L.C, f^rrocc L THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESENTED BY PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID >1- Digitized by the Internet Arciiive in 2007 witii funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation # //www.arciiive.org/detaiis/evoiutionspirituOOmcdoricii EVOLUTION AND SPIRITUAL LIFE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS C. F. CLAY, Manager Hontion: fetter lane, e.g. BDinburgij: loo PRINCES STREET i^fto gorfc : G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS Brnnbag, Calcutta anli piaUras : MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. CToronto: J. M. DENT AND SONS, Ltd. SToftgo: THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA All rights reserved EVOLUTION AND SPIRITUAL LIFE BY STEWART A. McDOWALL, M.A. TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE CHAPLAIN AND ASSISTANT MASTER AT WINCHESTER COLLEGE Author of E'uolution and the Need of Atonement Cambridge : at the University Press Camtiittrge: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS ■ ^ /^5 TO MY FATHER iw375599 PREFACE II /T ANY laymen feel that the humanity of a doctor ^^-*- is generally, though by no means always, richer than the humanity of a clergyman. Not a few courageously proclaim the fact; greatly to the discomfort, and perhaps the benefit, of the clergy. And as we mentally run through the long roll of literary doctors, beginning with Luke the Beloved Physician, noting the names of Sir Thomas Browne, Dr John Brown, Dr Oliver Wendell Holmes, and many more, till we reach contemporary writers like Douglas White and the author of The Corner of Harley Street, we cannot but agree that the laymen have a good deal of justice on their side. And our personal ex- perience teaches us the same. The reason of this is not far to seek. The humanity of the doctor is richer than the humanity of the parson because he knows so much more about the mechanism in which the soul lives. Very few doctors fall into the mistake of thinking they have to talk to, and counsel, a mechanism without a soul; while "quite a many" clergymen talk to a soul as if it had not got a mechanism tied on to it. Unfortunately, the doctor has not time to be a parson viii Preface as well (though many are both in all but name and technical knowledge); and, still more unfortunately, a medical degree and a hospital appointment, followed ' by some years of general practice, are not within the sphere of practical politics in the training of the parson. \ But, at least, we parsons can learn to reverence the doctors' point of view, and the doctors ours. Each will have to be honest and openminded, and unready to take offence. But the outcome will be pure gain for both. We parsons shall learn to admire the body a great deal more than we do; and to see what a very useful servant, what a very valuable ally, it has been, and still is, for the soul. We shall ' learn to be rather more charitable to some sinners, and rather less complacent to some respectable folk. We may learn to lighten our condemnation of sins of the body, and to put far more vigour into our denunciation of harshness and lovelessness and such- like sins of the soul. We shall get love into truer perspective, and bring our code more into line with our Master's. We may find saints in rather unexpected places — and sinners too, for the matter of that. And the doctors will learn something as well, but we may leave that matter to them. The spread of knowledge has imposed a very serious ' duty upon all parsons, for it has taught men to ask "Why?" And if the clergy cannot give a reason for the faith that is in them, and further, a reason that Preface ix takes full cognisance of, and welcomes, modem discoveries, men will turn to others for help. The phase of doubt and questioning is in itself thoroughly healthy; but it may become a real menace to the Church, unless her accredited teachers are prepared to teach, and to learn. It is no good to say to a man "This is what you ought to want to hear about." Our duty is to let him tell us what he wants to hear about himself, and then to try to answer his questions. For the common-sense man asks questions which are full of common sense. St Peter was not told to be content to roam with the flock, and to snatch a mouthful for himself where he could; nor, on the other hand, does the skilful shepherd feed his flock with roots all the year round. The present book, and its precursor, represent an attempt to look at the human being as a soul closely connected to a mechanism. I have tried as far as possible to see eye to eye with the doctor and the common-sense man, while keeping steadily in view the conviction that the mechanism exists because of the soul, and not the soul because of the mechanism. Furthermore, stress is laid on the fact that neither soul nor mechanism is fixed: the one is growing through the activities of the other, and both are changing. Much is to be gained by the effort to view life as a whole, and without bias. Naturally, a rooted conviction that the soul is more important than the X Preface mechanism renders it impossible to write altogether without bias; one can only try to avoid prejudice, as far as is humanly possible. Comparatively little detailed consideration is given in the present book to the conclusions of particular schools of philosophy, except where a reference to one system or another has seemed desirable for the purpose of illustrating a definite point. William James justly complains that "The abuse of technicality is seen in the infrequency with which, in philosophical literature, metaphysical questions are discussed directly on their own merits. Almost always they are handled, as if through a heavy woollen curtain, the veil of pre- vious philosophers' opinions. Alternatives are wrapped in proper names, as if it were indecent for a truth to go naked." I have tried, rather, to work from point to point, handling everything with bare fingers, and only discovering by touch the shape of each lump of fact and its contacts with the next. And the shapes and contacts of some were unexpected. But clothes are ornamental; and these ornaments we have come to consider essential to decency. There- fore, both for the sake of our ideas of what is suitable, and to escape arrest by the police who guard our thoughts, I have decked the body of my work with more or less of the usual habiliments i. 1 Those who have never studied Metaphysics, but who wish to gain some general idea of the scope and aim of Philosophy, cannot Preface xi The debt I owe to many writers, and especially to M. Bergson, is manifest throughout. But, for the above reason, no copious bibliography is given, though reference is made to some of the works which proved specially helpful ; and also, of set purpose, to various small manuals, which may be consulted with profit by those who have not leisure or opportunity to study larger books. I would emphasise the fact that the outlook on the problems of life and religion is in a sense narrow. The standpoint of evolution has been adopted, and from that, and that alone, the whole has been viewed. Very much that is true and valuable, very much that is important, must necessarily lie outside our purview. And everything that does lie outside has been rigorously excluded. I cannot hope to have avoided serious omissions, any more than positive errors; but many aspects of the problems discussed are outside our range, and one may not justly be brought to task for failing to include matters which it was never intended to discuss. The first part of the book deals with certain basal problems which lie at the root of religion, and an attempt is made to show that the chief contradictions do better than read F. B. Jevons' Philosophy. What is it? (Camb. Univ. Press, 1/6 net) and the Hon. Bertrand Russell's The Problems oj Philosophy (Williams and Norgate, 1/- net), both of which are admirable summaries. xii Preface of our experience are due to the limitation of freedom, and the bearing of this limitation on the mechanism of thought. Necessarily, the discussion of many aspects of the subject-matter is somewhat technical; and I fear that I may not altogether have avoided ob- scurity, though I have tried to do so. The conclusions are simple, and so is their application, but one has first to dig deep, in order to discover this, and make it clear. In the second part the great realities of the personal religious life of a Christian are examined from the same standpoint — that of limited, but growing, freedom. Of necessity frequent reference is made to my earlier book. Evolution and the Need of Atonement, to which the present volume is a sequel, and in some sense a corollary ; though complete in itself. In that book an attempt was made to show that sin, though it is the result of evolution, is yet not an inevitable result. It is failure to progress; but it is more than mere failure. It is the conscious choice of the lower course by beings who are capable of higher things. By sin man sets up a very real barrier between himself and God, since he has of his own will chosen a course of action that commits him to an evolution which can never end in perfectness. Imperfection is ingrained in his being. God must remove that imper- fection by some means which leaves man's freedom untouched, if there is ever to be union between Him- self and man ; for there can be no true union between Preface xiii a Being Who is perfect, and beings eternally doomed to imperfection by their own free act. And so the evolutionary conception of sin in no degree does away with the need of Atonement, but, rather, lays stress on the necessity of an Atonement that could only be wrought by God Himself. It in no degree removes the need for a God, but rather gives clear indication of His existence and His plan for the world; for spiritual evolution is a real fact, and implies a spiritual environment. jk Now philosophers have long been divided into two hostile camps : those who consider everything in terms of mind, and those who consider everything in terms of matter. The first includes the Sensationalists and Idealists; the second, the Materialists. But people are beginning to realise that the camps lie on opposite sides of a line; and that each group says the line has only one side. The common-sense man, who may be also a philosopher — for the prevailing view that the two are mutually incompatible is un- sound — is objecting that every line has two sides, and must have two sides, even though it is without breadth. And so a species of philosophy, not very different from a kind of practical dualism, has grown up, which admits that Mind and Matter alike really exist in some sort of way, and that they are very closely related. As to what exactly constitutes this relation, views difier widely; but Mind is generally M. 6 • xiv Preface given a more prominent place in the system than Matter. In the course of the present work the reader will find a good many arguments adduced which seem to point towards the conception that Matter is inti- mately connected with the limitation of freedom. And freedom is necessarily to be regarded as an attribute of a Personal Being, and only of a Personal Being. It is further suggested that what we call Matter may be simply the expression or manifestation of this limitor tion of freedom. In the beginning this must have been a limitation of the freedom of God, since freedom is an attribute of personality. Hence arise the kenosis-aspect of Creation and the doctrine of Immanence. As soon as other personalities develope, the limitation affects them also as part of their experience, and matter becomes a limitation of man's freedom as well as God's. Moreover, the problem becomes explicable when, and only when, we seek and find an end or aim in limitation. Our whole examination will lead us to conclusions that involve a very definite teleology. We shall see matter as an instrument; for the end is something that can only be brought about by the limitation of the freedom of God. And this must necessarily be willed by God, for there is no one else to will it; and it must be, so, a self-limitation. With the elucidation of this thought the first six chapters are concerned. Of necessity they are in a Preface xv great degree metaphysical. The remaining chapters are more practical, for they deal with the everyday, wonderful certainties of religious life. If anything is herein written that gives offence to one or another, I can but ask pardon. If anything appears too dogmatic in form, it is due simply to a desire for clearness and brevity. The whole matter is far too high for adequate presentation. One can but outline, to the best of one's ability, such aspects of the truth as seem to be revealed. The pen is a poor instrument at best; and the awe and reverence of the heart, however deep, cannot be forced into the narrow compass of words and syntax. The ineptitude of the Prologue in Pyramus and Thisbe resulted from his inability to "stand upon points." I can only say that I have tried to search out the truth honestly, and plead for lenient judgment. For all of us there is one great belief, that "God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son, to the end that all who believe on Him should not perish, but have Everlasting Life." This is the great, universal Truth; and we can only strive, each in his own way, to understand those aspects of it for which our training makes us able. I must again express my gratitude to Canon V. F. Storr. He has read the manuscript, and offered many valuable suggestions. While he can in no way 62 xvi Preface be held responsible for the general argument, or for the mistakes and omissions that may still remain, he is responsible for the absence of some, and for suggestions towards the reshaping of certain passages which were obscure or doubtful. I am also indebted to my wife for many hints and criticisms, and for constant and ungrudging help in preparing this book for the press. Acknowledgment is due to the Editor of the Church Quarterly Review for his kind permission to make use of my article on " The Problem of Continuity," which appeared in July 1914, and which forms the basis of Chapter II. A few omissions, verbal altera- tions, and additions have been made, but it remains substantially unaltered. S. A. McD. WiNTON, February 1916. ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I Some Antinomibs of Thottqht FAOE Primitive religion based on Personality ... 1 Underlying idea of Fetishism spiritual ... 4 Complexity of tribal pantheon leads to conception of One Creator ........ 6 "Nearness" of tribal Gods absorbed in Immanent aspect of Creator ....... 6 ReUgion must find ideals in every aspect of God . . 7 Metaphysical attempts to evade the necessary conception of a Personal Ood Mechanistic Philosophy ...... 8 Spinoza — Pantheism — Conception of Unity ... 9 Leibnitz — Conception of PluraUty .... 10 Empiricists ........ 10 Transcendentalists . . . . . . . 11 The Vindication of Personality — Lotze. . . . 11 Monism and Pluralism ...... 12 Bergson ......... 15 Stages of Growth of Belief in Immanence and Transcend- ence ........ 16 Multiplicity of metaphysical systems due to selection of premisses ........ 18 Pairs of correlated opposites appear in the three chief domains of rational thought (1) Theology: Transcendence and Immanence . . 20 (2) Philosophy: Unity and multipHcity . . . 21 (3) Natural Science: Freedom and determination . . 21 xviii Analysis of Contents PAGE (1) Instinctive understanding of man that matter is the instrument of spirit .... . . 23 God causes matter, yet indwells matter . . 26 (2) The human mind demands unity, but finds pluraUty ; hence arise rival systems of philosophy . . 28 (3) Determination of matter ..... 30 Freedom of hving organism ..... 32 Summary: "As transcendence is to immanence, so is unity to multipUcity, and so is freedom to deter- mination" ....... 33 CHAPTER II Some aspects of the Idea op Continuity The modern mind sees activity of God rather in serial progress than in adaptive design ... 34 Can Spirit, land and water be placed in series ? Rather, all are parts of one continuous Environment . 35 Man can only have perceptual knowledge of the material part of this Environment ..... 36 Only conceptual knowledge of a continuum possible . 37 Mind always moves from recognition of discontinuity to conception of a continuum : e.g. the Ether. Matter is now known to be based on knots or strains in a continuous ether ...... 37 Quanta ......... 39 There can be only one ultimate continuum, though it may be conceived under spatial or temporal aspects . 41 AU lines of thought lead independently to conception of a continuum ....... 43 Freedom is synonymous with continuity, Umitation with discontinuity ....... 45 Analysis of Contents xix PAGE Spiritual nature of the Cosmos ..... 46 The idea of Creation as a self -limitation of God . . 47 This limitation can only vanish when the creature becomes perfect ........ 48 Progress from perception to conception ... 50 Man's realisation that discontinuity is temporal, spirit eternal ........ 51 ReaUty of dualism for God in so far as He is Immanent . 51 Sin is the rejection of knowledge of the sacramental nature of matter ....... 53 Summary ......... 64 CHAPTER III Some aspects of Unity and Multiplicity IN Living Mattbb Unity and Multiplicity in the Environment and in the Organism. ....... 57 Physiological division of labour based on the impulse of Mving matter towards unity .... 58 Regeneration exempUfies the same impulse ... 60 The impulse towards unity in insect colonies . . 62 The more highly organised the colony, the less independent the individual unit ...... 64 The Problem of IndividuaUty : is individuaUty to be sought in the unit or in the colony ? . . . 65 Mr Huxley's definition of the Individual ... 68 This definition includes human societies, but fails to take account of Personality ..... 69 SoUdarity achieved in two ways, by instinct and by intelligence ....... 70 Intelligence based on the possession of a central nervous system ........ 72 XX Analysis of Contents PAGE Corporate consciousness ...... 74 Impossibility of corporate intelligence, since intelligence is a phenomenon of personality .... 75 When corporate instincts are based on reason, it is the reason of the individual, not of the race . . 76 Tribal instinct ........ 78 Ethics based on intelligence, and a manifestation of personaUty ....... 79 Importance of central nervous system : freedom can only arise where in the organism itself there is almost complete certainty of determinate interaction of the parts ........ 81 Recapitulation : animal societies based on instinct ; human societies, largely at least, guided by reason . . 82 Survival of instinct in human societies. ... 83 Development of personality dependent on possession and integrity of central nervous system ... 85 Conclusion : Where intelligence is absent there appears to be a tendency towards unity, where it is present, towards plurality, yet with a reasoned advance towards union ....... 88 Note on Herd Instinct ...... 90 CHAPTER IV Some aspects of the Winning op Freedom Conclusive proof of existence of freedom eludes us ; of its truth we seldom doubt ..... 92 Definition of freedom: the true alternative ... 94 Freedom must be won, not given .... 94 Is the gift of the power of winning freedom not really equivalent to a gift of freedom itself? . . 96 The element of contingency negatives this ... 97 Analysis of Contents xxi PAGE The process of evolution is new spirit in the making, not pre-existing spirit striving towards freedom and self-expression. Pluralism, not pantheism, is its result ......•• 99 God can only create good spirits, and the achieval of goodness which has an ethical value rests on the possibihty of not-goodness. There must be no compulsion for the individual .... 100 The moral problem of pain loses much of its urgency if we realise that the seK-Umitation of God is the only possible basis of man's freedom .... 103 CHAPTER V Immanence and Transcendence; two aspects of the Christian idea op God The antinomies that confront us are : Transcendence and Immanence ; Unity and Multiplicity ; Freedom and Determination . . . . . . .112 Inadequacy of monistic and pluralistic explanations . 114 Origin and growth of the ideas of Immanence and Tran- scendence ........ 117 Personality must underlie Divine activity, and the judg- ment of values which activity involves . . . 121 Conception of unity static, of union dynamic . . . 126 The activity of love is directed towards union . . 127 Freedom in the creature involves three difficulties : (1) the limitation of God; (2) the creation of a pluralistic universe; and (3) the passage of the Timeless into Time 128 (1) Creation must be a kenosis, and must entail pain both for God and the creature, since freedom can only be won through struggle with a determinate environment .....•• 129 xxii Analysis of Contents PAGE Transcendent freedom is complete self-determination; Immanence involves a measure of determination from without ....... 133 Absorption of the perfected creature into Grod is impossible 136 Pain is inevitable ; sin is not, because it is not a necessary consequence of the existence of a lower course of action ........ 136 Pain becomes part of the experience of Grod, but sin does not 138 (2) The eventual solution of the pluralism that exists in Time, is to be sought in the union of the wiUs and experience of men with Grod's, in Eternity . . 139 (3) Immanence involves duration, since it involves the interpenetration of states ..... 142 The relation between Transcendence and Immanence in the Godhead. Immanent and Transcendent activities ; the first external, the second internal. . . 146 Transcendence is the relation of God to that which is perfect^ eternal and simultaneous, and so to Himself ; while Immanence is His relation to thai which is imperfect or becoming J and so is durational . . . .148 Man, Hke God, is both transcendent and immanent; but with this difference, that God's Transcendence and Immanence are the cause of man's . . . 150 Summary ......... 153 CHAPTER VI Etebnal Life Recapitulation of arguments leading to the conclusion that the antinomies are due to absence of freedom 157 The basis of freedom must be sought in personality . . 160 Limitation and Immanence involve change, and change introduces the time-factor . . . . .162 Analysis of Contents xxiii PAGE Thus Time must be real for God, in so far as He is Immanent 163 Transcendent activity is directed towards union . . 165 The meaning of Matter ...... 168 Four metaphysical problems: (1) Can one experieTice he shared hy many experients ? (2) Can man and God share a common experience ? (3) What is the transcendent part of man ? (4) What is marCs relation to the two aspects of Ood ? . 170 (3) and (4) More and more of man's being passes out of time into simultaneity, and hence his transcendental ego is constantly being added to . . .171 The question whether this appHes to animals . . . 175 Man has relation with God in both His aspects . . 176 (2) Pure memory is in the past, and therefore cannot exist in the simultaneous: hence in eternal life man's experience cannot differ from that of God by including memory ...... 177 Nevertheless the character of the personaUty was built up largely through the agency of memory, so that its results persist ....... 182 God's Transcendence is antecedent and causal in its relation to man's . . . . . . 185 (1) Suggestions towards an understanding of the meaning of Transcendent Experience . . . .185 The difficulty of a common experience is overcome in the conception of perfect penetrabihty . . . 187 Conclusions : that all the difficulties of thought have their origin in the absence of complete freedom, and that freedom will find its final consummation in Union, not in Unity ....... 191 Summary of argument 192 xxiv Analysis of Contents CHAPTER VII Prayeb PAGE Prayer is only possible for a Creature who recognises the relation between means and ends . . .197 The Creature at first uses part of his environment as a "tool"; later comes the power of tool-making — a mediate act, involving reflection, and the recogni- tion of causaUty ...... 202 Mediate action involves voUtion ..... 204 Recognition of causality leads to a sense of dependence on God . . 205 Is the efficacy of prayer due to self -stimulation, or to external aid? ....... 207 In either case its validity is derived from God . . 208 Prayer is voluntary use of the Spiritual Environment of man, making a "tool " of it ; and so the external aid thereby received cannot Umit man's freedom . 209 God cannot answer prayer for mistaken ends ; otherwise He would contradict Himself . . . .211 The question whether external aid is actually given . 213 Every answer to prayer involves a change in matter, both within, and external to, the petitioner; and so it is not justifiable to draw a hard and fast line between prayer for spiritual and for material gifts 215 Conclusions 222 Note on Prayer for the Dead . . . . . 224 CHAPTER VIII Sacraments The material side of man's experience has all the essential features of a sacrament ; so that we may speak of the Sacrament of Matter, or the Sacrament of Environment 226 Analysis of Contents xxv PAGE Theological views of the Holy Communion . . . 228 Congruity of aid through the Holy Communion . .231 Constant renewal of union with God, through Christ, in the Holy Communion ..... 234 Von Hiigel's discussion of Institutionalism in Religion . 235 The essentials of a sacrament ..... 237 Hort on the Holy Communion ..... 239 Nettleship on symbolism in the Holy Communion . 241 Inge on the Sacraments ...... 244 The sacramental nature of matter is emphasised in the Eucharist 246 A modified form of the Receptionist doctrine is indicated as a result of our discussion .... 250 Conclusions . . . . . . . .251 The aid given in the Eucharist is directed towards the immanent side of man; the appeal of communion is for his transcendent side .... 252 Our argument tends to suggest that the importance of Baptism lies in soUdarity rather than in special gift of Divine aid ...... 253 CHAPTER IX Faith, Providence, and Revelation Faith defined as movement from Hope towards Certainty 258 But Faith always involves the relation of one Person to another Person ....... 263 Faith tends towards Action ..... 265 Relation between Intuition, Hope, Faith, and Certainty 267 Faith involves belief in the existence and purpose of God 269 Analysis of the conception of Providence . . . 272 And of Revelation ....... 274 True ideas of Providence, and questionable ones . . 277 xxvi Analysis of Contents PAGE True ideas of Revelation, and questionable ones . . 282 The basis of the ideas of Providence and Revelation is to be sought in progressive movement, not in inter- mittent action ....... 283 CHAPTER X The Christian Community The impulse towards solidarity among animals and men 284 Solidarity finds its ultimate meaning in the needs of PersonaHty 287 The eternal meaning of this is clearly foreshadowed in the Church 289 Conclusion ......... 295 Additional Not« on Prayer ..... 300 PAET I FOUNDATION CHAPTER I SOME ANTINOMIES OF THOUGHT With the earliest dawn of social life among men arose a belief in higher beings who had power to influence the course of the little world that centred round the community. Sun, moon and stars, fire and hail, snow and vapours, wind and storm, fulfilled their word. Tree and shrub, bird, beast and fish, were under their dominion ; so was the community itself. And because "They" were persons, naturally Their interest was focussed on the community of persons who were so like Them, yet so much fettered by material needs. For the tribe the gods created the world and everything in it, and in its interest all was controlled. Nevertheless the gods had their own concerns, and they were apt to be distracted from their duty to the tribe by the pressure of private affairs. The sun or moon might be put out by a troublesome fellow-deity, or some monster might swallow the one or the other. Such things had to be dealt with at once, and the M. 1 2 Primitive Religions Personal offender punished or made to disgorge. Celestial harmony had no part in the conception of the pantheon. Therefore the gods required reminders, when they forgot for the moment that the centre of the universe could not get enough to eat without their help. Again, since they were of a touchy temperament, jealous gods, they had to be cajoled into forgiveness of past neglect when they manifested their wrath, and the sickness was sore in the land; when the sun was darkened, or the moon gave no light. Clearly, since they were many, the right god must be appeased. It was easy enough to determine the particular god involved in simple cases, but in more general disasters expert advice was needed. Even in the simplest matters it was important to select the best mode of propitiation. Hence, naturally, arose the rudiments of a priestly system. Each tribe was perhaps, in its own opinion, the hub arouud which the universe moved; for whose benefit the sun and moon ran their never-ending race, and the stars swung out to cheer the dark hours that were given for a time of rest. But practical experience taught that there were other tribes all round, with other* gods, whose existence and actions could not be overlooked. As the tribes waged war, so did the gods also. Evidently, if the tribe was to retain its position, and even its existence, its own gods must be kept in good humour. They must also Polydaemonism and Fetishism 3 be kept up to the mark, and be reminded constantly that celestial quarrels afforded no excuse for the neglect of terrestrial duties. Since there appeared to be design in each detail of the world ; since man himself was a designer of tools and an organiser of action; all design was explained as the immediate action of a personal being. And because man was only capable of comparatively simple and immediate acts himself, so each portion of the design of the world must have immediate origin in the will of a special being. In this way probably arose the promiscuous attribution of person- ality to the spirits of wind and rain, of mountain and river, of tree and cornfield. Furthermore, the whole system was complicated by the idea of individual as opposed to tribal, guardian spirits, which took up a temporary residence in some natural or artificial object^. From this arose the system of fetishism. A fetish may be defined as the temporary, or more rarely permanent, guardian spirit of an individual which resides for a time in some material object. The spirit is not a god, for its modes of action are limited, and are directed towards the welfare of the individual, often only in regard to some special under- taking, which may be contrary to that of the tribe. * Jevons, The Idea of God in Early Beligions. Haddon, Magic and Fetishism, does not draw such a clear line between the individual reference of a fetish and the tribal reference of an idol or totem, 1—2 4 The many Tribal Gods But even when the fetish was used for the purpose of injuring another member of the tribe, the under- lying idea was still spiritual. To the savage the spiritual world, peopled by strangely anthropopathic beings certainly, is as real as the objective world around him. And the rudiments of all this are to be sought in the first dawnings of self-consciousness and of realisation of the personality of other men^. Partly owing to the ever widening range of com- mercial transactions, partly to the recognition that the anthropomorphic pantheon and pandaemonium are peopled by beings whose natures are lower in some respects than those of their worshippers, a change of ideas inevitably comes. Economic intercourse brings a knowledge of parallel religions, and the pantheon grows in complexity as the tribal system gives place to the national. Similar gods seem to be different aspects of the same being, and identifica- tion takes place, while others, often antagonistic to one another, are incorporated and go to swell the 1 I cannot agree (with Jevons) that "common consciousness" precedes " self -consciousness," even allowing for the fact that he uses the words in a more loose and colloquial sense than I am prepared to give them in such a connection, since it inevitably leads to vagueness and confusion of thought. The attribution of personality to the essential nature underlying material objects is the result of reasoning, even if very imperfect reasonings And the power of reasoning is an attribute of the self-conscious individual, not of the community. I am not sure, however, that more is meant than herd-instinct see ch. in). merge in One Great Spirit 6 confusion of the celestial host. Growing confusion brings with it growing anthropomorphism. The clash and strife of communal and personal interests become intensified as they are translated into the spirit - world. Human actions which are questionable, though immediately expedient, assume a very different com- plexion when the gods perform them. Propitiation and cult persist, but true worship dies, for the god is lower than the man, in morality, though not in power. The spirit of man wanders further in its search for a higher being. Where so many gods exist, it is difficult to beheve that any one of them was the creator ; they sink into mere tutelary deities ; and the mind finds solution of the deeper problems, and satisfaction of the need of worship, in another Being, further off perhaps from the everyday life, standing out of sight behind the phalanx of minor gods — the Great Spirit; even the All-Father. In modern phrase we may say that He is tran- scendent, but He is emphatically not immanent. Slowly the gods die. The unity of the human soul which is the very core of personaUty demands unity in that which it worships, and the tribal or national god is merged in the Great Spirit. At the same time He draws nearer, for the search of the mind for a reasonable ordered explanation of everyday happenings does not grow less. The cult of the lesser gods becomes more and more formal, and when 6 Spiritual Nature of Primitive Religion the rhythm of tradition is disturbed by some crisis, it dies away. He must increase, they must decrease; it is the eternal law. And so the old gods die. The demand for a God who is near, in the house, in the field, in the temple, is met in the idea of a Great Creator who is, and who is yet becoming; the Distant All- Father who is yet the Spirit of Manhood and the very Dweller in the Innermost. From the lowest to the highest stage it is the spiritual side of man's nature which seeks fulfilment through relationship with spirit. Even in the fetish, it is the indwelHng spirit that gives the gnarled root, the fantastic stone, or the pipe bowl filled with dirt and ordure their potency. Even in the grotesque idol it is the God that is worshipped. The spirits of the wind or of the tree are to be feared, not winds and trees themselves. The Linga and the Fig-tree do not themselves confer fertiUty, but the spirits or the gods that dwell in them. True, the Hnga may de- generate into an amulet, the fig-tree into a charm. But so too does polytheism degenerate into a mockery of religion. Each stage of thought outgrown brings death to the spirit that chngs to it, just as surely as the physical inertia of the unadaptive organism brings destruction in the evolution of the creature that is being prepared for a soul. Greece mocked the Gods before she passed. Kome mocked and prayed while barbarian races drove her in upon herself. Plato Religimi based on Ideals 7 and Marcus Aurelius saw with clearer eyes, but they could not carry the nation with them. On the other hand the Jewish race was scattered so that it was no more a nation. Twice its spiritual vitaHty overcame national disaster, and even at the last the soul of Judaism conquered the world, and still Uves, a worthy foundation for the Saviour of the world to build on. The only rehgion that rests on a firm foundation is the reUgion which finds an ideal in every aspect of its God. Just in so far as one aspect falls beloW the ethical and spiritual ideal of the nation, just so far will the seeds of decay manifest themselves; and without ruthless excision the decay will spread beneath the surface until the whole fabric of society becomes rotten and collapses; even as the tiny fibrils of a fungus spread insidiously and all unsuspected in an elm tree, till the tree crashes to the ground in an autumn gale, and the rot is revealed. The prophet is the mycologist of the nation, whose office is to watch for the first indications of decay. Happy the nation that hstens to its prophets, and is flexible enough to alter its rehgious system to suit the advance of its intellectual and moral growth ! From first to last the mainspring of religion is, as we have said, the behef in personal entities dwelling in the spirit world. Personality is the basis of God- head. The idea that this demand for personaUty as 8 Failure of Mechanistic Philosophy a background to the shifting drama of the universe may be the result of an anthropomorphic projection of the human mind into the imperfectly understood is a late development of thought. In its logical or modern form it was bound to come, as the result both of over estimation of the importance and univer- sality of Natural Laws, half understood, which seemed capable of indefinite application as fact after newly- discovered fact fell into place, and of the science of comparative Religion. The mechanistic and atomistic interpretations of nature seemed all-satisfpng when first they were formulated, and even philosophy was for a time carried away by the seductive simpUcity of such views. Mechanism, and the solar myth turned out by a German workshop, proved as fascinating to the half- educated intellect as the clockwork railway to the boy. But as the boy grows he soon tires of clockwork and asks for a train that goes by steam. So man very quickly asks for something that has more living force and reality at the back of it. The artificial simpHcity of the solar myth suggests too clearly its lack of reality. It is but a model — a working model, it is true, but still very different from the real thing. It will only work on a small scale; no mechanical spring would be strong enough to drive a life-size universe. The attribution of personahty is no "disease of language," as Max Muller held it to be. The solar myth passes like a meteor, leaving no trace behind. Pantheism — Spinoza 9 None the less, the search for origins must be pursued till rational knowledge becomes coextensive with experience. And so philosophy must play her part, questing through the unknown ; blindly perhaps, in as much as she does not know whither her investigations will lead her : she has no revelation, such as Keligion claims, to aid her in her search : yet she starts from the sure foundation of the known, and works methodically and honestly towards further understanding. Impersonal pantheism achieves a temporary 4 success, inspired by the genius of Spinoza. For. him God is immanent, not transcendent. He is without passions, without will, without goodness, without purpose. One of His attributes is pure absolute thought. He thinks Himself, imderstands Himself, and so is self-conscious; yet He is not personal, and everything that exists is the necessary result of His nature. God does not create the world. He is the world^, and the world is real. The same that exists in the attribute of consciousness as object (objective), as the content of our ideas, exists in the attribute of extension as something actual, independent * Cf. Windelband, History of Philosophy, p. 418: "Spinozism is a consistent identification of the relation of Cause and Effect with that of Ground and Consequent. The causality of the Deity is, therefore, not in time, but is eternal, that is timeless; and true knowledge is a consideration of things stib quadam aeiernitcUia specie." This idea has much in common with the results to which we are driven in chh. v and vi. 1 Leibnitz — Empiricists — Idealists of any idea or mental representation {formaliter). But neither of these two modes of existence is more original than the other, or forms a prototype for the other: both equally express the nature of God (exprimere). Hence an idealistic interpretation of Spinoza is as incorrect as a materialistic, although both might be developed out of his system^. The doctrine of unity is Spinoza's great contribution to thought. Leibnitz added plurality, and indeed destroyed unity in so doing, only saving it by the mechanical device of the Pre-established Harmony. The Empirical School, ruled by recent discoveries in the physical world, left only three possibilities open to the mind by its rationalistic investigation of the data of the senses; agnosticism, atheism and deism. The Deist might believe in a personal god, but he set up a dualism which rendered the idea of infinite personality untenable. His personal God was a limited being: His very personality was in itself a limitation. " God was regarded as standing apart from the world and man in splendid isolation 2." Intellect was everything, feeling and emotion nothing. ^ Windelband, History of Philosophy, p. 419. 2 Storr, Development of English Theology in the Nineteenth Century, p. 202. Consult further Harte, The Philosophical Treatment of Divine Personality from Spinoza to Herman Lotze; Seth, Scottish Philosophy ; Taylor, Elements of Metaphysics ; Windelband, History of Philosophy, etc. Lotze — Y indication of Personality 11 The reaction came with the German Ideahsts. TranscendentaHsm took the place of Eationahsm and Empiricism in speculation, and thought as a whole moved once more in the direction of pantheism. Necessarily, on such lines also, personaHty is looked upon as a limitation, and the impersonal absolute replaces the deistic God. Finally, thought rises above the idea of personality as a Umitation. Lotze tries to show that all the contradictions which appear when we regard God as a Person are resolved when the impHcations of Infinite PersonaUty are fully understood. The contradictions, he says, are due either to making thought, instead of experience, the basis of our discussion {e.g. for instance the Ego is only thinkable in relation to the Non-Ego, but may be experienced previous to and out of every such relation^) or by the realisation that an Infinite Person- aUty does not require the quahfication of external things for its realisation. Lotze's God is immanent yet transcendent, an Infinite Person. Finite person- aUties are modes of the Infinite Person. Yet we may notice that finite persons have a certain indepen- dence of their own, which to Lotze is nothing less than an "inexhaustible wonder." He cannot explain it, but takes refuge in the idea that unless the many are severally comparable, or are of the same generic nature, they can have no knowledge of each other: 1 Harte, ojp. cit. p 139 12 The Vindication of Personality if they are comparable they are ultimately one. 6/jLoio<: becomes 6fMoov(TLo<;, as Athanasius would ex- press it. Here lies the weakness of Lotze's system. But with the aspects of pluralism and monism we shall have to deal immediately^. And so the whirligig of time brings in his revenges, and the philosopher of the nineteenth century returns to the view of the savage, that the world is ruled by personal powers. It is true that philosophers still tend to fall into two groups, and that the tenets of neither are wholly in accord with the data of religious consciousness; but there are clear indications that a change is coming, and that thought is steadily tending in a theistic direction, towards the acceptance of a Personal God, while the metaphysic of Bergson renders a re-examination of the older systems urgent and inevitable. The philosophical solutions current to-day fall, broadly speaking, under the two headings, the absolute or monistic, and the pluralistic. Materialism has gone for ever. Crude dualism is shaken to its founda- tions. Only an idealistic interpretation of some kind is possible, or else a transcended dualism in which spirit is progress in pure duration, while matter is the perceived present of duration. With this last difficult thought it is not necessary for us to deal at present. It lies at the centre of the Bergsonian 1 Cf. Ward, Pluralism and Theism, pp. 216-224. Pluralistic mid Monistic Idealism 13 metaphysic, and for a full account of it reference must be made to Bergson's Matter and Memory'^. (1) On the idealistic side, starting with the argu- ment that for ourselves nothing exists except in relation to experience — either our own or that of others — and that to exist is to be experienced, philosophers contend that the ultimate Reality also can only be a datum of consciousness or experience. The question is, whose experience ? That of Alice and Tweedledum and Tweedledee, or that of the Red King? Clearly there are two main lines along which thought may move. We may either look on ultimate Reality as the sum total of one complete experience, which we call the Absolute, in which case our own experiences are finite fragments of the whole — bits of the Red King's dream — or we may say that the sum total of the experiences of finite beings, each separate and independent, constitute the ultimate Reahty. In this case the difficulty is to find any underlying unity. In a sense the two systems difier in being inclusive and exclusive respectively. The first is monism, the second pluralism. The monists claim, and prove by what James terms "vicious intellectuahsm" — reasoning based on logic pushed to extremes and applied in matters 1 Brief yet clear summaries may be found in Wildon Carr's excellent little book on Bergson (in "The People's Books" series) and in Lindsay's Philosophy of Bergson. 14 Monists and Pluralists where its applicability is doubtful — that the units of the pluralist must be isolated and unable to inter- communicate in any way ; and further, that pluralism must end in reahsm (or materiaUsm), since the mutual independence of the units involves of necessity their own independence, as real entities, of any experience. In the monadism of Leibnitz escape from these two dilemmas is sought in the introduction of a Pre- estabhshed Harmony, a kind of transeunt or affective causation, which unites the monads into a systematic whole. This introduction of the Will of God as a harmoniser of metaphysical discrepancies, though it obviates the chaos of ideahstic pluralism, is yet so grossly mechanical a device, so wholly without metaphysical justification, that it is needless here to point out the difficulties it introduces^. On the other hand the pluralist may point out — James does, with characteristic humour and vigour ^ — that the Absolute is useless for deductive purposes; for if you accept it you never can tell what you are going to meet in the phenomenal world till you have met it ; that it must suffer from an obesity, plethora, and superfoetation of useless information, if it is to include, not only everything that is, but also everything ^ For a discussion of this from the monistic standpoint reference may be made to Taylor's Elements of Metaphysics, Book II. Chapter n, 2 Pluralistic Universe, ohh. ii and m. Incompleteness of Berg son's System 15 that is not ; and that it introduces an insoluble problem of evil. Finally the intellectualism which gives rise to such a conception is landed in innumerable reduc- tiones ad ahsurda when it has to face the common aspects of phenomenal experience, if it be true to its own method. (2) On the other hand, standing apart, we find Bergson, for whom the ultimate reahty is spirit, and spirit is progress. God is eternal freedom and growth, eternal activity, ever increasing "God has nothing of the already made^." We cannot say that He is, for while we think it He has changed. Indeed we may not speak of Him, but merely of a centre of activity without hypostasis or being, or anything but growth. Clearly the mind cannot rest here. M. Bergson has done a great work in exposing the fallacies of intellectuahst philosophy; his critique is as original as that of Kant, and his constructive genius is un- rivalled ; nevertheless in losing touch with the problem of personahty he has thus far missed the coping stone of his edifice. He has raised but a roofless temple, and the defect cannot be hid by the beauty and purity of its outhne. It is an uncompleted Parthenon, in which no god dwells, and where no soul can fulfil itself in worship. His system is not far removed from a progressive pantheism, spreading in ever- widening circles. There is freedom, ever increasing, ^ Creative EvoliUion, p. 262. 16 Philosopher and Savage alike reach but there is no perfect day. True, he admits the existence of personaUty, but only as, so to speak, the substratum of intuition. PersonaUty is for him essentially a flux. It has a unity, but only through intuition. Reahty is only reached by the integration of intuitional experience — an integration that must be without limits; for Reality must be an indefinite integral, since all things "flow from form to form and nothing stands." The savage then simply believes; the philosopher reasons laboriously, ever harking back, examining and re-examining the work of those who have gone before him; correcting errors, suggesting new modes of attacking the old problems. The savage finds his gods near him and far away. The spiritual world is a vast industrial hive, full of individual gods with each his own work, and behind all the great General Manager who superintends the whole. Naturally, even this belief is of slow growth. It requires an effort of the mind to argue back from the Many, with whom he is in immediate daily contact, to the One far off, out of sight. Yet it is not merely, or even chiefly, an effort of reason. In his own experience as a person, as the head of a family, as the head of a tribe, he sees exemplified the law of sohdarity; and he perceives, rather than reasons, that at the back of every undertaking must he one mind. He beheves that the gods are persons, because he sees activity Ideas of Immanence and Transcendence 17 and apparent design in every phenomenon of life, and his own experience as an active being, who can design schemes and carry them into effect, leads him to beheve that such things must have origin in the mind of a person. He sees also that there is apparent design and harmony in the world as a whole, while yet each god must have his own interests; just as in the tribe there are conflicting individual interests, while to an outsider the policy of the tribe is seen to be a unity. He knows that in the tribe this is brought about by the presence of a chief, and so he argues to the existence of a spiritual chief in the pantheon. And thus the savage reaches, more by intuition and analogy than by logical reasoning, a beUef in the co-existence of immanence and tran- scendence. Not at first in the same being, it is true ; but as the lesser gods go they are absorbed into the great God; and so deeply is the double reahty of immanence and transcendence — the near and the far — felt, that there is never a moment's question of the conception dying out as those conceptions of the gods which are really incompatible with each other or with ethical standards die out. The philosopher sets down his premisses and then slowly, testing each step, reaches his conclusion. And the conclusions of philosophers differ strangely, as we have seen. According to the premisses chosen, one arrives at pure immanence, another at pure transcendence, M. 2 18 Metaphysical Systems constrvxited another at results incompatible with either. And then, to cover the glaring unreahty of the cosmology that results from their systems, too often they introduce an extraneous and irrelevant supposition in order to bring it more into harmony with the everyday experi- ence of men. We find God as a person, as an impersonal sum total, as pure activity, as an abstract idea imposed on mankind by the solidarity of human existences treated as spiritual units; or we j&nd no God at all. The very multiplicity of philosophical systems must make us pause to enquire whether, after all, the explanation of it is not to be sought in the fact that the philosophers are making an unjustifiable and arbitrary selection of the premisses which they propose to admit. One is impressed with the unity of the cosmos, and rejects all postulates that seem irre- concileable with that; — and then finds that his system leads to a glorious Absolute, the essence of Oneness. Another sees the manifold complexity of human relations, and a suitable selection gives him a system that reflects this multiplicity a thousandfold increased. One sees the powers of personality, and lo, his God or his Absolute shows the same powers. Another sees personahty as a limitation, and his God becomes an Impersonal Entity. Yet another sees change everywhere, and for him God is Essential Flux. Is it so strange that suitably selected premisses should lead to the desired result ? And, in spite of all, Rehgion by Selection of Premisses 19 lives and grows, content, or forced, to accept help from each new truth that the philosopher and the scientist supply, more than content to reject the doubtful panaceas that enthusiastic individual workers in these fields vociferously commend. ReHgion is \ ready to accept the data of experience, but demands i that no part of the realm of experience shall be excluded. She is wilKng to accept the dictum of Science and Philosophy that knowledge can only come through experience, but refuses to allow that Revelation is y thereby excluded, since, or if, it is experienced. She refuses to look upon a section of Reality cut in an arbitrary plane as representative of the whole of Reahty, and rejects with scorn the suggestion that, because something does not appear in the section in question, it therefore has no real existence. Physical Science now admits that it does but investigate one such plane^ — as Hegel pointed out: even Philosophy is beginning to doubt whether the experience of the intellect can justly be claimed as the only mode by which Reahty can be experienced ^ ; and this growing acceptance of the limitations imposed by method leaves Rehgion in a stronger position than she has occupied for many years, as far as the appeal to reason is concerned. As we have seen, Rehgion has for ages been ^ Cf. Whetham, Recent Development of Physical Science, ch. i. 2 Cf. Bergson, eap. An Introduction to Metaphysics. 