good causes and 304 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES made himself over to his God, holding nothing back ; and the conception of the perfection of him in whom he has trusted, with the conviction of certain victory, are an inspiration to him. Never has its assurance slackened the zeal of the ethical or religious spirit. In the next place, both religion and philosophy presuppose and demand a finality which is incon- sistent with the limitations of finitude. The con- ception of the Absolute, or the hypothesis of systematic and all-comprehensive unity, or of a single focus in which all things meet, and which is the source from which all the forms of energy flow, is essential to a view which maintains that in the Universe, as we know it and try to know it, it is order and not chaos which All-knowing rules. This is the presupposition on which all science thS^reaUty rests, and, in fact, it stands at the background of all system^and^ attempts at consecutive or sane thought. For why Pluralism should thought be consistent or contradiction be a should not o _ _ pretend to gign of error if facts are not in rational connexion ? conclusions. Pluralism, admitting " real indeterminations, real crises, catastrophes and escapes," might conclude to a finite deity, or a collection of such deities, if it could reliably conclude to anything. But that, of course, it cannot do. " Real indeterminations " may intervene at any point. If the Universe is one, the Absolute of philosophy is one, and so is the God of religion : if facts are not rationally related in a single system, reason is helpless. A waste But Other, and possibly better, reasons for hesitating cJntfn-*°'' to identify the world-process with the will of God gencies. j^^^^ j-^ggj^ offered. Contingencies have been admitted to enter here and there into the general scheme, as THE VALUE OF CONTINGENCIES 305 being the best means of securing the conditions necessary for the moral life. God could have pre- vented them, but he has willed, so to speak, to turn his back and let them take place ; he has assigned to contingency, and inconsequences, and irrationalism, and chaos, a domain in which to run amok. He has " let himself go into his opposite," as Hegel once suggested. The realm of accident were thus another proof of his wisdom and goodness and power. But, I may ask, if it is purposed, is it a realm of accident ? In any case these contingencies are confined to the moral region. Natural law permits none in the physical world. Natural laws are all admitted to be universal and absolute. But nature, it is held, brings no reliable support to man's ethical aims. The natural world, with its rewards and penalties, may support morality on the whole ; but it does not do so in detail. Hence the moral life is a hazard, and hardship, and venture all the more real on account of the looseness of the relation between the natural and the spiritual world. Life, it is said, furnishes a better school for virtue, tests man's courage more ruthlessly, gives him a better opportunity for " show- ing what stuff he is made of," because of the con- tingencies which sweep over its surface like sudden storms. By stultifying his foresight, and by its dis- regard for the moral value of a man's deeds, nature teaches him not to trust in, or set high value on, any- thing except interests which are spiritual. The un- certainty and inconsequence, the extremity of the venture, turn in his hands into opportunities. He will cease to calculate consequences, and do what is G.L. U 306 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Collision of natural advantage and moral goodness. The facts are there, but they are not contingent. We should not expect moral causes to bring any results except those that are moral. right for its own sake all the more readily, if con- sequences are mere contingencies. That this apparent looseness of relation between the natural and the ethical spheres exists can hardly be denied. The facts must be acknowledged. While, on the whole, nature upholds purposes that are sane, and the more prosperous people turn out to be on the whole the more virtuous ; while, in other words, to act reasonably is to respect the laws both of nature and of morality, nevertheless there are numberless examples of the direct collision of natural and moral good. By simply keeping silent the speculator might have made his fortune : that good cause has cost him his domestic comfort, his material prosperity, his health, or even his life — such are the things we are often told. And the conclusion drawn is that the natural scheme is non-moral. But to admit the apparent indifference and lack of all connexion is one thing — these are facts ; to call them contingencies is another. The admission of contingencies plays such havoc with philosophic theory and religious faith, and the results of doing so are so stupendous that we are entitled to look round for some other way of accounting for the facts and overcoming the difficulties they raise. In the first place, then, it may be insisted that moral law is not less universal and necessary than natural law. Moral actions, as already suggested, have moral results which follow immediately and with absolute necessity. The dishonourable action makes the man dishonest on the spot. The result can neither be averted nor postponed. But we constantly confuse the issues, and look for natural results to follow in the MORAL CAUSES AND MORAL RESULTS 307 same way, so that a man suffers some natural punish- ment when he does wrong, as promptly as he burns his hand if he puts it in the fire. We would demand that he be made poorer in pocket, or in health, or in general esteem and influence, whereas it is the opposite that often happens. To every tree its own fruit. It is the natural antecedent that will brinof the natural consequent, and it is moral causes that have moral effects — so far as our observation of the indi- vidual life can show. On the larger scale of national and human history, I admit that the dependence of natural events on spiritual antecedents becomes more plain. But we infer, all too hastily, from our observa- tion of the individual life, that natural and moral facts are not connected, and that anything may happen. This border region between the natural and the moral is supposed to be the playground of contin- gencies. No one, not even the Absolute, takes charge of it. But the difficulty may be of our own making. The error of affirming contingency may arise from the expectation of necessary connexion where none is required. We would not call it a contingency that an apple tree does not grow pears, or thistles, or grapes. The moral corruption which inevitably ensues upon moral wrong-doing, and, on the other hand, the inspiration and strength which come from the consciousness of right-doing may be in them- selves adequate consequences. And that such is the case is an assumption on which morality rests, as I have already tried to show. In the next place, I would observe that non-inter- ference is one thing : contingency is another. It is 308 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Non-inter- ference does not neces- sarily involve contingency and the moral venture is man's. Can God be perfect although man errs ? possible to conceive God, or the Absolute, supplying man with the conditions of the good life, and support- ing him, in the sense that he is the inexhaustible reservoir of power to which man can turn when his strength is spent or his courage fails. We can say with certainty that there are three things with which man has not endowed himself: they are gifts, and gifts from a power which itself possessed them. These are (i) the spiritual powers, or the rational faculties, implying freedom amongst other qualities ; (2) an ever-changing natural and social environ- ment, by interaction with which he can realize his powers and learn to do what is right ; (3) a desire for the Best, which corresponds in man to the law of self-preservation in animals, controlling every choice however deeply we blunder as to what is best, or however blind we are to the fact that the best is always ethical or spiritual in character. Except as the source of these gifts, the spring at which man may always slake his thirst, God may be conceived as standing aloof, and even as retaining his perfection when man blunders. On this view, there is a part which God fulfils and a part which man fulfils, even though the spiritual well-being of man is the aim of both, and although the will of man may be one with the will of God, in whose service he finds freedom. The deed, the use of his powers and his opportunities — except that these are given to him — are exclusively the individual's own. Neither God nor his fellow-man can take up his burden or appropriate the value of the opportunity. His will remains free and indepen- dent when it concurs and obeys, no less than when it revolts and disobeys. And if we have regard to this WIDER MORAL OPPORTUNITIES 309 aspect only, we can represent the sphere in which he exercises his will as left to him. This line of argument offers a very alluring way Immortality 3,^ 3.11 out of the difficulty. But it is closed by the con- extension of • 1 . i'i • r .^ 'J ri*' Ti. man's moral siderations which arise from the side or religion, it opportunity, is intolerable to the religious spirit that God should stand aloof unaffected by the events of the moral world, as this view would imply. After all, God's gifts to man were not purposeless. They were the means of his spiritual well-being. And if that well- being is not secured, then in this matter God himself has failed. God's gifts in that case, it might be said, have proved scanty. Another environment, another set of circumstances by reference to which the indi- vidual could react, might have awakened his spiritual interests, and shown that the Best he was always seeking can be nothing but the moral best. He must have more and different opportunities. The demands of another station in another life, and possibly in another world, may be met by him and his soul saved thereby. And such another chance — the chance that immortality brings — will be given by a perfect God whose purposes must not come to naught. At any rate the alternative of the immortality of man's soul seems much more probable than that of the defeat of the purpose of the God of Love. And in any case there are no events in the moral, any more than in the natural, region which we can justly call contingencies, unless we mean by that phrase, to characterize, not the event as itself having no cause or no constant antecedent, but our own ignorance. A man's deeds spring from his char- acter. They are his way of meeting the wants he 310 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES believes he has discovered in himself: the results of his own self-interpretation. They have antecedents in him, and they have consequences upon him ; and although owing to the complexity of human character we cannot foretell a man's volitions, still they depend on what he is and are not contingencies. The rigour and universality of law in matters of spirit are in no sense or degree less than they are in physical matters ; and the admission of sheer accident would have analogous consequences. " If you are willing to be inconsistent," says Mr. Bradley, " you can never be refuted." ^ If by calling an event an accident or contingency, we mean simply that the causes of its occurrence were not anticipated or are not known, then we are dealing with a confession of ignorance which all of us can make every day of our lives. But the doctrine we have referred to implies more. It affirms that events do take place in incalculable ways. Their incalculability is the truth concerning them. We should err if we sought their cause, or assumed that they had any particular antecedent, or were determined by any specific conditions. The former attitude is consistent with the effort to acquire fuller knowledge. The latter stultifies every such effort, arrests and paralyses it at the first outset. For on that view, to know, that is, to discover the relation of a fact to reality as a whole, were to discover an illusion : it is presumed from the beginning that the