2—2 20 Antinomies: Transcendence — Immanence; cognisant of two seemingly antithetical truths, and has accepted both, each in a greater or lesser degree; while the intellectual recognition of the antithesis is only of recent growth. These truths are comprised in the doctrines of Immanence and Transcendence. To the intellect they may appear incompatible, mutually exclusive, yet to the spirit they appeal with all the force of a realised fact. Reason may and does find here a battle-ground; the soul acclaims the double truth and cherishes it, content — perhaps too easily content — to say with Thomas k Kempis "It is a blessed simplicity when a man leaves the difficult ways of question and disputings, and goes forward in the plain and firm path of God's command- ments." Theology, the science of the soul and its religion, has then to face the antithesis of Transcendence and Immanence; and, if she can, to give a reasoned account of these. Naturally, at one period she lays stress on the one; at another, on the other. Yet to the soul itself the truths are complementary rather than antithetical. The soul can grasp both aspects; it is only when the mind begins to attempt a logical synthesis that they seem in any degree mutually exclusive. It is customary to assume that the soul is wrong and the mind right. But can we be sure that the assumption is justifiable? For if we turn to the other great sciences we find Unity— Multiplicity ; Freedom — Determination 21 very similar antitheses. This must strengthen our doubt as to the supreme power of the mind to achieve a full understanding of hfe as a whole, and so of the meaning of every least phenomenon of hfe. We should expect that Philosophy at least, the science of the mind, would be able to frame an harmonious model of the cosmos, since here we have thought working in terms of pure thought. But we find exactly the opposite to be true. At the very outset philosophers are confronted with the problem of Unity and Multiphcity, of the one and the many, and they have never yet solved it. The monists hold that multiphcity is but an illusion resulting from the partial understanding of unity; the plurahsts, that unity is but an illusion of the more or less unexplained interrelationships of the many. And for all alike the matter becomes hopelessly involved as they trespass more and more on the domain of theology and endeavour to incorporate the special problems of that science. Again when we turn to Natural Science, the science of the body and its physical environment, we find contra- diction once more. On the one hand there is rigid natural law, on the other evolutionary progress. Energy, in any world where life is possible, is always becoming degraded and rendered unavailable. Evolu- tionary progress in such a world is adaptation to environment, through the utiHsation of the free 22 Pure Reason leads to Antinomies energy that obeys this law, while yet complete adapta- tion spells destruction. Yet the result of evolution is the control of matter, which control is the essence of freedom; and progress in freedom is essential to survival. Thus freedom emerges out of the response to a determinate environment. This antinomy of science has been worked out by the author in a previous volume^, and it is needless to recapitulate the argument in detail here. We find, then, that in every domain of life attempted explanation in the terms of pure reason leads to irreconcileable contradictions. Necessarily such a dis- covery must shake our belief in the all-sufficient power of the mind, though, emphatically be it said, not in the validity of its critical function. Our immediate concern is to examine and see whether it be not possible to find a solution of all these anti- nomies in the Hght of the deeper insight given by the consideration of them as aspects of one great Reahty ; and then to apply our conclusions to the common facts of rehgious experience. At any rate we may hope to see more clearly in what measure they depend on the exaltation of the intellect to the supreme dominion of man's Hfe, and in what measure the intellect may yet see a mode of reconciliation. For this purpose it is necessary that we first set out the antinomies at length, even at the cost of some repetition ; 1 Evolution and the Need of Atonement. Matter the Instrument of Mind 23 and to this task the remainder of this chapter must be devoted. We have already seen the origin and gradual resolution of the primitive ideas which give rise to the conceptions of Immanence and Transcendence. In the childhood of a race we expect, and find, a child-mind. The gods are many and their habita- tions visible. Trees and waters, winds and storms, shrines and fields, have each their indwelling spirits. Bodies terrestrial and bodies celestial are ahke thrones of power. As the child-mind grows the wonder of the world's harmony dawns upon it. The warp and woof of common things blend into a pattern that is full of beauty, full of symbolism and of meaning. And precisely because the symboHsm is instinct with deep meaning man finds in it evidence of purpose. In his own personal experience he discovers that matter can be shaped and utihsed as his mind dictates. Indeed it is this discovery, speaking from an evolu- tionary standpoint, which initiates his self-conscious life. The lower creatures can utihse material objects to subserve their ends, as the bird uses grass or twigs to build its nest, or the caddis bark and tiny stones to strengthen its tube; but man can reason about the ends he wishes to compass, can make use of the memory of past efforts, can discover by induction and deduction the elements that go towards failure or success, and can constantly improve upon his 24 Vague Presentation of Immanence and own efforts. And, so doing, he realises himself as a rational being. Matter becomes for him the vehicle of his desires, and the means of their fulfilment. It is clearly for his use and enjoyment. He has dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowls of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. And just because, as IHingworth^ points out, he sees everywhere matter as a thing usable by, and useful to, his own personal will and spirit, while his will and spirit are utterly useless to matter, he begins to conceive of all matter — even the things he cannot touch or fashion, the winds, the rain, the heavenly bodies — as the instrument of some greater spirit. And so insensibly he grows into the behef that matter is essentially a means to spiritual ends, and has no meaning apart from spirit. Matter is simply matter, and gains nothing from his actions: the changes he makes in it are only of value relatively to himself, and in no way advantage matter. He, not matter, gains by the intercourse. In short, materialism is the offspring of a mind satiated with detail ; bhnded to the larger issues. There is no such thing as a primitive materialist. But to communicate with others, to show his affection or his hate to his fellows, man has always to make use of matter as intermediary. He cannot ^ Divine Immanence. Transcendence to the Primitive Mind 25 speak, lie cannot write, he cannot give a gift, without using it ; while yet it is only of value when use is made of it. All matter which has a meaning to him is matter which has been moulded for some purpose by himself or by his fellows, which, in being so moulded, has become so to speak saturated with his own person- aUty, with its desires and aims. And so arises the idea that all matter derives its meaning from the spirit that permeates it. Again, as we have said, even to the primitive mind the world is full of design. No savage can look on the succession of the seasons, the daily rising and setting of the sun, the seed-time and the harvest, as a constant repetition of fortuitous events. Though our teleology is less simple and immediate than his, we hkewise are unable to conceive order without mind. Though our doctrine of immanence is less naive than that which sees in every grotesque rock or root the body of a god, we hkewise are fain to look on matter as the mode of communication, as the expression, almost we might say as the precipi- tate, of a great divine spirit. If matter has any meaning, that meaning must be imprinted on it by mind, by which again it can alone be perceived. Even if not in strict metaphysic, yet in practical fact esse est percipi; for there can be no meaning in that which is not perceived, and that which has no meaning cannot be more than an 26 Presentation of Immanence and accidental by-product of mind, and the Primal Mind can hardly be imagined as ejecting unforeseen by- products. Thus contingency in the cosmos can only be the result of purposeful self -limitation in the God- head. It is the intuitive recognition of this fact that underlies the idea of matter as the express manifestation of spirit ; the idea which we term immanence. Yet, on the other hand, it is impossible to conceive of the Primal Mind as being confined to, and fully expressed in, matter. As IHingworth says^, " to speak of immanence or indwelling inevitably implies some kind of distinction between the indweller and the indwelt. And the phrase can only retain its ordinary meaning so long as this distinction is present to the mind. But if the whole notion of transcendence is rigorously excluded, we can no longer distinguish between God and the universe except as different aspects of one and the same thing." In other words we are landed in pantheism. In such a scheme there is no room for purpose or intellect, will, feeling, or moral values in the whole; God becomes the simple essence of all finite existences. But because the one thing man knows internally and intuitively is his own personahty, and because it is his personality that can impress order on that which surrounds him — which is only another way of saying that man makes matter his tool — and because he finds moral values * Divine Transcendence, iv. p. 68. Transcendence to the Modern Mind 27 in his actions and those of his neighbours, he is driven by the existence of order, causaUty, moral values in the cosmos, to believe in a personal God. Pantheism lands him in the inextricable confusion of the One consisting in, and composed of, the Many; to an Absolute which is the result of constant, uncaused, unrelated changes. To this we shall return in a later chapter. Sufl&ce it to say, now, that to the educated man and to the savage aUke, the idea of a Personal God inevitably entails the conception of transcendence. And we have seen already that the fact that matter only has meaning when it is the vehicle of spiritual communication, drives all men alike to a belief in immanence. We may not say that all theologies possess both these ideas; as the one or the other becomes over- emphasised, in the search of the intellect after logical completeness of thought, religions move in the direction of pantheism or deism. But we may and do say that the primitive mind grasps both truths in some degree, more by intuition than by reason, and that the j>ro- gressive rehgions, such as Judaism and Christianity, as well as some of the polytheistic religions, like Hinduism and the religion of ancient Egypt, do move more and more towards the acceptance and justification of both those tenets. And the Mystic Way in all ages and in all countries has led towards this same belief, 28 The Problem of except where a pantheistic bias has constrained it from the first. There is then this fundamental theological antinomy. We shall see that Philosophy has an antinomy that is equally striking; and Science also. And we shall further see that the three antinomies are really one and the same, in origin, if not in statement. All ahke are fundamental and reach to the depths of human thought, and beyond. The basis of all human knowledge and all human action is the behef in a systematic unity underlying the cosmos. The more perfect our understanding of natural phenomena, the less do we look for contingency. We find law in the world, ' considered as a physical phenomenon. We find that social and economic ties bind us together in an inextricable nexus of common aims and interest, and mutual accommodation. We find individuals linked naturally into famiUes, famihes into tribes, tribes into nations, nations into empires, empires into alliances. We find the same orders in commerce — ^individuals, firms, companies, syndicates, trusts. Trade unions, churches, confraternities express the same tendency. The very world we hve in is made up of whirling electrons, whirling atoms, whirling molecules, whirling planets — perhaps whirling solar systems. Microcosm pictures macrocosm, and all tend to unity. Whether, with Bergson, we say that Nature tends to form closed systems, or with the the One and the Many 29 psychologists we say that there is a demand for a corre- lated unity in the mind of man, the facts are there. Naturally men look on the whole of Reality as a great Unity or closed system, an Absolute, a thing complete in itself, without external relation, without an " other." Herein lies the material of monism. Every- thing that exists is but a part or mode of the Whole. On the other hand men know themselves as individuals. They exist for themselves. In some measure they are, or feel themselves to be, indepen- dent of external relation. The ego knows itself as a whole, not as a mere system of whirhng particles; a bundle of needs; a note that only has meaning as part of a great universal harmony. And it is constantly and immediately aware of "others." May not ReaHty be the sum total of individual experiences? Yet even so the experience is not truly individual, but must be indefinitely subdivided, for everyone is aware of a clash of purposes and interests within himself. For the thorough-going plurahst the world must crumble into a discrete chaos of unrelated particles or entities, while for the thorough-going monist it becomes a phantasmal whole, the parts of which experience loves and hates, crises and triumphs, that have no real significance, except as fragments of the One Experience, which thus loses its oneness in the intestine strife of its parts. The plurahst finds too much unity, if he claims individual experience 30 DetermiThation of as the basis of Reality; the monist finds too much pluraUty if he takes his stand on the Oneness of ReaUty. Systematic Ideahsm — the theory which claims that the parts exist for the whole, and the whole for its parts ; the experience of the whole affecting the parts, and the experience of the parts the whole — is either a verbal compromise, or the importation of a theological dogma into the domain of philosophy. Many and various are the shapes which pluraHsm and monism assume, but in this very multipHcity of exposition we find sure proof of the basal nature of the antinomy. jk Turning finally to Science, we find again a funda- mental contradiction. The whole structure of Physics and Chemistry rests on the basis of an assumed uni- formity. Experience shows that certain concatenations issue in certain results. Oxygen and hydrogen, heated, combine to form water; and their combination sets energy free as heat, which can be utihsed. In a similar way compounds of carbon can be oxidised, and their oxidation is attended by the evolution of free energy. Chemical changes produce changes in surface-tension, and changes in surface-tension set free energy that can give rise to relative motion. And the movements of animals are brought about by such changes in surface-tension. Experience shows that in every case these effects follow on their causes, and expei:iment confirms the behef that this holds the Material World 31 good universally. And thus men are led to formulate what they call natural laws, and even, mistakenly, U- to invest them with an axiomatic certainty, almost with a moral necessity; regardless of the fact that, if there be any meaning in the logical doctrine of Ground and Consequence, cause and efiect are different aspects of one whole, and it is thus impossible logically to differentiate them into cause and effect. Never- theless the postulate which underlies the idea of natural law fulfils the pragmatic requirement. It works. We can in fact prophesy with complete certainty that given the identically similar concatenation of circum- stances, the effect will follow. There is complete practical determination in the material world. And living matter is equally subject to the laws y^ of physics and chemistry. Indeed it is the free energy produced by oxidation that is responsible for motion, and for all the vital phenomena of a living organism. Further, it is the changes of surface-tension resulting from this oxidation that immediately determine motion ; and it is the corresponding effect of chemical change on osmotic pressure that determines assimila- tion and growth. Even reproduction is probably susceptible of physico-chemical explanation, were our knowledge sufficientTV Again, the basis of evolution^ is determinate response to a determinate environment, as I have pointed out elsewhere. Yet on the other hand, the saHent feature of the organic world is the 32 Freedom appearance and progressive increase of freedom. And by freedom we mean the control of matter, at first unconscious, in the latter end conscious. VoHtion is but the expression of this control raised, so to speak, to a higher power. The leit motif of evolution is the appearance of freedom in response to the interplay of the determinate forces that regulate the creature and its environment. And eventually this freedom is manifested as an attribute of personality. The manifestation of personahty appears to be the aim of the process. Here then we see the uniformity and unity of natural law resulting in the appearance of a pluraHty of persons each in some degree, if not independent of natural law, at least able to control and direct its action. Let us now recapitulate what we have said, and set out, definitely and in order, the problems we have to consider in the first part of this book. We began with a brief analysis of the appearance of the world to the savage, and with his explanation of its meaning as the manifestation of the power of personal beings — eventually, of one personal being. We next summarised the attempts of philosophers to reach an explanation of the same phenomena, and noticed the reasons for the failure of their various cosmogonies. We saw how the philosophical concep- tion tended more and more to approximate to that which originated spontaneously in the savage mind. Summary 33 And we may remark, in passing, on the parallelism of this fact with the instinctive phenomena in animals, and especially in animal colonies, and the similar tool-making and social systems that have arisen among men, largely as the outcome of reason. The hymenopteran colony achieves the physiological, even economic division of labour by instinct, the human colony initiates, or at any rate extends, it as the result of intelhgent consideration of economic conditions. We then noticed that in each of the three great sciences — those of the spirit, the mind and the body — there was an antinomy, or if we prefer to call it so, a pair of correlated opposites, which underlay them. For the spirit there is the doctrine of immanence and transcendence; for the mind, of multipHcity and unity; and for the body, of determinism and freedom. As transcendence is to immanence, so is unity to multipHcity, and so is freedom to the complex relationships of determination. This, which is apparently the result of viewing the whole of each one of the three aspects of Reahty from the point of view of reason alone, must make us pause to wonder whether the rational method is ade- quate for an understanding of any one of these aspects. If it is not, what m^ethod are we to substitute, and what bearing have these antinomies on the experience of personal religion? It is with an attempt to answer these two questions that the present volume deals. CHAPTER II SOME ASPECTS OF THE IDEA OF CONTINUITY Bacon, writing of Atheism, says wisely, "while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate, and Hnked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity." And, though Paley and his fellows, and all their works, may be to some of to-day anathema, as they seek, and find, the activity of God rather in the realm of time and progress than in space and order, yet the words I have quoted retain all their original force and truth. We still find God revealed in the unity of the Cosmos ; only, because the ideas of process and immanence have taken such deep root, we find Him manifested in the serial continuity of evolving life, rather than in the mosaic pattern that made the glowing beauty of the deists' world. For those who realise something of the meaning of Divine Immanence, continuity — serial progress — must enter largely into the conception of Unity, if Serial Continuity 35 they see unity in the cosmos at all. Immanence in an evolving world inevitably suggests some intimate relation between the Divine Spirit and the Process which gives It freer expression in the world. The question is, how far can this apparent relation itself be relied on as an index of ReaHty ? If we are going to consider the great contradictions presented to the whole being of a man as he tries to form a mind-model of Reality — contradictions which may, and I believe do, owe their existence to the conditions under which we have learned to reason at all, as we shall see in the next chapter — ^it is necessary that we first examine the foundation on which our argument is based. This foundation is the doctrine of serial continuity. Our starting point is the belief that men are what they are because of a process of becoming through struggle. We claim that the evolutionary advance has been complete and unbroken. We claim that man is the corollary of life. We claim that the process by which he has come to be is one and the same throughout, and that its ruling characteristic, and its motive, has been throughout the achieval of freedom and control. To this it may be, and is, objected that, if develop- ment is response to environment, correlated with other factors, and if the process is uniform, and serial in nature, the environment itself must also be con- tinuous. It is then suggested that continuity here too 3—2 36 Knowledge of Discontinuity Perceptual; must be serial, and that it is impossible really to put spirit, land, and water, in series^. But surely the difficulty lies simply in this method of statement. I have shown in my previous book that the environ- ment must all be one. But I have never stated that it is directly serial, though, as we shall see, this is in a sense true, if we look on the creation as a kenosis or self-limitation of the freedom of God, and on progress in freedom as a process of removal of that Hmitation, in time. In short the word "serial" in this connection implies a time-factor in part of the environment, and this does exist, as we shall see. But apart from this, our object in the present chapter is to vindicate the conception of one continuum, the Great Environ- ment, in which discontinuity, and so series, is the result of imperfect freedom. Further, we shall see that the only part of our Environment of which we can have perceptual know- ledge is just that part in which freedom is absent — the material part. Of that which is free we can only have conceptual knowledge; and this doubtless lies at the root of this impossibility of a logical demonstra- tion of the existence of free-will. It is true to say that we can only perceive things, or the existence of things, by difference or relation. Perceptual knowledge is gained solely through relation. Only when a thing is outside ourself and we can feel, ^ Waggett, Church Quarterly Review, April 1914, p. 124. of Continuity^ Conceptual 37 see, hear, or smell it, are we able to perceive its existence. For instance we have no perceptual knowledge of the most solid thing in the world, the ether, compared with which gold and mercury are filmy cobwebs, or fleecy clouds ; a cubic inch of which weighs something hke 17,000,000 tons ; which is everywhere, permeating everything. We are utterly unconscious of its presence, simply because we have no means of watching it sHde past other bodies ; because we cannot perceive it in relation to anything else. This incredible truth illustrates the point I wish to make, that we can only perceive through relation. Yet we know a great deal about the ether, because we can see the results of strains in it when they begin to set what we call matter swinging. We can measure the size of the swings, and their frequency, and certain electro-magnetic effects, and so, indirectly, obtain a quantitative notion of the properties of the ether itself. Further, what we perceive leads us on to form concepts, or rather, we form concepts by working with the material that perception has given us, for which purpose memory, in the last resort, is called into action. For it is only through memory that we can compare and correlate, and these processes are necessarily prior to inductive reasoning. And so, in the case of the ether, we gain, conceptually, knowledge 38 Discontinuity and of a continuum of which we could never know even the existence by immediate perception. We move in this instance from the recognition of discontinuity to the conception of continuity. Looking at Hfe in the material plane, we see, then, that far the greatest part of our surroundings is a continuum, although we are perceptually unconscious of its existence. And it is only natural that this last should be the case if Bergson is right in his contention, so admirably argued, that matter is the instrument of action, the perceived present in a uniform duration^. This means, briefly, that the creature only perceives that part of its environment of which it can make use. Thus we see that the fact that we perceive discontinuity is no argument against the reahty of a continuum: it simply means that in our present stage we are able to make use of but a very small portion of the Reality which constitutes our environment. On the other hand, it may be urged that often, where we perceive a continuum, there is really dis- continuity. For example, water in a glass on the table seems to be at rest — a uniform fluid in static equiUbrium ; yet both uniformity and equilibrium are apparent only. SuflSciently minute particles of gam- boge, for instance, suspended into it, are seen under a powerful microscope to be in a state of unceasing movement, due to their bombardment by the ultra- ^ Matter and Memory. Continuity 39 microscopic molecules of the water, whose existence is suggested by many other trains of reasoning. Here, undoubtedly we perceive a continuum where conceptual reasoning showed first that there must be discontinuity, and experiment confirmed it. But in fact we are not deaUng with continuity in the same sense; the water is dehmited by definite surfaces; and since it is limited, and exists outside us, and we are able to perceive it in relation to ourselves, it is really through dis- continuity that we recognise its existence. Never- theless certain somewhat analogous facts have led men to investigate the continuity of the ether, and to find some reason for thinking that it too is discontinuous, though the theory of quanta is generally believed to be unsound when pressed to these lengths^. Sir Oliver Lodge, in his British Association address ^ The theory of quanta suggests that energy is discontinuous, thence, with some probability, that the ether is discontinuous. It is practically an atomic theory of energy. There seems to be no doubt that, when we are dealing with very minute particles such as electrons, the Newtonian system of mechanics does not hold good. "The fact seems to be that the old laws are not, so to speak, fine- grained enough to supply the whole truth with regard to small-scale phenomena." (Jeans, Report on Radiation and the Qtiantum-Theory, p. 3.) The basis of the new view is, that energy is shared by mole- cules among a few degrees of freedom only. But a molecule has many degrees of freedom. Hence it is suggested that energy is atomic and that atoms of energy are supplied to the major degrees of freedom only. The actual reasons which led to the formulation of the quantum-theory are however too complex and technical to be here. 40 Discontinuity and Continuity on Continuity, has shown strong reasons for disbehef in such a view. The most prevalent, and probably the correct, behef looks on matter as ultimately based on stresses or knots, in a continuous ether. To use Lodge's own illustration, a knot in a piece of string, though differing from the rest of the string, is none the less itself string. And because these knots are discontinuous, the phenomena associated with matter show similar discontinuities i. In fine, matter is discontinuous, and since matter is the only thing we can 'perceive — for we cannot perceive hght or other vibrations in the ether, but only their effect on matter — discontinuity seems to us to be an ultimate factor in all ReaHty ; whereas in the domain of physics, even, the universe is conceived as more hke an infinitely large india-rubber ball with a few scattered particles of less elastic rubber in it. Homogeneity is the rule, heterogeneity the exception. The theory of quanta will almost certainly be found to derive from discontinuities of the second order, that is, depending on the essentially atomistic structure of matter^, and it is anyhow due to the absence of * This view is specially characteristic of the British school of physicists : some contineotal workers have been inclined to dispute it (the Relativity School). 2 "For whatever is regarded as certain or imcertain about the ether, it must be granted as quite certain that it approaches more closely to a continuous medium than to a gas. If it has any grained structure at all the distance between adjacent grains must be enormously less than the 10~' cms, assumed for the corresponding Continuum must he One 41 freedom in matter that the phenomena appear. (See note on quanta.) To explain this last statement would need rather a technical examination, and it is only- introduced here for the sake of the interesting analogy it affords with a conclusion we shall reach later. The dynamic nature of all physical equihbrium is however clearly estabUshed by such discoveries as the molecular movements of H quids at rest; we are driven to divest our minds of statical conceptions; but on the larger scale, among evolving organisms, the idea is no new one, and the extension of the principle is no hindrance, but rather a gain. Thus far we have considered the concept of a spatial continuum, in which matter is a kind of flaw. What has this to do with any continuum we can correlate with theological tenets? First, let us remember that perception is neces- sarily and essentially spatial in its nature, because it is the guide of action, and action deals with matter. And so any conceived continuum derived from perceived realities is likely to be spatial also. Yet conception is really temporal in essence, though in so far as it distance in the gas." "The whole of the phenomena associated with the quantum-hypothesis could probably be given a consistent physical explanation if we were free to imagine radiation to be atomic in its structure" (Jeans, op. cit. pp. 6, 85). The whole matter is quite unsettled and many different views are held. But what seems certain is that, whatever the fate of the quantum-theory, belief in the continuity of the ether will remain unshaken. 42 Perceptual Knowledge at first of more is founded on experience it may express itself in terms of space. But memory, which plays a foremost part in the formation of concepts, is a spatial representation of successive states. We set memories of successive perceptions side by side in our mind, and reason as to the principles by which they may be correlated. Hence, although in thinking of material phenomena we form the concept of a spatial continuum, while in thinking of series we picture the continuum as durational; yet, if we are right in postulating a real continuum at all, it must at the last be one and the same. There cannot be two universal ultimate con- tinua. We must hence divest our minds of the idea that space and ordinary time are anything more than modes in which we regard one unity, according to the idea-complex with which we are engaged at the moment. All we can say is, that whether we think of things in terms that lead us to spatial or temporal concep- tions, we are in any case confronted with a con- tinuum. In the domain of physics we find matter known, and its properties studied, long ages before the reaHsa- tion dawned that the perception of such properties as the emission and reflection of light is really due to rhythmical stresses in an all-pervading ether, of which matter itself is but a modification. In the domain of biology, we find man improving breeds under domestication, long before he reahsed practical value than Conceptual 43 that he was producing a series in just the same way that nature had produced series, or knew that he was employing just the same interaction between the potentiaHties of variation in the animal, and the effective influence of new factors in the One environ- ment that had made the animal what it was, as she did ; long before he knew that there was one environ- ment, or that no development was possible at all except in response to it. But nowadays he sees that different parts of a pre-existing environment act suc- cessively on the evolving organism or the developing embryo ; and he inclines to the view that all environ- ment is one, at any rate as far as the physical side of evolution is concerned. In the domain of philosophy both subjective and objective idealism see unity at the back of all the manifold phenomena of perceived Keality. Bergson too, with his idea of matter as the perceived present of duration, while spirit is the progress in pure duration, gives at any rate the idea of a fundamental continuum, in which — and this is important — discontinuities are the result of imperfect freedom, imperfect progress. In other words, all lines of thought seem to lead independently to the conception of one continuum in which everything that is, exists. There are pluraHsts, there are duaHsts, there are materiahsts; in theology there have been gnostics ; with all these perceived dis- continuity seems to overshadow conceived continuity. 44 Discontinuity due to But we shall probably not be far wrong in regarding their hypotheses as simply one-sided views, stages in the solution of the problems of unity and multi- plicity. Such men are the Daltons of thought, believing in the fundamental atomicity of Beahty. And their work is of abiding value. As the physicist, reasoning about the kinetic theory of gases, postulates particles of perfect elasticity, without dimensions or attractions, in the first stages of his argument, and subsequently corrects these postulates in the hght of experimental facts ; so in all other domains of thought false assumptions have to be made in order to simphfy the issue and bring it within the grasp of the mind. All modes of conceptual thought, then, seem to lead eventually to the notion of a continuum, whether it be the one ether, the one environment, or the one ultimate reahty. Each leads to the making of an idol in its own image, since each idol has to serve the needs of its own worshippers. One is purely spatial, another part spatial, part durational. But throughout the history of human thought the main movement is away from the natural idea, based on perception, that discontinuity is the basal law. Discontinuities are flaws, whether they are found in the ether, or in the freedom of the creature's body or spirit. Even the existence of the world-stuff we call matter, is due to a Hmitation, constraint, or knotting of the ether. Freedom is synonymous with continuity, Hmitation Limitation of Freedom 45 with discontinuity. And this seems to be ultimately true, for freedom means the absence of any Hmiting factors, that is, the absence of all breaks or checks that could act as a basis of Hmitation, at any rate as far as space is concerned. Furthermore, the animal achieves greater freedom, in the wide sense of control over its surroundings, through the acquisition of memory — which means, the reaHsation of serial relation. For memory is an essential part of the mind-process which underlies the manufacture of tools. That is to say, the power of the creature to make tools of its surroundings goes hand in hand with the grasp of temporal continuity. Recognition of this enables man to reahse that continuity is the basis of the psyche, and to look on discreteness as the accident of the body, as the thing that limits the freedom of the spirit. Further reasoning leads to the idea of continua, what- ever the hne of thought pursued, and finally to the behef that there can be only one Reality, which must be continuous ; space and time being the reflections of this Reahty, much as different images of a pin between two mirrors, one vertical, the other horizontal, are seen in these different planes. And this idea of unity seems to represent an ultimate truth, for freedom means the absence of any limiting factors; that is, the absence of all breaks or checks that would act as the basis of hmitation. The idea of One Continuous Unity does not banish the realness of discontinuity, 46 The Cosmos Spiritual ; Discontinuity but the latter appears as a flaw in an otherwise perfect whole, and experience connects it with the idea of limitation. If the one Keahty is spiritual, the experience of God, then the limitation of freedom is a hmitation of God, and the serial nature of progress, as it appears to our minds, must mean for us the gradual perfecting of our knowledge of God as we pass to greater freedom. And greater freedom in the creation means more perfect union with the Creator, and so the progressive removal of His hmitation. Arguing from the point of view of the organism, in my previous book I showed reason for postulating One Environment. Is that environment itself Spirit, or an eject of Spirit? That, I take it, is the great problem underlying the question of serial continuity in the progress of man. If his spiritual progress is the result of development to a stage when new factors of the environment can act, when he can see the meaning of freedom, and appreciate its value and its significance, then he has simply moved from individual response to the stimuU resulting from the perception of discontinuity, to personal response to the stimuli of the conception of continuity and unity. Before, he responded to his material surroundings, which are not free ; now he responds to his spiritual surroundings, which are free. If this be true, there is value and meaning in the struggle dtie to Self-limitation of God 47 of past generations to cope with their environment, and to obtain greater control over that which limited them. If not, there is no meaning for man in the history of those past endeavours. There is no unity underlying the world as he sees it. The creature was made subject to vanity, by the whim, not the reason, of Him who subjected it. "Whatsoever the man called every creature that was the name thereof " ; they were given him for food, but he has no right to call them little brothers. If the cosmos is not Spirit, but an eject of Spirit, then there is not One Environment, but two at least, separate and different; and we must, it seems to me, return to deism, and believe that God made the world, gave men certain spiritual gifts, and stood aside to see how they would behave. I cannot hold any such behef. In the second edition of Evolution and the Need of Atonement I have dealt briefly with the idea of Creation as a kenosis, or limitation, of the freedom of the God- head, on the assumption of continuity, of the spiritual nature of all Reahty. It is clear that, if we believe that men have true freedom, however incomplete, God must be limited in relation to them. And true freedom can only be won in struggle with that which is not free, for the gift of freedom would constrain the recipient to accept it ; the gift of the power of winning freedom exercises no such constraint. Therefore there must be limitation in part of the experience of God. 48 The Kenosis- Aspect And since He gave the power of winning freedom, He must be self-limited. But as we reasoned concerning the fundamental nature of evolution, we saw that it was all tending towards freedom, finding expression in the greater control of matter. Freedom, as we know it, means the greater control of matter, but it means far more. The spirit of man is able altogether to transcend matter, in thought, grasping something of the idea of a continuum — whether it be the physicist with his knowledge of the ether, or the mystic with his knowledge of eternal life. And a little of this same power we find in ordinary men; for in all rehgions, in every ideal, the conception of true freedom is impHcit, if not realised in practice ; and the conception of absolute freedom contains in it the idea of con- tinuity — of an existence without obstacles, without discontinuities, moving forward smoothly to the desired end. Discontinuity is always correlated with the absence of freedom. Now if God, in creation, granted, not freedom, but the power of winning it — and this I believe is the only possibiHty, for freedom could not be given since the gift is in itself a constraining act^ — ^He must have introduced a limitation into that part of His experience which entered into relation with His evolving creation. And this limitation must exist as 1 Evolution and the Need of Atonement, 2nd ed., oh. vn. jxtsaim; and infra, ch. iv. of Creation 49 long as the creature was imperfect. Not longer, be it observed. For though personality is, we beheve, indestructible, yet there is an absolute standard to which the perfect personaKty must conform : the Nature of God. This hes at the bottom of the fundamental imperative of ethics. Only one type of perfect per- sonahty is possible, if the guidance of reason and of rehgion, if the idea of an ultimate spiritual Unity, have any value. Therefore there must be unity of experience between the perfected soul and the Creator, as far as the experience of the former reaches, while yet the persons remain distinct. I cannot dwell on this point here ; we shall return to it in a later chapter, but it may be well to observe in passing, that herein Hes one mode of escape from the dreadful oppression of sameness and inaction which mars for many the conception of Eternal Life. Where there is mutual relationship there is the basis of activity even with uni- formity of experience, and this is, I beheve, one of the truths enshrined in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Let us now return and apply the foregoing to the question of the reaUty of a serial relation between water, land, spirit, as successively active factors in the One Environment. Are we justified in saying that as the creature evolves it drifts on to a threshold "where new conditions, not of sun and air, but of supersensual influences, act on it." If the ideas of matter as a discontinuity — which M. 4 60 Progress from Perception implies something continuous — of progress as growth towards freedom, and of freedom as existence in a continuum, in any degree mirror the truth, surely we are justified. The Umited low-grade organism is only "conscious " of matter — that is, it only reacts to discontinuous stimuli of limited range. Not free itself, it cannot act as if it were free ; cannot, that is, perceive continuity and freedom around it. As long as it is bounded in its horizon by percepts, from the nature of the case it can know only what we call matter. But as freedom dawns and grows the creature becomes able to form concepts of something that is not so hampered, and so to understand something of continuity and freedom. In this, as we have said, it is guided by the realisation of series. And so the ideas of a man reach beyond his material surroundings, and he begins to know the meaning of Spirit, and to see that the path to freedom hes, not in dynamic equiUbrium with the ever recurring stimuli of matter, which are essentially discontinuous, but in relation with Spirit. He begins to develop in response to the spiritual environment, which he cannot perceive by his senses, but in which he yet knows himself to move. And as he progresses the hope that he will not vanish as a mist, but become united, yet not identified, with that in which he has his being, grows ever, through faith, towards certainty. to Conception 51 The laws of development are necessarily the same throughout, for the winning of freedom for himself, and the abohtion of the self-hmitation of the Godhead have always been the goal, and growing freedom means emergence from discontinuity into unity. In and through his own growth he reahses in himself the truth that Spirit is more real, and more potent than matter — a fact which the discovery of the power of suggestion and autosuggestion in the domain of therapeutics makes more clear every day^. And so he learns that matter, discontinuity, is phenomenal, temporal; that Spirit alone is eternal and complete. One question remains. Is the discontinuity real for God, or only for man? I suppose the answer must depend on the nature of the Eternal Conscious- ness, of which we can have but a dim notion, and that purely conceptual. But it seems that there must be two sides to the consciousness of God, at any rate as long as imperfect creatures exist. This idea is impUcit in the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation — the entrance of God into Time and Matter. In the Eternal, Simultaneous Consciousness of God, in His Transcendent Consciousness that is, one can conceive that He sees already the end; that in His Eternal Present man is free, and His Own self-Umitation has ^ Compare for instance, to take only one case, the utterly different health of the two dissociated personalities of Miss Beauchamp and Sally. Moreton Prince, The Dissociation of a Personality. 4—2 52 Transcendence and Immamence of God no real existence. But in His temporal or immanent nature He too is in the process of becoming; He too is limited ; He too knows the pain of discontinuity. Dualism becomes true for God in so far as he is Imma- nent, but for His Transcendent nature there is but one Reality, yet a Reality ever being added to in the mutual relationships of personahty, while ever complete. A fuller consideration of this last matter will be attempted in a later chapter, when we consider the relation between the Immanent and Transcendent aspects of Godhead. It is all far beyond reason, and the spirit can only have visions of it in moments of exaltation, as of a landscape flashing fitfully into sight in the gleam of the lightning. For we are still fettered to perception for the greater part of our knowledge, and perceptually we can only know that which affects our senses by relation or discontinuity. But we can, and do, conceive the idea of a continuum, and this last is but higher knowledge. Both are true knowledge, of the same type, but one we achieve through the senses of our lower animal nature, the other by the recognition of the ultimate meaning of the environment that is all about us. The discon- tinuity is real, but it exists only in relation to us and to the self-limited side of God which, in our imperfection, we are able to apprehend. It is the sign and seal of imperfection, and because of this, it is the sign and seal of God's love for us, since the Sin 53 imperfection is an expression of the self-limitation of God, for the sake of the freedom that is to be in us. ReaHsing all this, however dimly, by whatsoever road the truth comes home to us, we unite more and more with the Great Unity. Eternal Hfe is the com- pletion of the continuum, not through extinction or absorption of the ego, but in the union of perfect mutual experience. And because the whole process of development is one, sin is, as we have claimed^, continuous in origin with the failure of the lower animals to achieve freedom ; with their acceptance of dynamic equihbrium. But in nature it is utterly different, for it is based not on action, on the acceptance of conditions perceptually known and too completely trusted, but on the rejection of the idea of freedom and progress conceived in the soul. It is in effect the disavowal of the sacramental nature of life. Those who say let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die, eat and drink judgment unto themselves. Sin is knowledge rej ected. The child may do wrong and yet not sin. We act on this beUef every day. And the animal may fail, and yet not sin. It is knowledge, not change of outward circum- stances, that makes sin. If matter is spirit limited; if freedom is the goal of creation; then we may, we must, hold that the environment is one, and that failure and sin are ^ Evolution and the Need of Atonement. 64 Summary phylogenetically the same, however different they may be in their own nature. The break comes with the passage from perception to conception. It is in the creature, not in his surroundings, that we must look for the real significance of sin and guilt. Let us now sum up the somewhat diffuse argument which we have briefly stated. All Hues of thought suggest, in the long run, a fundamental continuum which cannot be perceived, but only conceived. In this continuum are discontinuities, which constitute the basis of perception. For the physicist there is the discontinuity in the ether, which constitutes matter. For the metaphysician there is apparent multiphcity with one underlying Reahty, only conceived by abstract thought. For the biologist there is one environment, of which successive parts come into play as the organism develops, giving rise to a fictitious mirage of discontinuity. For the theologian there is sin and there is pain in a world that has come to be through the will of God. But matter is a Hmitation of the degrees of freedom of the ether, according to the physicist. Apparent duahsm is the result of imperfect apprehension of Reality, according to the idealist. The serial nature of evolutionary progress leads the biologist to believe in the existence of an environment-sum; and he sees that with progress comes greater freedom for the creature. True, he means something different Summary 55 from the physicist when he talks of freedom, but nevertheless both mean the absence of constraining factors, and their different dejS.nitions are conditioned by their different points of view. Finally, sin is due to the hmited spiritual under- standing of man, according to the theologian, since it is the voluntary acceptance of imperfection, the voluntary refusal to progress, the determination to "take the cash in hand and waive the rest" as too uncertain, too problematic — too unpleasant in the winning. In each instance the perceived discontinuity may be said to result from lack of freedom, in the sense of the defect or absence of the property of unconstrained- ness. And in each, the idea of a continuum is the final end reached by the exercise of the highest faculties of conceptual reason. In the systems of thought which concern the progress of man, the idea of a durational continuity plays a part; in that which deals with matter only, qua matter, the continuum appears spatial. But spatial conceptions in the long run are found to be based on duration, since memory enters into their formation. In a series, mathematical for instance, each number may be taken as a definite thing, but its properties are chiefly derived from its relation to the other members of the series. So too, in the animal kingdom, each organism derives its real importance 66 Conclusion from being viewed, teleologically, as a member of a series. On the convergence of all these trains of thought we may base our belief in the serial connection of all the phenomena of progress — a series which repre- sents growth in freedom. Phenomenal discontinuity we may look on as evidence of lack of freedom, and we must regard all the evidence which points towards a fundamental continuum, of howsoever various nature, as a cogent argument for the real basis of such belief. That the continua differ, may be regarded as the natural consequence of a limited purview inherent in the particular mode of thought. If there is one continuum, it must be spirit ; meta- physically this statement needs no elaboration. Our answer to the question Can spirit, land, and water be placed in series? is this. They can, in the sense that all matter is a limitation of spirit, which limitation is in process of being removed. We shall see in later chapters how far-reaching in its influence on our thought this answer must be. If this line of argument is justified, dualism is phenomenally real, and represents a true Hmitation of Spirit, or God, in relation to the limited freedom of the creature. And unity will only be achieved when the evolving spirit of man has become wholly assimilated to, though never to be absorbed in, the Spirit of Divine love. When that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away. CHAPTER III SOME ASPECTS OF UNITY AND MULTIPLICITY IN LIVING MATTER In the last chapter we discussed the problem of unity and multiplicity in the environment of man. We saw that as far as perceptual knowledge is con- cerned, multiplicity must be the basal fact, since perception is dependent on matter, and matter is discontinuous. Nevertheless we found that, as soon as self-consciousness appears, with all the powers of memory and conceptual thought that accompany it, the idea of continuity takes a higher and higher place. And continuity is closely linked with unity, though it may be complicated by the existence ol a time-factor, as in a durational series. We turn now to the problem of unity and multi- plicity in the organism itself, in order to find, among other things, the clue to the fact above stated that because perception is based on the discontinuity of matter, the problem of unity and multiplicity must arise, as soon as conceptual thought corner into 68 Physiological Division of Labour existence. This clue we shall find in the material basis of thought, the brain. The tendency of individuals to form groups, or what we may almost call individuals of the second degree, is found throughout the animal kingdom, even amongst the Protozoa, the most primitive of all free- living animals, and the simplest. These consist of a single cell, which is differentiated in the higher members of the group so as to perform the various functions of the body extremely efficiently. Thus at the very outset we find a tendency in the single cell for the parts to group for the purpose of more efficient functioning. We nearly always find a nucleus, a digestive region, and a contractile region ; and generally an excretory region. And doubtless the analysis could be pushed much further were our knowledge sufficient. No doubt there is technically some question as to the justification of applying the term cell to these organisms at all, but since phylogenetically the true cell is descended from a protozoon, though perhaps a subdivided one, for our purpose we may use the term a Uttle loosely without invalidating our argu- ment. In many cases such unicellular individuals congre- gate together to form a colony; later they specialise on one function or another ; and so arises that physio- logical division of labour which is carried to such perfection in the body of the higher Vertebrates. based on the Impulse towards Unity 59 At first the units of the colony can be separated by mechanical means without suffering much injury, and they are then able to lead an independent life, for each cell is still capable of performing all the vital functions. Among the Protozoa the formation of colonies is thus seen to be a convenience rather than an immediate necessity. In the simple Sponges the cell-units will still live quite successfully when they are isolated, at any rate for a time, but they tend to aggregate again, and by gradual stages, probably reproducing the historical development of the colony, they re-form a colony similar to that destroyed. This can only occur, of course, if all the types of cell that existed in the original organism are present. On the other hand if the cells are separated and the particular type that line the passages and chambers of the sponge, — the collar-cells, possessing retractile collars and long, whip-hke processes, — collected together, these too evince the same tendency to group, and they form colonies exactly resembling no known organism, yet thriving together, for a time at least, as an animal bearing a striking likeness to several well-known forms. Here there seems to be in the first case a kind of impulse towards unity in the whole, generated perhaps by physical contact, perhaps by chemical stimuh, that makes the cells creep into their allotted places, where they may best perform their parts, and 60 Regeneration exemplifies in the second case the primaeval stimulus that led to the formation of a colony without any differentiation of function seems to reassert itself. Higher in the scale we find the same thing at work. At first the whole animal is able to regenerate the particular part that has been lost or injured; there is again a sort of unity in the whole that realises the interrelations of the parts. But as the parts become more and more specialised, this power of regeneration becomes limited to cells of the same type as those which have been destroyed; in the human being nerve-cells only can regenerate nerve-cells, muscle cells only, muscle-cells; and this to a limited degree. There has been so much speciaHsation that adaptability is lost. The latent powers have, so to speak, been dealt out among the tissues at a very early stage of development, and it is only the cells that are formed by the first few divisions which take place after fertilisation, that are able to regenerate the whole. But even among human beings, if the fertilised egg, after its first division, has its two daughter-cells accidentally but completely separated, each of these, instead of giving rise to half a child, gives rise to a whole one, and we have a case of what are called similar, or PhiHppine twins, alike in sex, and indeed so like in every way, mentally as well as physically, as to be almost indistinguishable^. 