event or fact is unrelated. That reality constitutes one system, that the system is all-inclusive, that within it all its parts have free play and full function, and that these parts or elements so agree as to be ration- 1 Truth and Reality, p. 235. PLURALISM 311 ally coherent — this I have taken for granted all along. I have not discussed the view that realia are par- The , , , . . , 1 , . r A assumption ticulars, that we begin with the many and must nnd of a the one, that the relation between the particulars, umv^eTse^and the unities, are really mental fabrications, that objects of aulormT are independent, owing nothing to each other, of Pluralism. All the forms of Pluralism I have set aside. The whole process of thinking, as illustrated most clearly, perhaps, in the natural sciences, begins and ends with the conception of unity in differences, that is, of system. There is no science, nor the promise of it, until there is a colligating hypothesis — as I have tried to show. Prior to that we have nothing but a collection of facts, which are more or less similar to one another. Sameness, on this view, is the only kind of universal that is conceived : and the idea of a principle which is active, breaks out into differences, gives to the elements within the whole their character and their function, is in truth not considered. For Idealism, on the other hand, this is the only type of principle which counts : and the same is true of the special sciences. They are founded upon hypotheses ; they start from the assumption of a concrete system : their whole task is to apply that hypothesis, testing it by reference to particular facts, and seeking in it, at the same time, the real meaning of these facts. It is evident that to one who occupies this point of ^onse- ^ , . ^ quences of view, whether as a philosopher or as a scientific man, the , 1 • . r • • c 1 assumption. the admission or contingencies, or even one sneer contingency, is disastrous. To do so is like breaking the string on which pearls are hung. It does not 312 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES matter at what point or how many times the string is cut, there results the same chaos. We cannot admit contingencies and retain the uses of reason. Philosophy and science become im- possible, for at any point there may be an intrusion of that which negates their use. And it is question- able if religion will then survive at a less cost than that of admitting the finitude of God, and attributing to at least a portion of the world-process an irrational spontaneity. Events that are not cannot create them- selves ; nor can they come from nothing, having no antecedent. Is it not likely, seeing that no one ever discovered such events, and there is no science, philosophy, or religion which can consistently search for them, that we have no evidence that they exist ? The refuge in the idea of occurrences outwith the principle that manifests itself in the world-process cannot be justified by any ethical considerations. It is to seek shelter under the wings of what is irrational. Rather than seek such a way of escape, it were better to admit one's failure. Only, that course requires courage ! There can be no doubt of the demands of reason or of philosophy. The Absolute leaves no room for its absolute " other," which a contingency would be. The Absolute is not at all, if it be not all-comprehensive : there is then no Universe, or the Universe is not a " single system," and philosophy and the sciences are out on an impossible mission. But are we justified in the course which we have followed throughout these lectures ? Have we a right thus to identify the Absolute of philosophy with the God of religion ? I must try to answer this question in the next lecture. LECTURE XVIII GOD AND THE ABSOLUTE I ENDED the last lecture with a question. I asked if God and . . the we were justified in identifying the God of religion Absolute, with the Absolute of philosophy, as has been done throughout our whole course. Is it true that our intellectual and our religious needs find satisfaction at the same ultimate source ? Will the yearnings of " the heart " be stilled by the same conception of reality as that to which the frank and rigorous use of the methods of reason points ? Or must we distinguish between God and the Absolute ? The same problem meets us in another form. Love and What is the relation of Love and Reason, and what are their respective functions ? It is generally assumed that religion is not less obviously an affair of the emotions than philosophy is of the intellect. A religion that leaves the worshipper cold and indifferent and self-centred fails just as hopelessly as the philo- sophy which does not satisfy the demands of reason. Emotion appears thus to have a place and function in religion which it does not claim, and which would not be readily conceded to it in a philosophical theory. This fact is usually overlooked by philo- sophers, and to do so is an error ; for, although 313 314 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES in the last resort the whole man is involved in all his moods and activities, the differences between these still remain. There are many different ways in which the spirit of man expresses itself, just as there are many different kinds of reality to which it is called to respond. As to the relation of God and the Absolute, Mr. Bradley says quite roundly (as is his admirable way), " For me the Absolute is not God. God for me has no meaning outside of the religious consciousness, and that essentially is practical. The Absolute for me cannot be God, because in the end the Absolute is related to nothing, and there cannot be a practical relation between it and the finite will. When you begin to worship the Absolute or the Universe, and make it the object of religion, you in that moment have transformed it. It has become something forthwith which is less than the Universe." ^ There are thus two supreme beings — the Absolute which Mr. Bradley identifies with the Universe and with the reality to which speculative research leads ; and God, who is something less than the Universe and everything to religion. The Absolute is related to nothing, and there cannot be a practical relation between it and the finite will. Nothing stands over against the Absolute. All that exists is part of its content. God, on the other hand, must stand in relation to my will. Religion is practical. There is a perfect will, and there is my will ; and the practical relation of these wills is what we mean by religion. And yet, if perfection is realized, what becomes of my will, which is over against the complete Good Will ? * Truth and Reality, p. 428. MR. BRADLEY ON PERSONALITY 315 While, on the other hand, if there is no such Will, what becomes of God ? Mr. Bradley refuses the escape offered by the idea of rejecting the Perfection of God, and, instead, accepts as final a fundamental contradiction in religion. Religion demands and at the same time rejects a perfect God. God's will expresses itself in the activity of man, and yet it must stand over against the will of finite beings. Mr. Bradley emphatically insists that the real presence of God's will in mine, our actual and literal satisfaction in common, must not in any case be denied or impaired. This is a religious truth, he adds, " far more essential than God's personality." But is it compatible with his personality ? Mr. Bradley's affirmation of the personality, whether of God or man, is almost always hesitating and qualified ; and he denies altogether the per- sonality of the Absolute. He also speaks of the super-personal, a word to which I can attach no definite meaning at all. " A God that can say to himself * I ' as against you and me, is not in my judgment defensible as the last and complete truth for Metaphysics." ^ " The highest Reality, so far as I see, must be super-personal." ^ It is on this matter of the significance of personality that I differ most deeply from Mr. Bradley — if I understand him correctly. But I must first refer to another matter. Mr. Bradley denies that " Religion has to be consis- tent theoretically." If we seek consistency, we will be " driven to a limited God." But apparently we ^ Ibid. p. 432. * Ibid. p. 436. 316 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES We must rest in contra- dictions as ultimate. ought not to seek it. We should be content, so far as religion is concerned, with contradiction. He is convinced that there are " no absolute truths," and that " on the other side there are no mere errors. Subject to a further explanation, all truth and all error on my view may be called relative, and the difference between them in the end is one of degree." ^ The defect of what we call truth arises from its incompleteness. Something is always left out by us. It is abstract ; above all it omits its own opposite ; and " with every truth there still remains some truth, however little, in its opposite." 2 " The idea that in the special sciences, and again in practical life, we have absolute truths, must be rejected as illusory. We are everywhere dependent on what may be called useful mythology, and nothing other than these incon- sistent ideas could serve our various purposes. These ideas are false in the sense that they are not ultimately true. But they are true in the sense that all that is lacking to them is a greater or less extent of com- pletion, which, the more true they are, would the less transform their present character. And, in proportion as the need to which they answer is wider and deeper, these ideas already have attained actual truth." 3 It is not possible to deny that all our knowledge is incomplete. It is also, in the last resort, hypothetical. But it is another thing to admit that there is no differ- ence between truth and error except a difference of " degree." True ideas, as Mr. Bradley admits in the last sentence I quote from him, answer to needs. That is to say, they fit into, are consistent with, find a place 1 Truth and Reality, p. 252. ^ Ibid. p. 253. ^ Ibid. pp. 430-1. OPPOSITION NOT CONTRADICTION 317 within our conception of reality as a systematic whole. What we take for error refuses to do so. I admit Incomplete- , . - , 1 r 1 ''i^ss is not that our conception or the system may be raise, error, but I also affirm that although incomplete it may nevertheless be true. By incompleteness we mean simply that the elements which are its content are not fully known. In a word, the conception formed of the whole would be " general " and in that sense abstract. Our knowledge, as I have shown, rests on a hypothesis, and the hypothesis is always on its trial. Its incompleteness is incompleteness, and not error. Our knowledge does not misrepresent, although it omits. Understood in this way, the quest for consistency opposition in our thought of religion, as in all our thinking, is necessarily not a matter of choice. We are always seeking con- ^i^^^^Q^" sistency. We cannot rest in contradictions. But we can be content with opposites. We may hold that two truths may differ, and on that very account supplement and complete each other. Indeed, I am not con- vinced that we ever do reach the truth before we can state '* both sides," and find that each of the opposites demands and exists in virtue of the other. Religion amply illustrates this fact. Affirm nothing but the unity of the divine and human will, or, on the other hand, affirm nothing but their independence of each other, and religion becomes impossible. The Double truth is that the union of wills can take place only if reality they are independent. It is their concurrence that inreiigio^n. makes them one, and they cannot concur if either of them is not free. There are many ways of uniting and disuniting chemical elements ; but nothing can unite wills except the adoption of the same purpose 818 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES by free agents. And the adoption of a purpose is an affair of the individual as a separate being. Only- wills that are free can truly unite. A society of slaves has very little coherence, and has at no period of the world's history been powerful for either good or evil. Unity and But the mutual inclusion of persons, that is, of individuality -.r • .,...,, , , said to be selt-conscious individuals, is, unless 1 err, possible diciS^ to ^" t^^ opinion of Mr. Bradley only at the expense of each other, their independence and individuality. In my opinion, on the other hand, their common life deepens their individuality, and strengthens them as independent persons. And here lies the central issue. The more a man is the voice of his times and people, and of what, at their best, they are striving to be, the greater he is as an individual. He is a more significant unit, because of the extent of the common elements. Mr. Bradley argues, quite correctly so far as I can see, that if we assume that " individual men, yourself and myself, are real each in his own right, to speak of God as having reality in the religious consciousness is nonsense." ^ That is to say, if men are separate individuals, then God must be still another separate individual, and the ** indwelling " or *' immanence " of God, which is essential to religion, cannot be. But Mr. Bradley goes on to prove that men are nos inde- pendent individuals or separate beings. " The inde- pendent reality of the individual ... is in truth mere illusion. Apart from the community, what are separate men ? It is the common mind within him which gives reality to the human being : and taken by himself, whatever else he is, he is not human." ^ ^ Truth and Reality, pp. 434-5. * Ibid. ONE SPIRITUAL WHOLE 319 Then he proceeds further to enforce the truth which Mr. Bradley many years ago he stated in his Ethical Studies in a unity of manner calculated to lift it beyond the reach of con- P®"°^^- troversy. Even when an individual sets himself against society, it is on the resources of his society that he draws : he has not a shred that is exclusively his own. *' When he opposes himself to the com- munity it is still the whole which lives and moves in discord within him, for by himself he is an abstraction without life or force. ^ If this be true of the social consciousness in its various forms, it is true certainly no less of that common mind which is more than social. In art, in science and in religion, the indi- vidual by himself still remains an abstraction. The finite minds that in and for religion form one spiritual whole have indeed in the end no visible embodiment, and yet, except as members in an invisible community, they are nothing real. For religion, in short, if the one indwelling spirit is removed, there are no spirits left. " The Supreme Will for good which is ex- perienced within finite minds is an obvious fact, and it is the doubt as to anything in the whole world being more actual than this, which seems most to call for enquiry." ^ I admit all this readily, and gratefully : I first But that learnt it from Mr. Bradley many years ago. But hnpossLie I cannot admit that the participation of individuals in theexerclse common elements lessens either their independence or of indi- . . vidua! their individuality. Least of all when, as is evident, functions, that participation is not possible except by the rational adoption of these common elements, that is to say, except by the exercise of powers which are intensely 1 lUd. p. 435. 320 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Mr. Bradley's neglect of this truth and emphasis on the pan- theistic aspect. individual. If my community is to live in me, / must interpret its meaning, / must adopt its traditions and creeds, / must make its ends my personal purposes. And every one of these activities is personal and, in a sense, private and exclusive. In this reaction the material offered by the community is recreated by me ; and the reaction at once enriches the communal store, and exercises and develops my individual powers. But this aspect of the truth is not recognized by Mr. Bradley, though, at times, he seems to accept both sides. " I cannot, for one thing," he says, " deny the relation in religion between God and finite minds, and how to make this relation external, or again to include it in God's personality, I do not know. The highest Reality, so far as I see, must be super- personal. At the same time, to many minds prac- tical religion seems to call for the belief in God as a separate individual." ^ Mr. Bradley himself can accept this belief only if, in the first place, its practical value is clear, and, in the second place, if it is supplemented by other beliefs which really contradict it. And these beliefs, I must add, are most vital to religion. He then proceeds to indi- cate some of these beliefs. He shows how much the Universe would be impoverished if the Maker and Sustainer were not also the indwelling Life and Mind of the inspiring Love. But he cannot reconcile this " pantheism," as he calls it (which to me also is priceless), with a God who is personal and individual. " The so-called ' pantheism ' which breathes through much of our poetry and art is no 1 Truth and Reality, p. 436. THE SELF AND ITS OBJECT 321 less vitally implied in religious practice. Banish all that is meant by the indwelling Spirit of God in its harmony and discord with the finite soul, and what death and desolation has taken the place of living religion ! But how this Spirit can be held con- sistently with an external individuality, is a problem which has defied solution." ^ But, I would ask, is personality ever " external " ; or is such a personality an unreal creation of our own, fashioned by taking account of only one aspect of a person, namely, the subjective ? If personality means, as I take it, a rational subject conscious of itself and of its world as an object, then it does not stand in an external relation to anything whatsoever. Self-consciousness is essentially that which overpowers external relations. Man as a rational being goes out Only in J , . self-con- of himself, so to speak, so as to know and use objects sdousness (and there can exist nothing which is not potentially achieved his object), but he always returns to himself enriched, ^^;j°^'lnce. for he brings back as a part of his own experience something of the meaning and use of the facts he has been dealing with. Not only so : there is nothing save self-consciousness which does overcome external relations. It alone achieves unity in difference. Self- consciousness is one with itself only through its relation to objects ; for a subject that has no object, that does not say " I " as over against something else, is not possible. In denying personality, or self-con- sciousness to the Absolute, Mr. Bradley is thus per- mitting external relations to be final ; and his Universe is in no sense a unity. Its differences cannot be made to come together. Everything within it holds every- 1 Ibid. p. 437. G.L. X 322 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Hence the Absolute must be a 'person. Opposites may be comple- mentary to each other. thing else at arm's length. The ultimate relation between its elements is negative ; and the Universe is, at best, a mere collection of particulars. To arrive at the truth of this matter we must restore to self-consciousness all its functions. In order to do so it is not necessary to reduce the debt of the individual man to his community, or his de- pendence upon it for the living experience which enters into his powers ; nor is it necessary to im- poverish the Universe by denying the pantheistic conceptions which are implied in the " indwelling spirit of God." Every word said by Mr. Bradley on this aspect of the ultimate reality seems to me to be true ; but not less true is that activity of the self-conscious being by which alone he converts his world into his own experience and establishes his *' separate " individuality. It seems to me obvious that an Absolute which was not a person, that is, not a self-conscious individual, could not be immanent in a world of objects, or reveal itself in its processes. Now, these two aspects seemed to Mr. Bradley to be not only opposites but contradictory, and therefore could not be reconciled or even held simultaneously. Their co-existence, as a matter of fact, was a matter of which the intelligence could make nothing. " The immanence of the Absolute in finite centres and of finite centres in the Absolute, I have always set down," he says, " as inexplicable." He cannot maintain the personality both of the Absolute and of man, or recognize them as complementary ; so he denies both alike. Now, what I would wish to make clear is that this mutual indwelling, or possession, is the condition of EITHER-OR IMPLIES SYSTEM 323 spiritual existence, and of rational personality. It is illustrated, and practically explained, by the many ways in which the mutual participation takes place. The more a man enters the life of others, the richer , his own life. His uniqueness or difference from others is the greater, the more he adopts and enlarges and carries out the ends of their common giver. Every deepening of unity in difference exemplifies the process. Science is quite familiar with the fact that " integration and differentiation " go together, and are double aspects of one and the same process. The growth of learning, or of spiritual power of any other kind, shows the operation of the same ten- dency. As a man grows in wisdom, experience becomes at once more consistent and more wide of range. Of course the fact is unintelligible if the " either-or " " Either-or " attitude of thought is final. But it is not. " Either- s^Sem. or " plainly implies " system." That each points beyond itself is proved by the fact that each needs its opposite and exists only in virtue of it. Were it not for its relation to man, the Absolute were not Absolute, and vice versa. The Absolute realizes itself in finite centres ; and more fully in that finite centres are spiritual, and that man is man only in virtue of the indwelling of his God. The religious spirit is awakened whenever it apprehends this truth. It then seeks its own realization through obedience to God's will. Whenever we have such mutual implication on the part of opposites, we are, in truth, dealing with system, i.e. with a unity that has neither reality nor meaning except in the different elements, and 324 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES with differences that are intelHgible only when con- sidered in their place in the system. And if we only follow our thoughts out, we shall find that in the end everyone of our ideas is a system. Every sentence is a system, every proof, every theory, every rational state- ment ; and so is every fact. Rational experience on the one side, and the Universe on the other, is a system of systems. The relation of finite centres to the Absolute is but the supreme example of a fact which is universal. Significant The importance of this result is great. It means consequences , .., , . j^... . t- ^r of this view, that philosophy, mstead or rinamg in religion a selr- contradictory and unintelligible fact, discovers that religion attains, as at a leap, the results which it itself seeks by toilsome methods. The intelligence is always, if its work is prospering, finding some deeper unity amongst wider elements, or new qualities and features in the unity. Here in the object of religion the unity is .^//-comprehensive, and within it a/l differences are, in the last resort, harmonized. Religion teaches the apparently im- possible maxim — " If you would save your life, lose it." " Give yourself if you desire to find yourself." " Live 1 live the full and the best life. Attain an altitude where it is not you that lives but God lives and works in you." But philosophy by means of its conception of an ever self-differentiating Absolute sustains the religious consciousness. It shows that religion so far from differing from, or contradicting, ordinary rational experience is continuous with that experience, and differs from it only in that it is more complete and perfect. It is a very great matter for religion thus to gain the support of the enquiring RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 325 intellect, and it is a great matter for philosophy that its enquiries, in the degree in which they are sincere and thorough, support the religious view. The theoretical attitude then supports the practical attitude of man towards the Universe, and he thereby attains the deepest peace and the greatest spiritual good. " God," says Mr. Bradley, " for me has no meaning outside of the religious consciousness, and that essen- tially is practical."