1 Cf. Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, pp. 165 seqq. the same Impulse 61 Thus throughout the animal kingdom — and indeed the vegetable kingdom too — we find a tendency towards aggregation and interdependence among indi- vidual cells, which tend more and more to lose their power of independent existence — of performing all the functions of a primitive living organism them- selves; though even in man some cells, such as the white blood-corpuscles, are more or less free ; and the first cells of the embryo have always latent in them the powers needed for the production of a complete whole. But when we look deeper, still stranger things appear. In the case of the simple sponge we saw that the cells, even when forcibly separated, seem to retain some sort of corporate instinct ; for left together, each cell, or rather each type of cell, migrates to the place in the whole formless heap which is suitable for the performance of its particular function, and so the ground-plan of a new sponge is laid down. We may attribute the motions to physico-chemical causes ; yet if we see in the phenomenon nothing but such causes we are landed in a difficulty when we turn to higher grades of colonial organisms, and survey the ants and termites, and the social bees and wasps. For here we have a colony where the social instinct — ^in the strict sense of the word — is carried to its highest manifestation. When the colony is regarded as a whole it is seen to possess something which one is 62 The Impulse to Unity almost inclined to call a common mind^. In these colonies the component cells are aggregated into the groups we term individuals, which are yet themselves only complex units, often incapable of the simplest forms of what we may call, or rather miscall, rational action when they are separated from the hive and called upon to perform any action or to respond to any stimulus, except the one for which they had covenanted in their corporate life. Lord Avebury's experiments, in which he enclosed a bee in a long glass bell-jar lying on its side with the closed end towards a window, and the open one towards the room, illustrate this. The bee in some cases failed to get out at all, in others it only got out after a considerable interval of time. Flies placed in the jar got out at once. It must, however, be remembered that bees exhibit much more marked positive phototaxis than flies ; and this fact in some degree vitiates the experi- ment; though other experiments in trying to induce bees and ants to find their way under abnormal condi- tions strongly confirm the view that colonial species have far less of what we may call intelligence — meaning simply the power of reaction to unaccustomed stimuli — than soHtary-living species 2. Yet the colony as a whole performs marvels of architecture, of legislation, ^ Cf. Trotter's Herd-Instinct, and the discussion of it at the end of this chapter. * Cf. Lubbock, AntSf Bees, and Wasps, p. 278 et passim. in Insect Colonies 63 of farming (as in the cultivation of fungi, and the care of flocks of Aphides), of subjugation and slave- labour; even of rational coping with the unexpected, as when, the Queen Bee being killed, the nurses rear a new queen by enlarging the cell and altering the food of some other grub, which would else have become an ordinary worker, or in the experiment of training an ant to use a section-Ufter presented to it as a hft or elevator for the purpose of crossing the water to an artificial island-nest^. True, as far as we know, where several individuals are concerned in some activity they frequently confer together, stroking each other with their antennae, before they perform any act out of the common run of their daily round, so that physical contact is generally needed for inter- communication ^ ; though sometimes they appear to be able to communicate at a distance by signs, such as posture, movements of the jaws, and the hke; but the important fact remains that they do things, as a colony, that are utterly beyond any individual in the colony. Their corporate instinct is far higher than their individual instinct, and seems often to be rational if we judge merely by results. In other * Cf. W. M. Wheeler, Anta (Columbia University Biological Series, vol. ix. ch. xxx.), where a fascinating description of the plastic behaviour of ants wiU be found, including a careful analysis of the "memory" of ants, as shown in their docility. 2 Cf. Lubbock, Ants, Bees, and Wasps. 64 Dependerice of the Unit words, we have here a case of aggregation of units to form an individual whose component parts preserve a considerable measure of spatial independence; an instance differing in degree rather than in kind, on the one hand from the primitive colonies we first con- sidered, and on the other hand from the connected wholly dependent units that go to make up the colony we call a man. In a sense it is the hive or the ant-hill that is the individual — the whole colony with its protective husk — not the ant or the bee. We must not lose sight, however, of the fact that what is gained in a higher degree by the community is lost by the individual unit. No single hive bee is capable of such varied activities as the solitary bee. In the formation of a state, of an individual of the second degree, the unit has lost its power of independent life. And this is always the case. Even among men the subdivision of labour makes each more and more dependent on other, less and less capable of successful solitary existence. First the family, then the tribe, then the nation, then the empire, then perhaps the universal brotherhood^. Mr Norman Angell and his precursor Blioch have shown from a different point of view how much more closely nation and nation are already bound together than most men have any 1 Trotter {Sociological Review, 1908 and 1909) would put the family as a secondary phenomenon, the original solidarity occurring in the undifferentiated horde {v. infra Note). on the Colony 65 idea of. Bergson has expressed the universal tendency of Hving matter thus : " Life . . . manifests a search for individuahty, as if it strove to constitute systems naturally isolated, naturally closed^." Parasitism, and commensahsm or association — two organisms, differing even as widely as plant and animal, yet living together in intimate physical relation; as do the alga and the fungus that together make up the lichen ; the alga that is symbiotic with certain corals; or the moth that fertilises the Yucca-tree, and lays its eggs in the ovary of the tree, to feed on some of the plant-seeds, plant and animal ahke speciaHsing themselves for their common ends — these are but more illustrations of the tendency of living things to form closed systems — to form complex individuals. Indeed throughout the whole realm of matter, inanimate as well as animate, there is this same tendency towards the formation of closed systems. All this gives much food for thought to the theo- logian. At first sight it is simply bewildering. The old, rough criteria of individuality by which we are accustomed to guide our thought are swept rudely away, and we seem to be left with the vague idea that we are individuals, and yet cannot deny a measure of the same privilege to each component cell in our bodies, if we are to be consistent; for an amoebocyte^ * Creative Evolution, p. 15. 2 White blood corpuscle. M. 5 66 The Problem of Individuality is capable of a considerable measure of independence, even if a nerve cell is not, and the series connecting them is complete. So too we must not deny individuality to the hive of bees, or to the lichen. And if the hive of bees is one individual, what of the community of men? We know something of the psychology of crowds: we know that the crowd has powers, and that it acts as a whole, and that these powers are different from the powers of any of the men who compose it, while its actions are such as commend themselves, often, to no single individual present. We know something of telepathy, and of corporate prayer. We are one and all affected in some measure, consciously or unconsciously, by the pluralistic HegeHanism that would make God out of the corporate unity of finite inteUigences — a system that is, in a sense, the metaphysical statement of the facts of nature we have just outlined. We have heard of the Neuter Brahma, the Essence of Things, energising Itself as Brahma, the Creator, of whom all that exists is a manifestation, perishable as a dream, yet one\ and the fantastic myth acquires a new significance as we realise that all through the material world the many collect together to form the one. We begin to wonder if after all men too are just isolated groups of cells, possessing the sem- blance of independence, yet really only parts of an individual that is in process of becoming, and is itself Huxley and Garrod Q7 the dream of the Red King — a King who is not a person, but the impersonal Essence of Things. This problem of IndividuaHty in the Animal Kingdom is dealt with in a very fascinating manner by Mr JuUan Huxley in a Uttle book which bears these words as its title, and details of almost all the instances above quoted, and many more, are there fully set forth. We owe a debt of gratitude to this writer for his reasoned and careful correlation of facts well known to the Zoologist, but quite unknown to the outside world, and for his truly philosophical interpretation of them ; even though, as we shall see, we are unable to follow him altogether. Some years earher appeared a book, by Miss E. K. Garrod, entitled The Unit of Strife, in which the same Hne of thought is pursued further, rather on social and pohtical lines, though there is a strong rehgious element interwoven with the argument. But this book, suggestive though it is, is again vitiated, though in a less degree, by the same fallacy that underlies the latter part of Mr Huxley's work. The main point brought out by both writers is, that physical unity is by no means necessary for the individual. Its component parts may lead lives largely independent of each other, wandering freely and at large, and reacting to the stimuli of the world without any direct reference to the organism as a whole, at any rate in minor affairs. Just as many of the commonest reactions of the human body to external &— 2 68 Huxley's Definition stimuli are carried out through reflexes, without reference to the coordinating centre or brain of the man, so many of the simple problems of existence are faced by the individual bee or the individual amoebocyte. Still further, as we have seen, this divided unity may exist between creatures so dissimilar as plants and animals. Cooperation seems to be the criterion of individuaUty. Mr Huxley makes out a strong case for his definition, that: The individual must have heterogeneous parts, whose function only gains full significance when considered in relation to the whole; it must have some independence of the forces of inorganic nature; and it must work, and work after such a fashion that it, or a new individual formed from part of its substance, continues able to work in the same way. As we have seen, such a definition includes a colony or tribe of men. This is one of the reasons that make an examination of this line of thought an absolutely indispensable preliminary to a consideration of the Spiritual Life from an evolutionary stand- point, for we are at once faced with the question: Is our behef in immortahty but a reflection of the vicarious immortahty enjoyed by every colony; by the sponge and the volvox, and by the hive of bees; is it merely a tribal consciousness of continuity? And again, is our behef in a God really of the same nature as the behef of the bee that there is a hive of Individuality 69 in which he in very truth lives and moves and has his being? To attribute any conscious thought of this kind to the bee is of course not permissible; but the knowledge which it has unconsciously, may not we have consciously? With the biological reasons for concluding that the existence of God gives the only reasonable explanation of certain sides of man's nature I have dealt elsewhere, though from rather a different aspect of the evolutionary problem i, and it is only necessary here to state the conclusion arrived at, namely, that the appearance of spiritual phenomena necessitates the postulation of a Spiritual Environment, and the phenomenon of Personality determines the nature of this Environment as Personal. In other words, the Laws of Evolution point clearly to the existence of God. And more, the nature of human personaHty points towards its own immortahty. So for the present we may dismiss the second question, though we shall have more to say on the subject of immortality later on. Before we can answer the first, a searching examination of the nature of the process of aggregation which we have been considering is obviously needed, and to that we must now proceed. First of all, what is the motive force that impels aggregation? It is, as Mr Huxley points out, but a special case of the general law formulated by Bergson, ^ Evolution and the Need of Atonement^ ch. i. 70 Instinct and that the organism is always striving to advance in indetermination by the process of compelling more and more matter to become subservient to it, through more and more efficient tool-making^. Matter com- mandeered enlarges the sphere of action of the organism, and, before the rational consciousness is evolved, rendering conscious tool-making possible, one of the means adopted towards this end is the formation of groups of individuals, generally, but not always, in protoplasmic continuity with one another. The other chief means is the far more familiar one of the instinctive or unconscious tool-making of a unit organism — the caddis that makes for itself a house, or the bower- bird that constructs a pleasance of fruit and flowers and a theatre in the midst for the enjoyment of his future mate. And we have seen elsewhere that the conscious tool-making of man is but a manifestation of the same phenomenon. Between the unconscious and the conscious process, however, Bergson draws this clear distinction : Instinct perfected is a faculty of using and even of constructing organised instruments ; intelligence perfected is the faculty of making and using unorganised instruments 2. 1 Naturally, in creatures which derive their sustenance from plants, the impulse towards the formation of colonies will have fuller effect than in carnivorous ones. The food of the latter is comparatively scarce, and no district could supply large colonies of them for any length of time. Carnivorous colonies or herds will be rare, and where they exist they must generally be migratory. ^ Creative Evolution^ p. 147. Intelligence 71 Thus the activities of a hive of bees, or the spatial sense that urges the disintegrated sponge to re-form its old structure, are to be contrasted with the chipping of flints by primitive man, done with the reasoned idea that he can thus form a sharp instrument for offence, for defence, or for domestic purposes. With the interpenetration of instinct and intelHgence — for, as Bergson points out, the two are rarely if ever exclusively present — we need not deal here. What we have to reahse is that both the one and the other are the means adopted by the evolving creature for widening and rendering more inclusive the range of its influence over matter; and that the organism tends to move in one or other of two directions, towards pure instinct or pure intelligence, though the two paths are not mutually exclusive, at any rate in the earlier stages, and though the one certainly passes over into the other by gradual transition. The corporate instinct that underlies the formation of colonies in bees and the like is clearly an instance of advance in indetermination by the formation of a larger closed system; and it is probably based on pure instinct. And even where there is the absence of organic continuity between the units, there is still physiological division of labour. Each unit has its role, and is organically differentiated for the better performance of its part. On the other hand, in so far as the unit is capable 72 Intelligence based on the Possession of acting as an independent entity, we may look on it as an individual. The units are tending to lose their individuahty in the formation of a closed system, of larger size and of activities wider than those possible for a single unit, but they may still retain some measure of it. Among the insects we see the highest develop- ment of instinct, and correlated with it we find the tendency to form aggregate individuals raised to its highest manifestation. But the price must be paid. By the very discreteness of the composite the possi- bility of development of the intellect is negatived. At first it is not easy to see that this is so. Why, it may be asked, if corporate instinct is possible, and actualised in fact, is corporate intelligence to be ruled out? The answer is, that intelligence is really the recognition of relation, and the power of correlation. Cause and effect, the abstract suggestion of form, the power of inferential reasoning, these belong to intelligence. And these demand a centre of correlation to which all problems may be referred, and which in its turn shall direct the units or organs towards the suitable mode of action^. In all the conscious beings we know, beings, that is, whose actions are ruled in any degree by intelHgence, this function is discharged by the central nervous 1 The relegation to a reflex centre of reactions to stimuli which are constantly repeated, as a secondary process, in no way afifects the main problem. of a Central Nervous System 73 system; and, as far as we know, it is in such forms alone — individuals consisting of an aggregate in physical continuity, and regulated by a controlHng mechanism — that even the rudiments of self-consciousness appear. We must not forget, however, as Miss Garrod points out, that in the State certain individuals by nature most suited to the occupation have the province of thought delegated to them by common consent, others the pro- vince of invention, others the province of government. In other words, there is at least a close analogy between this fact, and the fact that in the unit certain cells are set aside for the purposes of regulation and sensa- tion — the nerve-cells. The analogy is a true and valuable one, though it again can be pressed too far, and this, combined with a sUght inexactitude of thought, is largely responsible for the fallacy that invaUdates the two books we have referred to. The essential point, which has escaped the notice of Huxley and Garrod is, that if there is to he correlating power, the conscious individual itself must first he as completely correlated as possible, otherwise correlation could have no reahsed meaning for it. If the organism is to be rational, that is, if it is to be conscious of the relation of cause and effect outside itself, it must first be aware of the relation of cause and effect within itself; for it is only after the realisation that such and such a voKtion issues in such and such an action, that the reahsation can come that a certain cause 74 Corporate Consciousness; Instinct; will produce a certain effect in the world without. The recognition of relation without must be preceded by the recognition of relation within. Afterwards memory may play its part, but experience must precede memory, and inward experience must precede outward in this matter. We shall proceed immediately to the elaboration of this point, but meanwhile we shall not be far wrong if we say that the discrete composite organism, such as a hive of bees, while it evidently allows the development of instinct to a high pitch, at the same time achieving a considerable measure of indetermination by the mere fact of its colonial nature, and increasing the sphere of its activity by means of the relative independence of its members, yet parts once for all with the possibiHty of progress into the realms of self-consciousness and volition. The whole question of corporate consciousness, whether instinctive or rational, is intimately bound up with the question of the relation of mind with matter. Suffice it here to say that, if we accept, as men are being more and more driven to accept, the existence of some embryonic rudiment of conscious- ness in all life, which is always striving towards self- realisation and self-expression; something that is precipitated in matter, yet is not of the nature of matter and appears to be acquiring a measure of independence of it ; something that conditions progress, call it what you will — elan vital, spirit, continued and Ratioiial Consciousness 76 responsiveness to environment; there is no reason for insisting that it is so intimately bound, in actual material union, to the material basis on which it works. We may apply this suggestion in all cases of corporate consciousness into which no element of reason enters. It seems strange perhaps that a corporate consciousness should be possible even in the domain of instinct, in cases where there is so much mutual independence, but here we are certain of our fact ; as we are also in the case of the instinct, for it is not mind, that animates a human crowd. Interesting also, in this connection, is the herd-instinct described by Trotter^, which deter- mines the views of classes and nations on such matters as probity, honour, purity, justice, and all behefs and opinions which are not the outcome of special knowledge. The whole question of the struggle between herd-instincts and individual reason is admirably though briefly dealt with in Hart's Psycho- logy of Insanity. When however we try to apply the same thought in the case of the intellect, that is, of the result of reasoned application of the idea of relation, the case is different, as we have seen. It is hard to conceive of conditions that could lead to the evolution of intellect where the organism was not aware within itself of the functioning of its own governing system as a some- thing capable of repeated voHtions issuing regularly 1 Sociological Review, 1908 and 1909. 76 Impossibility of Corporate Intellect and certainly in the desired action. And, as we have said, this appears to be possible only where there is close interdependence of parts by physical con- tinuity, the whole being governed by a central system of coordination. So far, then, we have arrived at the idea of corporate instinct, able to translate itself into terms of action — a practical fact — and the idea that corporate intel- lect is impossible. The conclusions of generations of individuals capable of understanding their experience and generalising from it after free discussion of its universality and importance, may, and do, become instinctive; for Nature is an economical Dame, who lets nothing run to waste needlessly. But even in the cases where herd-instinct and race-consciousness seem based on reason, the basis is the reason of indi- viduals, not of race. We have noticed elsewhere another aspect of the reason for this^. It is this : that the individuals, not the race, that pass on the vital flame ; it is in the individuals — i.e. the units — that freedom primarily exists ; and it is the individuals that become persons. Race freedom and group freedom, race consciousness and group consciousness can never go far, and that be- cause race personahty and group personaHty are things unthinkable. The attributes of personahty — love, reciprocativeness, volition, purpose, moral judgments ^ Evolution and the Need of Atonement, 2nd ed. p. 130. Antagonism of Communities 77 — all point to its impossibility, for each depends ulti- mately on the reahsation of relation, and we have seen that this realisation can only be evolved where there is a central nervous system to serve as a basis of correlating activity. At the same time it is worthy of notice that this particular argument cannot logically be apphed when once the personality has been evolved. We have seen that instinct seems in some degree to be independent of physical contiguity, and it is conceivable that intelligence, and even personality, once they are present, might also have some similar measure of independence. This is pure speculation, however, for which there is little or no evidence. What cannot be too strongly insisted upon is that they could not appear at all in the first instance without physical continuity throughout the system. Another point that requires notice before we begin to draw our conclusions is, that throughout the animal kingdom there is antagonism between individuals : either direct warfare, or the antagonism that results from the struggle for existence ; and this, whether the individual is a unit or a commimity. The formation of communities is only a means towards the more effectual coping with environmental conditions. When we turn to man we see the same thing at work. Here too there is the banding together into communities for purposes of subdivision of labour. 78 Tribal Instinct of defence, and of offence. Here too communities are antagonistic. Here too we see the same tendency towards the formation of larger and larger communities at work. Here too we see the presence of race con- sciousness and tribal consciousness — the formation of an aggregated individual. Again the consciousness of the group is clearly of the nature of instinct: the psychology of crowds is certainly not reasoned in its manifestations. We must, however, ourselves be on our guard about a piece of loose thinking, which is not altogether avoided by the writers we have mentioned, though we have already drawn attention to it. The organised activities of a nation or industry are quite clearly of a totally different kind from those of an animal colony. They are the result of reasoned correlation of cause and effect on the part of intelHgent individuals. True, we have indications of instinctive individuality in crowds as a whole, similar to that in colonial animals. But in regard to this two points are noteworthy; first, that the manifestation of tribal instinct seems to be on the wane ; it is far more marked in primitive tribes than it is in a civilised community (though this is perhaps not true of the special forms considered by Trotter) ; and second, that such individuality as a crowd possesses is of a lower order altogether than that of any unit in it. An angry mob will go to lengths that no man in it would dream of approving. Development of Ethics 79 The units are here urged by an instinct that impels them to action that they really disapprove of with the whole of their individual personaUty. Another result of the community Hfe of rational, self-conscious beings is the appearance of an ethical standard. Whatever be the ultimate origin and basis of ethics, whatever the real meaning and authority of its sanctions, it is undoubtedly a fact that the immediate origin and the form of growth of its manifestations are to be found in the utilitarian aspect of it in the com- munity^. And here again we find ourselves confronted with something that has originated in the faculty of relation, of recognising and making use of cause and effect, that is characteristic of inteUigence and is there- fore logical. It is because remembered experience has taught that certain things are harmful to the com- munity, as well as because of the knowledge that along this path Ues the road to completer self-realisation, that ethics becomes a factor in evolution. In other words, here again we have something that appears only as a phenomenon attendant on community life, but which is yet by no means the expression of a single corporate mind in the community; for we find that an ethical sense is apparently developed in sohtary animals as soon as they come into contact with human beings^ — 1 Vide p. 80. * Apparently, because it may be that the manifestations are not due to a true ethipal sense at all, but are rather a direct response 80 Community-Law witness a dog — and perhaps even when circumstances throw them much into contact with another animal of the same species. This is not at all of the kind or order of the community-consciousness. True, the unit in the hymenopteran community which does not fulfil its allotted part is in some cases ignominiously expelled or stung to death, but we have no evidence whatever for bringing this fact into Hne with the ethical code of even the most primitive community of rational beings, ex- cept in so far as we have the same function performed. There is certainly no moral sense in the unit insects, or in the community as a whole, that the lazy or impotent one is wronging the community; there is present simply the same corporate sense that leads to the extrusion of any cell or group of cells from any colony when that cell or group becomes, for the purposes of the whole, dead ; that is, when it is no longer able to perform its allotted function. The unfortunate tendency of modern pseudo-natural- historical literature is to impute ethical and rational significance to actions that are purely instinctive. If an elementary idea of morals is indicated at all in the animal community it is only among the highest forms which already show signs of real intelHgence, to stimulus. A dog who has done something wrong shows it in every line of his body; but it may be merely the memory of past scolding or beating that induces the attitude of penitence (which in the first instance was produced by the punishment) by suggestion and association. Importance of Central Nervous System 81 e.g. rooks and beavers. It is stated that rooks and Indian crows at all events hold a parHament to discuss the conduct of the criminal before punishing him. Ethics is essentially a thing characteristic of a ferson, for it is based on the recognition of a Good, and a Good is always an End, and an End has only meaning in relation to a person. This is one of the reasons for believing that any purely evolutionary account of the appearance of a moral sense, with no reference to, or ultimate sanction in, an absolute standard, must fall to the ground. The practical standard may be, and is, determined by utihty, and is hence characteristic of community life, and subject to evolution. The ultimate demand of the moral imperative is personal, and is founded on the nature of Reality. The recognition of moral good is one of the deep-seated attributes of personahty; the form which moral good assumes is largely determined by the needs, and progressive complexity of relation, in the community. Let us again insist on the fact that reason and personahty can only appear in individuals possessing a central nervous system, with complete, or at least marked, control of the organic parts. In other words, we must insist on the truth of the strangely anomalous yet suggestive statement that indetermination, in the sense of reasoned voluntary action, can only arise where in the organism itself there is as complete a certainty M. 6 82 Animal Societies hosed 07i Instinct; of determinate interaction of the parts as possible^. Let us now review what we have said, and follow out the two threads that we have found in our sUght survey of the life of communities. We must wholly endorse Mr Huxley's conclusions as to individuality in the animal kingdom as distinct from man. Where cells are aggregated together we must assign individuality to the aggregate, while allowing some measure of individuahty to the cells themselves, or to the unitary groups of cells, in the measure in which they retain the potentiality of independent action and existence. We must recognise that among non-self-conscious animals there is a tendency towards closed systems, to which individuality must be assigned, and whose parts have very different degrees of physical continuity. And we must admit too that in these colonial individuals we find pheno- mena closely parallehng the phenomena in colonies of rational beings, which are yet totally different in nature and origin, being due to instinct, and the plasticity of Hving matter, and not to intelligence; just as in individuals of solitary habit, we find artifices parallehng the severest exercise of the power of observation and logical deduction. Bergson deals very fully with the characteristics of instinct and intelligence, and it is unnecessary for us to consider them here. In man, too, as we have seen, we discover the 1 See p. 73. Human Societies on Reason 83 tendency to form colonies; but here we must differ from Mr Huxley and Miss Garrod in seeing the sanfie phenomenon — ^if indeed they do consider it to be the same, as they rather imply. Doubtless the same need to win victories over matter by widening the range of activity conditions the formation of colonies. Doubtless also the same requirements of community hfe appear in both cases — ^indeed this must be so. But in the one case the reaction to the forces which determine these things is instinctive, in the other all the evidence goes to show that it is increasingly the result of a dehberative recognition of causes and effects. Men herd together because observation and experience teach them that by so doing they profit in many ways^. There is the purposeful choice made by the individual men as a result of comparison of experiences. And such a development of intellect is only possible, as we have seen, to units possessing a central nervous system. Now even when the colony is formed, there is still room for the activities of instinct, if it has not wholly disappeared; and we need not be at all surprised to 1 Even if we assume, with Trotter and other writers, that primitive men lived together in an imdifferentiated horde (and the zoological evidence seems to me to render this doubtful) our main argument is not impugned; for men continue to herd together because, as soon as they began to reason, they realised that union gave strength. In other words, the modem society is based on reason, not instinct. 6—2 84 Survival of Instinct find a corporate sense, similar to the hive sense of the bees, coming into evidence again ; a sense not merely- similar but of exactly the same nature, purely instinc- tive. If this idea be true we should expect to find it most marked in primitive races, since it can never be of prime importance to the community which is based on reason, and so it will gradually die out, and all its manifestations will lag behind those of the rational whole. And this is exactly what we do find, at least so it seems. True it is, on the other hand, that the movements of nations as a whole, whether in poHtical or economic matters, represent a factor that is by reason uncontrolled and uncontrollable. A nation drifts irresistibly into a pacific, a bellicose, a socialistic, a materiahstic attitude, and the great men of the day are more the creatures than the creators of this attitude. In this no doubt several factors are involved — herd-instinct, which dominates each class, and to some extent the whole nation ; national instinct perhaps; national character certainly; and the reactions between the individual and his social environment. The philosophical outlook of a nation has, again, a more potent influence than most men realise, though the effect of Nietzsche's system on Germany has brought the fact home to many of late. But here again we cannot dissociate philosophy from history and economics. The whole phenomenon is complex, depending on the interplay of all these in Human Societies 85 factors^. Perhaps too the law, suggested by Petrie in his Revolutions of Civilisation, that national pros- perity depends on conquest and racial admixture, and that every race ascends to its zenith some five hundred years after such conquest, and then descends again to its nadir, if true, has some bearing on the matter. But, taking the human race as a whole, it is fair to say that instinct, and all phenomena uncon- trolled by reason, are on the wane, and are relegated to a very subordinate role in the economy of the civiHsed world. Such facts as we have just passed in review may be more truly compared to the growth, hfe and downfall of a colony of wasps. They are essentially parallel to a phenomenon I have dealt with elsewhere. The vital impulse in its struggle to bear up matter against the forces of kataboHsm is necessarily plapng a losing game. Decay is inevitable. The body dies, while the vital impulse is passed on through the rudimentary germ of life, or gamete, in reproduction. As the gamete is to the whole body, so is the hibernating queen to the wasps' nest, and so is the national admixture of the conquered race with its conquerors to the resulting nation in its zenith. The phenomena are all examples of the tendency of matter to form closed systems, and of the instabihty of such systems. ^ This chapter was written two years before the outbreak of war, and the foregoing passage stands exactly as it was first written. 86 Development of Personality dependent on It now becomes of vital importance to us to answer definitely this question: Is the tendency towards the formation of closed systems waxing or waning? The coming of intellect, we have argued, coincided with more perfect organisation of a central nervous system. And necessarily so, for only when relation and causality could be ascertained as experimental fact could intelligence find a terminus a quo. The recognition of coordination between the parts of the body must precede the recognition of coordination between the body and some external object, which is the foundation on which the making of tools rests. As the subordination of external matter to the needs and wishes of the conscious organism proceeds, after the inturning of the consciousness on itself, as Bergson calls it, which is equivalent to the realised concept of internal relation, so the concept of external relation becomes fuller, till it eventuates in the logical idea of Ground and Consequence. The determinate nature of the process in the neurones inevitably leads to a determinate or logical conception of life, and the final issue of self-realisation, from the intellectual side, is the appearance of personality. True, in certain cases well known to students of abnormal psychology, a failure in the power of co- ordination seems to lead to the formation of several personalities. At first sight this would suggest that personahty was in some degree independent of the Integrity of Central Nervous System 87 integrity and completeness of the central nervous system — an idea, however, completely at variance with the phenomena of necrosis, of cerebral lesions, and other degenerative conditions, such as the recently discovered bacterial (spirochaetal) poisoning -which gives rise to general paralysis of the insane. Other indications of the same nature are to be found in the toxic brain disturbances due to the hyperactivity of the thyroid gland in Graves' disease, in the mental changes produced by insufficient secretion by the thyroid or pituitary body in cases of myxoedema, acromegaly and cretinism, and even in the various 'phobias accompanying neurasthenia ; and still more strikingly in the moral changes resulting from these failures of secretion — moral obliquities occurring which are sometimes completely removed by the administra- tion of the gland- extracts. But such cases as that of Miss Beauchamp^, in which two major and several subordinate personahties appeared, evincing not only completely different natures, but even completely different physical health (which we have already noted as a fact of great interest in regard to the close dependence of matter on mind and spirit) 2, confirm the impossibility of such a view. The fact is that 1 Moreton Prince, The Dissociation of a Personality. 3 Pace Miinsterberg, Psychotherapy, e.g. p. 161. I think, however, that the line we are taking is not really at variance with his con- clusions; although we do not agree with the metaphysical basis of his psychology, which is a blend of Parallelism and Epiphenomenalism. 88 Summary each of these "personalities" are but incomplete fragments of one whole ^. The successful synthesis achieved in the case quoted proves this effectually; for the final person was normal and complete, while fragmentary personalities were respectively neuras- thenic, psychasthenic and immature. Yet intellect cannot be a sufficient basis for a full personality. It would thus seem that something more than the mere integrity of the brain is needed before the non-logical imperatives of developed ethics, and the ideas of love, and self-abnegation for the sake of love, and above all, the cherishing of ideals, could arise ; for the higher manifestations of these have no relation to a causal series. Either we must regard them as epiphenomena, which is metaphysically not permissible ; or as instances of over-speciahsation, which is negatived by the fact that, though they are often antagonistic to the physical well-being of the man in whom they are manifest, they are yet on the increase in progressive races; or we must seek some other cause for their appearance. And this cause is ready to hand, as we have seen elsewhere, in the underlying principle of evolution — the vital impulse — a thing essentially altruistic, essentially idealistic, acting in response to the Spiritual Environment. We have now the clues to two important lines of argument. * Cf. Miinsterberg, op. cit. pp. 154, 156. Summary 89 In the first place, the fact that the intellect is entirely dependent on the integrity of causal series within and without the organism, suggests the reason for its failure to solve the twofold problem that presents itself whatever aspect of man's hfe we are considering — body, mind, or soul — the problem of unity and multi- pUcity. And in the second place we have seen that, where self- consciousness is absent, there is a constant bias towards the formation of closed systems, whether in organic or inorganic matter, while where self-conscious- ness and intellect exist, the bias, though still present, is subordinated, and has to take a second place, for there cannot be an organised intelligent individual without a coordinating system completely determined in its action, which is actualised in man as the central nervous system. Thus, in other words, where intelli- gence is absent there seems to be a tendency towards unity; where it is present, towards plurahty. Yet all the while there is an advance, based on reason, towards union, though not towards unity; for per- sonality cannot be merged or fused. In the unconscious world there is a movement towards unity, in the conscious towards union. Inorganic matter, and non-conscious living matter, ahke tend to aggregate, until the size of the group, whether radium-atom or hive, leads to instability. There seems to be a maximum size, and beyond this the primary groups begin to form groups 90 Summary of the second degree. Men also tend to form groups ; but these are based largely on the intellectual reahsation that union is strength, and on the realisation of each man's personality as a separate being. It is because men perceive the reality of independent personal existence, and the value of cooperation for the purpose of subordinating more and more matter to their requirements, that they unite, and not because they look on the tribe as a higher form of person. Their groups are founded on reason, at any rate in the long run, and reason is based on physical coordination. Therefore the individual man is the really important factor. He chooses to combine with others because his reason tells him it is the best way of coping with many of his difficulties. But he reaUses all along that he and his fellows are not fragments of one whole, but persons; wholes themselves and self-sufficing. A plurality of persons becomes the one certain reality. Yet still man is possessed with that difficult, obscure quest for unity. He needs one explanation of his life ; while the manifold of persons round him seems to drive all hope of it away. Note. A little more attention must be devoted to Trotter's admirable and suggestive discussion of the part which herd-instinct plays in the evolution of conscious beings. In the first place it is quite clear that this herd-instinct acts as a limitation from without imposed upon the individual, and so far is antagonistic to true freedom. But I think it wiU probably be found that it mediates greater freedom in the long run, even for the individual, through the interpenetration of personalities {vide infra, ch. vi). Note 0)1 Herdliistinct 91 Very interesting in its bearing on the wider aspects of the problem is his treatment of the proposition that, in all matters affected by herd -instinct, belief is the primary stage, rationalisation the secondary. This is exactly what one would expect where instinctive action is imposed from without upon a sentient, rational being; but it is in no way an explanation of the ultimate fact that the individual has to form rational concepts. It offers no sort of solu- tion of the great metaphysical and religious problems. Again, his explanation of the sense of need that underlies all religion as the instinct of man that he is part of the herd, which drives him to seek completion and satisfaction in herd-activities, though it may be true as a biological fact, will not do as an ultimate explanation. It must issue either in materialism or nihilism, and is open to aU the objections of these systems. Very possibly Trotter is right in placing the undifferentiated horde in a position antecedent in time to the family and the tribe, though we have not adopted this view in the present chapter ; but whether he is right or not, the fact has no deep significance in regard to the whole question of the formation of closed systems in biological evolution. The point is, surely, that the undifferentiated horde proved unsatisfactory as a basis of communal activity. Indeed, it is a little hard to see the justification for treating it as a herd at all. Some VorticeUas live as an "undifferentiated horde"; others have gone further and form branching colonies. Is it more justifiable to treat the "undifferentiated horde" as a unit in the one case than in the other ? Can we say more than that the instinct towards closer aggregation is present in both cases ? In fine, in these brilliant articles attention is drawn to a factor in evolution which has hitherto escaped due recognition. But, as always happens at first, too much has been explained by it. A purely biological explanation of life on materialistic lines is fore- doomed to failure. Herd -instinct plays its part in the development of religion, but it does not lie at the bottom of religion, any more than the brain lies at the bottom of mind. CHAPTER IV SOME ASPECTS OF THE WINNING OF FREEDOM In this book, and in its predecessor, we are, as it were, stringing a rosary together. The beads are of many shapes and patterns, some ugly, some beautiful, yet they are not without an ordered harmony which endues even the ugly ones with beauty and meaning. But we only understand this when the whole is com- pleted, and all the colours and patterns are seen mysteriously blended, and explained in the Cross. The thread that holds all together is the winning of freedom. If the thread is too weak, if there is no freedom won, our beads must fall apart into a tumbled meaningless heap; for us the revelation of the Cross must be lost, and the Cross itself lie unexplained among the rest. It is time then that we examine our thread. That it is strong enough, I firmly believe. But it is not easy to see wherein its strength lies. The idea of freedom has been a stumbling-block in the path of many thinkers. Nothing seems so certain ; nothing so incapable of proof ; nothing so vulnerable to the assaults Freedom and Determinism 93 of an easy logic; nothing so Antaeus-like, for ever stricken down, for ever arising with fresh strength^. Imbued with the spirit of Sir Andrew Barton it recognises no defeat. Fight on, my men, Sir Andrew sayes, A little Ime hurt, but yett not slaine; I'll but lye downe and bleede awhile, And then I'll rise and fight againe. As our argument went forward ^ we saw, time and again, facts that threw some light on the problem. Moreover, if we are right in our claim that logical reasoning really has its basis in the determinate ^ The difficulties of the pure determinist when it comes to the practical issues of life are illustrated by a conversation in Peacock's Nightmare Abbey, which is a "masterpiece of wise absurdity," as a newspaper wrote of Tenniel's illustrations to Alice in Wonderland. "'Liberty of action, sir? jihere is no such thing as liberty of action. We are all slaves and puppets of a blind and unpathetic necessity.' "'Very true, sir; but liberty of action, between individuals, consists in their being differently influenced, or modified, by the same universal necessity; so that the results are unconsentaneous, and their respective necessitated volitions clash and fly off at a tangent.' "'Your logic is good, sir; but you are aware, too, that one indi- vidual may be a medium of adhibiting to another a mode or form of necessity, which may have more or less influence in the production of consentaneity; and, therefore, sir, if you do not comply with my wishes in this instance (you have had your way in everything else) I shall be under the necessity of disinheriting you, though I shall do it with tears in my eyes.' " 2 In this book and its precursor. 