! And, apparently, theoretical inconsistency is of comparatively small consequence in religion. All that matters is that its tenets should prove practical. " To insist on ultimate theoretical consistency . . . becomes once for all ridiculous. "^ I admit the difference of the theoretical and prac- Practical tical, though as a matter of fact they are both practical rSicai^^" or purposive, as I have already shown. But I cannot admit that what is theoretically unsatisfactory can be practically effective. We cannot act on ideas which we have detected to be mutually destructive. And if the last word which theory or philosophy can say of religion is that it is inconsistent, then religion is left impotent for all practical good. No doubt the distinction between the religious The attitude and the philosophic is real. Religion like the religious other practical interests (of which it is supreme) is p^h^sopliic confronted with its fundamental presuppositions only attitude, occasionally ; while the philosopher, so to speak, is always fighting with his back to the wall and dealing with ultimate issues. In this sense a man's God is rarely absolute or all-comprehensive, one with the nature of things, or the ultimate living reality which expresses itself in the ever-changing universe. God is 1 Truth and Reality, p. 428. - Ihid. p. 431. 326 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES man's immediate help : in him is satisfied the need which happens to be urgent and imperative. He is man's leader in battle ; or the judge between him and his enemies, or his instrument of revenge. Is the punishment of the powerful enemy the primary need ? Then he calls his God forward. " Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into hell. . . . As for me, I will call upon God; and the Lord shall save me."i God is at first the creation of the present passion — as we have seen ; and it is only little by little, in the course of centuries, that he comes to represent the interests that are universal, and to comprise within himself a// the conditions of well-being. Incon- sistency in rudimentary religion is thus, in truth, of little moment ; but as the religious consciousness develops, the demand that its God shall be perfect in every way, infinite both in power and in goodness, becomes more and more imperious. The religion of the future cannot afford to be inconsistent. It must justify itself at the bar of reason, and prove that it has its place within " the universal system," and a function of its own, if it is to maintain its hold of the practical life of mankind. This demand for absolute perfection which an enlightened religion makes is met in Christianity by the conception of a God of Love who is also omni- potent. In him all spiritual and natural perfections meet. He is, in fact, the same being as the " Abso- lute " of the philosopher. And both philosophy and religion would gain by recognizing this fact. But the Perfect Being whose attributes satisfy the intelligence has had comparatively little place in our religious 1 Psalm Iv. 15, 16. THE FUNCTION OF LOVE 327 creeds ; and the philosopher on his part, in contem- plating religion, has made little count of love, or of any other sentiment or emotion. One reason for this fact is the misuse made of love by religious apologists. They have made feeling bear testimony to the truth of their religious beliefs. But to act as a witness is not the function of feeling. No judge, if he can help it, will give it a place either in the witness box or on the bench. He will not acquit or condemn a man because a witness feels that he has, or has not, stolen the article. And feeling, whether it be love or hate, can no more testify to the truth in religious matters than in secular. On the contrary, it distorts, blinds, renders even the truthful man untrustworthy. Love can find every perfection where sober sight sees little but defects. It can arise from or attach itself to the most undeserving object. And the history of religion gives ample evidence that mankind has reverenced, worshipped, adored and loved all kinds of unworthy gods. Nevertheless love has its own place and part to fill, and a most significant function in religion ; and I am inclined to think that philosophers have over- looked this fact. Neither the intelligence nor aught else can discharge that function. We would recog- nize at once the cold, forbidding character of a domestic hearth where everyone completely understood everyone else, but had neither love nor liking for him. It were the same in religion. Even had man that complete comprehension of his God, or of the Absolute which philosophy seeks, and the full splendour of the divine nature could break upon him, unless there were love, the attitude of man towards his God would not 328 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES be religious. Men may know their God and fear him ; instead of seeking him, they may wish to flee and hide from him. But they cannot worship a " loveless God." They recognize that " a loving worm within its clod " were diviner than such a deity. For love is one of those facts which has ultimate and absolute and un- borrowed value. Man may obey the divine commands from a sense of duty, as demands made by an auto- cratic will ; and God might care for the creatures he has called into being, from a sense of justice. But religion does not come in till love enters and rules. Now I am disposed to think that it is only on one condition that philosophy can conclude that God is love. It has to find operation of love amongst its data. And it must look to religion ; for this datum is supplied most unambiguously by the religious consciousness. There love is simply all in all. Let me illustrate. So long as natural science in its theological enterprises omitted to take any account of man it could not hope to find a God who was spiritual. Inert or dead matter, the crudest form which reality could take, was made the ultimate cause and origin of all objects. But when nature was found to imply a human or spiritual result as its own ultimate achieve- ment, then it had to be newly construed, and a better idea of God, or of the first cause, than dead matter had to be found. Speculation started from fresh data. Amongst the premisses from which religious con- clusions were drawn, henceforth, were the spiritual capacities and experience of mankind. To-day, both religion and experience enrich still further the data of the philosopher. By observation BROWNING ON LOVE 329 of that experience he discovers for the first time the function of love in uniting God and man. Only where love rules does the unity of persons attain fulness, and the difference of " you and me " dis- appear, so that the humblest devout man can say " I and the Father are one." But, on this matter of the power and place of love in man's religious and secular life, I am tempted to turn to the poets, and above all to Browning, who, as a poet of love in all its sublimer forms, stands alone. In endeavouring to estimate the value of his teach- Browning as ing, I have asked "What, then, is the principle of sophicai and unity between the divine and the human ? How can Jeafher^ we interpret the life of man as God's life in man, so that man, in attaining the moral ideal proper to his own nature, is at the same time fulfilling ends which may justly be called divine ? " The poet, in early life and in late life alike, has one answer to this question — an answer given with the confidence of complete conviction. The meeting- point of God and man is love. Love, in other words, is, for the poet, the supreme principle both of morality and religion. Love, once for all, solves that contra- diction between them which, both in theory and in practice, has embarrassed the world for so many ages. Love is the sublimest conception attainable by man ; a life inspired by it is the most perfect form of good- ness he can conceive ; therefore, love is, at the same moment, man's moral ideal and the very essence of Godhood. A life actuated by love is divine, whatever other limitations it may have. Such is the perfection and glory of this emotion, when it has been translated into a conscious motive and become the energy of an 330 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES intelligent will, that it lifts him who owns it to the sublimest height of being. " For the loving worm within its clod, Were diviner than a loveless god Amid his worlds, I will dare to say." ^ So excellent is this emotion that, if man, who has this power to love, did not find the same power in God, then man would excel him, and the creature and Creator change parts. " Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift, That I doubt his own love can compete with it ? Here, the parts shift ? Here, the creature surpass the Creator, — the end what Began P"^ Not so, says David, and with him no doubt the poet himself. God is himself the source and fulness of love. " 'Tis thou, God, that givest, 'tis I who receive : In the first is the last, in thy will is my power to believe. All's one gift. • ••••••• •" Would I suffer for him that I love ? So wouldst thou, — so wilt thou ! So shall crown thee, the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown — And thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down One spot for the creature to stand in ! " " And this same love not only constitutes the nature of God and the moral ideal of man, but it is also the pur- pose and essence of all created being, both animate and inanimate. " This world's no blot for us, Nor blank ; it means intensely, and means good." ^ 1 " Christmas Eve." ^ « Saul." 3 Ibid. * " Fra Lippo Lippi." LOVE BRINGS NEW LIGHT 331 ' world, as God has made it ! All is beauty : And knowing this, is love, and love is duty. What further may be sought for or declared ? " ^ In this world then "all's love, yet all's law." God permits nothing to break through its universal sway, even the very wickedness and misery of life are brought into the scheme of good, and, when rightly understood, reveal themselves as its means. " I can believe this dread machinery Of sin and sorrow, would confound me else, Devised, — all pain, at most expenditure Of pain by Who devised pain, — to evolve. By new machinery in counterpart, The moral qualities of man — how else ? — To make him love in turn and be beloved, Creative and self-sacrificing too, And thus eventually Godlike." ^ The poet thus brings the natural world, the history of man, and the nature of God within the limits of the same conception. The idea of love solves for Brown- ing all the enigmas of human life and thought. " The thing that seems Mere misery, under human schemes, Becomes, regarded by the light Of love, as very near, or quite As good a gift as joy before." ^ Love thus played in Browning's philosophy of life the part that Reason filled in Hegel's or the blind-will in Schopenhauer's. He reduces everything into ways in which this principle acts. And it widens the out- look of the poet beyond the things of space and time 1 " The Guardian Angel." 2 " The Ring and the Book— The Pope." 1375-1383. 3 " Easter Day." 332 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES and this life. Love not only gave him firm footing amidst the waste and welter of the present world where " time spins fast, life fleets, and all is change " ; but it made him look forward with joy to the immortal course. The facts of eternity, no less than those of time, are love-woven. So far as I can see, the demand of philosophy, placed at its highest, is thus met by a religion whose God is a God of Love. LECTURE XIX THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL We assume that reason is the most fundamental principle in our theoretical life. If there is not rational connexion between facts and if the relations between them are not discoverable by the methods of reason, then the whole region of the real would be for us chaotic. We could draw no conclusion ; no practical maxim would be reliable. Man would be helpless in a tumble-down universe. Can it be that Love on the practical side of life fulfils a similar function ? Neglecting for a moment the fact that spiritual forces imply each other in such a way that any one of them may be conceived as containing the rest, would a loveless world be more possible or desirable than an irrational one ? Assuming, as is often done, that " reason is cold " The spiritual — either passionless as Hume thought, or the antagonist Love. of all passion and desire as Kant thought, could men live together in such a loveless relation ? That is to say, would social life and all it brings be possible ? And again, would religion be possible ? Would the dedication of the self to the best, and the worship and service of it take place, where no love crowned the object with worth ? 333 334 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES The com- bination of Love and Reason. Both answers must be negative. Love is no less a condition of right or rational practice than Reason is ; and when Hegel passed from the former to the latter there was no fundamental change of outlook. And, of course, reason includes love and love at its best includes reason. To act in the most rational way towards our neighbour is certainly to behave in the spirit of love. Every service if it proceeds from Love gains thoroughness, and value, and beauty. There are few if any circumstances in which the loving attitude is not the most reasonable and practically effective. But accentuate their affinity as we may, the specu- lative attitude and the religious remain different. They are rarely both occupied at the same time. The temper of mind which doubts and tests and reasons for and against a doctrine differs fundamentally from that which trusts, adores, loves and worships. When doubt comes, as it does upon all reflective minds, there follows, or ought to follow, an appeal to reason. And if the frank use of the methods of reason support the faith then there is great peace. There are few attitudes of the spirit more worth striving for than that which is inspired and guided by a religious faith, that is itself, in turn, supported and ratified by our interpretation of the ultimate meaning of the finite facts of the world in which we live. How far have we achieved this purpose .'' What are the results of our enquiry ? At first sight these results appear to be pitifully meagre, even if our conclusions follow by a sound process from sound premisses. HYPOTHETICAL RESULTS 335 In the first place, all o\xv conclusions are hypothetical^ and, as we have seen, to treat a religious faith as if it were a hypothesis repels many good people, philo- sophers among them. But when the function of hypotheses in our practical and cognitive life is more closely considered there is less dissatisfaction. For all our knowledge is found to be hypothetical, being incomplete ; and we cannot reject all knowledge. That were a self-stultifying attitude, as absolute scepticism always is. In the next place, let me remind you, our hypotheses are, in every department, our ultimate explanatory conceptions. Only in their light are facts intelligible. Knowledge does not arrive at completeness either of content or certainty. " We are made to grow." It satisfies, however, if we have succeeded in establishing some universal hypothesis, and tracing its presence in every detailed fact that comes under it. And if it be true that the sanest explanation hitherto our results offered of the facts and events of our finite life is that theticai!° but which refers them ultimately to the operation of the nevertheless J i _ ^ convincing. Absolute of Philosophy or the God of Religion, then religious faith is so far ratified. No stronger kind of proof than this can be offered in any science. If, again, the practice of religion, the religious life, brings new reasons for the faith ; if spiritual facts, in other words, prove more and more that they are their own sufficient justification, then the sense of the truth of religion grows, and has a right to grow. Practice brings new tests, and nothing explains the nature of a thing or its value so fully as its activities. Pragmatism is quite right in accentuating test and trial ; its error is to leave out the intelligence which draws the con- 336 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES elusions : and religion indubitably sustains the prag- matic tests. Except in If I could Say that our enquiry had resulted in e ma ei. pj^^^^jj^g i-eligious faith on this basis, i.e. on the same basis as the colligating conceptions which the scientific man calls his hypotheses, I should be more than satisfied. But I must be frank and confess that I have achieved nothing so convincing. You may remember the emphasis that was thrown upon the difference between not-proven and dis- proved ; and the sharp distinction we drew between the instances in which a law of nature or a hypothesis had not as yet been traced, and the instances in which it had been proved to fail, being directly contradicted by a relevant fact } In the latter case the scientific man at once gives up his hypothesis, and fumbles about for some other : for until he finds one he is helpless amidst a chaotic collection of enigmata. Our Now, it seems to me that the central hypothesis of apparently "^ philosophy of religion, the vital article in an en- fanccTiivcs'^^ ^'§^^^"^^ religious creed, is thus challenged by facts which we have all observed and which are not reconcil- able with it — except on one condition. The central article to which I refer is the faith in the omnipotence and limitless love of God — the spiritual perfection of the Absolute. The fact which contradicts this faith — a fact which an honest and fearless intelligence will not try to deny — is the ultimate failure of some human lives, and, therefore, in these instances, of God's goodness or power. We follow certain lives to the end of their career, and at the side of the grave we turn away our thoughts from OUR INCOMPLETE PREMISSES 337 the contemplation of them, knowing they were a blunder and tragedy. The ethical enterprise which human life is supposed to be had come to what is worse than nothing. All would be well if, like some writers, we could be satisfied with a God who, while not caring for the individual, cared for the species ; or with a general triumph of the good. The conception of a God whose goodness or power, or both, is limited might also satisfy. But we have rejected these facile solutions of the difficulties. No scientific spirit could be satisfied with them. On the contrary, the scientific man would affirm that one genuine failure of the good, in any one single life, deprives us of the right to be convinced of the divine perfection which we deem to be essential to religion. The sceptical inference is undoubtedly sound. That is to say, the premisses can yield no other conclusion to honest thought. But, on the other hand, the premisses from which the inference proceeds may be insecure, unreliable, incomplete, or even false. Let us examine them. In the first place, our knowledge of any particular But our in- object is confessedly incomplete ; and this is especially incomplete/^ true of the exceedingly complex object we call man. The life we have condemned as a failure may not have been a failure. Our view of the individual may have been wrong. In the next place, the life-process we have witnessed and from which we drew our con- clusion may have been incomplete. It may have been stopped in mid-course. We have no more right to assume that death ends matters than to assert the opposite. U^e do not know what takes place at death. We cannot tell whether or not death is more than a temporary sleep ; and we can draw no conclusion, G.L. Y 338 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES either sceptical or otherwise, in such circumstances. Death is manifestly a part of, and has a place in, the scheme of things. As such it is capable of a rational explanation, but that explanation has not been found as yet. There is nothing more obscure within the whole psychological region than the relation of the soul and body, and the dissolution of that relation. There are many theories, and every one of them is more or less probable. For instance, it would appear that when a physical organism achieves a certain complexity of structure it performs the activities usually attributed to spirit or soul. On the other hand, the exact opposite may seem to be true, namely, that only in spirit or soul does the body acquire any meaning, and only in virtue of that ' end ' does it exist at all. Such was Aristotle's view. " The soul was the first perfect realization of a natural body possessed potentially of life." ^ The ordinary psycholo- gist restrains himself, and propounds no theory of the relation of soul and body. There are two series of phenomena, he tells us, which, so far as we can observe, are independent ; and yet they have a concurrence The failure of that suggests intimate connexion. I, for my part, have to^give h^p. affirmed that the distinction between soul and body, or nature and spirit, by no means amounts to their independence of each other. The idea of an unbroken evolution, according to which mind, too, is a natural product, precludes such a view. Moreover, the im- potence and meaninglessness of both man and his world when held apart, suggests a unity within their difference. Amidst such a variety of opinions it seems to be impossible either to affirm or to deny the immortality ^ Edwin Wallace's Aristotle's Psychology. NATURE'S SUGGESTIONS 339 of the soul on psychological grounds. The future may reveal that which, in its very nature, necessarily conquers death ; but that discovery has not been made as yet. The biologist is not much less helpless than the And of psychologist. To all appearance the death of an ° ' animal is its end. It has been all along, as an individual animal, less the care of nature than the species is ; and even the species may disappear. Is nature careful even of the type ? On the other hand, the biologist affirms the unbroken continuity of every kind of life. The life that is in the oak of to-day — Natural facts ^ that suggest the same life — was in the first oak that ever grew on the victory over cooling earth. There has never been a single break, or gap, or need of the recreative act which a new beginning demands. Have we here a hint, within the natural region, of something that masters death } Can death be merely a recurrent incident in the history of a plant or animal .'' That it has a place of its own in the scheme of things is undeniable, as Hegel said ; and it follows that it has significance only in virtue of its part and function within that scheme. Death contributes somehow to its perfection. How ? There is another natural feature which seems to suggest the same positive conclusion as to immortality, namely, the cumulative character of the life-process. The history of spirit, whether in its theoretical or • practical activities, shows this fact quite clearly. The past does not vanish. It is preserved. Knowledge, experience, character grow, and growth implies this conversion of the past into an active element of the present. There is no way of accounting for the 340 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES growth of human civilization if the process of living has not this cumulative character. Now, so far as I can see, this fact would become practically meaningless if death ended all. Death, whenever it came, would set the process at nought : and death may come at any moment. Its coming is the only certain thing in man's life ; but the when and how of its coming are the most uncertain. The " cumulative process " and every other human interest gives it no pause. It takes the babe from its mother before the process has begun ; or the mother from the babe who is left without her care. The strong man is called, the feeble is left : the man of wide uses, and social sympathies and services, is summoned, his useless neighbour is left to cumber the ground till old age brings its imbecilities. Can such an apparently lawless event as death have the importance that would accrue to that which puts a final end to the soul's enterprise ? It seems to me to be much more natural to conclude that death is, in truth, a very insignificant event, seeing that its " when " and " how " of coming count for so little. Nature The fact is that nature does not destroy and demolish. obj^eS but It changes. The probability is strong that nothing is annul!