94 Definition of Freedom reactions of the brain to stimuli, we find at once a clue to the logical indemonstrability of freedom. It is time now to face the problem itself, or rather, that aspect of it which bears on our method of analysis of certain phenomena of life. The definition of freedom that concerns us is this: the 'power of control over environment, becoming conscious or volitional choice between alternatives as the stage of self-consciousness is reached. I do not propose to consider the many forms under which the subject has been discussed, nor even to deal with Bergson's brilliant analysis of it, and I have nothing to add in the way of fresh discoveries. In the introduction to Evolution and the Need of Atonement I said, "No attempt has been made to deal with the philosophical problem of Freewill. The existence of freedom in man has been assumed." To this attitude I propose to adhere. The question that must now be discussed is, rather, our assumption that true freedom cannot be given, but only won\ because in the very gift is an act of constraint. Further, we assume all through that the course which leads to freedom is chosen, voluntarily selected, by the man who is gaining greater heights of manhood. Not the freedom itself is chosen, be it noted, at least in many cases. Generally a man does right, acts finely himself, and influences others to act finely, not because he thinks of the winning of freedom, but because the act appeals to his conscience Self-determination and Plasticity 95 as good. He has still much of the blindness, so far as logical reasoning as to means and ends goes, of the lower animals. But none the less he does select the path which leads to freedom, and selects it volun- tarily. Again, obviously and certainly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of what he does is still the result of what he has done in the past, and what his ancestors for millions of years have done. But there remains always the thousandth part — until the man is perfect, when, as we have already suggested, and shall attempt to prove later, he will be completely determined, with a determination that proceeds from within, not from without. Perfect self-determination is perfect freedom. In the self-conscious organism there can be, and is, choice, in what measure two possibihties are open. But what of the unconscious organisms ? Such creatures can profit by experience, as the work of Professor H. S. Jennings shows^. Even the Protozoa can learn by experience to make immediately the suitable response to certain stimuH. But this probably involves no element of true consciousness; it is merely an instance, artificially and experimentally demonstrated, of the characteristic faculty of protoplasm for habituating itself to the suitable response to stimuH — in other words of its adaptabihty or plasticity. As far as we can judge, low down in the animal scale ^ The Behaviour of the Lotoer Organisms. Cf. Wheeler, AnU. 96 Is Freedom indirectly a Gift? there is no evidence of will at all^; no element of self-consciousness; and therefore no possibiUty of choice, and no responsibility. The animal cannot be held morally responsible for failure to progress, any more than it can be for the inherent adaptability which characterises the protoplasm of which it is composed. But yet successful organisms, or rather successful phyletic stocks, do win freedom vicariously, in the persons of their ultimate descendants ; although in their earUer stages no choice or merit determined their progress along the right path. Is not the freedom they have attained rather a gift than an achievement? Can we say that it has been won? Certainly it is not directly a gift, for it is the inevitable consequence of the adaptability of protoplasm under the stimulus of a determined environ- ment. But nevertheless God is responsible for the environment, for the adaptabihty of protoplasm, and for the vital impulse, which together make freedom inevitable in the long run for successful races of organisms; and we have seen that there is no merit in their winning it. Two questions at once present themselves as we reason thus — questions which must be answered. (1) Is not freedom indirectly a gift, if it is won under such conditions? (2) Is not God really responsible for all the pain and suffering of 1 For the exact sense in which we are using the term vnll, see ch. VI, pp. 179, 180. Contingency in Evolution 97 process, which appals us as we contemplate the animal kingdom? And, if so, is He not necessarily un- moral ? We may put the first question in the form of an equation. May we not say that Gift of POWER of winning freedom -f NECESSITY for winning freedom = Gift of freedom itself '^ As stated the equation is self- evidently true. If these are all the terms, freedom is really given; and given by a roundabout and cruel process. The long struggle has no meaning, God is evil, not good; cruel, not loving. For our two questions hang together: the second is implicit in the first. The thread is gone. Beads and Cross fall into a meaningless jumble. There remains but the advice of Job's friends, to curse God, five out our brief span, and die. But is the equation complete? Certainly it is not. In the first place the necessity for winning freedom does not apply to all organisms: only to those which are to progress. And these are but a few in very many milhons. Most branch off at one stage or another and reach equilibrium positions. There is no necessity for any individual organism, or even any individual group, to attain freedom. It seems to be almost a matter of chance which organisms vary in a suitable direction, and so progress along the road to freedom; even though eventual freedom for some is made inevitable, by the very M. 7 98 Contingency in Evolution existence of the vital impulse^. The left-hand side of our equation now becomes The Gift of POWER of winning freedom + NECESSITY of SOME organisms winning freedom. This is merely another way of stating what we have said before, that for the organism itself there is some measure of indetermination, for the race, apparently none 2. Clearly this introduction of a " chance " element — of something not dehberately foreseen and planned as far as the individual creature is concerned — does remove the idea of a direct gift. The new equation is not an equation at all. And moreover we are brought face to face with a definite limitation of the Godhead, if God created conditions such that He could not know which of His creatures would win to freedom. An element of contingency is introduced, as far as His experience is concerned. Clearly, too, if God created the conditions under which His creatures could win to freedom, any limitation involved, either in that freedom, as we have already pointed out, or inherent in the means by which it is won, is a self-Hmitation. But the foregoing argument, though true, is not satisfying. It is incomplete. We have practically, if not verbally, treated the organism rather as a unit than as something instinct with life. Yet if we are 1 For those who agree with the views expressed by Professor Bateson in his British Association Addresses for 1914, the "chance" element is seen to be indefinitely increased. * Evolution and the Need of Atonement, 2nd ed., p. 46. N'eiv Spirit in the making 99 right in arguing, as we do througkout, that matter is the expression of a limitation of the Absolute Spirit, the organism, which is spirit in process of becoming, is no mere unit, nor is it coextensive merely with the matter of which it makes immediate use — its body. This statement requires amplification. There is in the living creature an activity or principle which, by interaction with its environment, is bound to progress, or be extinguished; and which may lead on to free spirit. So we have argued. What that principle is we must at present leave undefined, saying merely that it is an expression of the creative activity of God. It is not spirit, but spirit in the making. It is something which, when in conjunction with matter, is always striving to gain freedom. It is not conscious, in the earlier stages, but is always striving in a direction that leads eventually to conscious- ness. It fails, and, let us say for the present, suffers. Whether an unconscious organism can be said to suffer without a misuse of the word, indeed without a contra- diction in terms, we will leave on one side for the moment. We cannot look on the arena of evolution without associating the strife with suffering, though possibly we may be unjustifiably projecting our own consciousness into our mental picture of the process. Occasionally the organism succeeds. But still it suffers, and inflicts suffering. Either way there is the struggle, with, apparently, its attendant pain. 7—2 100 New Spirit in the making And moreover there is no choice in any true sense, as far as the individual organism is concerned. But we are not really looking at pre-existent spirit striving to express itself or to become free, and eventually succeeding. Such a view would logically lead to pure pantheism — through an unexplained, inexpHcable self- limitation of God, progressively removed through struggle. The spirit, when it is developed, is not part of the spirit of God. Rather there are milhons of new spirits in the making. Pluralism, not pantheism, is the result; though, as we shall see, the plurahsm is eventually resolved in union. God creates a principle which issues as self-realised spirit; and His self- limitation supphes the environment which renders such self-realisation possible. Created spirit has, not freedom itself, but the power of winning it; and the self-realisation is linked to, and progresses step by step with, the gain of freedom. Now if God is perfect (and the moral problem of pain belongs to our second question, not our first) His creative activity can only result in the genesis of spirits which are not antagonistic to Him; a Perfect Spirit can only create cognate spirits, not antagonistic, for the last would involve a self- contradiction. And thus we see that a Good Spirit can only create spirits that are good, if It is omnipotent. Further, created spirits can only achieve goodness through free choice. There must be the possibiHty of Freedom for man w^ans Contingency for God 101 not-goodness open to them, for the goodness of a finite being impUes and involves a possible antithesis. Goodness is not a mere passive attribute, but an activity; and when it is in the making there must always be the possibility of refusal. Goodness is dependent on freedom; and freedom that is growing towards perfectness must suffer no determination except self-determination, and the environmental determination which makes its exercise and progress possible. There can be no gift of freedom ready- made. The original gift that leads to the gaining of freedom is due to the activity of God, and is inherent in His personal nature — necessarily a corollary of it. But for any resultant individual there is no necessity or compulsion towards freedom. In this our first equation was wrong. In this the element of contin- gency is involved. But that some should win freedom is necessary, as we have seen, from the very nature of the vital impulse. And this consorts with the fact that the will of a transcendent God cannot fail. On the other hand the element of contingency involved in the fact that some organisms must win freedom, but only a small minority of the total number, is an expression of a Umitation of God which can only be self-hmitation. And this points to the reahty of the freedom that is gained by the creature. We thus see that the gift of God, which is the gift of the power of winning freedom, is not a gift of 102 Contifigency must he real for God freedom, because it has in it an element of contingency. And this contingency is real for God, not merely for the creature. Before the creature achieves self- consciousness there is the contingency of variation^ real for the experience of God only, since the creature is unconscious, — ^if this is indeed contingent at all, as seems probable from the potential indetermination inherent in the vital impulse; after consciousness is reached there is still contingency, due to the power of free choice that has been won. Such considerations remove the whole thing once and for all from the category of a gift; and this because the creature is not a imit but a living being, with all that is entailed. We have not yet attempted to discuss the difficult problem involved in the fact that the unconscious organism cannot choose. And this is really the crux of the moral question, though it is convenient to deal with it here. Clearly it does not affect the argument we have just set forth; for the element of contingency is there (in relation to the individual), whether there be conscious choice or the mere working out of a sum in permutations. Here, too, we must remember that we are dealing with living creatures. The problem is not simply that of a bag of many-coloured marbles, where, if the number is sufficient and the operation repeated often enough, picking out the marbles in pairs is bound to result in a certain pair of colours coming out together. There is something in the vital Omnipotence and Pain 103 impulse that tends towards the production of the suitable variation. All conceivable types are not evolved. Unsuitable ones are often vetoed in some way, and never come into being. There is no conscious choice or selection, but there is selection. The fact that the creature is hving does operate efficiently, if partially, in determining its evolution. You may say, "then freedom is in some degree determined for it, and so is a gift." But this is not a true statement of the case. The impulse towards freedom is there — a gift — but it is not always successful in driving the organism forwards. The impulse towards equiHbrium often outweighs it. And so here again we find the element of contingency creeping in. And, as always, the origin of it lies in the determinism of matter — the material environment of the creature, and the matter of which its body is composed. The problem is not essentially different from that of the conscious organism. Let us now turn to our second question — the moral problem of a universe in which there is pain. This we may divide into two parts. Freedom is being won throughout, but there is only merit in the winning when there is conscious choice. And for the lower organisms, if choice exists, we have at any rate no knowledge of it; and so we must argue as if there were none, if our discussion is to leave no weak spot for an opponent to attack. Therefore we must consider the moral aspect both 104 Self-limitation of God the only in relation to unconscious and conscious organisms. The difference between the two clearly lies in the fact that the first can in no way be held responsible for what it does, while the second can. The first obviously presents the greater difficulty. How can a good God voluntarily select a method, by which His creatures can win freedom, which entails so much failure, so much pain? But possibly we are not justified in using the words "voluntarily select." Let us examine this point first. Certainly God is responsible in a sense for the environment which leads to freedom, but only in a sense. It is the introduction of Hmitation into a part of His Experience ; and this kenosis is a necessary consequence of the fact that freedom must be won. Now limitation is pain to a person who is conscious of it; it brings a sense of powerlessness, and so of incompleteness, which in itself is suffering. Add to this the pain of seeing things go wrong, and it is clear that God must suffer. But suppose we say that freedom can only be won by struggle, if, as we have argued, it must be won, not given. Is this true? Could it not simply grow? No; surely not. All through this book and its predecessor we assume, and rightly assume, I believe, that freedom can only be won by struggle; and struggle with that which is not free. The winning possible basis of Mans Freedom 105 of freedom means gain of control — the achieval of self-determination out of the press of external factors which would constrain the plastic, growing spirit. Freedom cannot be won from freedom. Man cannot obtain freedom directly out of the freedom of God. To hold this would be to say that the freer a man becomes the more does he limit God. The growth would be towards antagonism between man and God, man snatching away God's freedom. Of course one might argue that when man becomes perfect, he would become like God in will, and so would restore His freedom ; but I cannot see that any element of God's Transcendence would be left, since Tran- scendence is an absolute thing, from which nothing can be removed by an external agency without destroying it utterly. The limitation of God would be a limitation from without, not from within, in the end. True, the initial step bf creation would really be a potential self-limitation of the Godhead. But it would also be a gift of freedom, given gradually and not all at once ; for each advance would involve the direct cession of more of God's freedom. God would be giving His freedom to His creatures. However we regard it, such a view leads us into a hopeless tangle of absurdities. On the hypothesis that we have advocated we encounter no such difficulty. Undoubtedly the Crea- tion is a kenosis. God does limit Himself, give up 106 Freedom cannot he given some of His freedom, in creating matter; but that freedom is not given to His creatures. It simply ceases to be, by the operation of His Will. They have to wrest the power of control from warfare with the determined matter and forces amid which they exist. When they are perfected. His self-limita- tion automatically ceases^. If, then, freedom must be won, not given, and if it can only be won by struggle with that which is not free, we are apparently led to the conclusion that God cannot choose the method of His creation — that while Transcendent He is not Omnipotent. And surely in a sense this is true. God cannot contradict Himself. Freedom must be freedom, and must in freedom be achieved, through strife with that which is not free. God cannot control the nature of perfect spirit ; which is His own nature. He cannot make other perfect spirits, because the two ideas involve a contradiction. It is as impossible that He should be Perfect and make perfect spirits as it is that He should be both Good and Evil. The idea of absolute goodness in a person excludes the coexistence of evil in that person. So too the idea of freedom excludes the idea of making freedom in others, for the idea of being made is incompatible with the idea of being free. A carpenter who wishes to make a rabbit- hutch is limited in his plans by the fact that it is to * Vide infra, ch. vi, pp. 139 seqq. The Problem of Animal Suffering 107 contain rabbits; an engineer who wishes to design a marine engine is limited by the fact that it has to drive a ship. He may make a planing-machine if he chooses; but once he decides on a marine engine his methods are Umited. So too — I speak it reverently — I cannot but hold that when God had decided (in human phraseology) to make man a free spirit, He was hmited by the fact that man had got to be free. We must not overlook the fact that the Umitation is self-imposed: God chose to make man. Lastly, we must return to the moral problem, though it is much narrowed by our previous arguments. Can God be good if He inflicts such oceans of suffering on the unconscious organism, which, ex hypothesis is not self-conscious, and so has no true soul, for which reason there seems no room for compensation? We can give no complete answer to this question. But I would point out (1) that the word "inflicts" begs the question ; we have seen that struggle, and so suffering, is imphcit in the creation of beings who are free; (2) that we know next to nothing of the nature of the consciousness of the lower animals, and so it is rather rash to say they have not in them a germ of that same Hfe which in man becomes eternal spirit ; and if they have, can we say there is no room for compensation? and (3) if the organism is wholly un-selfconscious, the suffering is for God only. Though no categorical answer can be given it will 108 The Problem of be well to conclude this chapter by a brief discussion of these three points. (1) If we were right in arguing that God is not free to choose the method of creation of perfect spirits, but is Hmited by the very fact that His creation must eventually be perfect, the moral question of His Goodness is not really involved at all. Because He is a Person He must be Active, as we shall see in the next chapter ; and this activity must be creative. The question rather involves His Omnipotence than His Goodness. And we have seen that a false view of the meaning of Omnipotence is involved when we say "could He not have created otherwise?" For as far as our understanding goes any other method of creation would have involved the absence of freedom in His creatures, or else a self-contradiction. The problems are the same as those involved in two questions genuinely asked by two children aged four and three respectively: "Could God make a stone so heavy that He could not Hft it?" "If God is Good why did He make nettles sting?" The answer to the first is of course "No" ; for the terms of the question involve a contradiction. The answer to the second involves just the problem of the free reaction between the vital impulse and the environment which we have discussed at length. (2) We do not know that the lower animals are simply annihilated when they die. True, the vital Animal Suffering 109 impulse seems to have lost its progressiveness in the creatures which have attained equilibrium; but no moral barrier such as sin separates them from perfec- tion. What bars their further progress is over- adaptation, equilibrium; and with this sin is continuous in origin, yet totally different in nature, as we have seen. It is easy enough — perhaps too easy — to imagine some metempsychosis, some form of transmigration, that would meet the need, so far as our little knowledge extends. Easy, but futile. For we have literally no know- ledge of the meaning and nature of the vital impulse in relation to the individual ' unconscious organism. The little we know is from observation of its effects in race progress. And besides, we do not even know that the problem of pain in the individual exists at all in the lower creatures, if we project into the word individual the personal significance which it has in common speech. Thus we neither know whether there is a germ of eternal hfe in the lowest creatures, nor whether we can even isolate them at all as separate beings. Possibly it would be truer to look on the whole of such creatures as are in the direct line of progress as cells of one vast growing organism, while those on side-tracks are analogous to a protective horny epidermis; useful, necessary, but destined to die and be sloughed off. Where we have no knowledge it is useless to discuss. 110 Suffering and Consciousness (3) If the lower creatures are wholly unconscious it is clear they cannot suffer, in any true sense of the word. Pain, we know, is a method of indicating the presence of danger, and the reactions to it are largely automatic even in man — in short, are reflexes. The sense or feeling we call pain is an additional appeal to the consciousness of the personal being. It by no means follows that because in response to certain stimuU reflexes occur in lower animals which in our- selves we associate with the feehng of pain, that the animal also feels pain. Unless it has the elements of true consciousness, obviously it cannot. If it has not, the only true consciousness that can be painfully affected is God's consciousness; and that of man if he perceives the reflexes of the creature. The suffering of the unconscious world must be the suffering of God, since it is part of His experience. And so by this road we are brought back to the mystery of Creative Love, which is willing to suffer for the sake of that which is to come. The higher animals do appear to suffer, though we cannot be certain of it; but they probably have some rudiment of consciousness. Certainly they do not suffer as men suffer. Even among men we find individuals and races who can bear without more than discomfort things which would make other men writhe with agony. And this is especially true, I believe, of the more primitive races. The Suffering of Man 111 To sum up : if there is suffering in the unconscious organisms it must be God who sufiers. For other creatures who have not sinned, there is no real reason for denying the possibiHty of the removal of the barrier to their progress in some other existence; though this remains pure speculation. And the moral problem of the whole is really non-existent if they are not self-conscious, since it is God who Himself suffers, and since He is not free to choose the method of creation. If freedom is to be the goal, struggle and suffering would seem inevitable, not because God is not Omnipotent, but because even Omnipotence cannot contradict Itself, and contain within It at the same time two irreconcileable opposites. Finally, the moral problem of suffering in the conscious being presents no real difficulty; and we have already considered it at some length^. It is involved in the struggle of the soul, fraught with purpose and understanding. Eternal Ufe lies before man; and he understands in some measure the meaning of the toil and pain amid and through which he achieves the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. * ^volution and the Need of Atonement, 2nd ed. pp. 168 seqq. CHAPTER V IMMANENCE AND TRANSCENDENCE; TWO ASPECTS OF THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF GOD Thus far the main result of our study has been to set forth antinomies, and to state, and partially solve, isolated problems. It is time to try to find the reahty that underlies all these complex issues, so that each may fall into place. We have seen that, whenever hfe is regarded from the standpoint of the intellect alone, it becomes a riddle without an answer. Two opposites emerge, and the proof of each seems irrefutable. Strangest of all, the spirit tacitly accepts both and rests happy. Only the voyaging mind, as it encounters the opposing tides of thought that beat upon the Scylla and Charybdis of fact, so immutable and passionless, so seemingly eternal, enters a whirlpool which threatens to drag it, reeHng and spinning, into the deep silent blackness of scepticism or agnosticism, there to be stifled. Antinomies of TJwught 113 On the one hand The spacious firmament on high, With all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled Heavens, a shining frame, Their great Original proclaim^. God appears as Transcendent, Complete Being, and the unity of His creation has unequivocal witness in the unity that is craved by every human soul. It is idle to see in this craving merely the mirrored image of the strife of nature towards the formation of closed systems; such a suggestion merely places the issue a stage further back. Yet, on the other hand, God is an Immanent Spirit, indwelling the whole cosmos, suffering with His creation, striving with it, reaching towards freedom and self-reahsation with it, Hmited by it. Again, the intellect striving after the unity which, existent in the mind of each man, alone makes thought possible, is brought face to face with the multipUcity of phenomenal existence at the very outset. And yet again, while natural science is founded on belief in causal relations — the inevitableness of events — on the other hand the commonest experiences of every day give the lie to her axioms in the case of men. Men are limited, they are constrained to react to the stimuli of their environment, but they are free too, with a measure of real freedom. They are ^ Addison. M. 8 114 Origin of the Antinomies slaves to convention, to good or evil habit, but they have woven the chains themselves, and they can break them. Nay, those very badges of slavery, the automatisms and reflexes of life, may be the means to freedom setting the mind free for higher effort. From the bottom, right up to man, life has a meaning only when we see in it a striving for freedom. Then there is that discontinuity that marks all experience, and at the same time an ultimate continuum towards which all modes of thought seem to move. Here we have the problem of unity and multiphcity with the element of time pervading it. Finally there is the isolation of the individual correlated with the constant tendency to form a closed system, be it animal colony or nation, phylum or church ; another aspect of the same problem. It is, I think, possible to look on all these as manifestations of one and the same fact, a fact that is the one fundamentally true thing in the world — the striving of the soul towards union with God through the winning of freedom. To make this clear we must set out at some length what we believe to be the attributes of God, and what His relation to mankind. The great difficulty that has faced all attempt at a metaphysical explanation is that monism leads to complete unity, while a pluraHstic system is faced with the problem of supplying a reasonable theory of linkages. The individual tends to become a Diffictdties of Monism and Pluralism 115 "windowless " entity : without any jpoint d'appui with other individuals. To criticise the generally accepted versions of Monism and Plurahsm in their multitudinous variety would be beside the mark, yet it is worthy of notice once again that monists like Mr Taylor, for instance, so far feel the difficulties of pure monism as to introduce such conceptions as that of a " System- atic Ideahsm" in which "the whole is for its members as well as the members for the whole" : " a Systematic ReaHty in which the unity and multipUcity of the system are aUke real, and equally real"; a system in which "the experience of the whole affects every member as well as the experience of every member affecting the whole^." According to McTaggart again the Absolute is a Spiritual College, where union is resident in the members and becomes conscious only in them. And, at the opposite pole, James is driven to the conclusion that We are indeed internal parts of God, and not external creations on any possible reading of the panpsychic system. Yet because God is not the Absolute, but is Himself a part when the system is conceived pluraUstically, His functions can be taken as not wholly dissimilar to those of the smaller parts — as similar to our functions consequently^. Now the conclusions of James and the Monists alike comprise much that is aHen to the Christian ^ Elements of Metaphysics, p. 97. A fuller treatment of all this is to be found in Prof. Ward's Pluralism and Theism. ^ Phiralistic Universe, p. 318. »— 2 116 Difficvlties of Monism and Pluralism theology. On the one hand, the idea of an externally limited God, not omnipotent, or omniscient, is untenable by the Christian, or at least is very far removed from his basal conceptions of the Universe; and on the other hand the idea of men as merely part of the experience of a possibly impersonal God is equally far removed, even if we accept the olive branch of Systematic Idealism. Our task is then to search for a conception that will bear the critical assault of the metaphysician; that will fit in with the suggestions we derive both from our rehgious life and belief, and our intuitive knowledge that God is good and transcendent^ ; and that will fall into line with the biological theory of progress already discussed^, and with the elaboration of that theory, in its application to our personal rehgious Hfe, which is the object of the present book. Evidently it is impossible in small compass to do more than hint at the hues of a possible solution, diffidently, yet in full trust that the truth will not be darkened at our hands, but rather receive, it may be, a little more illumination. 1 The suggestive treatment of the problem of pain and evil from the point of view of the impotence of perfect love in Mr Rolfs The World's Redemption, true and beautiful though much of it is, is vitiated by a strangely materialistic, almost gnostic idea of primal chaos from which order is slowly emerging. The Doctrine of the Kenosis enshrines all the most valuable truths in regard to the problem of evil, and the powerlessness of God against sin, without, I believe, involving such a questionable basis. * Evolution and the Need of Atonement. Immanence and Transcendence 117 From the earliest dawn of conscious social life, when the first pale tints that heralded the coming of man's glorious day began to appear, enlightening more and more the dark, mysterious world, men realised a double need of God. Whether by many Gods or One, the cravings for a Great Explanation and for an IndwelHng Presence must aUke be satisfied. The world must be explained, for it was there, full of living creatures ; and the personal needs and longings and strivings and questionings of men must somehow find deeper satisfaction than could be obtained from intercourse with other beings on the same plane. In most primitive polytheistic religions we find some attempt to meet the double need of the human soul in the many lesser gods and the one Great Spirit. With the coming of Monotheism crystallisation sets in, and the correlated doctrines of Transcendence and Immanence are definitely enunciated. According as rehgion passes through a rational — a deistic — or a mystic phase, one or other aspect of the Godhead predominates in thought, but neither is ever wholly absent. It is desirable that we consider very briefly the content of these two ideas in modern theology. To do more than this is needless for our purpose, as there are many books wholly or partly devoted to these matters^. ^ In niingworth's Divine Immanence and Divine Transcendence the subject is very simply and attractively set out. 118 Immanmice and The Transcendent Aspect of God is essentially the Causal and Creative Aspect. It represents the result of man's groping after an understanding of infinite power and purpose. God must be omnipotent, omniscient, active. Active obviously, since He creates ; omnipotent because He creates as He wills and what He wills. "Whatsoever the Lord pleased that did He in heaven, and in earth, and in the sea, and in all deep places." Omniscient, because the order of the universe implies the working of a Master Mind, and not the blundering attempts of an experimenter. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being imperfect; and in thy book were all my members written; which day by day were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. But there is far more than this. A motive for creation has to be sought, and motivation is only compatible with personaUty. Thus the Transcendent God is presented as a Personal Being; and as under- standing and abstract thought develope, man reahses that to a Personal Transcendent God belong the essential attributes he knows in himself, feehng and love. But to correspond with the possession of Omnipotence and Omniscience these too must be transferred from the finite to the infinite. Whether they can be so transferred without suffering complete change he cannot understand, nor does he generally care to reason about things too high for him. TratisceiidfMce 119 Nevertheless this difficulty is, in fact, partly at any rate, and in the beginning, responsible for the readiness with which he turns to the Immanent aspect of the Godhead. Such a Being as he has conceived seems far away and unapproachable. At first immediate needs may be met with lesser gods, but these soon pass^. Their function is imphcitly, though not expHcitly — for men have little courage to be honest where the deepest things of life are concerned — vested in the Immanent aspect of God. The Transcendent God cannot change; yet all around is process, and process is change. The world exists only in God, as well as through Him ; it is part of His experience. And so the idea dawns that He indwells; that He is in the heart of man and in all the manifold wonder of nature. As is always the case, this higher, truer thought, is infiltrated with such truth as was held in solution in the cruder conceptions which brought the minor pantheon of earth and air, fire and water spirits, and tribal gods, into being. In these lay the embryonic rudi- ment of the great truth of divine Immanence, which day by day was to be fashioned into more Godhke semblance. 1 No inversion of the evolutionary order of religious beliefs is here implied. Our point is simply, that in the polytheistic stage the divine attributes of immanence and transcendence are implicitly recognised, though not fully in the same individual deity. 120 Immanence and Transcendence In human thought there is a kind of viscosity. As it moves forward it drags with it something of the surroundings amid which it moves. And so in every stage of rehgion we find material belonging to a lower stage. Thought' has moved on ; the germ of truth has grown and put forth leaves. But accretions have accompanied the movement and the growth instead of all being left behind. Some of the old fluid of speculation is dragged on; particles of earth adhere to the first spreading leaves. With fuller understanding of the meaning of process, both from the metaphysical standpoint, and from the standpoint of evolutionary science, comes fuller recognition of the importance of this conception of immanence, for Deism cannot long hold the field. Overshadowed for a time by its brilliant, yet strangely different, developments in Pantheism and Positivism, the doctrine grows steadily, and seems now to be coming to its own. We are beginning to see that secular change impHes a changing experience for God; that a change which is growth impUes growth in the experience of God also ; that growing experience impUes previous Hmita- tion, and its progressive removal. For a time there is danger in these ideas. I think it is G. K. Chesterton who speaks somewhere of new ideas going to man's unaccustomed head and intoxi- cating him as surely as new wine. The Need of a Persorml God 121 But the doctrine of Transcendence cannot long be lost sight of, and with this as corrective the pheno- mena of spiritual hfe quickly resume their right proportions. The limitation impUed in change and growth is seen as self-limitation. Sub specie aeternitatis Immanence is seen to be indissolubly linked with Transcendence in the kenosis-aspect of creation ; and both alike become Personal once more. Love, the deepest, highest, broadest attribute of personaUty, is seen as the impelling vis viva, becoming externally effectual in creation. Behind the Activity of God is His Love. And His Love is, because He Is, not because He becomes. At the long last we return to the earliest conception of creative power, that there is a Transcendent God. We must now analyse at considerable length such of the consequences of man's belief — a necessary and justified beUef — in the dual aspect of God as Immanent and Transcendent, as are germane to our thesis. We offer no apology for assuming the personal nature of the Godhead, of which we shall attempt none but implicit or incidental proofs. The only theory which satisfies the test of experience is this. All other leaves life an enigma, and our personal experience, as developing, progressing beings, a mirage. The key to human evolution is lost; and our ex- planation of it is but the projection of our own illusions into something which has no existence apart 122 Divine Activity^ and from them^. The evolution of the soul becomes an unthinkable exception to the law that develop- ment is the response to some suitable stimulus, and has adaptation as its end. In bodily evolution there is this teleological function of adaptation; in such spiritual evolution there would be effect without cause, progress without aim. The onus prohandi Hes on the other side. The personal nature of God is the only explanation of man's personaUty, and man's experience, and we shall assume the truth of it. Let us begin our analysis with the point of view of St John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Here we have expressed the conception of God as the Transcendent Being, and (from the subsequent verses) as a Person. He is the Transcendent Absolute, of Whose experience everything that was was a part. It matters little what the nature of this experience was. The idea we must keep clearly before our mind is, that in Eternity and Simultaneity He Was 2; and nothing 1 Cf. G. Galloway, Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, p. 285 : "Thus, if the non-personal nature of God be maintained, not only does the evolution of the human self become an enigma, but the historic development of the religious consciousness can only mean the fictitious projection into the sphere of real being of purely subjective needs and desires." * Strictly, we should rather say He is, since no question of time enters in. the Relativity of Values 123 else was, except as part of His Experience. It is outside the scope of our present discussion to consider deeply the implications of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in this connection. Our point is rather, that in Eternity He was the Transcendent Absolute, while yet a Personal Being. We can form little idea of the nature of that experience, simply because it is of the category of the infinite, and transcends time and space. But philo- sophers and mathematicians tell us that there are different grades and values in infinity, as well as in the finite. Therefore the experience of God may be said to consist of an infinite number of infinite experi- ences, without involving us in any logical difficulty. Hence there is no inherent difficulty in introducing the idea of relativity, of more and less, into the experience of God. This I believe is of great impor- tance, for it introduces the element of activity into the Absolute Experience. It is true that mathema- ticians deal only with the numerical relations of infinities. But the chief characteristic of numbers is their relation to one another ; they are commensurable. If the experience of the Personal God is a unity, it would seem that its parts must be commensurable, having one ultimate standard of reference, if we may judge from our own inward reahsation that we, as persons, are always valuing our experiences, in a way that we could not if they were incommensurable, and without a common norm. 124 Activity as a On this view, Divine Activity would seem to be representable as the result of the recognition (a personal attribute) of the relativity of values. In order to appreciate this point more fully, we must consider what is the exact connotation of the term activity. And in doing this we must again frankly acknowledge that we are attributing personality to the infinite God. We may be wrong in attributing personality as such, but metaphysicians are fairly well agreed that we must believe that the Absolute is at least personal; that it includes personaUty as a part of its experience, even if it is not merely personal. The only idea of activity which we possess is as a manifestation of personaUty. It is true that we often speak of the activity of chemical action, but here we are using the word in a metaphorical sense. We say an element or a compound is active, when it produces very marked changes under certain given conditions. But in saying this, we are really com- paring it with the results produced by the intelHgent work of a sentient person^. A man is, to our minds, active when he produces a considerable change in his surroundings in a short time, thus enlarging his experience — when, for instance, he changes a log 1 Cf. Galloway, Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, pp. 222, 223: "The growth of experience is based on the activity which exists between its real elements." " If there could be such a thing as a self purely passive, the development of experience in it would be impossible." Manifestation of Personality 125 into fire-wood, or climbs a high tree. In other words, the original connotation of the word activity for the human mind Hes in the action of a person, not a thing. Indeed among primitive races, anything that is active, or that seems to manifest the existence of activity in the form of design, is at once endowed with person- ahty; and so it comes about that a savage will pray to a volcano. Later, although more knowledge leads to the recognition of the absurdity of such pro- miscuous attributions of personality, the phraseology to which it gave rise is retained. But in speaking of the activity of the Absolute we must undoubtedly give the word its old implication. Activity, as represented in the human personality, is the power and will to produce change. It is in a sense creative, in that activity, though it may be primarily destructive, is yet destructive in view of an ultimate constructive end. A man may cut down a tree and saw and hack it into small fragments, but he does it in order to build a house or a boat, or to make a fire. Other forms of activity may have as their object simply the gratification and intensification of the sense of power, or the gaining of greater power, as in the case of a man who trains for a game or for a race. But in the long run activity is always directed towards an end, and is so creative. If we now apply this idea to the recognition of relativity of values in the experience of the Personal 126 Activity of Love is Absolute we at once find a clue to His creative activity. Thus, for instance, it seems to us reasonable to put love as a higher, more all-embracing aspect of per- sonality than reason. Both are essential attributes, but in human personality at least the first appears to us "higher" than the second. Again unity in its simple unadulterated form implies isolation, impenetrability, as well as com- pleteness, and seems therefore on a lower plane than Love, since it can at any moment rest satisfied, static, while love craves relation. One of the chief aspects of human, limited personality is its fellowship, and if we examine our conception of fellowship we find that it involves essentially a growing union, which ideally should be complete, though never resulting in unity or identification. The conception of union thus affords more scope for the personality than that of unity, since it includes dynamic relation. The metaphysical need of the mind for unity may be simply the ex- pression of the ideal of complete union which is the only satisfaction of the craving for perfect love. And if we analyse this idea of union it surely seems to connote the translation of external into internal re- lation — an idea full of the conception of growth, as well as of interpenetration. This is exactly mirrored in the Christian belief in a Transcendent God, the great Eternal, in Whom activity of union is conceived in directed towards Union 127 the Trinity of Love; while the activity of growth is represented in the Immanent God, Whose experience is ever becoming fuller by the incorporation of the love of His creatures, and whose activity of growth is en- shrined in Creation. (To this very important point we shall return in the next chapter.) And more and more we are coming to see that we may not set bounds, in our thought, to such activity. God is eternally the Creator. What right have we to claim that we are His sole creation? At first we are apt to regard anything infinite as being merely without beginning and without end — a dead emotionless continuum. But by the intro- duction of the idea of degrees of infinity, and so of relativity, we at once lose this terrible oppression of sameness. Love may quite well be of more import than reason or unity, even in the infinite. And if this be so, it is easy to see that the possible activity which is implied in the idea of degrees of infinitude, may, and will, lead to a need of creation, in order that there may be something external to reciprocate that love. Indeed it would seem to point us to a belief in an eternal impulse towards Creation in God, since fellowship, or union, always craves expansion as well as intensification^. And, as we have said, a vague ^ The spectre of impenetrability must, however, be first exorcised if we are to find any satisfactory basis for the understanding of this process of creation. 128 Union as the Aim of Creation conception of the thought outlined above has much to do with our intuitive belief in a God Who is not merely One, but is more than One — Three Persons composing a perfect union, not merely a perfect unity. But it is idle to make definite statements as to the modes of being and of action of an Infinite Person, since personality as we know it is finite, and we can only argue inductively from our own experience. All that we are trying to grasp in our present argument is a rational explanation of the fact that the Infinite Person can be and is active and creative ; and we find a irav crrSi in the idea that in infinity, as well as in finitude, there are degrees ; and that, hence, we are justified in arguing that the Infinite Person, by con- centration of His Being on those factors of Personality that are of more import, may be active and creative. Now suppose, as we have suggested, that this creative activity is directed towards those ends which are demanded by love and reciprocal relation. If an expanding union is a true requirement of Infinite Personality, as it is of finite, the creative activity will have as its end the making of beings who also have the attributes of personality, and their final union with the Infinite Personality ; no mere absorption, but an existence whose basis and object are still activity and love. (1) But here we are at once met with a difficulty. Love and personality imply freedom. A personality Three Diffimdties 129 constrained from without, and a compulsory love, are contradictions in terms. A personality may be con- strained, but only by the limitations involved in its own finitude. Consequently we see that the beings that are created, even though they be finite, must yet possess freedom, if they are to fulfil the function for which they were created, namely the fulfilling of the experience of God by the reciprocal influence of other beings. And this means that they must limit the freedom of God. (2) Another difficulty is the metaphysical one we have already referred to, that at once we introduce a pluralistic system, for our argument cannot be twisted into a bare pantheism. (3) Yet another thing which appears to be a difficulty, but which we shall find is, on the contrary, a valuable and suggestive help, is that, with finite personalities — indeed with the introduction of finitude at all, by the idea of creation — we introduce a new factor, Time, into the Timeless. With these three points we must deal in order, though they inter- penetrate. (1) In regard to the first, the question of person- ality and of consequent freedom (the discussion of which must be mainly a recapitulation), we see at once that partial freedom in the creature means limitation in the Godhead. In other words, the existence of Personality in the Godhead necessitates M. 9 130 Pain inevitable, because Freedom creation, in order that its need of expansion and reciprocal communication may be fulfilled, and this creation must be what St Paul calls a kenosis — an emptying by self -limitation, A gift of freedom, ready- made, so to speak, would not be possible, for the creature would be constrained by the gift itself. In other words, it would seem to our limited apprehension that in order to create beings that are free, God must first create the conditions under which freedom can be won, and then leave the winning of freedom to find its own fulfilment. We are altogether unable to say that only one method of satisfying these conditions is possible. All we can say is that, by whatever means freedom is won, the winning of it must entail struggle and pain; for it must be, throughout, a gradual conquest of that which is not free. At every moment and at every stage there must be something that, for lack of another word, we must call choice. But in using this word we must remember that to give it any volitional implication until self-consciousness is reached is wholly unjustifiable. Rather, we must imagine that there is a divine unrest in the material basis of freedom, which ever urges it onwards towards new developments; and that the stress of circum- stances kills out those variations which do not make for progress. This idea we have already discussed at length, so it is unnecessary to do so here. Our object at present is rather to emphasise the is based on Determination 131 fact that, since freedom is to be won, there must at every stage be the possibility of wrong methods, wrong applications of such freedom as the organism already possesses; and that such wrong applications must lead to suffering and eventual racial extinction. Life must be a struggle. Creatures that are ahead of their fellows must trample them underfoot. Eat or be eaten must be the law of progress ; for even in material things the new must be built on the foundation of the old. The process must be economic; and so the creature which spends all its energies in converting inanimate matter of simple chemical structure into animate matter of complex structure, must, for the sake of economy, be preyed upon by the higher creature, who has thus more energy to devote to the subordination of matter in other ways. Oxen eat grass all day long; men eat the flesh of oxen, and a very short time spent in eating sufl&ces them, giving time for other and higher activities. Pain and suffering must be the condition of progress, in one form or another: for greater freedom must always be gained by the most economical method, that is to say,, by making use of the freedom already won by others. As we have said, it is idle to conjecture whether or not any other method than the subordination of matter would have led to the evolution of freedom. Doubtless it is possible that the Almighty and Omni- potent God could have made another part of His 9—2 132 Freedom can only originate experience the basis of the process, or, in other words, that the expression of His self-limitation might have been perceived by His creatures as something other than what we call matter. But what is clear is that, whatever the basis of our experience, there must be utilisation of past effort if there is to be progress, and there must be continuity; and thus there must be objective pain — pain, that is, inflicted by one creature on another in the utilisation of the experience of that other. Moreover, when self-consciousness is reached, there must be also subjective pain — the pain involved in the repression of immediate desires, of goods that are apparent, for the sake of acquiring a higher good, which does not appeal with the same clamorous in- tensity. For example the promiscuous satisfaction of sexual desires — desires based on the most potent of the evolutionary factors that affect the individual — must always appeal more directly to the man who is just emerging into civilisation than the realisa- tion that communal progress and solidarity will in the end mediate greater advance, even greater hap- piness. Another matter must be taken into account, if our previous reasoning has been sound. In chapter in we saw that before true freedom could be initiated — the freedom based on choice — there must be the realisation of the existence of cause and effect — there must be the knowledge that a certain change in the in a Determinate Environment 133 relationship of a group of objects will have a certain result, and that the will to produce this result will cause changes in the sentient being which will tend to bring about the desired effect. To take an example, palaeolithic man must know that by flaking off chips from a flint he can make a weapon which, hurled at an animal, will pierce it and cause its movements to cease. But further, he must know that a certain wish of his own will set his arm into such motion that a stone he holds will inevitably strike another stone in such a way that a chip will be split off in a certain direction from the percussion centre ; that this action can be so repeated, with slight but certain variations, that the final product will be sharp in just those places where sharpness is desired ; and finally, that a different volition will so react on his body that the weapon will move in such a manner as to do the desired work on the creature he wishes to affect. He must be reason- ably certain that his volition will set a definite causal series in action, both within and without himself. Only so can he achieve the control which is the basis of freedom. Freedom is built on the foundation of the determinate nature of the reactions between force and matter. It would seem, then, that a freedom which is won must be won through the mediation of that which has no element of freedom in it. But what of the freedom of God? 134 Absolute Freedom is based We have seen that His freedom is completely bound up with His activity. If He is a person He must be active; if He is active He must be free; if He is free it follows that He must know. If we believe He is Transcendent He must have a perfect Personality, if His PersonaHty is perfect He must be perfectly free, Omnipotent and Omniscient. Yet the creation must be looked on as a kenosis — a self-limitation. Thus it would seem that as far as His creation is concerned, God is not perfectly free, and is there- fore not omnipotent nor, probably, omniscient^, for contingency enters into His Immanent experience, owing to the partial freedom of His creation. In His Immanent aspect He is limited, of His own free wiU, by His creatures. And we shall see that other lines of thought lead us to the same conclusion. He is limited because of His own Love, which brought men into being. But we can go deeper than this. In His Tran- scendent Nature God is completely self-determined. Because He is Perfect He can do nothing that is irreconcileable with that perfection. Because He is Love He can only act lovingly. Because His knowledge and power are infinite they can only result in action ^ Grod is, of course, omniscient in the sense that He knows of every happening, when once it has happened ; but it seems most likely that He is not omniscient as regards the future, because of the existence of actual freedom other than His own. See, however, p. 61. on Absolute Self-determination 135 which is inflexible, immutable. Because He is what He is there can be no shadow that is cast by turning. Therefore, if He wills to create, He can only create beings that shall eventually become perfect, like Him- self — beings that, since they are absolutely free, must be absolutely determined. But this determination is very different from the implacable necessity of nature, for it is determination from within, not from without — ^5e?/-determination. How then is this self-deter- mination to be won — for won it must be, not given, otherwise it would in some measure be determined from without ? Only by the struggle that will bring all power within its grasp — only by the struggle that will bring all determination under the sway of the per- sonal will. That which is without must be brought within. The will must become a reservoir wherein all the forces of the inevitable are stored, before it can become a welling fountain of indetermination or freedom — the freedom that is complete self-determina- tion. Therefore creation must be a Hmitation of the Godhead. It must be the creation of conditions of strife and pain for the creature, if the creature is to be finally perfect. And wh9,t of this final perfection? It must be always in one sense inferior to that of God, for HE IS from eternity as well as to eternity, whereas the creature has a terminus a quo, even when it too enters 136 Absorption into God impossible into the realm of the simultaneous^ ; " Before Abraham was, I AM" — not I was, for there is no past or present or to come in the simultaneous. Therefore there can be no absorption of the perfected per- sonalities of the creatures into the Perfect Personality of the Creator, for His Experience includes a fuller reality than theirs. They are o/jloioi, but not fully o/jLoovaioi with Him. The problem of evil in its more primitive form, when evil has no ethical signification, loses its force when we realise that it is an essential factor in the teleological process of the development of freedom. And in the higher stages, when self-consciousness is reached, and evil becomes an ethical reality, it loses at once its inevitableness. For here we have conscious choice replacing the unconscious response to stimuli. Consciousness acquires a more and more predominating influence as man progresses. And the conscious choice of the lower of two possible courses, when there is any degree of recognition of teleology in that particular matter, is not in any way a necessary consequence of the existence of the lower course of action. Sin only exists, that is, moral evil only exists, when it is possible for the man to make the right decision. Hence sin is not a necessary product of evolution. As we have seen ^ it introduces an entirely new factor. The problem of pain and the problem of 1 Vide infra, ch. vi. ^ Evolution and the Need of Atonement. Pain inevitable; Sin not 137 moral evil, though in a sense continuous with one another, in that both are necessarily possibilities under the only conditions in which freedom can be won, are yet discontinuous, in that the first is inevitable, the second not. For in the second we have the new factor of volition. Volition itself is continuous with non-volitional freedom, as we have seen, but yet it introduces an entirely new factor into the process of development when once it has appeared, in however rudimentary a degree. Here again, much insight may be derived from the reahsation of creative activity as a kenosis. If we adopt the idea that the creation of what we call matter is really the result of a discontinuity introduced into the experience of the Godhead by voluntary self- limitation, we find at once a clue to the understanding of the whole problem. For it is the voluntary ac- ceptance of pain and struggle into the experience of the Godhead, that such a kenosis involves. And the end and object of this acceptance is the emergence of beings who shall eventually leave the Godhead yet fuller in experience. For when the wills and activities of such beings are united — not unified, be it observed — with the Will and Activity of God, the kenosis becomes not merely a plerosis but a pleroma of the Godhead. His experience ceases to be limited, since the wills and activities of these beings are wholly aligned with His own; while it is richer in content 138 Pain part of Experience of God; Sin not owing to the reciprocal fulfilment of love, yet does not increase^. What then of the discordant aspects of the ex- perience of the finite being — what of sin? Sin, as we have seen, is the misdirection of per- sonality, — only possible when the person is imperfect. In this sense then, it is impossible for it to be part of the experience of the Perfect Person. God cannot sin. It is clear that, since freedom is an attribute even of the imperfect person, there may be a clash of wills between the Perfect and the imperfect, of which sin is the expression. The existence of freedom in other personalities is part of Reahty, but the possible direc- tion, or misdirection, of that activity is not a part of Reahty until it is actuahsed. In other words, sin is a misdirection of the wiU in time, which adds to Reality only when the issue in conduct is consummated^. Thus the effects of sin must become a part of the experience of God, but not sin, the misdirection or declination of the will, itself. God must suffer the consequences of man's sin, but sin itself has no part in Him, since by the creation of other free persons a plurality of wills 1 Vide infra, p. 147. 2 " Conduct " is here used in a very broad sense, to include all actual sin, including sins of thought. The point is that actual sin affects Reality, and so affects the experience of God: the poten- tiality of sin does not, since nothing is added to Reality, till the sin is actualised. For a discussion of Original Sin, and the biological meaning of sin, see Evolution and the Need of Atonement. The Aim of Creative Activity 139 has come to be. We must however remember that all this can only have relation to the limited aspect of God : His Immanent aspect. All the while He remains Transcendent, the same, above all the toil and strife. (2) This furnishes us in some sort with a possible solution of the old problem of the One and the Many — Monism and PluraHsm. For we find presented to us the idea of an Infinite God Who is essentially active and creative. The full satisfaction of that activity can only be found where all the attributes of personahty are ahke involved — love among the rest. Hence the Eternal voluntarily limits Himself in one portion of His experience, both as regards His omnipotence and His simultaneity — as regards His omnipotence in order that His creation should be free to love; as regards His simultaneity, because the creature must, as we have seen, become, not be; grow, not be made; and growth is a time-process. In this sense too, as far as the temporal limitation introduced into a part of the experience of God is concerned, God Himself may be said to be becoming, since His love is finding wider fields of activity through the reciprocal love of His creatures. And, as we have suggested, and shall dis- cuss at length in the next chapter, the eventual solution of the pluralism that exists in time, is to be sought in the union of the wills, and the experience, of men with God's. This does not lead us back to monism, for there is more than one experient; yet neither does it lead 140 The Aim of to pluralism in the ordinary acceptation of the term, for Reality holds the same content for the experience of God and of His perfected creatures^. Reality is one material of experience, shared aUke by God and His perfected creatures. The experience of all becomes unified, yet the experients remain individual. The experience of the creature is a microcosm, picturing in little, yet with absolute fideUty, the experience of the Creator ; for the experience of each is personality, in its fullest connotation. Many persons, with one Reality, the Reality which is for personality ; God with the same experience, yet with a greater infinitude, in that His experience is I AM, while the experience of His creatures includes I AM, but only in Him. That HE IS is the ultimate cause of the fact that for me I AM. God knows Himself; I know myself in Him. In other words, if we believe, as I wish to suggest, that the Personality of God is the basis of ultimate Reality, the appearance of other personalities is implicit in the activity which is one of the chief characteristics of a Person — an activity ever directed towards making fuller the content of experience, which is, for that person, Reality. Thus, if we conceive of a Tran- scendent, Eternal Person, in whose experience ultimate, or transcendent, Reality alone consists, we must at the same time conceive of the activity of that Person as directed towards the creation of other persons whose ^ Vide infra, pp. 177 seqq. Creative Activity 141 experience, which is Reality for them, is really part of His experience. In other words, as we have seen, if they must come to birth through struggle and pain, that struggle and pain must be part of His experience, and so their creation must be a kenosis. Yet although their experience is part of the Absolute Reality, by their existence they add to that Reality in degree, if not in kind, since they make fresh demands on the reciprocative aspect of the Ultimate Personality. Their experience is their own, yet it is also part of the Absolute Experience of the Transcendent Being. These other personalities add to God's experience, add, that is, to Reality, but only by their existence and action, since they are free, and in so far as He is Immanent. When these wills become wholly aligned with the Will of God, sin has passed away, discord vanishes. We have a plurality of persons possessing a wholly concordant experience. When they pass from time to simultaneity, they are as God, an I AM. Yet because they were once in time their experience of Reality can never be altogether the same in fulness of content as God's. They must differ from Him in this, and so there can never be absorption. The plurality of persons is eternal, yet there is only one Reality, which is still the experience of God, with which their experience and wills are wholly aligned, and with part of which they are coincident. To this, which is fundamental, and which yet involves a serious 142 The Time-problem metaphysical difficulty, we shall return in the next chapter. (3) All this however involves the translation of the finite into the infinite, for we cannot conceive of a perfect union of wills between an Eternal God and a temporal spirit. In other words we have here to introduce the time conception, both in regard to the self-limitation of God and the translation of personal existence from time into eternity. Let us deal with these two aspects of the time- problem in order. In the first place we see that, as far as any individual creation is concerned — granting the possibility, or even the probability, of the creation of other universes besides our own — the self-limitation of God is finite. In other words, it only affects one portion of His total experience. We cannot conceive that matter, which is, we have suggested, the result of the elimination of freedom from a certain portion of the experience of God, represents His whole experience. In the infinite expanse of His experience He is still transcendent; only in a certain finite and bounded fraction of it is He limited. It is as though in a vast homogeneous expanse without external boundaries we mapped out a small area. In so doing we at once introduce the idea of space — we can speak of it as an area simply because we have set bounds to it; and therefore points within that area have position relative to each other and to the whole. Immanence and Duration 143 But we can go further than this. Bergson has shown that clock-time is really the spatial realisation of succession. In other words pure duration, when considered in regard to something that is bounded, becomes temporal in the ordinary acceptation of the term. The perception of time as succession is only possible in virtue of the existence of pure duration in the percipient. Pure duration is the interpenetration of states. It would seem, then, that duration is only possible in that which is becoming^. Now it is quite clear that, since man has freedom, and since God has created the power of freedom in man by self-Umita- tion, the interrelations between man and God must be durational in aspect as long as there is any process at work. That is, as soon as we introduce change into our concept of any being, we have necessarily to introduce the concept of pure duration, and we leave at once the idea of the eternal or simultaneous. Change connotes interrelated states, and interrelated states involve duration. Therefore any conception of God as experiencing change in relationship to other beings removes Him from eternity, though not necessarily from infinity. Is duration then a limitation? I think we must admit this ; for with duration the IS becomes but the non-existent line of demarcation between the was and the will be. We can no longer say that the J Cf. Von Hiigel, Eteriica Life, p. 383. 144 Coexistence of Transcendence and Immanence immanent God is, any more than we can say that man ts, at any given moment, however infinitesimal. This need only be a difficulty however to those who accept the doctrine of Immanence without its correlative, the doctrine of Transcendence. But does not the acceptance of those two doctrines involve a contradiction? Can God become and yet he at the same time? Can He be active, and yet the Eternal One, the I AM, at one and the same moment ? Let us think of the human person. I know that I am, and yet I am not what I was a moment ago, and even while I think of what I am, I have changed ; my present becomes my past and determines yet more my future. Yet with all this I know that I am : it is the same I that is undergoing change. Though my ex- perience is constantly changing, making me more than I was ; yet it is myself that is changing and growing. A new self is not born every second, to die again at once. My personality represents a continuum, which is myself. In other words I myself am an immanent changing spirit, influencing, and being influenced by, the matter and spirit which make up my environment — my body, my house, my town, my world, my co- existent spirits — but I transcend all this changing flux ; I am, as well as I become. That is to say there is something of me that is not subject to this law of change. What is this? Surely it is the foundation on which rests the fact that / am, and that / am free ; involves Persisteiice throitgh Change 145 which freedom means for me, a limited being, my power to change of my own will. That for me is the eternal unchanging fact. I can change, I can create, I can increase. It is this which difierentiates me from the inorganic matter amid which I move ; and also, in a way, from other creatm-es which are free in some measure, but not self-conscious: creatures which are purely immanent. Now if we apply this same thought to the being and person of God, we find here that God is complete power, to change, to increase, to create — in a word to act. But He is Transcendent because He can, at will, persist through change. The matter is not, however, so easy as this. In dealing with the problem of the activity of God we are face to face with the whole question of the relation between eternity and time. And because we are in time we cannot hope to grasp the meaning of activity for a transcendent, simultaneous being. Yet we must attempt some fuller consideration of this, the hardest problem man has to meet. Although reason cannot grapple with it, since it is outside the range of dis- continuity and so outside the perceptual basis from which reason starts; yet because of the growing freedom we possess, which freedom represents the presence of something eternal in us, we can conceive something of the continuum which is eternal life. Let us first set down our premisses. M. 10 146 Two Types Duration is the interpenetration of states, as we have seen; the passing of the was into the will he. It is dynamic, and is of the essence of change, since the will he is different from, and when there is progress, fuller than, the was. Eternity is simultaneous. There is no was and no will he. There are no states; and therefore there is no duration. If this were all, eternity would be a dead continuum. But we have the further conception of eternal life, which connotes activity. Now activity is of two types. There is first the durational form — the only one of which we have objective experience, since it alone can exist in relation to limited experience; or, to put it more simply, since it can exist only where there is a discontinuous environment, such as our material one, which limits freedom. This form of activity intro- duces change or becoming into the experience of the personal being, by reaction. The second is the simultaneous form — the only form we can predicate of a Transcendent God, or indeed, of any simultaneous personality, and so, of any perfected Spirit. In it there is no element of change or becoming, for the ego is unbounded and perfect. It is an internal activity; so to speak a reciprocativeness or mutuality within the Person of the Godhead. And further, it is a mutual activity between the Godhead and other perfected spirits, if such there be — a personal relationship that cannot be of Activity 147 increased, since it is the communion of perfectness, yet into which other persons can enter without in- creasing it. The communion of perfectness is the eternal contradiction, as far as the finite mind is con- cerned, since it can be added to without increasing. And because we are finite we cannot conceive or pre- dicate its nature ; while it is spiritually apprehensible to us as the peace of God — an idea that is full of life and activity — ^in which there is no deadness. The reason that we can apprehend it in some measure is because we have in us eternal life : because the king- dom of heaven is within us, in what measure we have achieved freedom. But there is another aspect of God's activity, dependent on this simultaneous aspect. The mutual relationship not merely can but must be added to, from its own nature as pure activity. And because new perfection can only come out of imperfection, new freedom out of non-freedom, there must be relation between God, Who is perfect, and that which is not perfect. This relation is expressed in the activity of creation. Now the existence of imperfect beings is, as we have seen, a limitation of God. As the beings become freer and more perfect, so is the limitation of God in relation to them progressively removed. Thus in His communion with them God is becoming; be- cause there is process at work duration enters into His Experience. 10—2 148 Gods Immanence in His Relation Of the two questions that arise out of this: Is His Experience fuller at the end of process ? and, What is the meaning for the creature of passage from duration to simultaneity, from time to eternity? we have already answered the first in part. His Transcendent Experience is not fuller, since it was always perfect, complete, and unbounded. Yet in a sense His whole Experience is fuller, — or rather different : for the new experience is the result of removal of freedom, since it includes the Immanent aspect of limitation or incompleteness. Because incompleteness is not a portion of completeness, but its antithesis. His Experience includes a dissonance, which is pain. And so far it ceases to be perfect. Therefore, in rela- tion to that which is perfect, God is unchanged and unchanging, while in relation to His creatures He changes and increases, for all personal experience is mutual in essence. We cannot however conceive i.hat His relation to that which is already perfect is changed : the two ideas are contradictory and self-destructive. Therefore the dissonance can have no effect on Him in so far as He is Transcendent ; and moreover we cannot think of Him as being any way less transcendent, for the idea of transcendence is absolute, not rela- tive. Thus we reach an unexpectedly definite idea ; that Transcendence is the relation of God to that which is perfect, eternal, and simultaneous, and so to Himself ; to that which is Changhig 149 while Immanence is His relation to that which is im- perfect or becoming, a7id so is durational. From this it is a short step to the answer to our second question. As limitation is removed from the experience of God, so He, as Immanent Spirit, re-enters the domain of the absolute or eternal. Eternal life is thus conceived as the absence of limitation. Thus it would seem, for the creature too, that as it becomes freer, so it passes gradually, from contingency and duration, into simul- taneity. But can we conceive of a gradual passage from duration to simultaneity; are not the two mutually exclusive? Clearly this is so. Nothing can be absolute and relative at the same time. But the difficulty here stated is more apparent than real, if we believe that personality, with all its attributes, is an absolute thing. I am ; that is to say my ego is in an absolute sense. But yet I am becoming. There is a measure of absoluteness or transcendence in me, because I am a person, and personality is an eternal reality, timeless and unlimited. But there is a measure of immanence in me also, coexistent with it. I am not free in most of my contact with that which is outside me. This is no more than to say that there are things outside me which are not part of my experience. And therefore there is relation and discontinuity in that experience ; time and space enter into it. But as I become freer, more undetermined from without, more self-determined 150 Marty like God, is both from within, pari passu I move from immanence to transcendence, becoming more complete. What is true of God is, thus, true of me also : God and I are both transcendent, I speak it reverently : God and I are both immanent and limited. And as my freedom grows and I pass more and more to tran- scendence, so the self-limitation of God is progressively removed. Eventually, no doubt, this involves the cessation of the particular mode of limitation we call matter. I pass from duration to simultaneity as, by struggle, I achieve more freedom. And my struggle removes, not merely limitation from my own experience; but from the experience of God also. I thus serve God in a more real and vital sense than is generally understood. What a vast dignity the under- standing of this confers on man! He is not merely God's servant, in the common acceptation of the word, but God needs his work; God depends on him. "I have said Ye are Gods" is not a phrase: "In the image of God created He him" is not a phrase; they are both bald statements of a vital fact. We are transcendent and immanent, as God is Transcendent and Immanent. But we must not forget the other side of this truth. We are transcendent and immanent, as God is Tran- scendent and Immanent, but we are also transcendent and immanent because God is Transcendent and Im- manent. Because God is Transcendent He is Active, Transcendent and Immanent 151 because He is Active He becomes Immanent, and because He has willed to become Immanent we are transcendent. His Immanence is a self-limitation, is born of perfect power, perfect volition, perfect love. Our immanence is dependent on limitation by things outside ourselves. Our eternal life is without end, but it is not unconditioned in the beginning. God is ; He is without beginning and without end. We are; but there was, not a time, but a part of the Absolute experience, when we were not; though there can never again be a time when we are not. This idea clearly requires a little more thought, for it is evident at a glance that we are using the words immanent and transcendent each in two somewhat different senses. In regard to immanence, if we examine the idea we j&nd that two of its essential implications are those of duration and change, as far as the indwelling spirit is concerned. But in the Immanence of God there is the further conception of 5e?/-limitation, in that of men of external limitation. In the same way the idea of God's Transcendence is absolute; man's transcen- dence must always fall short of this in that there is a terminus a qiio. But for our purpose, the con- sideration of the passage from time to eternity, the essential points are the same in both cases : so that we are fully justified in using the terms as we have done, and our argument is perfectly valid, so long as we 162 The Dawn of Eternal Life remember that there is a region in which the parallel, or rather the equality, no longer holds. Finally, our discussion becomes full of meaning when we look at the living world as a whole. For transcendence is essentially correlated with the recog- nition of the ego, that is to say, with self-consciousness. In the creatures that have no element of this, there is no transcendence. They are purely immanent, and their life is in time; durational, not eternal. The dawn of self-consciousness is the dawn of eternal life, the fruition of the age-long struggle of the vital impulse against determinate conditions : at once its glory and its explanation. We cannot enter into the meaning of it all for the unconscious organism. We know too little to discuss it^. Only, we can be certain that it is just and right. Whether there be truth in the simple doctrine of transmigration we know not. Nevertheless, we must remember that it cannot be a transmigration of souls, for there is no soul where there is no self-reali- sation ; and it is hard to see that such a doctrine, with this limitation, would amount to more than the passing on of the vital impulse, for which provision is already made. The body- matter is non-sentient; merely a relay system for recording, and reacting to, stimuli, to speak in the language of electricity: only the vital impulse has life. It is a grave mistake, too much fostered by pseudo- 1 Cf. p. 179. Summary 153 naturalists who deal with the vital reactions of animal on the analogy of the meaning of such reactions to our conscious selves, to attribute a meaning-for-the- animal to each evidence of vital activity. We know nothing of that which is not self-conscious. All we can predicate of it is, that it is part of the experience of the self-consciousness of those who come in contact with it ; and so, that all of it is a part of the experience of God. We must now recapitulate the main ideas which our survey of the implications of immanence and transcendence has brought out. The net is large, and we have spread it wide, but we may hope that the haul will teach us at least something of the deep waters in which it was cast. We saw first how these two conceptions naturally and inevitably arose as man began to realise the double truth of Creation and Process; and how they are quite unaffected by the discovery that creation is itself actually process, since behind it must lie some- thing capable of motivation. And we suggested that in the double truth that underlies these two modes of divine Being was to be sought the solution of the other antinomies we have discussed. To the exposition of this solution the next chapter will be devoted, but here and there in the present chapter suggestions towards it have been made, as the logical development of our discussion seemed to demand them. 154 Swmmary From the idea of relativity of values in infinites we tried to reach some idea of the meaning of activity in an Infinite Being ; and we found that further light was cast by the realisation that activity is essentially an attribute of personality. The idea of unity was seen to be incompatible with love, since unity is complete, static, and impenetrable. Thus, through love, we were led on to creative activity and so to immanence. The requirements of Eternal Love again led us on to the need of freedom in the creation; and so, through self-limitation or kenosis, back to immanence. We saw that freedom must necessarily be based on determination of some sort ; ^perfect freedom on self- determination ; the growth of freedom on the gradual passage of external to internal determination, issuing eventually in complete self-determination, as it is perfected. A discussion of the results of imperfect freedom — sin and pain — ^in their relation to the experience of God necessarily followed ; and the final solution was sought in union between creature and Creator. In this we found an indication of the answer to the old puzzle of the One and the Many, through unification of many experiences. A full discussion of this was reserved for the next chapter, but again we found that suggestive ideas might be derived from the Immanent and Tran- scendent modes of Divine Existence. But since the conception involves passage from the finite to the Summary 155 infinite some consideration of the time-problems was demanded, for immanence is essentially temporal, or at least durational, while transcendence is of the realm of the simultaneous. Necessarily we returned to the question of the Activity of God ; and we found that it is of two kinds, simultaneous and durational, transcendent and immanent. The transcendent form is clearly primal; but we have not yet attempted any direct answer to the question: Why, if Tran- scendent Activity is internal in action should it ever be externalised in creation and so become Immanent? But nevertheless we reached the definite conclusion that in all ways Divine Transcendence is the relation of God to that which is perfect, eternal, and simul- taneous; while Divine Immanence is His relation to that which is imperfect or becoming, and so is dura- tional. As we shall see this does not in any way imply that human beings can have no relation to the Transcendent God. This difficulty found a partial answer as we considered the passage of finite beings into the realm of simultaneity, which is eternal life. For we found in man something transcendent, per- sisting through change, as well as the changing self of a developing being. What that transcendent something is we have not yet even tried to formulate ; only we see that freedom is closely related to it as an attribute. Whatever changes, my freedom, however small be its range and scope is an absolute thing. 166 Swmmary But we reacli one definite conclusion, that man, as well as God, is both immanent and transcendent. The problem is the same; only the degree differs. And surely this is the strongest possible confirmation of the thesis we have briefly enunciated, and have still to amplify, that the object of creation, and the end of process and change, is union with God, the Creator. For men are seen as gods in little, and per- fected manhood appears to differ from Godhead only in this, that men are created, while God is Uncreated ; men become as God, while God IS from everlasting to everlasting. There is no Promethean impiety in such a belief ; we do not seek to wrest the crown from an unwilling Jove, but rather we seek to reign in God and with God, in perfect union, according to His Eternal Will. CHAPTER VI ETERNAL LIFE Let lis now briefly recapitulate the chief ideas which we have so far derived from our study as a whole. In our first chapter we found that, whether life was regarded from the view-point of Religion, of Philo- sophy, or of Science, we eventually found a pair of correlated opposites or antinomies, one or other of which was firmly upheld by thinkers in that domain, but, until lately, rarely or never both. In the case of Religion, which is based more largely on intuition than are the wholly logical sciences, the two anti- thetical aspects have been held more or less at the same time, but as soon as philosophical reasoning began to be applied, religion more and more tended towards deism or pantheism. We used the following terms to indicate roughly the antitheses inherent in the main methods of thought — immanence and tran- scendence; monism and pluralism; freedom and determination. It was then suggested that the anti- theses might have their basis in the incomplete survey 158 Recapitulation of Reality possible to reason, on a logical basis; and that their relation might really be correlative and not opposite. In chapter ii we considered the conceptions of con- tinuity and discontinuity, and found that the discon- tinuity we see everywhere around us is the necessary result of a knowledge based on perceptual experience. Only discontinuity can be perceived. But all lines of thought urge us conceptually to the idea of unity. The effect of this is, to confirm our belief that serial continuity is a real thing and not an appearance only ; and it leads us on to the belief that escape from dis- continuity when the spirit is perfected, by becoming free from external limitation, will mean the completion of a unity, in which yet the personality of each being will remain eternally distinct. In the third chapter we discussed the nature of the individual from the point of view of colonial existence. Here we found reason to believe that the true test of an individuality that could lead on to personality — in other words, the test of individuality on the main line of progress — was the possession of a central nervous system. The basis of such an idea was the need for complete realisation of causality, which could only proceed from complete determination in the organism. In the fourth chapter we considered at some length the validity of the argument of an imaginary critic, that a gift of the power of winning freedom was Recapitulation 159 equivalent to a gift of freedom itself, and this argu- ment we rejected on the ground that it took no cog- nisance of the contingency involved in the method of the gift. In the last chapter the thesis of the third was expanded to show that the need of complete deter- mination was inherent in the idea of self-determina- tion: that volition must be certain of its fulfilment. The tendency to the formation of closed systems is thus seen to be an effort to produce more com- plete internal determination; and it only finds its full meaning when there is a self-determining will animating the whole. Thus a partial truth is reached in the statement that, where intelligence is absent, there is a tendency towards unity, or closed systems; where it is present the tendency is towards plurality, since the personal being is a definite and separate entity. This, however, must not be pressed to such a length as will land us again in the conception of Leibnitzian monads. We have found no justification for the assumption that personalities are impenetrable. Pressing our argument as to the origin of the anti- nomies with which every form of thought is confronted to its legitimate conclusion, we are confronted with a very unexpected solution. If we are right in be- lieving that they are ultimately due to the existence of external limitation, to the absence of that complete self-determination which alone gives meaning to the 160 The Basis of Freedom must he idea of freedom, we have finally to consider in what this limitation consists. Freedom only has meaning in relation to person- ality, at any rate for the human mind. When we think of a thing as absolutely unconstrained, we do not think of it as inert, but rather as a centre of action. An unconstrained particle will remain at rest, unless at one time it was constrained by the action of some force, in which case it will move for ever. If it remains at rest, it is constrained to do so by its nature, and so is not free. If it were free we could only think of it as a perpetual source of energy, in which case it would be constrained to the manifestation of energy by its own nature ; and this is freedom in quite a different sense, really. Our minds are in fact quite unable to grasp the possibility of real unconstrainedness in any particle, material or non-material^; for the only meaning that unconstrainedness can have for us is the freedom of self-determination, the freedom of the true alternative — of a power of choice between rest and any activity, or between one activity and another, utterly undetermined by any outside influence. For the free- dom of sheer indetermination is zero; indeed in such an idea there is a contradiction of terms. In other words, for our minds it is only possible to conceive ^ By non-material particle is meant a particle of energy, if such really exist, as the electron-theory and quantum-theory seem to suggest at present. sought in Personality 161 freedom in relation to volition, which is an attribute of personality. Again, we are ultimately driven back to personality for the explanation of limitation, from the same necessity of the process of thought which drives us to seek a First Principle. As we have seen, the mind cannot rest in the idea of an impersonal First Principle, if it honestly and openly takes cognisance of the facts of human personality. Activity and volition are thus foimd to be necessary concomitants of a First Principle. In the long run, then, limitation must be the limitation of the personal activity of the Deity. And any limita- tion appears to us as the absence of complete freedom, which in the last resort is related by our mind to per- sonality. This point is so important that we may be allowed to repeat our argument. A particle which is only free to move in one plane, that is, in two dimensions of space, we say is limited. It has only two degrees of freedom. But even if the particle is "free," we only mean that it is free to move in any direction. It is not free to initiate motion. Even if it is a source of energy, as a particle of radium, and if we still further endow it with the power of perpetually producing energy of all kinds without suffering loss, and so of perpetually initiating motion of all types, it is still not free unless it can stop and go on at will. We are thus driven back to self-determination or volitional freedom. M. 11 162 The Ideas of Self-limitation and Anything less than complete self-determination intro- duces the notion of limited personality; absence of self-determination, absence of personality, is absence of all true freedom. Our antinomies, then, one and all involve the idea of limited personality, at the last. Immanence is a limited aspect of the Godhead — self-limited, it is true, but still limited. Plurality of persons not in perfect communion with the Transcendent Unity of God is a limitation of God's Activity. Determination in the material world hmits the freedom of living beings; and, from the conditions of the kenosis, directly, as well as indirectly, limits the freedom of God. The three are seen to be simply different aspects of the same truth. In what, then, does this limitation consist? What are the implications of a limitation, which, as we have seen, is being progressively removed, in regard to personality? Essentially, the great phenomenon in- troduced is change. And change involves duration, since duration is the interpenetration of states, according to M. Bergson. In other words, we find that the introduction of a time-factor is the great characteristic of the experience of limited personality. Only in the Eternal and Simultaneous is there perfect freedom. Increasing freedom indicates the passage from the temporal to the eternal. And this, as we have seen, is the true meaning of Eternal Life. It is Immanence involve Duration 163 life in which all limitations are swallowed up in the activities of perfect union. Communion is its keynote. And the meaning of communion is activity without change. As to the meaning of such activity we cannot reason, since reasoning is based upon limitation, from the very nature of its physical basis and origin. But those of us to whom is vouchsafed an earthly love as perfect as such love may be ; whose love seems as a deep haven unaffected by the storms of paltry ill- temper and vexations, however insistently they may rage without in the shallower waters of our being ; can have some intuition of the meaning of Eternal Activity. And the saints who have entered into the peace of God have perhaps yet clearer understanding. It is enough for our present purpose to record the fact that all our thinking has brought us to this simple view, that the difficulties of thought depend on the time- factor which plays so vital a part in the existence of a developing soul. In the last chapter we endeavoured to obtain some conception of the nature of the Activity of God. We saw that in as much as He is Personal, He must be active, with an activity based on internal self-deter- mination ; while He is also creative, with an activity based on volition externally directed. The first is transcendent activity, the second immanent. For in this last, His Will can only be directed towards per- fection; perfect freedom can only be won by, not 11—2 164 Reality of Dualism in Time given to, His creatures; and therefore in relation to them He becomes self-limited. Self-limitation at once brings Him into the realm of duration, since it intro- duces change into His relations with an ever-changing creation, and thus involves the interpenetration of states. God leaves the realm of the Eternal and Simultaneous, as far as His Immanent aspect is con- cerned, in the kenosis that is inherent in creative activity. And He can only re-enter it when His creation is perfected in the achieving of perfect freedom by His creatures. Yet this cannot mean their absorption into Him. Since He IS (we cannot say He Was, without introducing time into the simultaneous) when they were not, their experience can never be coextensive or completely identical with His, because they are born of His will functioning as creative activity. And for man Eternal Life means the passage from duration to simultaneity, with which proceeds, step by step, the repassing of His self-imposed Immanence into His Transcendence. Thus it is clear that dualism is real, as well for God as for man. But it is equally clear that it is of time — durational, not eternal. And because we are in time, and because Causality and the doctrine of Ground and Consequence are essentially temporal conceptions, involving succession, any purely rational system of thought is bound to bring us face to face with the antinomies of philosophy and science. The difficulties are insuperable by pure reason, and The Activity of God 165 according to the premisses we select we shall tend more and more towards one or other solution: monism or pluralism; freedom or determination — of which none is wholly true. The very existence of a parallel pair of correlated opposites in theological thought indicates the fundamental nature of the contradictions of experience. But a consideration of the nature of personal activity, applied to Infinite Personality, indicates the solution, even though the matter is not apprehensible by pure reason. Because God is Transcendent, unity is the foundation of all ; but because He is Personal He must be Active. Activity may be internal or external. Because He is Love it must be external, as well as internal, for love functions ever actively, ever demands a wider sphere. Therefore He is Creative, and if Creative, then Immanent. Yet Infinite Experience cannot be added to, for it is complete and full. ifKrip(oai^ completes again the TrXtjpiOfia. Fulfilling re-establishes fulfilment eternally. It may be asked, why, if there is no addition possible to the experience of the transcendent God should His activity function externally at all; and, conversely, why, since we know of an evolving world, the effect of such functioning, should we postulate transcendence ? Why should we not be content with the notion of an immanent God ? Naturally, we cannot fully answer questions like these, which deal 166 The Activity of God with simultaneity, of which only mystics have any experience, even if we allow to them such high honour. Nevertheless, taking the second first, we see that we are landed straightway in pantheism, or at best, in the unsatisfactory Bergsonian conception of God as "unceasing life, action and freedom," having "nothing of the already made^." And because such ideas do not satisfy the highest religious consciousness ; because they do not fall into line at all with the evolution of rehgion, we may reject them as incomplete. We are thus, as has been shown over and over again by very many thinkers, thrown back on a conception of God that is more than this, though, I hope we have made it clear that it must include this. Thus we turn once more to transcendence as an attribute of God ; a fortiori, as the fundamental attribute. And since we know the evidences of His activity; further, as simultaneity is obviously a more inclusive, complete, and final, thing than duration, we are bound to seek the meaning of what we experience and know in the nature of Transcendent Personality. External activity must be involved in its nature. If however we leave unity on one side, as a statical conception incommensurate with the idea of Personality (an active thing), and take instead the dynamic conception of union, some light begins to dawn. Union connotes reciprocal activity, and is compatible with love, 1 Creative EvdiUion, p. 262. Tra7iscendent Union 167 while unity is not. Union implies not exactly ex- ternality, but activity not solely directed on the self. True, union also implies increase, when we are dealing with finites. And, as we have said, it is not possible to conceive of increase in that which is transcendent, since it implies interpenetration of states, and so duration. The final question is therefore resolved into this simple form; can there be union without increase in that which is infinite ? And surely the answer is Yes, if we remember that we are dealing with Transcendent Personality. Union is the entering of other personalities into His Experience, as far as is possible for beings that once were not. Love is just this — the sharing of experience. If Reality is then the Experience of God, as idealists maintain, it is not increased by the existence of others who share it, so long as all the personalities interpenetrate com- pletely, without losing their self-identity, since they are united with Him in perfect love, which is the sharing of His Experience, which is itself unbounded activity, infinite, complete, transcendent. Like Job, we utter things that we understand not, things too wonderful for us, which we know not. But yet we have the Christian knowledge; we know Him Who said "The glory which thou hast given me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even as we are one." Three Persons in union in one Godhead, perfect, complete, and many others being added thereto to 168 Matter and Freedom share that identical, unincreasable perfection: it is incomprehensible to reason, but it is apprehensible and apprehended through the spiritual sense of man, and acclaimed as true. Two chief and very suggestive ideas have thus emerged from our whole study of the problems of religion from the standpoint of evolution; and they hold good, I venture to think, whatever the future may hold in store in the way of fresh Hght on the method or mechanism of the evolutionary process. The first is, that all our difficulties in understanding the ultimate problems of life have their origin in the same thing, the absence or imperfectness of freedom. In this we have found the common source of our antinomies. The second is, that the eventual solution is to be sought in union, rather than in unity. The satis- faction of the higher demands of personality is found in the region of reciprocal activities, which may be embraced under the collective name of Love; and reciprocal activities are only possible as between many persons. Unity is there, in complete oneness of aims and experience; plurality is there in many person- alities capable of individual activities in the domain of universal love. We have also reached this apparently anomalous idea that matter is due to the self-limitation of God, and is in fact an expression of that self-limitation; Matter and Freedom 169 yet it is in the end removed by man winning freedom for himself. Though at first sight such a conception may seem paradoxical, yet the more we examine it the more suggestive it becomes. For example, we may be inclined to look on it as a transference of God's freedom to man. Nothing, of course, could be more absurdly untrue. Such an idea is based on a kind of quantitative conception of freedom; whereas freedom is a quality, and, as such, is incapable of measurement or subdivision. When we talk of progressive removal of limitation, or the possession of partial freedom, we are in no sense implying that a being can have gradu- ated intensities of freedom. Rather, we mean that in certain parts of experience he is limited, in other parts free ; and the removal of limitation implies increase of the extensity or range of his freedom, not a greater intensity of some part of it. Freedom is an absolute thing, which is, or is not, present in relation to some particular set of conditions. And this applies to the self-limitation of God. Thus there is no transference of God's freedom to man; rather the self -limitation of God vanishes as the limitation of man vanishes. Eventually there will be complete freedom, with many participating in it. Thus the creative movement is directed towards a plurality of persons in complete union, and completely free. There can be no question of sharing the freedom 170 Matter and Freedom of God, since freedom is an absolute quality, and not a quantity. And again, the idea of matter as a portion of the ultimate Keality — the material of God's Experience — in which He has, impelled by Creative Love, sacrificed or abnegated His freedom, is at first puzzling. For this matter becomes, in the long run, the material of man's experience ; or rather, of that part of it in which he is conscious of limitation. And for the animals it is the whole material of experience. Yet, on the other hand, we must look upon, and have always looked upon, the act of Creation as an expression of the activity of God. All that is new in our suggestion is, that this activity is not merely energising in its effect, but rather that it functions first as a self-limitation, or cession of the power of energising, in regard to one portion of the Divine Experience, while it creates and energises something that we term the vital impulse^, and, by so doing, makes the final removal of the Divine Limitation certain, through the achieval of freedom by the beings that are to come into existence. There remains however one great metaphysical diflB^culty, which presents itself in two somewhat different aspects. (1) Can there be one experience 1 This is equally true whether the impulse itself be created, or only the situation of affairs which makes its appearance possible, indeed inevitable. Four Problems 171 shared by many experients ? Are we justified in the conception, which we have been led, or seduced, into forming, of a union of human souls with God in the sharing of a common experience ? And, if not, have we not once more drifted on to the quicksand of pan- theism ? must not the end be absorption, rather than union ? (2) Can there be a common experience shared by God and perfected man, since on the one hand it was through God that men came to be, and there was a part of God's experience when men were not ; and on the other hand man's experience includes the memory of struggle and sin ? Is memory nothing, or at any rate, not a part of true experience ? Into the attempt to solve these problems two other matters must enter. We must try to form some idea of what the abiding principle in man is — that principle which makes us know that we persist through all our changing experience — that elusive something which forms the link between the was and the will he, wholly inapprehensible to the intellect, for reasons we have already stated. And we must try briefly to formulate our ideas of the personal relationship of an evolving being to the Godhead in its Transcendent and Immanent aspects. All these things are closely linked together, and by beginning with the last we shall be led along a fairly well-marked path back to the first. That which is immanent of me, that part of me which is limited and becoming, that part which will 172 The Transcendent Aspect one day cease in fulfilment, is related to the Immanent Aspect of God. As our study proceeded, this fact came out more and more clearly. But besides this there is in me something that persists through change — the unchanging thing that is myself; that is not merely the non-existent line that divides the was from the will he of my experience, but the basal self-hood that enables me to claim that experience as my own. And this is the part of me which has achieved freedom and in doing so has become timeless; which, by the inturning of the consciousness on itself, has become self-conscious, and so free, with the freedom of volun- tary choice — of the true alternative. There is a part of me which is in duration, which ever changes from the was to the will 6e, whose jyresent is only the indication of this change. But more and more of me achieves, passes into true freedom, and so passes into the simultaneous. For perfect freedom is immune from matter and its laws, since matter is the expression of a limitation; and being immune from matter, and from all that is becoming (which also is clearly limited), it is no longer in duration. The immanent part of me is really Dr Thorpe's Ghost in the Corpse, and for it "the sacramental word is growth^." But Dr Thorpe's own estimate of "that queerest of Phenomena, Somebody Else'^ — "he almost always presents himself to me now as a growing, ^ De Morgan, Joseph Vance, p. 376. of Human Personality 173 decreasing, or stationary Ghost," "often with little or no control over his Corpse " — though purely immanental in expression, yet contains the germ of this same essential something which is not in Time at all, through which I am enabled to recognise that the Ghost is somebody else's Ghost, and not my Ghost. Each Ghost has his own identity, which enables us to re- cognise him, even though we see him growing or decreasing. I cannot forbear to quote further Dr Thorpe's tender, humorous lament over his younger son, not for its relevance, but for the clearness of insight it shows, and for the vague hope it suggests to those who are troubled by some baby soul in a grown-up body — hope very vague, very unsub- stantial, yet rooted in trust of Eternal Love which may still find out a way. He's little Joey still, and I can see it as plain as possible. His corpse has overrun him, and the poor Baby Ghost has never a chance. His intellectual powers and his carcase have grown. But his self — no! It's little Joey still — that preposterous kiddy-widdy. Anyhow, if there is a chance, little Joey has got to win his own freedom somehow, somewhen, somewhere ; and we must leave it at that, and come back to our analysis. The part of me which simply is, which has a real present, and not an imaginary, shifting line dividing past from future, is simultaneous. Its existence is 174 Contrast between Human for ever now. And because of this I know that I am. If then there is a simultaneous or transcendent part of my personality, surely it is related already to the Transcendent God — related to, but not truly united with, Him, since there cannot be true union between that which is complete or perfect and that which is incomplete or imperfect. My changing, growing being is related to the Immanent God; my persistent, real self is related to the Transcendent God. And as my immanence vanishes, gradually being absorbed into my transcendence, so God's Immanence in relation to me is reabsorbed into His Transcendence; and relation between myself and Him is merged in union. Till there is completeness there can be no union, for my transcendence is not as God's ; since His was or rather is, when mine was not. His Transcendence is complete in spite of His Immanence, though in a different sphere ; my transcendence is incomplete because of my immanence. It is almost impossible to put these things into words, because language is based on in- complete communion between persons, and has its basis in material limitation; but I trust I have conveyed some idea of a distinction that is perfectly clear in my own mind. The is of me, my ego, is, then, just this part of me which has passed from time into simultaneity. There was a part of God's experience when it was not, but and Divine Transcendence 175 never again, perhaps, can it cease to be, even though it may never achieve completeness and union. Yet perhaps, on the other hand, the reverse process, the diminution even of the free ego, is possible — less and less of me transcendent, more and more of me im- manent. This may be part of the meaning of the bondage of sin ; the ego becoming smaller and smaller, less and less free, as well as the immanent self — ceasing to grow. And the process might lead to extinction, if a man came to live solely in sensation. Either of these seems logically possible — a spirit eternally in- complete, or a spirit that suffers annihilation through losing its transcendent ego. On the whole the second seems the more probable, but we cannot decide by reason. Let us next turn for a moment to the animals. Have they an is ? Are they in a measure tran- scendent too ? Only, surely, if they are self-conscious; and of this, as we have often said, we have little knowledge. But if transcendence is, as we have argued, the self- knowledge of that part of a beingwhich is not susceptible of change, and if this constitutes the is, the ego, clearly there is no is, for the non-self-conscious animal. For it there is only change. Its persistence is but the per- sistence of matter energised by the vital impulse. It is different wholly from the persistence of me, a person. As we have said already, it is decidedly a question 176 Relations between Man and God whether for them the whole matter is not summed up in the passing on of the vital impulse. I, then, in virtue of my transcendency, can, and do, have relations with the Transcendent God. I can pray to Him, I can gain from Him the power to win more freedom, to make more of me transcendent^. For my aim is self-completion, the removal of myself from time to eternity, from immanence to tran- scendence. With the Immanent God^ I am in constant relation, in Time, because my spirit is still in bondage, and He too is in bondage for my sake. As my nature has two aspects, so each of them is in relation with the two aspects of the Godhead, which He has suffered for my sake. These are but suggestive thoughts. The poverty of our language, and the limitations of our reason, both alike finding their origin far back in the discontinuity of matter, make it impossible to set forth these mys- teries adequately, or even such part of them as we can grasp by intuition. In result the suggestions amount to this, that we, as persons, are fragments, offshoots, consequences — whatever you like to call it: the essential point is 1 Vide infra, ch. vn. 2 We must always remember that we are not speaking of two Gods, but Of two aspects of one mysterious Trinity. Memory 177 that we are no longer merely vehicles — of that vital impulse through which freedom has come to be ; fragments in which freedom has become in a measure absolute, not relative. In other words, we have the power of voluntary choice, of the true alternative. And so far we are not in time at all, but in eternity. We have now indicated the answer to the last two of the four problems we enunciated a few pages back (p. 171). We have seen what the abiding principle in man, the principle that persists through change, is; and we have briefly indicated the personal relationship between developing man and the two Aspects of the Godhead. We must next turn to our other two problems; and, beginning with memory, face the metaphysical difficulties involved in the conception we have been led to form, of a union in which are many experients who share One Experience. Can all experience become ultimately one ? Bergson divides memory into habit and pure memory, the latter being coextensive with conscious- ness. There are, we have said, two memories which are profoundly distinct: the one, fixed in the organism, is nothing else but the complete set of intelligently constructed mechanisms which ensure the appropriate reply to the various possible demands. This memory enables us to adapt ourselves to the present situation; through it the M. 12 178 Immanental Philosophy of Berg son actions to wHcli we are subject prolong themselves into reactions that are sometimes accomplished, sometimes merely nascent, but always more or less appropriate. Habit rather than memory, it acts our past experience, but does not call up its image. The other is the true memory. Coextensive with consciousness, it retains and ranges alongside of each other all our states in the order in which they occur, leaving to each fact its place and consequently marking its date, truly moving in the fast [italics mine] and not, like the first, in an ever renewed present^. Into the relations of these two memories, so admirably worked out by him, we need not enter, as they do not concern our present discussion. Suffice it to say that pure memory is the affirmation of the life and reality of the spirit, just as perception is the affirmation of the reality of matter. Matter itself is, for Bergson, due to our body, which is the ever-moving actual present of action, pressing forward and cutting across the universal "becoming"; and is thus presented to us as spatial. Our perceived Reality is, in fact, movement, and is hence durational. It is essential that we should grasp the fact that the philosophy of Bergson is purely immanental, in duration; for it is concerned solely with movement, growth, and becoming. We shall therefore look in vain for help in the solution of problems relating to 1 Matter and Memory, Eng. Trs., p. 195. Volition and Irritability 179 transcendence. It is but another form of what Von Hugel calls frelimiiiary pantheism, which is so valuable a help in forming a true conception of the richness of the Whole^. There is in Bergson's philosophy nothing that can lead to the uninspiring deadness of an ultimate pantheism. We need not go into the whole question of un- conscious psychical states; that kind of unconscious consciousness which plays so large a part in Bergson's system. We have already in some sort assumed their existence, in dealing with the vital impulse; though Hofiding would give choice and will as the character- istic of all life, making spontaneity "only quantita- tively different from irritability 2" — volition is, for him, consciousness of activity in a being whose state is not purely receptive 3. However, he uses the word "will" not in "the narrower sense, as the power of choosing between different possibilities," which, he rightly says, "is only the product of mental development, not an original factor"; but "in the wider sense, as all activity determined by feeling and cognition^." And this definition comes very much nearer to the Bergsonian conception, differing from it however in the introduction of the words cognition and feeling. Whether we are justified in attributing these to the 1 Von Hugel, Eternal Life, p. 388. ^ Hoflfding, Outlines of Psychology, p. 309. 