°^ ever finally lost. Physics will not admit the abolition of any form of energy : its task consists of watching its transmutations. But what waste would compare with that which death would bring, were death equi- . valent to extinction ! The whole purpose of man's life, as we have described it, would be set at nought and spiritual ends placed at the mercy of the most incalculable of natural events. Is it not far more likely that death is a pause than a break — at least A PREVIOUS LIFE 341 in the case of man ? For man's case is not like that of any other animal : he is self-conscious, and self- consciousness brings rights. Man has a right to the •> conditions which make for his well-being, if, indeed, the rule of the world is in God's hands ; and extinction at death would sometimes violate, and at other times greatly limit that right. Man's self-consciousness, and his claim to the conditions of moral well-being, have a final claim, which cannot be over-ridden by death. Before I return to the main issue I may mention that the continued existence of man after death has been held to imply his existence previous to the present life. This does not seem to me to follow. Until we arrive at the conception of a self-conscious being, we do not discover that whose worth lies in itself, and which has intrinsic rights. Other beings may be A previous used as means to something other than themselves ; proven, but a self-conscious being is never reducible to such a condition. Now self-consciousness, we concluded, was the result of a long evolutionary process, and so, likewise, are the rights and claims which self-conscious- ness brings with it. Amongst these is the right to immortality. For being in himself an end, the scheme of things must continue to serve him, and not over- whelm or destroy him. He must not be at the mercy of death, or of any other external power. Notwithstanding these considerations, all of which point in the same direction, I am not prepared to maintain that the observation of man's present life in this world furnishes adequate premisses for either the affirmation or the denial of man's immortality. Not that the balance between the two possibilities is even. For there are no premisses at all from which denial 342 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES spiritualism put on the rubbish- heap. The argu- ment must depend on man's nature. can justly Issue. There cannot be any negative evidence : there is only silence. On the other hand, the extension of life beyond natural death seems congruous with the natural scheme, instead of being, like extinction, sheer waste of achieved results. When we know more of the nature of the soul, or spirit, or mind, and of their relation to the body, we may dis- cover grounds in present facts for a more confident conclusion. At present we must look in another direction than that of the merely natural scheme. I need hardly say that I am not inviting you to consider the evidence which Spiritualists offer. Per- ceptual knowledge of those who have passed away in death is not given to us, nor, I believe, is it capable of being acquired. My faith in Spiritualism, in all its forms, is too weak to permit me even to examine them. With your permission, I will fling Spiritualism, so far as these lectures are concerned, upon my rubbish- heap. The grounds to which I refer as possibly offering premisses for reliable conclusions are all moral, or spiritual — if you like, you may call them religious. They are furnished by man's nature, though by no means necessarily by his desires. Royce finds within our finite personalities an insatiable divine discontent which calls for and implies satisfaction. Surely mere discontent can constitute no claim. It must be some positive element that can imply the satisfaction. I do not think that the Universe exists in order to make man contented. For that purpose all that is necessary would be to extinguish his ideals, and turn him back into a ruminant. Man's rights spring neither from his discontent nor from his desires. They arise from his THE GROUND OF IMMORTALITY 348 intrinsic nature, the final purpose of his life and of his world — namely, moral progress. That is the con- ception which we have throughout made our standard of values and the source of rights. And here we come upon the crowning use of it. It means that man is immortal if immortality is a condition of the fulfilment of the purpose of God, as expressed in man's moral life and the world-process. The ground of immortality does not lie in our desires. Not merely I do not think that our desires are consulted. " What desires, appeals to me," says Mr. Bradley, "... is the demand of personal affection, the wish that, where a few creatures love one another, nothing whether before or after death should be changed. But how can I insist that such a demand (whatever one may dare to fondly hope or dream) is endorsed by religion .? " ^ I do not think that religion does endorse it. Not that it is a small matter to disappoint the yearnings of love ; but that love itself, if it be not love of God, is not the spring from which necessities flow, I do not think that natural affection, desire, or Religion friendship count, except as elements in a moral system, rmmortaiity. Religion does demand the fulfilment of the conditions of a good life ; and I am inclined to think that the immortality of the soul is one of these conditions. Otherwise, as Mr. Bradley says, " mere personal survival and continuance has in itself nothing to do with true religion. A man can be as irreligious (for anything at least that I know) in a hundred lives as in one." 2 But the continuance of life, or rather its repetition, gains importance in that the hundred lives offer a 1 Truth and Reality, p. 439. * Ibid. 440. 844 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Morality does not depend on it. Logical evidence : our poets contemn it. hundred opportunities of learning to adopt the good as the law of conduct. Immortality extends man's spiritual chances, as I understand them. Some time, some where, in some life, under some new circum- stances and conditions, the soul, one would say, will awake and apprehend its true nature and destiny. For my assumption is, that the intercourse between man and his world will have a character on the other side of death similar to that which it has on this side. Such seems to be the demand of a moral universe. There is an ethical sense in which the immortality of the soul loses all importance. The possibility of end- less existence ought in no wise to affect our personal conduct in the present. It does not enhance the obligatoriness of duty if there is life beyond life in an endless series, nor loosen it if, when death comes, we cease to exist. Morality does not depend upon the immortality of the soul : but religion does. I do not deny that many truly religious men doubt or even deny the immortality of the soul. The problem of immortality stands apart from those of religious faith. But this result comes from the incoherence of such religious experiences. They have not been carefully scrutinized. Otherwise it would be evident that the belief in a God whose goodness and power are unlimited, which we have deemed to be essential to religion, is not possible unless the soul be immortal. A single life given to man would not exhaust the resources of infinite goodness. There must be " life after life, in endless series." " Everything finite," says Mr. Bradley, " is subject in principle to chance and change and to dissolution of its self. But from this it does not follow that finite TENNYSON AND BROWNING 345 beings are unable to endure, as themselves, for an indefinite time. And in the end the argument that we are finished when our bodies have decayed, seems to possess but a small degree of logical evidence." ^ Many thinkers would say that it possesses none ; and that it is none the worse for the absence of logical evidence. Their belief in immortality does not rest on logic, they tell us. The future life is a matter of faith. The first thing, for instance, that impresses the student of Tennyson and Browning is the fulness of their belief in the immortality of the soul. If they ever did doubt its truth — which is very questionable — doubt only " shook the torpor of assurance from their creed " : it left the belief itself more strong and fixed. Tennyson's view regarding the state of the soul after death changed at different times. Browning emphatically set aside both the final woe and the final extinction of the wicked. Neither could Tennyson adopt the belief that any soul would in the end be excluded from the love of God. But their faith in a future life never wavered or weakened, nor did their conviction that it was in spite of reason, rather than by favour of reason, that it could be held. Let us examine these attitudes. Finite beings, jMan is not thinks Mr. Bradley, may be able to endure, as them- ^^^^^e'^' selves, for an indefinite time. But is man adequately described as a "'finite " being ? Have we not found that self-consciousness implies what is more than finite } Does it not signify what is self-determined, and what, therefore, is not at the mercy of anything save itself? Mr. Bradley ought not to debate this question on finite grounds. ^ Truth and Reality, p. 467. 346 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES I need not say that he shows no tendency to rely on anything except logical evidence ; and the logical evidence against immortality he finds to be very weak. In this respect he is at the opposite pole from the poets. They believe that logical evidence goes for nothing.^ Experience So it does, if what is meant is theconscious use of logical ou/"og?cai methods. But supposing that reasoning is such as everyone''"'* we have described— the bringing to bear of the uses it. experience of the past upon the facts of the present } If our view is valid their faith had its premisses : these premisses were the results of intellectual and more or less correct judgments : and judgments are, one and all, the results of a logical process. The poets had discovered that the grounds of their faith were hypo- thetical ; but they had not discovered, nor even asked, what are the nature and significance of hypotheses. They were not aware that our hypotheses are, in the last resort, not merely the foundations of our knowledge, but " the light of all our seeing." The final It is not usually realized that the final proof of any Fact°is°by^"^ fact is negative in character. An object is proved real, negation. ^^ jj^^ -^ pj-Q^g^^ ^-j-^g^ when the denial of it brings consequences which are recognized as too insane to be entertained. Argument at that juncture closes ; the critic is silenced. I admit that the test is not perfect or complete, for, after all, it is employed by a fallible intelligence. But all the same it is the final test, and remains final, whether used or mis-used by the individual. The question we have thus to ask is : " Does the denial of the immortality of the soul imply such an ^ See the writer's Immortality of the Soul in Tennyson and Browning. PROOF BY NEGATION 347 insane consequence ? " We have already answered It. It is not possible to maintain the limitless love and power of God if the soul be not immortal. There are men, so far as we can see, who die in their sins. If death ends The line of 1 • 1 r -1 argument. all, then their lives can be called nothing but failures. These persons have missed what is best ; they have not used the opportunities of life to build up a good character. The failure of their lives is, so far as they are concerned, the failure of God's purpose. It was not benevolent, or it was not strong enough, to secure their well-being. The imperfection of God implies a breach of purpose, and therefore, of order, somewhere in his Universe. Sheer unreason has found an entry. It is not possible any longer to set out from the hypothesis on which everything depended for us — namely, that the world-process, of which man is a part, is ethical in character, and the expression of the sovereign will of a perfect Being. And what of those individuals who have not missed the purpose of their present life — but, as we would hold, have all their lives morally " attained " ? Is the result of their strivings, failures and successes to go for nothing when death comes ? To affirm this, it seems to me, is impossible except to those who have not learnt to value spiritual achievement. What remains for him who thus gives up the ethical character and the universal ideal of the cosmos ? We have only to ask the question to perceive that he who gives these things up, gives up the conditions under which his rational faculties can be of use. And the answer of the believer to the unbeliever is overwhelm- ing : denial of the immortality of the soul implies absolute Scepticism. 