3 Ibid. p. 313. 4 Ibid. p. 100. 12-2 180 Pure Memory is in the Past lower organisms which simply show the irritability that is characteristic of all life (even though it sinks to a minimum in certain parasites, such as Sacculina, as Johnstone points out)^ is another question. I am strongly disposed to doubt if we are. But it matters little to our main argument where we draw a line which must of necessity be artificial. We are using the term will in the " narrower sense," to denote the freedom of the true alternative; and we claim that, whatever be the exact condition of the lower organisms ; whatever the justification for speaking of unconscious psychical states ; all that concerns us is that there can be no real choice without self-consciousness. We may, if we please, go practically all the way with Bergson without troubling our theory, for Bergson's system is purely immanental, and we are concerned not with immanence alone, but with transcendence as well; ultimately, with transcendence alone. The great question for us at present is. What remains of memory in the transcendental state ? According to Bergson, Memory only becomes conscious when it is brought into contact with the sensori-motor elements of present action^. Pure memory is in the past^. All being, or, more exactly, 1 Philosophy of Biology, p. 291. An even more amazing instance of parasitic degeneration than Sacculina is to be found in Thompsonia, a form recently described by F. Potts in Proc. Canib. Phil. Soc. vol. xvn. part vi. 2 Matter and Memory, p. 197. ^ Ibid. pp. 170-171. von Hiigel 181 all spirit, is existence in pure duration; simultaneity is but a spatial concept^ ; indeed it is the intersection of time and space 2. With such a view we cannot agree, if it is pressed into the realm of transcendence. What the Eternal Now connotes we do not. know, but it is certainly not spatial. It is rather the absence of duration, than its intersection with space. It is the timeless activity of perfect freedom 3. Von Hiigel illustrates its meaning in some degree by examples of the experience of spiritual souls of to-day and yester- day*. One of many suggestive passages may be quoted from this writer. Eternal life, in the fullest thinkable sense, involves three things — the plenitude of all goods and of all energizings that abide; the entire self-consciousness of the Being Which constitutes, and which is expressed by, all these goods and energizings; and the pure activity, the non- successiveness, and simultaneity, of this Being in all It 1 Time and Freewill^ p. 95. 2 75 j^ p hq 3 We may note in passing Von Hiigel's admirable criticism of the Bergsonian conception of duration. "But indeed Bergson himself gives us two indications that we cannot take Duration as the sheer Change and Becoming which he usually declares it to be. For Duration ever consists with him in the interpenetration of its various parts. Take away all these parts (however obscurely discriminated and intimately interpenetrative) and the Succession of Duration has become as homogeneous as the Simultaneity of Space — which is precisely what the entire system does not want. Yet parts are ever parts of a whole, and sheer Becoming has no room for wholes, and hence none for parts," etc. Eternal Life, p. 293. * Eternal Life, pp. 371-378. 182 No Memory has, all It is. Eternal Life, in this sense, precludes not only space, not only clock-time — that artificial chain of mutually exclusive, ever equal moments — but even duration, time as actually experienced by man, with its overlapping, interpenetrating successive stages. But Eternal Life pre- cludes space and time because of the very intensity of its life. The Simultaneity is here the fullest expression of the Supreme Eichness, the unspeakable Concreteness, the overwhelming Aliveness of God ; and is at the opposite pole from all empty unity, all mere being — any or all abstractions whatsoever^. But, if Bergson's analysis of pure memory be correct, as I believe, pure memory is in the past, not in the now. It only flashes into activity with the need of action in response to some external stimulus. It is therefore connected with incomplete freedom, incom- plete self-consciousness ; for it is directed towards the appropriate action of a being partly determined from without. Therefore memory cannot exist in the simul- taneous — in Eternal Life, that is to say— for it only comes into play in the relation between soul and body. No doubt what I am, in my transcendent self even, is based on the past, and go related to memory; but memory itself can have no existence when I am all transcendent. God cannot remember, because all His transcendent experience IS. Only in so far as He is immanent, in duration, can He remember. So, though in part it is through memory that we 1 Eternal Life, p. 383. / in Eternal Life 183 rise to transcendence, yet in so far as we are tran- scendent we have no memory. Does, or will, then, our past cease to exist for us? Shall we retain no memories of earthly loves, earthly friendships, earthly happiness, earthly sorrows ? Must these all vanish, and leave not a wrack behind ? Or are they so to speak spread out — it is impossible to avoid a form of words that is spatial — like a great panorama in the nowl Surely all imperfection is swallowed up; but it is swallowed up in perfection — ^all imperfect states be- come merged in perfection. Earthly love becomes the perfection of love. But the personality remains ; and that came to be what it is through the partial loves and friendships and sorrows and struggles of earthly life. Personalities do not become identical because they are made perfect. What we shall be then, is simply the perfection of what we are now becoming^. There is 1 Surely this is what is meant by the Resurrection Body. " God giveth it a body." Not a tangible piece of matter: that involves limitation; but a self-identity which is the expression of the completion of process. Doubtless there must he limitation, until the spirit is made perfect. And if the spirit has to approach nearer and nearer to perfection in other lives than this: if it is not at once perfected when the mortal coil is shuffled oflF: some sort of limitation, which may be a body of some kind, must still hamper its freedom. But spirit perfected is absolutely free — free to limit itself in any way, and so free to assume a body, or 5eZ/- limitation. This surely is the meaning of the Resurrection Body of Christ, and His appearances after He rose. He was perfectly free, and so could manifest Himself in any Body He chose. 184 No Memory in Eternal Life diversity in the Great Union, not identity. More than this we cannot say. All we know is that the was is lost in the is ; but the is is what it is because of the was. All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist; Not its semblance but itself. The only difference, surely, must be between the broken arc and the perfect round. Is not this a part of the meaning of that "hard saying" which often distresses us "In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as angels in heaven^." Earthly relationships are fulfilled, being removed from externality into pure mutuality. Their work is done, and it remains. They are completed. And into the meaning of this completeness we cannot enter. Only we know that it will be far greater and fuller and more utterly right than anything we can conceive of now. Simultaneity has nothing of the eternal choir-practice about it. God is not our Ruler, or our tyrannical And all this is fully consonant with the statement in the Athanasian Creed, that He is One Christ; One, not by conversion of the God- head into Flesh; but by taking the manhood into God; One altogether; not by confusion of substance, but by unity of Person. Indeed such a conception seems to invest the dogma with fresh meaning for modern minds. I am indebted to Canon Storr for bringing to my notice a most suggestive and inspiring paper by the Rev. Wilfrid Richmond, published in pamphlet form (by Messrs Longmans, Green and Co.) in which this line of thought is admirably developed, with reference both to the appearance of Christ after His Resurrection, and the Pauline doctrine. 1 Matt. xxii. 30. The Fatherhood of God 185 Pedagogue, but our Father. We are not His trembling slaves, but His fellow-beings, sharing the mystery of Perfect Love. All we can be certain of is that TrXrjpwai^; must vanish in irXrjpwfia ; process in completion ; and with process time, duration, the past, must pass away. Memory, whose function was the direction of activity out of past experience, cannot exist in Eternal Life, for its place is taken by something far higher. Activity is now completely spontaneous. It does not need to draw on the past for inspiration and guidance. Yet we must not forget the other side. God is before I am, and this must always have an effectual influence. We must be conscious, even in the Eternal Now, that on one side there is a blank wall bounding our experience. We cannot express what this will mean to us ; but we must surely somehow be conscious that it is because of God's Transcendence that our transcendence exists. No form of words can be used that will not introduce spatial or temporal sig- nification into our description of this difference, and even our knowledge of it. We cannot do more than use the parallel which Christ used. God is our Father. The child recognises, in a way, that his father is responsible for his coming to be, that fatherhood is Causal, yet he does not feel this as a limitation of his own being and activities now that he actually is. Finally, we turn to our first, our metaphysical, problem. We see that memory must be eliminated 186 Experience of Transcendent Reality from our conception of Eternal Life. But can we justify the suggestion we have put forward, and indeed been driven to, that the essential character of transcendent existence is union; the sharing of a common Experience? According to Bergson the Reality we perceive is movement, and so is durational. What then can we conceive of the nature of a Reality that is transcendent and' simultaneous ? As we have seen already, it can only be conceived as activity again ; as mutual relation- ship between persons; as activity in which there is no duration. Such activity is inconceivable to us rationally, for reasons which we have already set out at length. Yet each one of us sometimes opens the door of the Timeless a little crack, Hke Anodos in Phantasies^, and for a moment passes through. But we return, and, like him, can give no account of our experience. In spiritual ecstacy, in deep love, in concentrated thought, we sometimes open that door. Perhaps too we do so in syncope, and in the time of long uncon- sciousness that attends certain injuries to the brain, when the soul remains chained to a material body which has become dislocated and incapable of per- forming its normal functions as a centre of responsive action. I, for one, do not feel the oppression of the "fearful sadduceeisms " that troubled Wendell Holmes in connection with these phenomena. 1 George MacDonald. Persiste7ice of the Ego 187 But there are experiences for each in which Time ceases to be, though it goes on for the material world in which he lives, as he finds when he "comes back" — and it is just this implacable march of time in all around which, half understood, or not at all, suggests the sadduceeisms. We fail to realise that duration must continue for all that is immanent of us and of our fellows. Transcendence we may call, then, for want of better words, activity without duration. The experience of such activity is clearly different from all other experience; but it is this experience which makes up Transcendent Reality. Nevertheless can such ex- perience be one, yet shared by many experients, as our demand for unity suggests, even in the Eternal and Timeless? On the one hand we have seen that it will be unvitiated by memory ; but on the other hand we must remember that the experients are different persons, whose nature is founded on their experience in Time. I have been moulded into nie, and not into somebody else. The meness of me is determined by the fact that my history is specific and peculiar. It is not the same as the history which lies behind the youness of you. I am passing, and have passed, into transcendence by a different road from you ; and since personality is determined in its transcendent aspect by the method through which it has realised itself (by achieving freedom in its immanent aspect), 188 Persistence of the Ego no two personalities can be the same even when they are perfected. For the interpenetration of the im- manent aspects of A and B is incomplete, and so their experience, in time, must always differ by their own self-hood, at least. And in transcendence A becomes the perfection of A, B the perfection of B. Perfect- ness is not one, but many. Just as the numerical measure of infinites is not identical, so all perfectness is not identical. Pantheism and nihilism become impossible, if we keep this fact steadily in view. For A has become A in a manner that differs from that by which B has become B. Their self -identities have been formed by different processes, and so must be eternally different. Now Reality for me is simply my experience, though I know that there are other and different experiences, and so, that true Reality, even in Time, must be fuller than, and different from, my conception of it. But in the timeless. Reality must also consist of the sum- total of experiences. This can only differ among the different experients by the experience each of his own self-identity. In other words, at first sight it would appear that A's experience will be that of all others plus his own internalised; and B's that of all others, including A's externalised, plus his own internalised. But in this we are losing sight of the completeness of union. We cannot talk of external and internal ex- perience where there is perfect union. My experience Penetrability and Union 189 is the experience of all others. The only point of difference is that / am there to experience it; and it is just in this that the distinction from unity lies. We may express it in this way, that I can put myself completely in another's place, yet know that I am not that other, but myself all the time. We get some inkling of the meaning of this in earthly love, which does in some measure teach two people to look on life with each other's eyes. They grow more and more alike; their community of ex- perience is ever widening, although here memory makes complete community impossible even in the smallest fragment of that experience. Remove memory, remove all that is durational, and their experience might be one in these and all other frag- ments, while yet they knew themselves to be two. The great point, then, for us to remember is this ; that there is nothing external in Transcendent Union. We cannot speak of our experience of other persons as being external to our experience of ourselves. There is no "otherness" to be experienced. Reality is, rather, mutuality raised, so to speak, to its highest power. A loves B perfectly, B loves A perfectly; yet A can put himself in B's place with complete understanding, and B can equally put himself in A's place. Yet all the while A knows himself to be A, and B to be B, and B has the same self-knowledge. The whole matter is beyond om* intellect, yet it is one and the 190 The Tiiple Point same with the truth, revealed by Christ, and accepted by Christians, of a Trinity in Unity which is at the same time a Unity in Trinity; Three distinct Persons Who are yet One God. It is here then, that our view differs in toto from the Leibnitzian conception of monads. The system of Leibnitz is essentially dynamic, and so is in touch, in a sense, with the formula of Bergson, but it differs from this in the conception of impenetrability. And the conclusions to which we have been driven by our reasoning suggest even more strongly the existence of penetrability. Even for immanent beings there is constant interpenetration, through the additions made to environment by each evolving organism. And transcendence we have viewed as the completion of interpenetration, coincident with the completion of self-identity. In the doctrine of an immanence that is passing into transcendence, with all that this implies, we find the meeting place of metaphysical, scientific, and theological thought. It is, to speak in the language of the physicist, the "triple point" at which three curves become coincident. Only, there is this differ- ence, that the triple point of physical substances is the intersection of three curves ; our triple point is that in which the curves meet, and find a common origin and explanation. It is the point at which each is completed, and remains for ever at once explained by Conclusion 191 and explaining the others. We dare not venture to claim that we have plotted our curves completely, or that we have in very fact reached their meeting place. At most we can but claim that we have found the coordinates of a few points on each, with such honesty and accuracy as we are able, and that the curves plotted through these points seem to indicate that there is a point common to all of them. And the location of this point has been our aim. Dropping all metaphor, let us say, humbly, and with readiest admission of the imperfection of our presentation, with fullest acceptance of the fact that the task is far too high for us, and that we may have unconsciously made some grave error that vitiates one or more parts of our work — admitting all this, let us say that we cannot help believing that all the difficulties of thought have origin in one thing, the absence of complete freedom, and that freedom will find its final consummation in union, not in unity. The conception of Immanence may lead us into preliminary pantheism, but the conception of Tran- scendence leads us out again into the purer light and brighter radiance of Eternal Life, and we believe again the oldest and yet the newest creed, that there is a Father in Whom is no shadow that is cast by turning, with Whom we shall at last dwell in union. "Our Master himself has joyfully taken upon him the bonds of creation; he is bound with us all for 192 General Summary ever" sings the Eastern Poet-seer^. Yes He is bound with us all, but not for ever ; only until the day dawns, and the shadows flee away; only until that which is perfect is come. Having now formulated our conception of the evolu- tionary basis of spiritual life, our task is to apply it. This we shall attempt to do by considering the relation of what has gone before to the great facts of the Christian life — Faith, Revelation and Providence, Prayer, the Sacraments, and the Church. To this the remaining four chapters will be devoted. Summary of Argument. Part of the argument of the foregoing chapters, and especially of the last two, may be very briefly summarised thus: Man is largely immanent in his nature ; that is to say, he is in duration, and exists at the meeting point of the was and the will be of his experience ; as indeed do all living creatures. But man is also conscious of his self-identity. This involves something that is not in duration, but persists. This something is his self, his transcendental ego, a thing which persists and is outside duration ; which is simultaneous, or transcendent. Thus man is both immanent and transcendent, as also God is in His relation to His creation. 1 Rabindranath Tagore, Oitanjali, p. 9. General Summary 193 But man is moving more and more towards freedom ; and freedom is essentially transcendent and simul- taneous. As more of man becomes transcendent, so the limitation of God in relation to him is progressively- removed; and God becomes more transcendent in His relation to His creation. But man, since he is a creature, winning tran- scendence out of immanence, is determined in his personal nature by his experiences. Of this he is conscious; he knows that he is both making himself, and being made by his environment. The personalities of men, even when they become transcendent and perfect, will therefore not be identical. A will still be A, though he is the perfection of A-ness, and B will still be B, though he is the perfection of B-ness. In other words, self -identity will persist in the simultaneous; that is to say, in eternal life there can be no fusion of persons, and spirits will be recognisable and differentiable each for other. In the same way, and for the same reason, the perfected man-spirit can never be absorbed in the perfect God- spirit. Yet the penetrability of imperfect spirits suggests that perfected spirits will possess complete interpenetration. This means that A will be able to enter fully into B's experience, and B into A's. Yet A will know that he is not B, and that B knows that A is not B, and B will have the like knowledge. On the other hand, because A and B mutually M. 13 194 General Summary interpenetrate, we cannot say that B is external to A, or A to B. The only difference between their experience is that each has knowledge of his own self-identity as an experient different from the other, while he can yet stand at the view-point of the other and realise what is his — the other's — experience as a self-identity. We can only gain a glimmering of under- standing of what this means, and cannot express it in words at all, since we are mainly in time and finite, and can form no adequate conception of that which is simultaneous and infinite. But in some degree it is apprehensible, even to the spirit which is only in part transcendent. It involves at any rate activity and love, in forms of which we can conceive no idea. The sum- total of Reality will thus be the same for all, since each can view the whole both from the stand- point of his own self-identity, and also from that of every other. He realises the existence of "otherness," but can penetrate the barrier which " otherness " sets up under durational conditions. This, it is suggested, is the (rationally) incomprehensible paradox of simul- taneous existence; the rock on which so many philo- sophies have found shipwreck, because its existence was not recognised. In some such way as this the problem of the One and the Many may ultimately be solved, or rather, be found to be unreal. PAET II APPLICATION 13—2 CHAPTER VII PRAYER Starting from the premisses of biological evolution, we have found an explanation of the phenomena of spiritual life and growth wholly compatible with those reached by theologians and philosophers. The theo- logian explains the yearnings of men after higher things as manifestations of the double process of the Creator reaching downward to draw His creatures to Himself, and the creatures reaching upward toward Him Whom their souls recognise as the perfection of Life. Ultimately, he relies for his evidence on the demonstrable reality of the latter, and an in- demonstrable certainty of the former, process — indemonstrable, as far as mere intellectual conception is concerned, but demonstrable by historical evidences which for him are only capable of this interpretation. The philosopher finds no reality apart from ex- perience, and so for him the ultimate Reality must be the experience of a mind or minds. He finds an all-inclusive Absolute, which he frequently endows 198 Prayer only possible with the attribute of personality in addition to pure Being. And arguing from the biological canon that evo- lution is response to environment, we too were driven to the conclusion that the Environment is spiritual, and is further a Spiritual Being in Whom we live and move and have our being. We have discussed the reasons for ajQ&rming a pluralistic universe in Time, as well as an Absolute, transcending and including all, in the Timeless sphere ; and we have tried to show that the antinomies of the pluralistic and monistic systems may be reconciled in this dual aspect of the Activity of God. In Time God is limited, of His own volition, by the partial freedom of His creatures. As their freedom becomes more perfect, so the limitation of His freedom is removed, by the unification of the will of men with His Will ; and thus eventually we reach the conception of an Absolute which is wholly God, since His Will becomes Perfect and Transcendent, while yet It includes a plurality of persons; independent in virtue of their self-hood yet completely united in Love. Turning now again to the temporal aspect of the Universe, we have yet to seek a rational basis for the universal belief in the validity of prayer, and to show that it forms an harmonious part of the process by which man's freedom is perfected. It is clear that prayer is not possible for the creature for a Self-conscious Being 199 until it has reached a stage when recognition of the relation between tool-making and ends, and not merely the relation between tools and ends, has dawned; the stage when it realises itself as a tool-maker. In other words, until self-consciousness is achieved, with all that it involves, there can be no voluntary effort to aid the process of development. Before this, the activity of the creature is directed towards immediate ends. The prawn darts backward into shelter by a violent flexion of the abdomen, in order to escape danger. The spider crab plants weeds and barnacles on its back in order to fall in with the infinitely various uniformity of the rock-pool. Here the absolute deter- mination of matter produces cause and effect. The nervous system reacts inevitably. The "tools" are there, ready to hand ; the need of them is there. The stimulus is there, and the material basis of the nerve- cord reacts with unfailing certainty. Stored up (if we may use the phrase, for want of a better) in the ac- cumulated experience of the life that is struggling towards freedom, is the knowledge that tools will compass ends. The rest is inevitable; for the brain, or nerve-cord, being the material basis through which experience projects itself for the purpose of action, must always react definitely to a definite concatenation of stimuli. In the higher stages, when greater freedom has been reached, there comes to the individual recog- nition that ends can be achieved by means. Gradually, 200 Ends and Means immediacy is replaced by mediacy. The savage, discovering that a re-curved stick which he has found by chance can be used successfully to catch fish, proceeds to make a similar fish-hook, and improves on the natural instrument, both in make and material. Even to-day among primitive tribes one can see all the stages of this realisation in progress. The end and the means are here recognised, but there is a third stage — the making of the tool. Thus, as we have seen^, the dawn of reflective thought is gradual ; but once there is understanding of the relation between means and ends, once there is the grasp of mediate processes, it comes inevitably. The creature begins to interpret all experience in this light, and so achieves self-conscious- ness. He develops his powers by the exercise of will, and so progresses rapidly. All this has already been dealt with at length, and it need not detain us further. The important point to grasp is, that though there may be, and indeed is, some degree of freedom in the lower creatures, yet only where there is self-conscious- ness can we speak of choice and will in connection with this freedom^. The choice between two immediate responses to an external stimulus is not volitional. In point of fact there is strictly no true choice at all. The accumulated experience — which has always been ^ Evolution and the Need of Atonement. 2 Soo note on Hoffding, ch. vi, p. 179. The Vital Impulse and Matter 201 urging towards freedom — is the determining factor if the stimuli are of equal potency. Our argument on this point may be briefly re- capitulated. We have seen that the cause of progress in evolution is the vital impulse — that divine unrest which drives the creature forwards to the acquirement of greater freedom, through the determinate interplay of environment and matter animated by the vital impulse; matter being thus interpreted as at once the vehicle of that which possesses the power of freedom, and as the factor which limits freedom. Further we have seen that freedom, or indepen- dence of external causation, is directly dependent on the action of the law of causality, regarded in its biological aspect; for we were led, by inductive reasoning, from the biological canon that evolution is adaptation — the suitable response to environment — to the conclusion that freedom must be the suitable response to the Environment-sum in the Cosmos. Thus the freedom-factor of the environment, acting causally on the determinate matter which has in itself the power of progressive adaptation, or the vital im- pulse, leads inevitably^ to the production of freedom, — inevitably, because the basis or substance on which it acts is matter, and is therefore determined. The material basis ensures that the nature of the direct response to the environment must be determinate and * Inevitably for the race — not for the individual. The Transition from Immediate inevitable ; the vital impulse or anabolic principle en- sures that in the race as a whole there must be progress, and progress towards freedom or control. In the individuals of the lower phyla the response to actual stimuli of all kinds, whether of hunger, of desire, or of fear, is immediate; governed almost wholly by determinate reactions in the neurones. In the races alone indetermination is obvious, and there only in the phenomenon of progressive adaptation. Yet, as we have seen, it is the individuals which pass on the vital impulse: in whom the vital impulse dwells. But in the more specialised races of these lower phyla we find the response of the individuals still immediate, but yet showing a kind of choice. At first this looks like individual choice. But a closer examination shows that different individual caddises, for instance, do not really show personal taste in the decoration of their tubes, but rather use the objects that come to hand indiscriminately. Only, when a start has been made with some chance particle, others harmonious with it are selected under the impulse of the protective mimicry characteristic of the creature. The race has chosen variegated particles from the stream-bed as its tools for response to the stimulus of self-protection, but all the members respond to the stimulus in the same kind of way. Tool-making is the race's mode of compassing the race's end, although the freedom is contained in, and to Mediate Response 203 transmitted by, the individual. Indeed it is generally true to say that immediate response is essentially of the race and not of the individual. And this is to be expected. The little freedom that has been won, the little control over matter, is so trivial that the only hope of survival lies in solidarity of action. Higher up we get a gradual transition from im- mediate to mediate response. Freedom is greater ; the need of solidarity is not so urgent, and so it becomes possible for freedom to become manifest in the in- dividual; to rise from latency to activity. We thus get obvious choice, even if choice of a limited kind, in the mode of response to given stimuli. Of two dogs desiring to get a walking-stick through a gap, one may turn its head sideways, the other lay the stick down close to the hole, get through itself, and then pull the stick through. In this first case we get an act verging on mediacy, for thought is needed before the action is performed — the use of the muscles to turn the head (an organic "tool"); and in the second case an action definitely mediate — the use of the ground, an inorganic tool. But mediacy involves reflection, and reflection involves self-consciousness and the recognition of the I, and of means of subserving the desires of the I. The case we have taken illustrates this at a very low grade. The savage and the fish-hook illustrates it in a higher grade. And from this the transition to true self- 204 Immediate and consciousness and the use of many mediate experiences to achieve a desired end is obvious and simple. Non- self has passed into self; the individual has become a person. Thus we see that mediate action, involving the recognition of self -hood, is volitional. The creature has achieved some measure of choice. The savage — perhaps the dog — recognises a certain desire in himself, and realises himself and the end he desires as related by a chain of potential phenomena; decides which potential phenomena shall be realised as the causal chain connecting his desire to its end ; and so, through the mediacy of tool-making, achieves his aim. It may still be objected that we have presented no evidence of choice. To this objection it may be answered (1) that the series from the unconscious use of tools of the lower creatures to the conscious manufacture of complex tools by man is complete, as has already been shown ; and that, therefore, if we admit freedom and volition in man we cannot eliminate all measure of freedom from the lower races, even though we do, and can justly, eliminate volition in many cases, since, as we have seen, true volition is due to the inturning of the consciousness on itself, producing self-consciousness. Therefore the problem we have really to face is the problem of freedom of will in man, which we have already agreed to assume. (2) That although free- dom does not involve choice, in the correct connotation of that word, yet it does involve the possibility of Mediate Action 205 a dichotomy of development. Side lines of evolution are possible, and, as we know, the possibility is ac- tualised. Thus the freedom of the lower organisms does lead to divergent modes of reaction in the lower races, of which the inexorable logic of environmental conditions selects the most suitable. And since progress is the aim of vital evolution, and self-con- sciousness gives the greatest possibility of progress when a certain stage is reached; and since, further, self-consciousness inevitably involves volition; the freedom that has been, and is being, achieved is manifested in conscious, instead of unconscious, in mediate, instead of immediate, reaction, — in other words in conscious choice or free-will. Thus, mediate reaction involves reflection, and reflection involves the recognition of causality. The further consideration of the I leads to wonder as to the chain of causation that resulted in the I ; — this is one of the roads by which the mind passes to the postulation of higher orders of spirits. The idea of infinite regress being alien to the human mind, which demands unity in the cosmos, man reaches at length the idea of one great all-comprehending Being, Who is God. Side by side with this development of thought we find the growth of personal religion; and men arrive at length at the conclusion that their business is to be good; that is, to be like God, as far as their limitations permit. With this comes the sense of the 206 Is the Efficacy of Prayer due to tragedy of life, "the good that I would I do not, but the evil that I would not, that I do. wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death ? " And man finds his answer in experience — No man. Sometimes he feels himself strong enough to cope with his lower nature: to keep before himself the final aim, and find it of more worth than immediate satisfaction. But this is not always so. Naturally, he turns to higher powers, if higher powers there be, and finds help and strength. As a certain fact he discovers that prayer is of avail : that it does help him. He may easily drift into a semi-gnostic belief that matter itself is evil, for he has no knowledge of the miracle by which freedom is won from that which is not free. He does not see that freedom cannot be created even by God, except with the limitation that it was created without its own choice, and so far is not free. He does not realise that true freedom can only be self-won. But this is beside the mark in our present discussion, though the realisation of it casts light as we have seen in previous chapters, on many of the problems to which the existence of evil and pain gives rise. The important point for us now is that he turns to a higher power whom he believes to exist, and finds in some way the help he needs. Later, as he reflects, he seeks to know whether Self-stimulatiwi, or to External Aid? 207 this help is really derived from outside, or whether it is not rather true to say that the intense self- direction of the will towards right, which is involved in the act of prayer, does not give rise to the desired strength. This is the question to which we must now en- deavour to give some answer. Clearly, if we answer it wholly in the negative we shall incur the right contempt of students of psy- chology; while if we answer it even partly in the negative, giving some place to the action of an outside agent, we shall become involved in grave difficulties, at least so at first sight it would seem, when we consider the effect of such an admission on our basal doctrine of true freedom, developing without inter- ference from outside. On the other hand, if we agree that the questioner is right, half the importance of personal religion goes, since much of the communion of man, as he is at present, with a Personal God, is done away. Let us then examine the question carefully. And first we must admit fully, freely, and to the utmost limit of possibiHty, that result of self-concentration in prayer on the highest ideal a man has, does give strength in itself, and often at any rate, all the strength that is needed. Concentrated effort always tends to produce the desired result. A shipwrecked man who desires to fence in and clear a bit of ground, succeeds by the 208 In either case its Validity is from God strenuous purposeful use of tools, even though he has first to design and make them. A man who desires to conquer some sin succeeds by the strenuous, pur- poseful use of his will acting on his own body, through his own nerves. In the first case the man employs extraneous matter to make his tools, in the second he employs the matter which is his own physical basis. In both cases his freedom is used to compel matter to subserve his own ends. But in admitting this, we are by no means arguing for the determinist, or for the atheist, whatever form his atheism may take. For we have seen that the whole process of evolution is progressive, and, further, is progressive because of the inherent indetermination of life. Moreover, we have seen that the only reasonable explanation of mental and spiritual evolution is, that it is the suitable response to the environment; and the only environment to which we can conceive as capable of producing such a response is a Spiritual, Personal Environment. Meta- physics points to a transcendent something, which is at least Mind, and probably is more; theology demands something more than an emotionless Absolute — a Per- sonal Being. Hence, even for this power of self-advance we are eventually driven back on the conception of a God Who is over all and through all, and so in us all. Prayer thus derives its validity eventually from God, even if it is no more than the concentration of the self on an ideal. But is it only this? Hdp would not limit Marts Freedom 209 First let us admit for a moment that, besides this internal efficacy of prayer, there is external help, and see how the idea fits in with our doctrine of freedom ; and then we may consider what evidence there is for the reality of this external aid, if we find no inherent contradiction between it and what we have already found our reason to commend as true. All through we have argued that freedom, in order to be perfect, must be entirely unconstrained at all periods and in all phases. For this reason we claim that, to our finite minds, no other means seems possible for the perfection of freedom but the granting, not of freedom itself, but of its potentiality. Would not a Divine intervention. Divine aid, in answer to prayer, be a constraint on real freedom? No ! For we have seen that prayer is only possible to the creature who has achieved self-consciousness and volition. This means that the demand for help from a higher power is in itself an expression of the freewill or choice of the individual. The mind of him who prays is firmly set towards a particular purpose, which, we will say for the present, represents his highest ideal, in so far as it is involved in the point in question. He finds the freedom he possesses himself not enough to ensure his ability to act up to that ideal. But he uses the freedom he has to demand more efficient freedom not from God, but rather through Him. M. 14 210 Voluntary Use of Spiritual Environment Clearly, as far as his action is concerned, he is not limiting himself, but rather is striving to increase by voluntary effort that individual freedom which is the crown of the whole evolutionary process. Turning now to the other side, the action of God in response to this prayer, we have to consider whether the gift of greater power to resist temptation, if it existed, would be contrary to our basal principle that the freedom of the creature must be won, not given, and must suffer no external intervention. And here again we must answer, No ! For how is it granted? Not really as a gift from outside. That form of statement prejudges the issue. The man, by the action of his own volition and freewill, utilises what he knows, or believes to exist, in order to further his desires. In all reverence, and in the sense in which we have constantly used the term, we may say that he makes a tool of God. In furthering his material progress he has made tools of the material part of his environment; in order to further his spiritual progress he now makes tools of the spiritual part of his environ- ment. Both matter and spirit are fragments of ReaUty outside his own self, and he uses both to further the development of that self. In the long run, and without entering into any of the detailed metaphysical problems involved, we may say that the Reality which he ap- prehends as matter and as spirit is all part of the material of the experience of God — the expression of Prayer for Mistaken Ends 211 His activity; only in the one case he is making use of a certain limited aspect of God's activity — matter — for the furtherance of his ends; in the other he is making use of the higher, freer, more inclusive aspect of it. But both are equally truly parts of a Reality that is shared by God and man. So then we see that the assumption that man can receive external help in striving after what he knows to be highest entails no contradiction of our main thesis that freedom must be unconditioned by external influences. In the foregoing discussion we have assumed that man's prayer is for help in attaining his highest ideals. It is possible to pray for help towards mistaken ends, even towards evil ends. It would seem at first that, on our own showing, God is equally bound to grant such prayers. Can God choose whether He shall help or hinder, according as man asks for what is really good or bad, without limiting man's freedom? Obviously, in the first place, man will gain power by the self-concentration demanded by prayer, entirely, or at any rate largely, irrespective of the nature of the object of that prayer. Thus the self -suggestive power of prayer may possibly, though not probably, be fully as great as when the prayer itself is directed towards good ends, although it is clear that such prayer will lead to the decrease, not the increase of real freedom. (Possibly, though not probably, because it will not, as 14—2 212 God cannot Answer such Prayers a rule, involve the exercise of the highest, freest, part of man's being ; his lower self will generally have its say in the matter.) Thus the effect of such prayer is, consciously or unconsciously, opposed to the will of God as manifested in the progress of living things. If then God answered such prayer with external aid, He would be contradicting Himself. God cannot answer such prayers. But does not this conclusion involve the difficulty that God chooses what prayers He will answer, and what He will not? And does not this choice on God's part fetter man's freedom? Evidently, if we admit the above mode of stating the problem, the answer must be yes\ and so there is clearly a flaw in our reasoning, either as regards the possibility of external aid in answer to prayer, or in our last statement that God chooses whether He will answer. The fallacy lies in the second statement. God does not choose. He cannot answer prayer that has not the true good of the man for its aim, for to do so would be to limit \lfiQ man's freedom, and so would involve a self-con- tradiction in the Will and Being of God. Prayer whose end, if fulfilled, is freedom or good, God can answer; prayer whose end, if fulfilled, would be limitation, or evil, God cannot answer, since He cannot contradict Himself. Next arises the question whether prayer is ever answered — whether external help is ever given. The Question of External Aid 213 The answer to this question is far more difficult. Evidently, it must always be hard to distinguish the internal aid which prayer gives : (derived, as we have seen, ultimately from God) — a mediate answer — from external or immediate aid. From the purely intellectual standpoint I do not see that it is possible to give a dogmatic affirmative. We know too little of men's powers and man's limita- tions, and we know the superhuman power that concentrated purpose gives. All we can say is, that the belief in the direct answer to prayer, at any rate in regard to spiritual matters (we have yet to deal with prayer for material gifts and blessings), is not in any way opposed to the evolutionary conception of freedom and purpose in the creation; rather, that it is wholly in accord with the conception, and falls naturally into line with man's efforts to call in the environmental factors in turn to aid his progress. We have also the historical fact of the evidence of countless men and women who know in themselves that they have received direct aid, but who yet may easily be mistaken, from their lack of knowledge of psychological analysis. Finally we have the direct evidence of Revelation, if we accept such evidence. Christ's behef in the matter is quite definitely stated ; many of the passages in which He refers to the efficacy of prayer in bringing 214 The Question of External Aid the direct aid of the Father, are unquestioned, critically, even though the clearest of them, those in S. John, may be of doubtful accuracy. Whether we accept or reject this evidence must clearly depend on (1) the view we take of the Person and mission of Christ, (2) the weight that we attach to the fact that Christ's words about prayer were coloured by the minds of those who heard and reported them, and to whom certain expressions might seem accurate paraphrases of, or having exactly the same connotation as, the phrases used by Christ, while in the light of our fuller know- ledge, the two phrases might be far from equivalent. The only answer that we can make to the question whether God does. Himself, and in very fact, answer prayer, is that the intellect cannot give a positive dictum^; but that the evidence of intuition and of revelation, if we accept such evidence, is on the whole in favour of the belief, while it is entirely consonant with — more, is reasonable and to be expected from — the line of thought we have been driven to follow in regard to evolution. Lastly we have to deal with the question of prayer 1 Indeed this must be the case, if the will of man is to be left free; conclusive evidence supplied from an external source, rmist limit man's freedom, for it compels man to a certain conclusion which will influence his action; moreover metaphysically we are faced with a contradiction in terms in the assumption, since a partial experience can never give to a changing mind permanent and complete imderstanding of an ultimate fact. Prayer for Material Benefits 215 for material gifts — a question that has troubled the minds of many generations, and which has never found a solution that wholly satisfies the intellect. Again we cannot hope to offer a final answer to the difficulties of the question. To believe that we could would be unjustifiable presumption, even if it did not involve the fallacy just referred to, that partial experience, which is growing and changing, can give an answer that is of the nature of absolute or unconditioned truth, and which will, so, stand for ever as the final expression of a fact. We can only hope for a partial understanding since our experience is partial; our business is to revise our mode of regarding realities so that it keeps pace with the widening of our experience. As before, we will divide our discussion into two parts — the question whether the granting of prayer for material blessings is reconcileable with our argument, and the question whether it is ever actualised in experience. We have already seen that the control of matter by mind is fully intelligible from the standpoint of the evolutionary theory we have adopted. We have seen too that this control is, for finite intelligences, mediated by intellectual methods and by the causal use of matter as tools. But further, we saw that the more intimately connected is that matter with the personal experience of the individual, the greater is the power of control. The facts of healing by hypnotic 216 The Control of suggestion, and of faith-healing, illustrate this. Hence it became clear that the more wide- embracing the experience, the more efficient the control over matter, and the greater its range. Thus the control of God over matter would seem to be complete, since His experience is the whole of Reality — always remembering that He can do nothing that limits man's freedom, or is in opposition to the mode of His own creative activity. For matter is one expression of His self- limitation, which can be done away the moment the need for it is gone, as man achieves freedom. Thus nature- miracles wrought by man would seem to be, not antecedently impossible, but yet only possible when man's experience in regard to that part of his environment is sufficiently complete. On the other hand, nature- miracles wrought by God would seem to be entirely possible, so long as the miracle does not constrain man's freedom, nor yet interfere with the phenomenal continuity which is the essential factor in the evolution of life. Now, assuming these premisses, our problem narrows itself to this question : can God answer man's prayer for material help and blessings, in circumstances in which the experience of man is insufficient to supply the necessary control of matter, unaided ? For it is clear that, remembering our previous division of the effects of prayer, where man's experience is adequate, as probably for instance in certain cases of faith- Matter by Spirit 217 healing by prayer (which are allied to, if not identical with, the power of healing by self-suggestion), the concentration of the mind in prayer may, and probably in these and other instances does, lead to the desired result. In attempting to answer this question we must be very carefully guarded in our statements, for our knowledge and experience are very limited, and we cannot predicate with certainty things depending on the nature of the complete experience of God. And first, it is clear that God could answer such prayer only when the desires expressed by man, with his experience of only a fragment of Reality, are con- sonant with the plan of God for man, seen in the light of God's knowledge of Reality as a whole. In other words, the desires of man must be in line with his spiritual development, and this is a thing which man cannot know with certainty. Therefore, clearly, his prayer for material aid must often remain unanswered, in accordance with the principle we enunciated a few pages back. But assuming that the prayer is fully in accord with man's highest interest, what then? In such a case I cannot see that any valid distinction can be drawn between the gift of increased freedom by control of matter external to the individual, and the gift of increased freedom by control of matter com- prising the immediate experience or physical body of the individual. And this latter we have already seen 218 Every Answer to Prayer reason to accept, for the prayer for spiritual blessings almost certainly involves change in the matter of the neurones — in the matter, that is, most intimately related to man's consciousness; and we can draw no distinction, except in degree, between such matter and matter less intimately related^. But, it may be objected that an answer to prayer involving matter more external to man than his own nervous system must affect others besides the man him- self, and so introduce a change into their environment. In considering this objection we must bear in mind the fact that there is no scientiiftc impossibility in an analysis of the chemical and physical changes in the nervous system induced by processes of thought and will. We already have some evidence for changes of vaso-dilatation in the brain, and changes in the granules of the nerve-cells, induced by thought; and a more complete knowledge of the effect of thought on the nervous system is only a question of more refined methods of analysis, which may conceivably be achieved at any time. Thus every form of thought and volition affects matter external to other percipient individuals ; and, potentially at least, involves a change in the Reality external to them in such a way as to affect the fragment of Reality which is included in their experience. Here also, then, we find a difference in degree, not in kind. We cannot draw a line between response to * See Additional Note at end of book. directly affects Matter 219 prayer that affects the mind and spirit of the indivi- dual, and response that affects matter, either part of himself or outside himself. For anything that gives him greater freedom changes the experience of other percipient individuals in contact with him. So also, the internal stimulus given by prayer must also affect other individuals besides the man who prays. The reform of a drunkard, for instance, however achieved, very greatly affects the lives of all the members of his own household, as well as his fellow- topers ; in a less degree it affects the licensed victualler, the brewery and distillery concerned, and, less and less markedly, and in ever- widening circles, the pockets of the widows, orphans and other citizens who finance the mechanism whose functions he misused. In other words we have come back to our original contention^ that the progress of the individual often changes the actual environment of others, and always introduces a new factor into their potential or total environment. Thus it becomes obvious that the two questions we have asked in regard to the possibility of prayer for material aid being answered, fall into exactly the same category, and require the same reasoning, as the parallel questions in regard to spiritual gifts. All that we said on that subject is equally applicable to the present one. There is no difference in kind between the granting of spiritual and of material aid. 1 Evolution and the Need of Atonement, ch. i. 220 The Control of Matter It is true that there are additional matters to be considered in regard to the actualisation of material aid from an external source — which we may practically term miracle. There is always the difficulty of dis- tinguishing between the effects of self-concentration in prayer and external aid; and this difficulty becomes all the greater when one remembers that the basal question as to whether mind can influence external matter at all has been long in dispute among scientists, and when one considers the proneness of man to re- gard an isolated coincidence of volition and realisation as a miraculous answer to prayer, while the thousands of cases where the coincidence does not occur, pass unnoticed. As we have shown, the primary difficulty disappears in large measure when we remember that thought and desire themselves produce a material change in the nervous system, and often in the body itself, and when we further remember (as was pointed out in chapter iii) that material contact or physical con- tinuity is probably not necessary for concerted action in hive colonies and the like, or in the case of the almost indisputable records of telepathic communication ; even though there is in such cases continuity in a sense, through the medium of air and ether. The control of mind over the matter that is its actual physical basis is an undoubted fact, in a limited degree; and there is no a priori scientific argument against the extension of this control, while metaphysical reasoning is in hy Spirit 221 favour of it. Indeed here too, as everywhere, we find continuity, although we must confess that so far the minds of men have achieved comparatively little direct control over matter. This is natural enough, however, since the indirect control evidenced by tool- making has reached such a pitch of perfection as to render the other not so vitally necessary; and, more- over, the whole process we call evolution is founded on control of matter gained before consciousness is reached, and it naturally continues largely along these lines afterwards. We have, however, a good deal of evidence for more direct control through prayer, though it must be accepted with reserve. The miracles of Our Lord, of the Apostles, and in modern times the miracles of Lourdes^, and those reported of Pastor Hsi (which must however be received with some reser- vation) as well as those of ordinary psychiatry, do constitute a body of evidence of some worth. But our object has been to show that the idea of the control of matter by spirit is not opposed to the evidence of evolutionary progress; indeed, that it on the whole receives confirmation and support from this; rather than to uphold it as proven. As we have seen, the material basis through which the intellect works, makes logic the only possible means of reasoning, 1 See, for instance, the analysis of the Lourdes miracles in the British Medical Journal for June 18, 1910, which is devoted to this subject. 222 Conclusions and thus the material or katabolic law of Causality determines the rational mental processes. But we do not know that the intuition has this same intimate relation with the ordinary processes of apperception. Indeed, as Bergson has shown, it seems likely that intuition, which is not directly conditioned by reaction to external stimuli, is independent of logical processes. Thus it may possibly be independent of material changes in the brain, falling, in any case, rather into the same category as the race-consciousness or herd- instinct, and the vital impulse itself; dependent on matter for its power of manifestation, at any rate in the realm of our experience, but not linked with it in intimate union. "For who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him ? Even so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God^." The idealist will be quite ready to grant the possibility of consciousness whose contact with reality is not circumscribed by what we call matter. So far then we have come to certain definite con- clusions : (1) That direct answer to prayer is not irre- concileable with the process of man's self-realisation, in the acquisition of freedom ; but rather, that analogy would lead us to believe it true, since all man's freedom has been won in the utilisation of his environment, 1 1 Cor. ii. 11. Conclusions 223 and his spiritual progress no less than his material depends on his utilising his environment. This amounts to saying that he utilises God in achieving the ends for which, after all, God "meant" him. For we saw that he could only "utilise" the power of God when his will coincided with God's Will, and his partial experience was identical with God's experience of that fragment of ReaUty in which his being moved. So far from constraining God's Will, it frees It from some of the self-limitation imposed by the Creation (and by the Atonement), through identification of man's will with God's. (2) That material gifts in response to prayer differ only in degree from spiritual gifts. They clearly belong to a higher stage of freedom, in the sense that mediate control of matter by mind, not immediate, is involved. So they must be rarer, and only achievable by those who have climbed higher up the Jacob's ladder set up between the creature and the Creator. But there is no antecedent improbability, even, in such response to prayer, but quite opposite. (3) We are not concerned with proving or dis- proving specific instances of answered prayer. All we are concerned with is, whether our belief that man's freedom must be won by struggle, and by utilisation of the environment, which is, after all, but a higher grade of adaptation, strengthens or weakens the hand of those who claim that experience teaches that prayer 224 Conclusions is answered. And we find strength, not weakness, in their contention. We cannot expect to find proof acceptable to all, for we are dealing with progress by- gradation, and there are always those who solve the riddle of the butterfly by concentrating their attention on the egg ; who seek to find the explanation of mind in the matter from which mind emerges. The common- sense man measures heaven by earth; the idealist measures earth by heaven. The angel measured the New Jerusalem with a rod brought from heaven: we too often seek to measure it with a foot-rule, or with the tentacle of a jelly-fish, according as our education has been based on Physics or Biology. All we can do is try to show the man of common sense that the very idea of such measuring implies a heaven — something beyond the mere compass of a wooden rod. (4) The other objection of common sense, that prayer helps a man by the concentration of purpose it involves, received our hearty assent. But the con- clusion to which it led us, when we examined its real significance, was far different to that at which the materialist would have us arrive, for we found the only meaning of it in the will of God. Note. A brief reference to the question of prayer for the dead in relation to our general line of argument may not be out of place. Evidently, the justification for such prayers must rest on the belief that when man dies he does not pass at once and wholly from immanence to transcendence. If the soul enters into perfect union Note on Prayer for the Dead 225 with God when it leaves the body, there is no room for prayer, only for communion. If there are still ages before it in which it gradually grows into closer union with the Father, we may still surely pray for it, though under the fullest reservation, for the understanding of its conditions is absent. But, if this be so, the dead can pray for us with far more knowledge than we for them. Unless man passes straight from human imperfection into transcendent perfectness, the communion of saints must surely become fuller and richer in content by the prayers of each for other, even though some have passed behind the thin, dark veil. 15 CHAPTER VIII SACRAMENTS All through our argument one fact has come more and more strongly into prominence, namely, the in- strumental function of matter. And if we are right in looking on matter as one form of expression of the divine self-limitation in creation, it becomes, of necessity, the instrument of the Will of God in time and space. It becomes the means by which His Will is made effectual in the creation of freedom gained not given. It becomes the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. It becomes sacramental in nature ; for surely there is nothing that more perfectly fulfils the conditions implied in the word. We have seen matter as a means to an end, that is, as an instrument ; we have seen the gaining of spiritual freedom through this instrument. It is true that the freedom must be won. There is no gift of freedom; the gift is rather a provision of something that, used aright, gives the power of advance towards perfection. We find that in this regard we must adopt a modification of the Receptionist doctrine, when we speak of the Sacrament The Sacrament of Environment 227 of Matter, or better, of the Sacrament of Environment. A modification, because the Receptionist holds that a sacrament is only efi&cacious when the man believes that he receives it ; without belief there is no reception of the gift. But we have seen in our argument that the gift of the vital impulse entails responsibility; that it canrMt be without effect. If the man, or the lower organism, consciously or unconsciously, makes wrong use of the gift, he pays the penalty. He must either increase or decrease his freedom; there is no standing still. He must always react to his environ- ment, be it matter or spirit, and the nature of this reaction determines his future course. In regard to the Sacrament of Environment the Pauline doctrine applies to the full ; he who does not perceive the nature of the gift receives judgment, even condemnation, unto himself. We must bear this in mind as we turn to a con- sideration of what we term the Christian sacraments. Here we may most profitably direct our attention to the greatest of the Christian sacraments — the Lord's Supper. After viewing this from the standpoint of our thesis, in order to see whether we can gain any light, even though it must be very partial, we will briefly consider one other sacrament, Baptism. Again we must lay stress, in regard to all the matters which come under our consideration in this essay, as we did in regard to the Atonement, on the fact that 16—2 228 Views on we have definitely and of set purpose adopted one standpoint, that of Evolution. Therefore whatever conclusion we arrive at, even though it be true, must be partial. We are only looking at one facet of the crystal. But, ex pede Herculem. More, as Wendell Holmes says, ex ungue minimi digiti pedis Herculem ejusque patrem, m^trem, avos et proavos, nepotes et pro- nepotes ^. If our reasoning is valid, the conclusion we come to must represent one complete aspect of the truth, even if we only argue from a small basis, so long as our starting point is valid, though it will not represent the whole truth. Provided our premisses and our logic are good we must arrive at an approximately accurate estimate of the stature of Hercules, at least, even though we have no evidence here to limn his features; for our Hercules is perfectly proportioned, and we can be sure of our synthesis in what measure it is involved in our premisses. Much is outside our purview, but there must be no clash between what we find to be true, within our limited range, and what is really true. If metaphysical, scientific, or theo- logical descriptions of the same phenomenon differ fundamentally from each other, one or other must be wrong. First then, what is it that theologians say in regard to the Lord's Supper? And here we are met at the very outset with the disquieting fact that they say several ^ Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, v. the Holy Communion 229 mutually incompatible things. All agree that some special holiness attaches to the ritual instituted by- Christ Himself, and most that there is special grace granted thereby. But there agreement ends. Some regard it purely as a memorial, efficacious only in the same way as prayer. Yet, rather illogically (for they reason that any other interpretation than the memorial- istic one is irrational and unsupported by scripture or common sense) they attribute a special grace to it, from a connection, really unreasoned, in their minds that links it with the Last Supper as a living fact and not a mere memorial. They build, however, mainly on "This do in remembrance of me." Others believe that to him who receives in faith, Christ does give a measure of Himself. They lay stress on His words about His Body and Blood, which the first regard as purely metaphor ; yet they do not take them literally. For them it is as though Christ had said, "those who do this in faith, in remembrance of Me, I will make partakers of My Body and Blood, in a spiritual manner." Others believe that the consecration is something analogous to the signing of a cheque. In some way the elements suffer an alteration which gives them a value they had not before ; not by substantial change, but by an act of approval made by God, which renders them valid. The signed cheque is still paper, but it is something more. These men lose sight, more or less. 230 Views on the Holy Communion of the Memorial, and accept the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ, though in a form that represents an addition rather than a change. Lastly there are those who, accepting the Eeal Presence in its fullest sense, believe that the substance of the elements is changed into the sacred Food. The accidents of form and weight and colour and taste remain unchanged, but the bread and wine are bread and wine no longer, but Christ. They evade or pass over the old metaphysical difficulty involved in sub- stantial without accidental change, which they argue, is a matter of words, not realities. For them the changed elements are to be worshipped as the Saviour Himself. Yet they do not forget the Memorial side of the Mass; the Roman Catholic doctrine of Sin makes the Mass itself a showing again of the Lord's death, efficacious for the wiping away of actual sin; the originalis justitia having been restored in the Death on the Cross, which also gave to the Mass its validity in wiping away the actual sins of men. Thus the system of the Roman Catholics, apart from the importation of bygone sacrificial meanings, is seen to be complete — far more so than the others ; and, if the metaphysical difficulties of transubstantiation are rejected or ex- plained away, far more logical. To some completeness is a help and comfort, to others it is a building that precludes growth, walling them in; just as to some the flint skeleton of a radiolarian is seen as the means Congruity of Aid through the Eucharist 231 of its success and survival, to others it seems the reason why the creature has remained stationary for millions of years; one points to evident protective design in the carapace of the lobster, the other to the hopeless failure of the armour of the glyptodonts. And both have to admit that it is man's skeleton that gives him power to be what he is. Form is needed. Who shall decide when form is our servant, and when we are its slaves? First then we must admit great diversity of view and belief, and admitting this, we are set the more free for our consideration of the sacramental problems, for we have not to face a universal consensus of opinion. We have not the temerarious task of discussing that of the truth of which everyone is convinced. Now we see at once that what we said of prayer applies here also in some measure. To this we shall return. At present we may say that there is no difi&culty in believing that God can give grace in response to the wish of man, even though we cling tenaciously to our belief in evolution, with all that it entails. Moreover the form in which the grace is granted is wholly consonant with what we know of the laws of progress. Answer to prayer is given always through material channels ; not merely in the sense that matter is the only medium of communication between spirit and spirit, though that is, at any rate in many instances, 232 Congruity of Aid the fact; but in the sense that the environment is both material and spiritual, and progress depends on the utilisation of all the affecting environment, and not only of the spiritual part. Where we are dealing with the categories of space and time; while men are in the material body that is ; these categories enter into the environment. The spiritual environment of the material world is God expressing Himself in time and space, while He yet transcends them. The answer to prayer, then, must recognise time and space and material phenomena as their substratum, while involving also something beyond. All through there must be not merely parallelism, not merely uniformity, but unity. Hence we found no difficulty, from the point of view of freedom, in accepting the possibility of grace given from without; and in realising that it must be given through material channels. We have now to consider, granting the possibility of direct aid from God, what are the implications of the material form involved in the sacramental idea; and afterwards to apply our results in order to see to what conclusion they lead us in the matter of Holy Communion; whether they offer any intellectual aids to belief founded on experience, and also, whether they tend towards any particular form of doctrine. We must further see whether, and in what mode, we can distinguish between the sacramental gift and the ordinary gift of God in prayer. through the Eucharist 233 Now, as we have already said, there is, in the very- idea of evolution, something sacramental. Matter is the vehicle of spirit. More, spirit comes to be true spirit, free and volitional, through its relation with matter. The whole of life is God's gift of Him- self. Thus it is obviously congruous, at least, that the special grace of God should be given in association with matter, if only as an emphatic demonstration of the fact that matter is the mode by which God's Will is fulfilled. Matter is not evil, nor yet good, but it is a means of grace none the less; indeed it is the only means of grace of which we have any perceptual knowledge. As the spiritual significance of matter becomes, through the ages, more clear to evolving mankind, so the spiritual significance of the matter which Christ chose for the imparting of Himself be- comes more clear to the Christian whose life is growing. The matter which Christ chose for the imparting of Hiynself. Assuming, with the theologians, that such a gift is given, what meaning do we attach to this phrase ? First, I think, we see that it implies no limiting of man's freedom. It is a gift to those who have accepted Christ. It confers an intimate relation between im- perfect man, who is yet made at one with God, and the perfect God Who expresses Himself imder the limitations of manhood, of space and time, in order to 234 Communion through the Eucharist supply the basis of union, making things which were incommensurable, commensurable by His adoption of the categories of man's being. Christ expresses Himself as the Last Term of the Human Series ; that is, of the Human Series become divine in spite of the limitation of its conditions. It is the Memorial of the great Act by which the possibility of union with God was con- summated; by which that union was removed from the domain of the impossible to that of the possible. But it is more. It is the constant renewal of union, rendered necessary by the daily sins of men. This aspect requires closer consideration. We have seen^ that the Incarnation, the Life and Death of Christ formed a second kenosis, in which God Himself accepted all the conditions of human limitation, even unto death— a death rendered igno- minious by the blindness and evil- will of men ; though this form of death was perhaps not needed for the purpose of atonement. We have seen that, in some mysterious way, the acceptance of a temporary extinction of the eternal side of perfected manhood in Him Who was also Eternal in Simultaneity constituted a fresh start, analogous to the first creation, while it again limited His Godhead in time and space. Limited again, because the second kenosis was the voluntary acceptance of the consequence of the mis- direction of will in man. The Creation left living * Evolution and the Need of Atonement, 2nd ed., ch. vn. Institutionalism in Religion 235 matter free to evolve towards freedom ; the Atonement set man free again — free from the chains and clogs bis sin had bound him with, by the mysterious adop- tion of those limitations into the Time Aspect of God. Thus we saw that another Atonement was impossible, as well as unnecessary. God cannot do more than take on Himself the limitations imposed by sin. The Risen Lord has transcended Humanity, leaving behind its limitations ; but by the Incarnation and Atonement He has made even fallen humanity once more com- mensurable with Godhead. And, because men sin, they need a constant reminder, a constant spiritual renewal, of this union of Godhead and manhood in space and time. We may now leave this side of the matter for a time, in order to consider the general question of sacraments more fully. We shall then return to the Lord's Supper, and finally try to fit our conclusions into their proper place in our whole system of thought. Von Hiigel^ rightly emphasises the fact that the tendency of Religion has always been to express itself as a Cultus, whether it be Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Mohammedan, or even Animistic, in form. Cultus — institutionalism — by its persistence through all chang- ing creeds and systems, proclaims its own indis- pensableness to human nature. And the power of its appeal undoubtedly lies in the emphasis it places on 1 Eternal Life, p. 325. 236 Reasons for Institutionalism the vital importance of solidarity. With this we shall have to deal in the last chapter. It is enough for us at present to recognise the universality and importance of institutionalism in religion, and, without discussing the deeper meanings of solidarity, to notice on what this craving of the human soul for cultus is based. Von Hiigel gives three reasons for its existence. (1) "The need of common worship, or com- munion^." Evidently the roots of this lie deep in the ultimate fact that personality demands personal re- lationships which tend more and more towards union. (2) "The essential, persistent contribution fur- nished by sense-stimulations and non-mental causes and objects to our entire knowledge and our most elementary self-consciousness^." This is the basis of sacramentalism ; that mystical vision which sees spiritual meaning in common things. (3) "The need for Religion as a whole (although itself a distinct, and in its way complete, experience, life, and organisation) ever to keep aware of, to accept or combat, and to assimilate or reject, the various chief forms and conclusions presented by the other complexes and organisations of human life. " Religion, indeed, is not directly either Ethics or Philosophy, Economics or Art; yet at the peril of emptiness or sterility, it has to move out into, and to 1 EterTuil Life, p. 326. * Ibid. p. 328. Meaning of the Miraculous 237 learn from, to criticise, and to teach, all these other apprehensions and activities^." This again really resolves itself into an acceptance of the universal and spiritual significance of all pheno- mena, and thus, like the others, finds its ultimate sanction in the spiritual interpretation of nature. All through our work we have seen that it is a fatal mistake to restrict the meaning of spiritual activity within the narrow limits of the conventional significance of the word, or to look on miracles as purely supernatural phenomena. Spiritual and physical activity are one and the same. The only difference between the two lies in the partial absence of activity, that is, in the lack of freedom, in some phenomena of the latter. And the only meaning we can give to the word miracle is the manifestation of an efficient activity of spirit in regions where it is unexpected by some individual man. Thus the villainous Case, in Steven- son's Beach of Falesa, is able to work evident miracles by means of luminous paint and aeolian-harps, but as soon as Wiltshire shows the chiefs that he knows all about it, and ofEers to do the same if he can get hold of a few banjo-strings, the thing ceases for them to be a miracle at all. Ignorance of the possibility of some form of spiritual activity (in its widest sense) in those he wishes to impress has been the whole stock in trade of the miracle-monger from time 1 Eternal Life, p. 330. 238 Essentials of immemorial. The working of miracles simply depends on the possession of superior knowledge and the power to make use of it — ^in short, the possession of superior freedom. Without irreverence we may say that this statement applies equally, each in its degree, to the miracles of Christ and to those of the medicine-man of some savage tribe. Indeed this must be the case, if all activity is spiritual in nature. Thus it would seem that any true sacrament, with its miraculous gift, must emphasise the linkage between the perfect freedom of God, and the limitation out of which man is striving towards that same freedom. It must, as the reahsation and consummation of freedom is slowly and painfully achieved, lay more and more stress on the spiritual side, less and less on the material. It must point to the sanctity of the com- monest things of life, while at the same time it pro- claims that their meaning must be sought in freedom and spirit, not in matter and limitation. It must include in some sense an element of miracle. A sacra- ment belongs essentially to that temporary and temporal aspect of life we have called immanent. As this changes, so the sacrament must change, laying less and less stress on the material, more and more on the spiritual side of its meaning. Life must progress towards perfection, and, as it moves, all the things which represent its points of contact with that which is eternal must move too. The appeal of sacrament a Sacrament must pass from totemism, through sacrifice, through the spiritual vision of matter as a means to a spiritual end, to complete realisation of that end in full com- munion with God. As faith is movement from hope to certainty^, and will cease when its long journey is done, so is the gift that comes in a sacrament; and so too is the growing understanding of that gift. Faith and sacraments are two of the moving contacts through which the spirit flows, along material channels, or wires, to energise man more fully. When manhood is directly connected with the source of life, contacts and wires will be done away. There is no faith, no memory, no sacrament, in the Eternal Present of Transcendence. But mean- time, sacrament emphasises the unity of process whereby man is striving towards union with God. It emphasises the continuity of that part of the material of God's experience in which He is self-limited and Immanent, with the Whole in which He is still Transcendent. In short it emphasises the dominance and power of spirit and freedom over matter and limitation — the great Eternal Miracle of Creation. There is a passage in Hort's The Way, the Truth, and the Life, which is singularly suggestive in this respect. The Eucharist is on one side the "perfection" of the sustenance of Ufe in personal communion, on the other * Vide ch. ix. 240 Hort a use of the products of the earth as instruments of com- munion, implying the necessity of taking the whole nature into communion if it is to be real, the symbols of creation and of the Lord's body in one. The life of the disciples with Christ was exchanged for a life in Christ; they abode as branches in the Vine of which His Father is the Husbandman. The Bread of the Last Supper took for them the place of the Body through which they had first learnt to converse with the living Lord. The Wine of the Last Supper took for them the place of the Blood in which His Life had dwelt.' In that feast of blessing and thanksgiving, that joyful participa- tion of accepted sacrifice, no life was found too earthly to be offered on the altar of the Cross, or to become a means of human fellowship and Divine Communion. The Oblation 'preserved the connexion of life. The fictitious and constructive offering up of a phantom body and phantom blood is a degradation of the Holy Communion to the unreal mimicry of a sacrifice, which if real would now be heathenish. It is the nemesis of destroying the relation between earthly elements and heavenly life^. All these suggestions and others which we shall have occasion to make later on, imply that any sacrament is at least a symbol, though it may be more than a symbol. And the importance of this implication becomes clear if we remember that the very fact that one thing can symbolise another, implies some common relation, some groundwork of commensurateness. To 1 Op. cit. pp. 213, 214 (italics mine). Nettleship on Symbolism 241 this R. L. Nettleship drew attention in a brilliant and suggestive fragment, from which the following passage in relation to the Holy Eucharist may be quoted^. Roughly speaking, there are two prevalent views; one, that eating the bread and drinking the wine are "signs" or "symbols" of certain "spiritual" acts; the other, that the bread and wine are in some way "spiritual" substances, the body and blood of Christ, in which the communicant in the act of eating and drinking participates. Neither view seems to represent the deepest truth. In the first place, we must ask what is a sign or symbol. To say that A is a symbol of B imphes, of course, that A is something different from B, but (and this is often forgotten) it also impUes that it is in some respect the same as B. The most remote, far-fetched symbol in the world must have something in common with that which it symboHses ; i.e. the person to whom it has the symboUc meaning must have some (however little it may be) of the same feeling or experience when he experiences the symbol, as he has when he experiences that which it symbohses. In other words, there are such things as symbols just because the most different things in the world have something in common. From this elementary fact sprung all the controversies and compUcations about symbols. One party says, "It is only a symbol, it is not the real thing"; and they are partly right, for in order to be a symbol a thing must be partly different from something else, and this something 1 Philosophical Lectures arid Remains of Richard Lewis Nettleship, voL I, pp. 23 seqq. M. 16 242 NetUeship on the else which is symbolised must be more than the symbol. The other party says "It is the real thing, this which you call mere symbol"; and they too are partly right, for in order to be a symbol at all, a thing must be partly the same as that which it symbolises. After a careful analysis of the processes and con- sequences of eating bread, traced through their ever- widening circles even as far as spiritual activities, he goes on : But the truth is (however absurd it may sound at first) that there is no one thing "bread," beginning to be "bread" at a certain other point. The properties (i.e. forces or agencies) which make "bread" as it is in the loaf, become quite different when "bread" is in a stomach, and quite different again when it is blood and muscle and nerve, and quite different again when it is feehng and thought and emotion of various kinds. And there is absolute continuity in all these changes, though the agency at any given moment is quite different from what it is at any other given moment. Now it is what we may call this continuity of agency which makes symbolism possible It (so to say) points beyond what it is in any given phase, to the infinite other phases into which it is capable of entering, and into which it eventually does enter, just as conversely the agencies of those other phases point back to (because they are really continuous with) the elementary agency of bread. It is they prospectively, they are it retrospectively. The feeling (true and justifiable in itself) that every act has "a spiritual meaning," "an eternal significance," Holy Commumon 243 "infinite consequences," and the like, unable to maintain itself at its height, helps itself by saying, "this bit of bread is being transformed into divine flesh"; and in saying this, it thinks, not of the real wonder (that bread is really an agency in the whole agency of human life, and so in the life of the world and God), but of a sort of nondescript process by which "bread" (in the average sense) is somehow converted into "flesh" (not indeed in the average sense, but still in some similar sense). Then comes the angry "man of science" and proves triumphantly that bread is bread and nothing else, while the "man of religion" goes racking his brains to find a way by which the "physical" laws of bread may be superseded, and yet the bread may still be bread. The cure for a wrong or spurious "mysticism" is to realise "the facts" ; but "the facts" must not be taken to mean (as they generally are) either certain particular facts (of chemistry, for instance, or physiology), or certain particular aspects of facts to which I happen to be accus- tomed. The fact is the whole fact, neither more nor less. True mysticism is the consciousness that everything which we experience, every "fact," is an element, and only an element, in "the fact"; i.e. that, in being what it is, it is significant or symbolic of more^. Whether or no one agrees in detail with Nettle- ship's method of applying this suggestive truth of the meaning of symbolism, one cannot but feel that here is a contribution to the understanding of sacra- mental meanings, not to be dismissed lightly. 1 Op. cit pp. 26, 31, 32. 16—2 244 Irige on Sacraments It is not necessary for our purposes to trace the origin of sacramentalism back to its primitive mani- festations in hospitality offered to the god by the tribe as a whole (this point is of course important from its bearing on solidarity of relationship between men and God), through totemism and sacrifice, to its higher manifestations in various religions, so closely paralleling the Christian rites^ ; or to trace the detailed connection between sacrament and sacrifice. This is admirably done in Inge's essay in Contentio YeritatiSy to which reference should be made, as well as to the numerous cases fully set out in Frazer's The Golden Bough. Inge traces the gradual transmutation of placatory sacrifice through piacular sacrifice and covenant sacrifice into " the sacrament of an atonement, in which the priest, the victim, the deity, and the worshippers are all made one^ "Herein," he says, *'lies the perfect realisation of the idea of sacrifice^." He points out the universal need and craving of men that is satisfied only in sacramental communion, and even goes so far as to say: The symbolic uses of washing and eating are the most natural, the simplest, and the most widely diffused of all such ceremonies. So natural are they that we may say with some confidence that if Christ had not instituted Baptism and the Eucharist the Church would have had ^ Even to reservation for the sick. 2 Op. cit. p. 275. Inge on Sacraments 245 to invent them. A Christianity without sacraments could never have converted Europe^. His (Jesus') action (in instituting sacraments, while at the same time breaking with the national cultus so jealously guarded by the priests) proves (1) that a sacra- mental system is necessary to true religion, (2) that there are developments of the sacramental system which are irreconcileable with it 2. The writer briefly traces the early history of sacramentalism in the Christian Church, gives strong reasons for distrusting the sacrificial meaning imported into the ofi&ce of priesthood by the Roman doctrine of the Mass, especially as held since the Council of Trent, and ends with a most sane and reverent, and at the same time philosophically tenable, exposition of the position of a Receptionist who sees in all life a sacrament, and yet is sensible of the need for special sacraments; who feels that the essence of Eucharist is Communion, not sacrifice (except personal sacrifice) ; and who realises, more fully than Nettleship, the truth that the Real Presence is involved in the symbols of bread and wine, because of the oneness of all experience, even while he repudiates the mythical element involved in the doctrine of Transubstantiation. The Lord's Supper is not a solution of the problem of the outward and the inward, but a symbol of the solution. 1 Op, cit. p. 279. « Ibid. p. 286. 246 The Sacramental Nature of Matter If it were fully intelligible, it would not be a true symbol of what is beyond our intelligence. When we see God face to face we shall no longer need even the highest symbols^. But here on earth we do need them^. It is needless to give a detailed analysis or criticism of this most admirable essay — an essay which should be read by everyone, whatever the shade of belief he inclines to in the matter, because of its clearness, insight and suggestiveness. It seemed desirable to refer to these essays, three among a countless number, because they lay stress on certain matters which we have again and again found as vital factors in the story of man's evolution. Continuity; the spiritual nature of matter; the symbolic meaning of that which is limited, determinate, through the self -limitation of Eternal Spirit; the immanental nature of sacraments; the need for a realisation of communion and solidarity between man and man, between man and God; in fine the sacra- mental nature of all the conditions of life— these, which are each and all mirrored in any sacrament, give irrefutable witness to the need of some form of sacramental doctrine. Let us now turn our thoughts and more directly to the consideration of the two great sacraments of the Christian Church, Holy Communion and Baptism. We must ask, in regard to each, granting that 1 Vide supra, p. 239. * Inge, op. cit. p. 308. is emphasised in the Eucharist 247 special grace can be given through sacraments, whether such a gift would not interfere with man's freedom. Suppose that God does in very truth give Himself to man in the symbols of bread and wine. Man's body is matter, and help could not, one would say, be given to the immanent side of man's nature except in an immanent form. In other words we would suggest that in this sacrament the aid, if such there be, is given to the immanent spirit of man, struggling in matter, even though the appeal of communion is felt most in that aspect of the spirit which is tran- scendent. In the Atonement, we saw, God had to enter fully into the limitations of time and matter, to help man on his material, limited side, when he had barred himself out from perfection. For incom- mensurables had to be made commensurable. God had to express Himself under the limitations of man- hood before He could redeem man, since man's tran- scendence was for ever limited by his immanence, to which he was perpetually doomed, until the barrier was removed that kept him from complete self-realisa- tion, through the Atoning Death of Christ. So here again, it seems natural that man's immanent being should receive help from God, if that were possible without impugning his freedom ; and thus that matter, always sacramental, should have its sacramental nature emphasised in some specially solemn manner: that help should come, in fact in a material envelope. 248 A modified form of Indeed, it seems natural that by instituting and sanctioning some ceremony of this kind, Christ should proclaim an agelong Memorial of the fact that He is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, immanent in time and matter both, in the Incarnation — that He should seal a truth intuitively grasped by every spiritual mind since the beginning with His Royal signet, as a decree that must hold good as long as Time shall last. It is natural, we would say, that His Sacrament should be continuous with the old sacrificial and sacramental forms, which showed so clearly man's inherent clearness of spiritual vision. And it is natural also, that it should derive fresh meaning and power from the Atonement, with which it is, in fact, so closely linked. It is natural, finally, that there should be given from God a direct gift of Himself, a sharing of His Perfect Self-hood with His imperfect creatures; that He should give Himself to men, since He had already given Himself /or them. But clearly, if man is to remain free, the gift must carry with it no constraint, no imperious demand for its own acceptance. Like the Atonement it must be placed before man, to be taken or left. If we were right in our conclusions with regard to the Atonement and to Prayer, such a gift would not in the least affect the completeness of man's self-determination. His freedom would remain absolutely unconstrained in regard to this, since he chooses whether or no he will Receptionist Doctrine indicated 249 accept the gift, just as he chooses whether or no he will pray, or will make his own the benefits of atoning Love. Nevertheless responsibility must attend the offer of power to use his freedom more effectually by accepting the gift. A fresh factor of the spiritual environment is made potentially operative for him, and if he refuses to avail himself of it, the responsi- bility is his. In connection with this we may remember that every sentient being receives matter with all its possibilities, whatever his own attitude. He is in a material world whose meaning and end is spiritual, whether he likes it or no ; he is not free from the responsibility of gifts won by past generations. If he does not perceive and use his freedom, he suffers for it. He is not immune from the responsibility of being free. And it does not appear that any limitation of his freedom is involved in offering him special means of attaining completer freedom. His responsibility is in a sense greater; he does eat and drink judgment to himself, if he does not perceive the Lord's Body; but then he eats and drinks judgment to himself of precisely the same kind, in its own degree, if he fails to see the spiritual signi- ficance of his daily life. In fine, man must suffer one compulsion, the compulsion to choose whether he will exercise his freedom or no. But this in no way limits that freedom 250 Reasonableness of Eucharistic Doctrine when it is achieved, for there is a true alterna- tive. Our examination has, then, so far as it is possible for us to come to any conclusion in view of its limited scope, brought us to a kind of mean position ; Recep- tionist, in that we find that the sacramental gift only becomes efiicacious in those who choose to make it so ; more than Receptionist in that we see the possibility and congruity of a real gift of Christ Himself offered to all, though rejected by some. A congruous gift, because all matter is sacramental, and there is need that the whole being should enter into Communion with God. Congruous too, because immanent man can only be united with Immanent Godhead, Who became Incarnate, in order that through His complete submission to the limitations of spirit, immanent in matter, and barred out from perfect communion with the Transcendent Father by sin, union might at last perfectly fulfil itself. Congruous, finally, because it explained, and put in its true perspective, a craving that from earliest days had sought satisfaction in primitive sacrificial and sacramental rites. Possible, because the Immanent God longs to hasten the 7r\rjp(o/iia which impelled Transcendent Love to suffer the pangs of creation. Possible, because the love of God has made it so, through the Incarnation of His Son. Possible, because man's destiny is such that it can do no dishonour to the Saviour of the Conclusions 251 World to impart Himself to those who shall one day- be united with Him in closer communion than men can conceive. It is not our purpose to try to reach a more definite conclusion than this. We can only decide what form of doctrine fits in with the system we have been driven to construct by our evolutionary thesis ; beyond this we have no intention of going, and no right to go. Nevertheless our examination has brought some fairly definite ideas. (1) Sacraments are the natural expression of man's recognition of the spiritual nature of all life. (2) They emphasise the immanental relationship of manhood and Godhead involved in the first kenosis, Creation. (3) The Christian sacrament of Holy Communion is a perpetual memorial of the second kenosis, when atoning Love took upon Itself the form and limita- tions of a servant, for the purpose of rendering possible, and consummating, under the then conditions, union between God and man. (4) There may well be a special gift of Christ Himself in the elements, for those who will receive it. Such a gift in no way Hmits man's freedom; it is of the same type as the gift of Christ in the Atone- ment; it is a gift which brings more of the Spiritual Environment within the range of eflGicient factors that can affect man ; and so it is yet another manifestation 252 ' Conclusions of God's Love, reaching down to draw man to Him- self. (5) There must be a spiritual gift of some kind in every sacrament that is perpetually celebrated by man, since every symbol implies a measure of com- munity between itself and the thing symbolised. Taken in connection with the preceding, this is parti- cularly important and suggestive. (6) The validity of the spiritual aspect in any true sacrament, such as we believe the Holy Com- munion to be, must increase and yet must change, as long as man remains immanent. It must become more and more spiritual, more and more real, as man approaches fuller union with God. Less and less stress must be laid on the material side of physical sustenance, less and less on the aspect of aid to the struggling spirit, more and more on the spiritual side of communion. Symbolism must pass more and more into reality; until at length, when all limitations are done away, the sacrament, the symbol, ceases in full realisation. In Transcendent Union there can be no sacraments. (7) The appeal of the sacrament, and the aid it brings, are chiefly an appeal and an aid to the im- manent nature of man, through the Immanent Aspect of the Godhead ; though the realisation of communion is for his transcendent side^. In this it differs from ^ It is, in fact, impossible to draw a definite line between that Baptism 253 prayer, in which man's transcendent spirit plays a part. Communion is not sacrament at all for the part of man in which transcendence is realised; for that part it is Reality, true union, proclaimed publicly. Only for his immanent part is it a symbol and a help; a lift on the road for the tired body which is marching on to the City of God, where all visions find their originals. Turning now to Baptism, we must confess that our method, applied honestly, leads us tg no such sure ground. Baptism does lay stress on the impor- tance of solidarity, — therefore it plays a necessary part in the formation of the organism we call the Church. With this matter we shall deal in the last chapter, and it is unnecessary to do more than refer to it here. On all the three grounds which von Hiigel gives for the need of institutionalism in religion, Baptism is most desirable, as bringing the individual into relation with the Church, by a public act which, if carried on to its logical result in permanent and true membership, does give a strong sense of corporateness, and may conceivably aid the individual in ways of which we know little or nothing, owing to the powers which is immanent of man and that which is transcendent. The one passes over into the other. But for the sake of argument the two must be kept separate. And, indeed, they are two totally different things: it is only the dividing line that is unreal, as we have constantly found to be the case in our examination of evolu- tion. 254 Baptism of a corporate body. Both the certainty of the first and the possibiUty of the second render Infant Baptism desirable. And, again, it is, in a sense, sacramental, since it lays special stress on, and draws attention to, the sacramental aspect of all life by means of a definite, symbolic rite. But we clearly cannot apply the results we arrived at in the case of the Eucharist. It is not linked in the same way with the Atonement ; and it cannot, at least so it appears, mediate a direct gift of God. For consider Infant Baptism. The child does not choose to be baptised ; it has not the faintest idea of what is going on ; it merely suffers a certain amount of physical discomfort for no apparent reason. Any special gift would therefore be a definite constraint on its freedom, since it cannot and does not choose whether or no it will accept it. The idea that Original Sin is washed away in Baptism seems to be a survival from the days when sacraments and sacrifice were closely linked with magic. It falls into line with the expectation that a God will answer by fire. The baptism of John was a symbol of the cleansing of the individual, through a change of his mind (note the emphasis laid on the personal will in the word jjierdvoia); the Christian baptism is formal admission into the Body of Christ; it is of the community rather than of the individual ; it is not a lustration but a public profession. In the case of an adult it may well be attended with special Baptism 255 grace, as may any sacrament, from its symbolical nature. But there seems no reason to associate Baptism in itself with any special gift ; while such an idea, applied to the baptism of infants, undoubtedly leads us into the grave difficulty that such a gift would impugn true freedom. Infant Baptism may well place the child in a spiritual environment which makes for spiritual progress. This is perhaps one of its great values. But our reasoning is distinctly adverse to the idea of an implantation of some special Divine Seed in the child, as a direct gift from God. Just as St Paul uses no single phrase that justifies the conception of a sacrificial office in Christian priesthood, so, I think, he never gives a hint of any gift in Baptism, except gifts of the Holy Ghost which attend those who voluntarily, and through personal conviction, enrol themselves as members of the Church of Christ. We must remember that we are looking at the matter from one definite point of view, and must not dogmatise about conclusions reached from the examin- ation of totally different aspects of it. But this we may say, that anything which seems to be irrecon- cileable with the doctrine of freedom, which we have found so fertile, must be regarded with grave sus- picion. It would seem then that Baptism viewed from our standpoint, has nothing of the same validity and significance as the Holy Communion. It is valuable 266 Baptism as laying stress on the sacramental aspect of life ; it is valuable as emphasising the importance of corporateness and of institutional religion ; but it has not of necessity and in itself, apart from the will of man, more efficacy than any other rite. While it may be a special vehicle of the energising activity of the Holy Ghost in certain cases, it does not appear to be always and necessarily so; and indeed, as far as we can judge from the limited nature of our method, such a necessity would appear to involve a check on man's freedom in the case of Infant Baptism. We must therefore leave the matter an open question — open, because our survey is partial. But we must in honesty record that the gift of a special grace necessarily given in Baptism does not seem to be compatible with the unsullied freedom which we believe God has given to man. Our general survey of the meaning of sacraments has led us to an appreciation of the importance of all rites of this kind, and of the deep meaning of the need of such symbolism which is universally present among men, as well as to a belief that in the Eucharist a very special gift of Christ Himself is offered to man. The Fathers were strongly impressed with the sacramental nature of all life, and this lay at the bottom of their enumeration of great numbers of sacraments. If our conclusions have been set down somewhat dogmatically, it is not with the will or intention to Apologia 257 wound the feelings of those who disagree with us, but only for the sake of clearness and brevity in making an honest statement of the results to which we have been impelled by our study. And surely, if there be anyone who feels that to attempt analysis of the most sacred mysteries of religion is sacrilegious, we may truly say to him, and with him, as we rise from our little efforts to plumb the deeps of life as it were with the foot-rule which is our earthly standard, Thou Hvest in a world of signs and types, The presentations of most holy truths, Living and strong, which now encompass thee^. and even while we ask pardon for any offence we may unwittingly have given, ask for the same liberty he himself claims to state his views. 