348 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES No stronger No Stronger proof of immortality is either possible mortaiitV™ oi" necessary than that which shows that it is a necessary If possible. condition of an orderly universe. The two hypotheses support each other. The truth of each of them, taken [ by itself, is probable : its truth by relation to its I complement is irrefragable. God is. God is perfect. His lovingkindness and power are unlimited ; and his greatest gift to man is the gift of the power, tendency and opportunity to learn goodness. God's goodness being unlimited, the opportunity not made use of by man in the present life is renewed for him in another life, and in still another ; till, at last, his spirit finds rest in the service of the God of Love. For my part, I wish for no stronger proof of the permanence of the spiritual process, and I ought not to care for aught beside : that supreme good involves every good. LECTURE XX THE RESULTS OF OUR ENQUIRY I HAVE come to the conclusion that we cannot close this series of lectures in a better way than by surveying the results of our enquiry. There are features I should like to accentuate, as possibly the most worthy of being considered further by you. First, things were said which, if not new, are certainly not familiar ; second, there are others whose truth is doubtful, and a matter of controversy ; and lastly, there are truths which I consider to be fundamental to a rational religious faith. You have probably observed that the course falls The into three parts. In the first part we dealt with the of the course obstacles in the way of enquiry into the validity of our religious creeds by the frank, and severe, and free methods of science. In the second part I expressed, as unsparingly as I could, the antagonism between the religious and the secular life. I considered carefully the apparently irreconcilable opposition of morality and religion, pointed out the erroneous conceptions from which the contradiction arose, and, finally, indicated the principle and method by which alone that contra- diction could be solved. In the last part we were engaged with the conception of the God of Religion 349 350 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES and his relation to the finite world, and especially to man ; and we identified him with the Absolute of Philosophy. The result seemed to be to prove that reason comes to the support of the religion which is enlightened. Enquiry, if free and thorough, will demonstrate the validity of our religious faith. Such, expressed in general terms, were our themes. Our question now is, what did we make of these themes ? What are the conclusions, negative or positive, as to the value and validity of our religious faith, which we are entitled to regard as decisive, and ought to carry away with us ? A confession. I must in the first place of all make a confession. Not merely are our conclusions somewhat meagre, but they are unsatisfactory in a far more serious sense. They are based, from beginning to end, upon an assumption which I have made no attempt to justify, and which, if false, deprives our attempt of all value. The assumption is that the moral life has a value | which is final, unlimited and absolute. By the moral life I mean the process of forming a good character ; by good character I mean a way of living which, in all its details, is dedicated to the service of the best, and is therefore the fulfilment, at one and the same time, of the moral law and of the will of God. From the absoluteness and finality of the value of the process of learning goodness it follows, that everything which furthers that process is good in the most unqualified sense, and that everything which hinders it is evil. Moral progress is our principle of evaluation and our only authoritative measuring rod. We approve and we condemn by reference to it, and to it only. Now, if the moral process, the practical life that is THE PERFECT WORLD 351 spent in achieving spiritual excellence, has this uncon- ditioned worth, and is the best, then the world which provides room for that process is itself the best world. It is better than the so-called perfect world, or world The perfect 1 . 1 1 . 1 , 1 , J • • 1 world is not in which the ideal and real are supposed to coincide — fixed and a world which is perfect in the static sense. In such ^ ^"seess. a world nothing could be done without committing evil, and doing harm ; the voice of duty could not be heard because what " ought to be " already " is " ; there could be neither the need nor the possibility of choosing between right and wrong. It would not be a moral world at all. It could not furnish man with the conditions of the moral or spiritual enterprise, and the moral life would not be possible. But no one would dream of calling the present world as it is to-day " perfect " in this the usual, static sense of that term ; nor can anyone doubt for a moment that it furnishes the most ample opportunities for the exercise of the will to virtue. The calls of dutv are loud and con- stant, for him that hath ears to hear. Our view then is that the moral life is the best thing conceivable, and that this present world, owing in a way to its imperfections, furnishes the opportunity for the moral process and demands it as the ultimate good. But we have not proved these truths. They are assump- tions, and their truth may be doubted and denied. Indeed, judging by our ordinary conduct, many of us do deny the absolute value of the moral process. We are always prone to postpone spiritual considerations, and to seek first the things that perish. Men have consciously and consistently made use of other standards of value, both in their judgments and in their way of life. The Hedonists are a conspicuous 352 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES The example. In no wise could they justify a world, standard of howevcr virtuous, in which there was more pain than values. pleasure. And, as a rule, it is very difficult to convince men who deny the sovereignty of ethical conceptions, that they are in error. We may urge, for instance, that the value of moral facts lies wholly in themselves, and is as little dependent on, as it is derivative from, aught else. But they will say the same thing of pleasure — especially if you permit them to call it " happiness." " Assure me happiness all my life long, and assure the same to all those whom I love, and I shall ask no more. I shall then say what Faust said when at last Mephistopheles claimed his soul, ' It is enough. Let the moment stay.' " Now, I do not admit that the Hedonistic position is unassailable ; but I should like to expose and empha- sise the difficulty of raising the secular spirit to a level from which it will judge things spiritually. The consistent use of spiritual criteria is not easy to any one in the present world ; and to the secular-minded man the argument will to the end seem to rest on sheer assumption, and our results will appear to be just the innocuous fancies of unpractical philosophers. It is probable that nothing short of the actual experience of living the religious life will suffice to justify our assumption, and to qualify the critic to pass judg- ment. In any case, without that assumption we are quite helpless : while, granted that assumption, many more important consequences are found to follow. These consequences I shall now try to bring into the fore- ground. The first consequence which follows from our MORALITY ATTAINS 353 assumption is that it provides the means of reconciling The recon- reHgion and morality. The moral life, as the best life reiiJioTand conceivable, becomes on this view the process of™^'"^^^*^" realizing, in the circumstances and amongst the calls of ordinary life, the good which is absolute, and thereby of fulfilling, in utter devotion, the will of God. Morality becomes religion in practice ; and right conduct can be defined as doing the will of God. Morality and religion are found to be complementary and inseparable aspects of the good life. The former is inspired, guided and controlled by the latter, and the latter achieves reality in its moral incarnation. The second consequence which follows is that, on Morality this view, the moral life instead of never attaining is atSs attaining in every virtuous act. The process of forming character through our volitional efforts is seen to be as positive and genuine an advance from stage to stage as the cognitive process ; for by doing what is right we learn how to do better. And that is the only way of learning that best and highest of tasks. The moral world instead of presenting a scene of " hazards and hardships " and failures, instead of being radically such a blunder that its success in identifying the real and the ideal would be its own extinction, shows us a constant conversion of the past life into a stepping-stone. For man rises a better man from doing a fine action, and a worse from doing a mean one. Moreover, every good act is, in its way, perfect. If the whole law is not directly realized in it, the law as applicable to the actual circumstances is put in practice. In the circumstances neither man nor God could do better ; and the performance of duty is just the highest use of circumstance, G.L. z 354 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES I cannot, for my part, regard these results as of small significance. The antagonism between morality and religion, the view of the former as merely human and therefore of low value, and of the latter as something aloof from the secular life, and there- fore in the last resort a matter of mysterious and incommunicable experience, weakened the power for good of both of them. Nor can I consider that the consistent and persistent presentation of the moral life as a tragic matter, a failure in that which is best of all, instead of a joyous process of learning more thoroughly what is right, could have been without its deterrent effects. We cannot, of course, advocate the pursuit of moral good on the ground of the prosperity it brings : that were to reduce morality, the supreme good and " highest end " (as Aristotle taught us), into means. Nevertheless, we can hinder the moral progress of no one by indicating in what a fair country the man who is learning goodness is travelling. Here is the true primrose path ; and as I have already hinted, the pilgrims who go along this way go singing. They are in the company of " The Shining One " : their moral life is a divine service. In the next place, the assumption of the sovereign worth of the -process of learning to know and to do the will of God, and of the present world as existing in order to furnish the opportunities for that process, throws a new light on the -problem of evil. The Our line of argument on this matter was both short pro em o ^^^ simple. If the spiritual process of learning to recognize and realize the best has the supreme value which we attribute to it, then the world that makes that process possible is the best world. It is a better A STALE WORLD 355 world, be it noted, than the so-called " perfect world " of ordinary opinion. That so-called perfect world obviously stands in no need of improvement, and has no room nor call for change. There is nothing in it that " Ought " to be done ; there are no unrealized ideals : on the contrary, to do anything were to introduce change, and a change for the worse ; for the real and the ideal already coincide. Morality is not possible. No duty calls. Spiritual enterprise is extinguished. If we choose the good (as we would), we should find that it is already there, accomplished ; so that we can but stand with idle and empty hands. It is never a moral good. But a world in which the moral life is not possible, a world in which no lover of what is right can move hand or foot, a world that is static, as if struck by a magician's wand, were, I should say, a most undesirable world. Man's spirit wants to be up and doing, and if it is a dedicated spirit it wants to be up and doing for the God it loves. Nothing a stale conceivable could be more stale than existence in a ^^^ * perfect world. It manifestly cannot compare in spiritual worth to a world where the cry for help arises from the social environment, and where obedience to the voice of duty, and the giving of that help, are re- cognized as the fulfilment of the will of a loving God. I in no wise seek to justify evil. I cannot maintain that in itself it is a form of the good : under no circumstances can it be changed into good. But I leave room for it ; for I recognize that in this instance the striving for the aim is the attainment of it, the battle is the victory. The process of learning to do what is right is the spiritual excellence we are seeking. G.L. Z2 356 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES Divine immanence. Difficulties of the conception. The third result that accrues from the assumption which we are making is the conception of the indwelling of infinite perfection in finite objects — the immanence of God in man's nature and his participa- tion in his moral strivings. Man's blind and pathetic gropings after the best become, from this point of view, the working within him of the divine will. Nothing can be more divine than the process of acquiring spiritual excellence. It is a movement to new perfections, each realization of the best being the starting point for a new departure. Instead of a Divine Being who dwells aloof from the world-process and can only look on at it, seeing that it is already statically perfect, God reveals himself in that process. He is the process from stage to stage, that is, from perfection to perfection. God's working in the human soul may often seem to be most imperfect and obscure : for man, being the medium of the operations, limits both their range and their power. The human agent must adopt the will of God as his rule of behaviour, and the range of man's choice is small. The divine working cannot pass beyond the boundaries of man's free choice : for what is a command on the one side is on the other a conscious obligation and devoted choice. No doubt this view brings difficulties. How can an action, it will be asked, be at once the working of the divine will in man and the expression of man's free choice } The fact seems undeniable, at least to the religious spirit : man's attempt to live the good life is unhesitatingly pronounced by it to be the con- sequence of its dedication of itself to the divine service in such a way that it has no wish, or desire, or aim MUTUAL INCLUSION 357 which is exclusively its own. The religious man, I repeat, gives up his very self. We met this difficulty by refusing to apply exclusive categories. Spiritual beings, we affirmed, include one another. The attitude of spirit is, in the last resort, not Spirit is exclusive to any object. All things are possible exclusive or contents of its knowledge and instruments of its ^°^^®- purposes. The world is there waiting for man, by means of his rational powers, to enter into possession of it. And we cannot make it too decisively clear to ourselves that the parts or elements in the world — the facts, in short — the possession of which signifies most, are those which have already become the expressions of, and are embodied in, human character. " The world of man " is for every man the object best worth knowing, and the powers asleep in that world are those best worth awakening. Individuals, we have said, are never primarily or Both, ultimately exclusive, though they have their exclusive, either-on or inner, aspect. They are infinite by nature and therefore all-comprehensive, although hindered and limited by littleness of their medium. It were, indeed, a tragic world were the relations of men to one another exclusive and negative. Who wants a hearth where the child cannot say " My father " and the father reply with " My child " ; or a country whose citizens do not feel that it is their own, and also that they belong to it } Our domestic, social, nay I shall add, our human life is one unbroken illustration of the mutual inter- penetration of rational beings. The see-saw category of " either-or," which has hitherto been in use in social questions, has brought endless difficulties. It 358 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES is time that we should try the concrete view, and start from the idea of " both^ Man and the fhis view of the individual and of the relation of Absolute. men to one another is, once more, in direct antagonism to that of Mr. Bosanquet and Mr. Bradley. They cannot, as we saw, assign individuality to man, as well as to the Absolute. In the last resort, he is a finite being to them. His individuality must prove to be a phantom, and his existence phenomenal only. The indwelling of God must to them be destructive of man's personality. When taken up into the Absolute, the finite being is transmuted, and the transmutation, I believe, involves the extinction of personality or independent individuality. But, on the view I have tried to set forth, the indwelling of God constitutes the personality ; for, as already shown, what is done to his world by the individual is done by the use of powers which the world has given to him. By his immanence in man God empowers man. The con- stituent elements break into consciousness in him, and are focussed in his self-consciousness. In that act of becoming self-conscious the individual gathers himself together, free from his world, in order, there- after, to be free in and by means of his world. Except on these terms I do not see how both the immanence of God and the freedom of man, or how both religion and morality, can be maintained. If God is Now the conception of divine immanence, seriously finite things entertained, carries with it a further consequence. It changekss. i^f^volves the rejection of the idea of God as perfect in the sense that he is unchangeable. It looks obvious that what is perfect cannot change except for the worse. But even were that true, it does not justify FROM PERFECTION TO PERFECTION 359 us in saying that the impossibility of change or its absence is either a feature or a condition of perfection. Changelessness may be a ruinous condition. It is evidently a conception that is totally inapplicable to life in every form and at every stage. Life is constant Process is •' J ■^ everywhere. self-re-creation. We are m some ways and in some degree new beings every day, for the past constantly enters into us and becomes a part of us. The instant that process stops, death ensues : death is the stopping of a process. But it is also the substitution of another : decay sets in. As a matter of fact, in neither the world of dead objects nor in the world of living beings can we find anything but process. The whole Universe is a single process ; and, if our conclusions hold, the reality at the heart of that process, which expresses itself in it, and which in truth it is, is the Absolute of philosophy, the God of religion. It does not seem easv to justify the conception of God moves ' . ^ . from the Divine Being as moving from perfection to per- perfection to fection. Compared with the later stage, the earlier ^^"^ ^"^ ^°°' manifestly comes to appear to be defective and im- perfect. A movement from perfection to perfection looks like a logical impossibility. Every present, when it arrives, seems to condemn what went before as at least a partial failure. But, at stage A^ may not a be perfection ; and at stage B may not b acquire that character ? Is it quite certain that there are static limits to the indwelling perfections of the divine nature, or indeed to anything that develops } What is admirable in a grown-up man can be repellent in a child. We value events often on the ground that they are timely : the fact is there to meet the need. Besides, may not the -process once more, rather than 360 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES He is the perfect in process. A friendly and helpful world. either of the stages, be the true object of judgment, and the divine mode of existence ? God himself may have in his power no better way than to sustain the process by which goodness is achieved. To me the idea of God as the -perfect in process^ as a movement from splendour to splendour in the spiritual world, as an eternal achievement and never-resting realization of the ideals of goodness in human history, is endlessly more attractive and, I believe, more con- sistent with our experience in the present world than the idea of a Divine Being who sits aloof from the world- process, eternally contemplating his own perfections. Love, at any rate, is directly and finally inconsistent with such an aloofness. And the religion of Love, undoubtedly identifies the God suffers in our sufferings, He is our Father ; and he moves with us, because he moves in us. There is one more consequence which follows from the fundamental assumption on which our whole course rests. I shall merely indicate it. It is the view which, for the first time, we are enabled to enter- tain of the world as friendly and helpful, and of God as an inspiring, and empowering, and guiding presence. It is the view which we advocate that, for the first time, recognizes the friendliness and helpfulness of man's environment, and apprehends the inspiration and power which the recognition of God as dwelling in us and active in our deeds brings. These forces were there always ; but the ordinary theory hid them from our sight. Now we can rejoice in a morality that is positive and triumphant ; in a religion that breaks into this joyous morality ; and, above all, in the knowledge which Christianity is, destiny of God and man : and rejoices in our joys. A FRIENDLY WORLD 361 that God is with us, and that, therefore, nothing can be finally against us. We have, in this course, so far as I am able to judge. Religion and followed the methods of science and admitted nothing at one. which did not recommend itself to, and stand the tests of, an enquiring intelligence. And it is no small matter that the use of the methods of science, if strict and unsparing, can thus support a rational religious faith. Were men strengthened and sustained by such a faith, it seems to me that Browning's words would have a wide application. Many an unobtrusively modest, religious man could describe himself as "One who never turned his back but marched breast-forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake." ^ ^ Asolando. PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY ROBERT MACI.KHOSE AND CO. LTD. THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, GLASGOW. BT SIR HENRT JONES THE PRINCIPLES OF CITIZENSHIP Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net Prof. Patrick Geddes in The Observer. — " A noble combination of philosophic lecture and moral sermon ; and with the very cream of Plato's and of Aristotle's teaching, of Kant's and Hegel's, too, and at their best, with lucid citations from Bradley, Green and Bosanquet, and jewelled with vivid passages from Browning." The Spectator. — " This very wise little book ought to be widely read. Sir Henry Jones has a firm grasp of moral principles, sadly neglected or defied by many people nowadays, and his exposition of his argument is singularly clear." The Outlook. — " A remarkable little treatise, and one to which we extend a hearty welcome. . . . We have been able to point out the drift of this admirable little treatise ; our readers must turn to the volume itself for the illumination of the duties of citizenship which we believe it gives." 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