1 J. H. Newman, The Dream of Oerontius. CHAPTER IX FAITH, PROVIDENCE, AND REVELATION There are two well-known definitions of faith: "the belief in what you know is not true," and "the assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things not seen." The first definition is a mockery, the second goes near to the root of the matter. Yet if the first is stated negatively instead of positively, it forms a valuable supplement to the other. Faith has in it the idea of beheving what you do not know to be true, if by knowledge we mean susceptibility of logical demonstration. And this is necessarily the case, if, as we have seen reason to believe, causal series, which constitute the foundation of logic, are essentially durational: based on discontinuity, which is the groundwork of perception. Faith is, largely at any rate, independent of perceptual experience, though its result may be to affect perception, since it affects man's personality, which is greatly dependent on perception. It is the assurance and proving of things not seen, nor heard, nor touched, nor smelt — an assurance independent of sensation. Faith as movement 259 But in the second definition there is a hint of some thing more. The conjunction of the words assurance and hope suggests movement and progress. And I believe that it is necessary to any true conception of faith that we should get a firm grasp of its essentially dynamic nature. Surely faith does imply movement — the movement from hope towards certainty ? Hope is keen, eager, exciting, unrestful; full of the possi- bility of disappointment; anxiously expectant. Cer- tainty is full of the sense of arrival and completion. It is restful, though not inert. It tends to action, because it is full of confidence; without action it would be valueless. Hope has no intellectual basis. It is altogether unrelated to any causal series, and causality is the essential groundwork of intellect; for intellect is the power of reasoning, and is thus based on the inevitability of logic. In actual fact pure hope hardly exists ; what we call hope is usually an extension of expectation beyond the limits of rational deduction; but there is some element of reason behind it. A child has a secret hankering to possess a toy train; it is always thinking about it, and has great hopes that it will get a lovely model railway, with a reversing engine and switches and signals and brake-rails, on its birthday, and that the engine will be a new kind that doesn't want winding up constantly. The hope is partly based on the fact that it does get presents on its birthday; but largely 17—2 260 Faith is Movement on an implicit belief in the inexhaustibility of its parents' powers and purse. Hope is no doubt purest in the least intelligent, least developed, races; but there is always a rudiment of something else in it, and that something else is, as we shall see, faith. Of the relation between faith and intellect we shall have something to say later. Certainty is on the other hand essentially intel- lectual, at any rate in the affairs of common life. It is based on the law of causality, and consists in a mental picture of a whole chain of events causally connected. It leads to action because the result of action is foreseen. Pure hope is thus receptive; it only becomes a motive of action when it is mixed with some elementary notion of the first stages of a causal series. And so, as we have said, what we ordinarily term hope involves the projection of causality beyond its legitimate bounds. This projection involves the principle of faith. Let us analyse the matter somewhat more closely. Suppose that the parents of our child have always encouraged its interest in mechanical things, and especially in railways, model and real. The child has more reason for expecting that its birthday present will take this form. It drops hints, more or less explicit, that the one thing needed to make life blissful and complete is a model railway. Thus, knowing that its parents try to do what it wants, when they can, it has additional reason to believe that a few days will from Hope towards Certainty 261 see the dawn of the millennium. And the parental "We'll see" is hailed as partial confirmation of the impending satisfaction of its ardent desire. If, by chance, its parents have said that one day they must see about getting a railway, when it is old enough and has learned not to break things, the belief becomes stronger still. And if it has, acting on the half- promise, refrained from breaking anything for a whole week, belief grows more and more towards certainty. Thus we see that intellect — the grasp of causal relation- ships — and action both take a part in transforming the hope and bringing it nearer and nearer to certainty. There is movement, and further, this movement is progressive. The movement is from hope towards certainty. It is a change of attitude, based on intellect, and issuing in action. Each action, itself the result of reasoning, tends in the same direction, and seems to justify the projection of the mind beyond the strict logic of facts; and so stimulates to further action. The whole process is progressive and dynamic. This progressive projection is faith. Faith is always a moving from hope towards certainty; it is always based on intellect, but always is thrown forward beyond it. When the movement ceases faith ceases, for faith is the movement itself. Now movement is simply a change in the conditions of that which moves, either in space or time, or both. 262 Illustrations Moreover this particular kind of movement is pro- gressive, and progress implies determination from within, not from without. It is utterly unlike the movement of a bullet that flies through the air. What then is it which moves? Clearly the spirit. And in every case, even the simple one we have taken as an illustration, the movement of the spirit tends towards the fuller understanding of the attitude and spirit of the person in whom faith is placed. The result of the child's actions is to make it understand more clearly what its parents' intentions are. Let us now take one or two more simple examples from which we may hope to gain further light on the matter. A man who embarks on a ship to go, let us say, to India, does not merely hope to get there. He believes that the probabilities are in favour of his arriving, or he would not embark. He will be out of sight of land for days at a time, and he may not have the foggiest notion of the science of navigation, but he believes that the officers know their job. He believes that the ship is strong enough to stand any storms he is Ukely to encounter, because he believes that the men who made her knew what they were doing. Of course, if she has made the run often before, he has additional cause for security, but let us suppose, for simplicity, that it is her maiden voyage. Now if we analyse his attitude we shall find it is always based in the long run on faith in a person. To have faith in a Faith involves two perso^is 263 boat is a mere metaphor. You do not believe in the boat, you believe first in the men who designed her, and made her, and next in the men who guide her and keep her moving. This is important, for if it is true we see that faith is always directed towards something that is living and intelligent and active; in other words, towards a person. Moreover, faith is only possible /or a person, since faith is a form of movement of the spirit. Thus we find that faith always involves two personalities, the personality who believes, and the personality towards whom this belief is directed. Further, the oftener our traveller has made the journey — notice, not only this journey, but any other — the less there is of the element of hope, and the more of the element of certainty, in his attitude. The fussy traveller is always the tyro, or else, is deficient in the faculty of drawing conclusions from his experience ; and both classes, in their very fussiness, show lack of faith in the persons to whom they have entrusted themselves. But even in the most trustful first voyager there is far more of the hope that implies doubt than there is in the citizen of the world who has voyaged widely, and has perhaps experienced the dangers of travel, and the dominant power of the characters of those who have had to bring those entrusted to them through an emergency. 264 Faith is directed towards a Person Or let us take another illustration from common life — the game of golf. On the first day the beginner can hit the ball quite a long way ; as day follows day he gets more uncertain. He cuts divots from the turf several inches from his ball, and jars every muscle of his body ; then he draws up too much and nearly wrenches his arms out of their sockets with a swing that sends the club whistling through the unresisting air. If he does by chance hit the ball he cuts it, till finally it becomes an irregular polyhedron with reentrant angles, showing gaps which reveal the mystery of its interior. In despair he goes to the Professional for help. At once he is told that his right arm, which aches with the vigour of his onslaught on the ball, should do little or no work; his helpless left must take charge. The guiding finger pointing along the shaft of the club is firmly removed; his right hand overlaps his left, to the hopeless hampering of both. And the result is, he feels further off than ever from hitting the ball. Then the ball is taken away and he has to swing foolishly over the turf, trying to obey directions in which he can see no point, except that they take away the little control a few tightened muscles seemed to give. Yet after a lesson or two, when the ball is put back, he finds he can hit it truly, and far. Here again, he had no proof, no certainty, that he would gain by these strange and unsettling doctrines of the Professional. But he trusted him as a person of and issues in Action 265 experience, and then, when he began himself to hit the ball, he trusted him still more. There was more certainty and less hope in his belief that he would be able to play properly some time. And so, with the added understanding of his experience, he obeys his instructor more intelligently, and makes rapid progress. Success goads him to fresh effort and further success. And this is characteristic of faith ; that it impels always towards action. If faith is based on a person, its proof is action ; action that manifests the accept- ance of the person's capacity and right to act as guide. And moreover, the action is progressive ; unless there is progress, faith stagnates and dies. Faith is move- ment, and the movement of anything that lives and increases is progress. The reason why faith leads to action is clear; it is be- cause we are persons ; it is because we are free, because we realise in ourselves the power of self-determination. Eventually, in our last case, faith becomes certainty ; the ideal golfer knows that he will hit the ball, and that it will go where he wishes. And so his faith ceases, being merged in certainty. But action does not cease; he continues to play golf. Here our illustration rather breaks down, for in this case abso- lute certainty would make it not worth while to play. He goes on because he is not certain in every case, but in nine cases out of ten, and he wants to make the certainty apply in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. 266 Characteristics of Faith But it serves its purpose, to show that cessation of faith when certainty is reached is not the death of anything, but the perfection of self-determined activity. There is, besides, a cessation of faith which is stagnation, and connotes death and decay; but this is the cessation of uncompleted faith, which brings inertia. Here action ceases, and death comes. Faith then is the movement of the spirit from hope towards certainty; it is dependent on intellect, in so far as intellect is the recognition of causality, but goes beyond it; it is always rooted in a person; it issues in action and is progressive. Its final end is self- determination; the certainty that action will have a definite issue. Let us now apply this to faith in its religious connotation. Spiritual faith is the belief in God, and in His goodwill towards us. It is the movement of the spirit in relation to the realisation of communion with God. It will cease when communion is fully realised, for it will then become certainty. It has all the characteristics of the simple cases with which we have dealt. It is even based on intellect; on the realisation of the law of causality in the world. This point requires a little further consideration, for it suggests that the laws of causality as we know them are eternally and absolutely true; a matter open to considerable doubt. The knowledge of the human spirit is twofold, Intuition, Hope, Faith, and Certainty 267 intuitional and intellectual. Faith may and does have as its motive power the pre-analytical knowledge we call intuition; but, though probably intuition lies at the bottom of progressive spiritual knowledge, the movement that indicates the gaining of more know- ledge is faith. In so far as there is progressive movement, it is due to increasing experience; to in- crease of intellectual or rational knowledge. Intuition is the projection of the soul beyond knowledge, faith is the movement of the whole personality in the direction of the certainty that lies in front. Thus faith involves both the intuition which indicates the path along which the spirit must travel, and the move- ment of the spirit along that path which is faith itself. Faith could not exist without the intuition, but it is not the intuition. Hope again is not the intuition. It too depends upon this, but has no element of know- ledge. Intuition is a form of knowledge, though it is not logical in structure. Hope is not knowledge, but rather the doubting of intuition. Thus, then, I would suggest the following classi- fication of these vague and interdependent states; Intuition, hope, faith, certainty. Intuition is that knowledge pertaining to the soul which is independent of causal series. Hope involves doubt of the sufficiency of this knowledge, which is evidenced in the demand of the mind for intellectual satisfaction. Faith is the movement of the soul along the line indicated by 268 Intuition, Hope, Faith, and Certainty intuition — a movement, due to progressive experience, which conj&rms the indications of intuition, and tends more and more to give a logical basis to them. When certainty is reached, faith ceases, for now logical proof has arrived at the same conclusion as intuition. In other words faith ceases when intellect and intuition have "arrived." This can only be when freedom from external limitation is achieved; and, thus, when material restrictions cease to exist for the perfected spirit. Consequently, in so far as causal series are dependent on external limitation, they will cease to affect the activity of the spirit in which faith has ceased through fulfilment, and which is consequently self-determined and transcendent. Our consideration of faith has led us once again to a dynamic conception. Nor was anything else to be expected. All through we have found that life is progress, in any being that is becoming ; and even in that which is perfect life is activity. For any personal being activity is the chief essential; if the being is imperfect this activity will be determined in a great measure from without, if perfect the activity will be self-determined from within. And progress is increas- ing self-determination. Better to sit at the waters' birth Than a sea of waves to win; To live in the love that floweth forth Than the love that cometh in. Faith is directed toivards a Personcd God 269 Be thy heart a well of love, my child, Flowing, and free, and sure; For a cistern of love, though undefiled, Keeps not the spirit pure^. This is the essential truth of life — not a reservoir but a spring, not a passive acquiescence but unending activity. Stagnation presages decay, as we have found over and over again. Only for a short time is it possible to take a sullen acquiescence For gentle Love's transforming presence^. ****** The terminus a quo of faith is hope; the terminus ad quem is certainty ; the line of movement is indicated by intuition. Just in so far as the intuition is clouded, the terminus ad quem vague and uncertain, so far faith falls short of the steady progress which should be its character. Where, for instance, the end has lost its personal appeal to the soul, seeming to be a formless Whole, impassible and sightless, like a colossal sphinx, as for the Agnostic, or a perpetual, pulsing centre of activity, as for the Vedantist, or passionless peace, as for the Buddhist, so far must faith fail to be a purposeful movement — so far it is not a true faith. There may be faith that is directed to a false end, but sooner or later it comes to a dead stop. Just in so far as there is truth in its end, so far it will show * George MacDonald, Phantasies. 2 A. C. Benson, Le Cahier Jaune. Miserrimus. 270 Faith involves Belief in life — the power of movement and progress; even as an organism may evolve for some time along a blind alley, progressing up to a certain point in virtue of the vital impulse which animates it, but sooner or later finding its progress barred by a blank wall, and dying out. In exactly the same way faith may progress for a time along a blind path towards a false end; but it must suffer extinction at the last. Faith, then, is founded upon belief in a personal God, and the recognition of order in the Cosmos. It is therefore natural to expect the existence of belief in Providence and belief in Revelation. Our next task is to examine and question these beliefs, as far as they affect the limited purview of our thesis. We may formulate our question thus: have these beliefs any foundation, if increasing self-deter- mination or freedom is really the object, method and basis of the order and progress we see in the world? First, let us notice that the movement is not from chaos to order. If, as we have contended, the material universe is the expression of the self-limitation of God in part of His Experience, it certainly shows no evidence of chaos. Rather, there is order without freedom. Order is characteristic of the universe; and for limited beings, this order represents perfectly determination from without. Nay, more; it surely represents the same for God. He is self -limited in that part of His Experience, and therefore He is a Divine Purpose and Plan 271 determined in it — not strictly from without, since it is part of His Experience, and has come to be by the action of His Will, yet the material world is in a sense outside His activity, since He is thereby limited. For if the object is the achieval of man's freedom by struggle with that which is not free, God cannot change the material world without contradicting Him- self by changing His Will towards man^. In other words, as we have so often said, the Creation was a kenosis; and matter, though part of the experience of God, is yet the result of limitation of part of that experience by the removal of freedom. On the other hand, chaos does enter with the clash of wills — that is, with the coming of sin. Sin is the introduction of disorder into an orderly cosmos, by interference with the steady march of the progressing spirit amid the ordered forces of the world which made that progress possible and certain. In the world at large then, there is order; but among men there is something that partakes of the nature of chaos, since all men sin. Clearly, in our analysis of the ideas of Providence and Kevelation, we shall have to consider both of these in relation to the order of the world, and to the disorder introduced by the sin of men. Analysing, then, the conception of Providence we find certain definite lines of thought involved. ^ See, however, the Additional Note on Prayer for Material Benefits. 272 The conception of Providence (1) It is the sense that the general trend of life is in accordance with a plan of God. This is implicit in the whole of our argument as to the progress of the Creation towards freedom ; it is the essence of the doctrine of Creation and Kenosis. Evidently we can and must accept its truth, (2) It is the belief that God is over all — a Brooding Spirit. This is a corollary of the first, and amounts to a vague idea of the doctrine of Transcendence, with all that it involves in relation to simultaneity and activity. Again there is nothing that can clash with an evolutionary conception of the world's pro- gress. (3) It is the idea that everything that happens to those who love God is in detailed accordance with His Will. This goes much further than the first two, which suggest only a general outline drawn by God and filled in in detail by His creatures. And it is often extended to cover everything that happens, especially everything that happens in an impressive manner, as a hurricane or an earthquake, as well as things that are due in a great measure to man's stupidity (as a great outbreak of cholera) or his sinfulness (as the destruction of non-immunised native races by gin and syphihs). (4) It is the idea that God interferes constantly in the conduct of the world, to bring about certain ends. This is really implicit in the last; and it is The conception of Providence 273 clearly hard to reconcile it with the notions of order and self-gained freedom. (5) It is the belief that God cares for men, loves them, wills that they should be made perfect, free; and that He hates pain and sorrow, and that therefore He must interfere in the course of the world. This clearly involves a non sequitur; and the difficulty is solved by the conception of the passibility of God. If God suffers with His creatures, the horror of suffering without help is gone. If God suffers it is because He must; it is because He cannot interfere for man's own sake. The suffering of God is the last proof of His love. A parent would not forbid the doctor to set a broken leg or the surgeon to use his knife if his child needed such treatment ; rather he would acquiesce in the immediate extra sufiering for the sake of future well-being. The earthly father lets his child suffer if necessary, though he could prevent it if he would; the Heavenly Father lets His children suffer, and cannot prevent it, because He can only do what is best. He cannot prevent the suffering from out of which freedom is won. He can suffer too, and we can begin to understand the meaning of such suffering as we watch the agony of an injured child, or the purgative remorse of one who has sinned. Without going into the problem of pain again at this point, it is sufficient for our present purpose to note that the realisation that God suffers removes the "must " from the idea of M. 18 274 The conception of Revelation interference because He cares. Because He cares it does not follow that He must interfere; the question should rather be "because He cares may He not interfere in some cases?" This brief analysis of the chief ideas imderlying the conception of Providence shows us that there are two main points to be considered. The first is the general belief that there is purpose in the world, and that this purpose is the Will of God, Who is the Omnipotent Creator, for the perfecting of man. This belief is involved in the whole idea of Evolution, as we have seen, and we must admit its truth at once. The second is involved in the question whether everything that happens in the world, except sin, is in accordance with His Will; whether, in fact, He over-rules and inter- feres in matters of detail. Can we say of everything, it is God's Will? Can we say " God will take care that this or that comes right," and " Whatever happens has some wise purpose in it " ? Having stated these questions, let us leave them for a moment to make a similar analysis of the idea of Revelation, with which they are clearly linked in the closest connection. (1) We may notice first that the animistic origin of primitive religion makes revelation seem natural to men. To the primitive mind, which sees in the waving of a tree the action of an indwelling tree-spirit, in the sliding of a rock as the ice thaws beneath it the com- .munication of a tornaq, in the breaking waves the The conception of Revelation 275 moving chariot of a sea-god, the direct communication of God with men through material means is obvious and necessary. Thus religion becomes permeated from the first by the idea of direct revelation through material channels. (2) Far-sighted men, prophets and priests, who are on a higher spiritual plane than their fellows, are in closer communion with God than the common run, and the obvious truth of their dicta suggests a special revelation from without. They too, because of the animistic thread that runs through the religious belief of a people, will project hallucinations and self-sugges- tions outside themselves, and see in them the finger of God pointing. Among the highest of these the external manifestations will be replaced by a still, small Voice; but they will be none the less sure that it is the Voice of God. Thus we see that the idea of direct revelation is natural, and to be expected. (3) From the standpoint of our evolutionary description of life, God's whole plan is towards the mediate revelation of Himself to man, which is to end in perfect communion and understanding. Creation, self -limitation, is God's part ; advancing understanding, increasing contact with the whole Environment, which is God, is man's part. Can more than this be justly read into the word Revelation? (4) Clearly the revelation of Christ is in a different 18—2 276 The conception of Revelation category. This was a second kenosis; the mani- festation of the Ideal of Manhood, and the removal of the barrier raised up by sin; the means of re-em- phasising and restoring order where sin had introduced chaos. Certainly the coming of Christ was a revelation in the fullest sense. We thus conclude that there is certainly a pro- gressive revelation inherent in the relation of men to God. This revelation is the fuller understanding of the meaning of life. It is given to saints and prophets to proclaim higher truths than the race has yet arrived at, and to hear them sometimes acclaimed, sometimes rejected, according as the will of the nation is set on righteousness or on material gain; according as the lesser minds can bear them already, or are not fit. Is there more? Is there evidence of outward and visible signs foreshowing inward spiritual grace, beyond man's ken — a revelation of God proceeding from without, not from within? It is clear that to both these questions we must apply the principle, which emerged from our discussion of Prayer, and of the Sacraments, namely that, where no self-contradiction is involved, the direct action of God, by revelation or guidance, is possible and natural. That is to say, God cannot act in any way that limits man's freedom without nullifying His own action in giving man power to win that freedom ; but any form of revelation or help that is consistent with the entire Providence and Evolution 277 freedom of man's will (except in regard to its relation with the ordered universe around him), is not only conceivable, but is necessary. If God can help man to win more freedom without in any way limiting him, He must so help him, since it is His Will that men should become free. The whole conception of Providence is really summed up in St Paul's phrase "fellow workers with God." The winning of freedom begins, as we have seen, in utilisation of the material environment; in gaining mastery over it, making a tool of it. With self-consciousness comes the power of fashioning tools for a specific purpose — a power that implies memory and reflection as well as mere control. Spiritual evolution proceeds in the same way; it is growth in freedom through response to a spiritual environment. In a sense man makes a tool of his spiritual surroundings, utilising them to further his own freedom. He uses his knowledge in the spiritual sphere as truly as he uses it in the temporal. In material things he learns enough knowledge to use everything that he can see and feel, as well as the ether, of which he has no sensory evidence. His deductions from what he knows empirically of the properties of light and radiant heat lead him to prophesy the possibility of transmission of electrical waves through a medium of the presence of which he has no consciousness, and he is able eventually to make and use these waves for purposes 278 Providence and Evolution of communication. So too, it is surely possible and likely, that as he gets more knowledge of his spiritual environment he will be able to make use of it — in other words, to claim the co-operation of God with his efforts to achieve freedom. When he knows enough of the nature of God, he knows how to ask for and use His help. He is free to see which way the path of freedom lies, and by his own free choice he can gain strength and aid in traversing it. When a man knows the geological structure of a place he knows that if he digs deep enough he will reach water, and he does reach it. So, when man knows enough of the purpose of God and understands how to gain help in fulfilling it, he will gain help. The help is no limitation of his freedom, but rather its evidence. A newborn child takes nourishment from its mother. Later it takes from her food for its mind, in the acquisition of words, and the application of them for the purpose of summarising simple causal relations. Later still it begins to learn from her spiritual truths. The source, the environment which supplies all these is one and the same, the mother; but its various aspects only become effective as the child grows able to receive benefit from them. So too we have the serial relation in the manifestations of the One Environment^. Hence we see that the ideas, both of direct Revela- tion and Providence, offer no diflB.culty in the case of 1 Cf. ch. n. True, and questionable, Ideas of Providence 279 the personal relation of man to God, if the man is far enough advanced to ask. Of course his new knowledge or power will affect others, but this is always the case ; it is the mode in which the action of the living organism adds to the environment-sum^. But even this, though it takes us to the root of the matter, does not satisfy our minds completely. Does the providence of God bring good out of evil? Certainly unnecessary suffering must be alien to God ; but it is doubtful if unnecessary suffering exists, except as a consequence of sin. Most suffering is, as we have seen elsewhere, an incident of the method of progress, due to the fact that progress in freedom can only be won in struggle with that which is not free. Good certainly does often come out of evil, in the sense of strengthening of character by pain and sorrow. Many lessons of life are learned in the hardest school. And here we have a triumph of the Will of God in man's achievement of spiritual gain. In this sense the suffering was providential; but we must notice that it only becomes so through man's own effort. It is not God's will that we should suffer, for suffering's sake, but it is His will that we should gain by suffering. So too, in the case of the general sense of guidance through life, good coming out of apparent evil, which is the certain experience of every Christian who strives, however feebly and intermittently, to live * Vide Evolution and the Need of Atonement, ch. i et passim. 280 TriiCy and questionable, Ideas of Providence with Christ. It is his inward realisation of the meaning of God's desire for mankind that makes him learn from every experience, and know the gain that has come as he passed through deep waters. True, in very many cases, special incidents appear to have been foreordained for good, even where there was no efiort on the part of any concerned. It is difficult to be cer- tain that the question of answer to some prayer does not come in here ; with this we dealt in the last chapter. But eliminating the cases where this seems a possible factor, as well as all the cases which really fall into the previous class, there certainly appear to be cases of providential guidance. These can again be reduced by the elimination of those dependent on little-under- stood phenomena in the domain of psychology, as when a man sacrifices his passage on a ship owing to a dream or vision, and the ship is wrecked on that voyage. Such a case would naturally be looked on as a warning from God ; but the fact that it only comes to one or two out of hundreds makes the explanation doubtful; and when we read the literature of the Psychical Research Society, or such books as Myers' Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death and Phantasms of the Living, we begin to realise what a vast region of knowledge about the faculties of the human mind and spirit is unexplored. When all these are eliminated, I imagine that the proportion of cases left where there seems to be direct Providence and Catastroj^he 281 providential guidance, in the sense in which we are using the words now, to the cases where no such guidance occurs, would be found to fit in pretty well with the law of probability, and might be put down to coincidence. One cannot, of course, say definitely that this is so; but if our argument has been just it would seem likely to be the case; and the conviction that such providential guidance in the lives of others is a matter of coincidence is deeply rooted in the mind of the ordinary man. Even if he has experienced it himself, he yet is inclined to pooh-pooh, or at least to explain away, the experience of others! So too, we cannot look on great natural phenomena, or terrible disasters and earthquakes or hurricane, plague or shipwreck, as a manifestation of God's wrath, or as an expression of His activity. They are incidents of a world ruled by determined laws which act rigorously and inevitably. They are not in accordance with His Will, or opposed to it, in themselves. They are evidence of the reality of determinism in matter; of the self -limitation of God in creation. They were inevitable, predestined, certain, from the foundation of the world. They were in God's fore-knowledge, but they are only expressions of His Will in so far as they are incidents of the method by which the creature is to win through, groaning and travailing, to the adoption; to wit, the redemption of its body. If we are right, the effective action of Providence 282 True, and questionable, Ideas of Revelation is then true and real for the man who is trying to serve God. The water is there, and when he digs deep enough he must find it. But Providence in no sense limits man's freedom, or helps him further than he wills to go. As faith moves more and more towards certainty, so does man's power of using the Spiritual Keality that is all around him, grow ; and so, his power to be helped. Help comes through progress in under- standing. Turning again to Revelation, we may apply the same criteria. We have seen that the revelation given in Christ is different from all others, and this we may leave aside. If, in other cases, by Revelation we mean the sudden gift of a higher understanding of God than was justified by the then stage of the man, the least we can say is that the matter is very dubious. When we examine the recorded cases of Revelation we find, I think, that it always comes through or to men of higher spiritual development than their fellows ; and, consequently, to the average man of any age the revelation appears to be a direct communication from God. Indeed, owing to the natural belief embedded in the race that gods do speak to men, the origin of which we traced in animism, the seer himself believes that God has spoken. And in a sense it is true. But it is true, not because God interferes with the normal activities of the world, but because the seer has learned to listen for His Voice and to anticipate what He wills. Summary 283 and so goes on from strength to strength he never expected, finding wells in the vale he thought was dry. To sum up, we have seen reason to believe that the basis of the ideas of Providence and Revelation — both true ideas, and full of deep meaning — is to be sought, not in the intermittent action of an external God, but in the progressive movement of the human personality from the hope of communion with a Great God to the certainty and knowledge of com- munion with a God Who is Transcendent yet also Immanent; Whose purposes are loving, and Who is Himself Love. CHAPTER X THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY Matter consists of closed systems which form practically isolated groups; or rather, as Bergson puts it, matter tends to form isolated groups or closed systems, but this tendency is never fully realised. The atom is a nearly closed system of electrons, the molecule is a nearly closed system of atoms, the mole- cules form a nearly closed system we call the planet earth, the planets form a nearly closed solar system, innumerable nearly closed solar systems form the universe. For many purposes we can deal with each or any of these as completely closed systems, or truly isolated realities, and matter may be defined as that which is susceptible of such treatment^. But we have seen, following further in the steps of Bergson and Julian Huxley and Trotter, that there is much the same tendency manifest in living creatures also. There seems to be a blind impulse in living matter towards a colonial life. This may be evidenced merely by the aggregation of morpho- ^ CI BergsoD, Creative Evolution, pp. 8 seqq. Economic value of solidarity 285 logically similar individuals; or we may get colonies with physiological division of labour, one individual looking after the catering, another after defence, another after reproduction, another after the telegraph system, another after the hydrostatic machinery for modifying buoyancy, another after the nursery, and so on. Again the system may vary between complete mutual contact and dependence, where groups of individual cells form tissues and organs, as in the human body, and a very large measure of independence, as in the hymenopteran and neuropteran colonies. The immediate cause of this is clearly economic. Efficiency is the keynote of specialisation. But we cannot rest satisfied with this explanation; it is good enough for the purpose of the zoologist, but not for that of the metaphysician. We find a similar impulse towards the formation of closed systems in man; the family, the tribe, the nation are all manifestations of the same phenomenon. Here too the basis is economic; the object being the complete subjugation and utilisation of matter, and the forces that govern it. All through there seems to be a tendency towards unity, and you cannot isolate the individual cell, the individual man, or the individual nation and still find its full meaning there ; you cannot destroy the relation of the part to the whole without losing the clue to a full understanding of the fimctions of the part. 286 The Solidarity of Men But there is a difference between the animal colony and the human tribe. Unity in the first is the result of a blind impulse — the same vital impulse whose movement is always towards the subordination of matter in order that freedom may be superimposed upon determination. In the second another thing, reasoning based on experience, is operative also. The first is driven by a blind urging towards unity, the second by a reasoned demand for union as well. In the first the individuality of an aggregate is the essential aim; in the second, a complete plurality of personal beings who have chosen union as the best and only means of gaining control over matter. In the first there is merging of individualities in one larger indi- vidual ; in the second there is no merging of personali- ties. The nation as a whole cannot be said to be personal, except in a metaphorical sense. Doubtless the blind impulse to union survives even among men, and is operative; but it grows less. Herd instinct and tribal consciousness may probably be its last manifestation. And no doubt also there is a kind of pendulum movement. Instinct as well as reason lies at the bottom of the aggregation of families into tribes. At a later stage the over- emphasis of individual inde- pendence, of the reasoning power of the person, may bring anarchic tendencies. The pendulum over-swings. But these abnormal manifestations are necessarily self-destructive, for the need of union is more potent Solidarity and Personality 287 than the self-assertion of any person, however com- manding. And the final end is the realisation that union is essential to well-being. This is the " position of rest." Thus all through we see that solidarity is necessary for the better subjugation of material surroundings, which is intimately correlated with increasing freedom. But in the human colony there is more. The realisa- tion of personal communion is recognised as an end in itself. Man continues to be a gregarious animal chiefly because he is a person, and reciprocity, com- munion, is essential to the person. All through, the vital impulse works with one pur- pose, increasing freedom,. but all through it works in relation to two things, the individual and the race. At first the race is everything, or almost everything. The great need is solidarity — the retention and trans- mission of freedom won for the race. Only when self- consciousness dawns is the true value of individuality made clear in the coming of personality. The earlier impulse towards solidarity is not valueless; it represents the striving of the vital impulse to gain freedom by including under its sway as much of determinate matter as possible; at once it evidences, and renders possible, determination from within, instead of from without. It thus lays the foundation of self-determination, which, when it becomes conscious, is personality. 288 Solidarity has its ultimate eocplanation Personality only becomes possible because of tbe previous activity of the vital impulse working for the solidarity of the race. With personality comes the higher stage. Thus far there has been no indication of an ultimate meaning in the strife of the vital impulse. Freedom seemed the only end. And freedom is a very unsatisfying, even meaningless thing, taken by itself. Freedom — self- determination — derives meaning only from personality, whose end is mutual experience — union. Union is a higher thing than mere self-determination, since it entails the satisfaction of every side of personality. Thus in the purposeful formation of societies there is the same economic need which determined physio- logical division of labour, but there is more. There is the satisfaction of the imperious demands of personal being in communion and fellowship — the mutual sharing of experience. This phenomenon, this marvel of the personality, this strange demand of the being of one upon the being of another, is a fundamental fact which we cannot brush aside. It is manifested in many ways, under many guises. One aspect of it is included in the phrase "the interpenetration of personalities." Perhaps indeed this phrase will include all the aspects of the relationship of personal beings to one another, when they are made perfect. It covers something elusive, beyond, or rather above, reason; something in the needs of Personality 289 intangible; illogical even; yet within the experience of every human soul in some measure. Only lately, perhaps, has the truth which it enshrines been formally recognised. Before it was the sacred, treasured ex- perience of many, rarely spoken of, jealously guarded. The poets of love touched the fringe sometimes, though the dominant note of sex drowned the fainter harmonics. The mystics knew something of it. Among the Society of Friends it found safe harbourage, if not full honour. But its kingdom was not of this world, and there were few who saw glimpses of the royal purple beneath the common mantle of earth. Neither in the nation, nor in any purely human group, has this need its full fruition. Mutual relation issues, for the nation, in a definite and peculiar national character, but the movement of a nation towards sohdarity is avowedly economic in origin, at any rate mainly. So too with the family. In the Church alone — I use the word in its fullest and broadest meaning — the whole meaning is seen, and finds expression. Solidarity, the corporate sense, is higher and tru^r here than anywhere else, because personal union has acquired an ultimate meaning. And surely this meaning is the gain of perfect self-determination for the purpose of perfect com- munion. The idea of the Christian Church involves this, the innermost, deepest truth of the Creation, of the Atonement, of the plan of God from the beginning. M. 19 290 The Church foreshadows the It emphasises the importance of each personal spirit, thus rejecting the idea of an ultimate unity by- absorption into the World Spirit, because personality is eternal; and at the same time it clings fast to the other implication of personality, ultimate communion. It sees the meaning of solidarity in the completion of personal communion through personal relation to God. In the light of these two truths the significance of the great world-process becomes clear. All the struggle, the pain, the gain of freedom little by little; the blind gropings and internecine strife of tribes and nations; the yearnings and guesses of the soul in travail; the destiny of those who have passed from human knowledge ; all these are flooded with a glorious radiance. The riddle without an answer is under- standed of the people. Things which puzzled the wise are revealed to babes. Unity and multiplicity are no longer contradictory appearances, but indi- cations of the current that slowly and steadily is bringing an evolving world into Union with God, Who is Transcendent, yet becomes Immanent, in order that we men, through immanence, may enter into transcendent Union with Him, beyond time. Faith is movement towards certainty; and that certainty is achieved only in union with God and with each other in Eternal Communion — a united plurality, not a unity. The Church on earth is the partial realisation of this union, ever progressing. It is a final end of solidarity 291 colony in which the final meaning of colonial life is in some degree understood ; though the understanding is far less than it could be, and ought to be, because of internal dissension. For the Church, Prayer and Sacraments fall into line with the efforts of the savage to make an arrowhead; Providence and Revelation become parts of one and the same great Process in which the Immanent Aspect of God is being reabsorbed into Transcendence, as men pass into the Eternal and Simultaneous with Him. The Church, even on earth, is the partial realisation of union with God, in and through Christ. The Body of Christ is no mere metaphor of the Church's nature ; rather it is a state- ment of the sacramental meaning of all the long travail of a world where the finite is passing to the infinite. The solidarity of the Church is of vital importance, if the gift of God in Christ Jesus is to have its fulfilment. Let us then, in conclusion, sum up our ideas of the significance of the Church in the light of our general argument. It is a commonplace of idealistic philosophy that the explanation of the phenomenon of matter must be sought in the phenomenon of mind, and not vice versa. And this principle may be justly extended to cover various other related phenomena that seem to demand a teleological explanation. For instance, it is reasonable to look for the meaning of the universal tendency towards solidarity, not in the realm of matter, 19—2 292 Recapitulation but in the realm of spirit, since we find that it exists not only in inanimate matter, but in living organisms ; and that it rises to fullest manifestation in man. Indeed we have tacitly assumed throughout that the ultimate meaning can only be found in the realm of spiritual things. We shall not be wrong, I believe, if we seek the key to all solidarity in the existence of the Church — using the term in a very broad sense, to be defined immediately. We have already dealt with the importance of soli- darity from the point of view of the economics of the organism. We have seen how necessary it is. But we have not yet linked it up with the views of immanence and transcendence that we have formulated. We found that the formation of closed systems in the living organism is closely related to the achieve- ment of freedom through solidarity. As much matter as possible must be brought under the control of spirit. This cannot be done wholly by increase in size of the living organism, for the vital impulse cannot bear up more than a certain quantity of matter against the determinate katabolic forces which govern it, and moreover the conditions under which life has established itself involve the interaction of external matter with the matter of which the organism is itself composed. No doubt, also, there is some cause, innate in the nature of matter, which renders the formation of large isolated Recapitulation 293 systems impossible. The atom which has more than a certain number of electrons whirling in it becomes unstable and tends to break up into two simpler systems. Hence we always find a tendency to form groups of the second and third and fourth degrees. Atoms group into molecules, men into societies. Now men form societies in order to gain completer control over the conditions of their life; for the purpose of more efficient activity. They evince in some degree the interdependence of personalities, which eventually manifests itself, as we have seen, as interpenetration. Atmosphere, aura, magnetic power — all these sym- bolic phrases, pressed though they often are to absurd and fantastic lengths, express in a certain measure the truth that persons are not shut out from one another by impenetrable barriers. The gain of solidarity is obvious, as a means of ensuring survival in the evolutionary struggle; but when we find the existence of spiritual solidarity we are bound to pause and inquire whether our older idea, that solidarity is essential to physical survival, represents the whole truth. Just as a full examination of evolution led us to the conclusion that the end was eventual adaptation to a spiritual environment, and not merely a physical one; so here, the existence of spiritual solidarity, which fits in so admirably with this, and with the metaphysical results we arrived at in the first part of this book, compels us to admit 294 Spiritiml solidarity finds that the ultimate explanation of this general pheno- menon must be sought in the sphere of spirit. Spiritual communion between man and man lays permanent emphasis on the sacramental nature of material existence. It supplies the key to the instinct and reason which alike draw men together in close bonds of fellowship. A Church is simply the outward expression of man's acceptance of the spiritual nature of the ties which bind mankind together, and link men with the Powers of Heaven. It proclaims the eternal self-hood of man; but it also proclaims that no man lives to, and for, himself. It is man's public denial that he is an isolated being. It is his public attestation of a creed which affirms the existence and creative activity of God, and man's dependence on Him, and intercourse with Him. This surely is the significance of every Church, each in its own degree, whether its outward mani- festation be a gathering of men together to indulge in corybantic dances and unmelodious outbursts of organised noise, to wait in silence and prayer for the moving of the Holy Spirit, or to receive the sacramental blessing of Eucharistic Communion. And we may further see the phenomenon on which we have so often had occasion to lay stress; churches that are , on side-lines, unprogressive, and churches that are on the main line of advance. expression in the Church 295 As yet we have little understanding of the power and meaning of a Church. Those who do realise it are apt to confine its sphere and activities within very narrow limits, surrounding it with a shell that renders free growth impossible. Others again resent the bondage of conformity to such a rigidly-confined organism, and fail to realise the value of an ideal which aims at universal solidarity. The Holy Church Universal is as yet an unrealised dream. Yet it is full of meaning. It has an urgent appeal for those who realise what underlies it. And that meaning is only to be foimd in the Christian Revelation; for only in the Christian Revelation is the sacramental nature of matter made plain through the Incarnation of the Son. A Universal Church would be, in very fact, the Body of Christ on earth — Christ the Head, mankind the Body — the organism through which His Will becomes effective in matter; till at length patience has her perfect work, and the Transcendence of God, reasserted, and without limitation, through the transcendence of man, becomes all in all once more. And then? Surely still the Church will be His Body in another sense, even in the Transcendent Now of Eternity, since it will be co-ordinated with Him in every expression of His Activity. « * 4: « * * Our task is ended. To those who feel that to 296 Conclusion carry over the scientific doctrine of evolution into the realm of spiritual life is alike unjustifiable and needless, it will seem without meaning, or at least inept. We would ask all such, and they are many, to remember that there are others who have a different outlook on life; whose deepest instincts demand evidence of continuity in the development of the soul ; who are so unhappily constituted that they must needs question even the things that belong to their peace. For their sakes any and every endeavour to search the mysteries of God by the little light of human knowledge and experience is worth while. Only those who have stumbled through the dark forest of doubt can know the comfort that even a little gleam of light brings. Quale, per incertam lunam, sub luce mahgna Est iter in silvis, ubi coelum condidit umbra Jupiter, et rebus nox abstulit, atra, colorem^. It is to those who ask for evidence of Divine order and purpose in the commonest happenings of every- day life, that these two books are offered. Very ignorantly, and very blindly, have we striven to understand something of the unsearchable riches of God's love. Yet if we have gained but a little insight into the meaning of past efforts, as life struggled along the first steps of its long journey; 1 Virgil, Aeneid, \i Conclusion 297 if we have found any additional justification for an intellectual belief that the way is not endless, but does really lead to the Beautiful City of which some vision has been revealed to us, our labour will not have been without fruit. If in any degree the painful quest we have pursued can turn our thoughts, so that the dreary oppression of what has been in man's history takes light and life from the part it plays in what shall be, we shall have learned aright the lesson of evolution. No longer Now, when far bells are ringing "Come, again, Come back, past years! Why will ye pass in vain?^'* But That we may lift from out the dust A voice as unto him that hears, A cry above the conquer'd years To one that with us works, and trust, With faith that comes of self-control. The truths that never can be proved Until we close with all we loved. And all we flow from, soul in soul^. Sin and Atonement, Faith and Providence, Prayer, Sacraments, the Church, all fall into harmonious relation with the process of evolution, when we look at this in the light of the End ; for the process is itself 1 W. Morris, The Eartfdy Paradise. April. 2 TennysoD, In Memoriam, cxxx. 298 Conclusion instinct with spiritual meaning, and can only be inter- preted in the light of a Spiritual End. That which is becoming must eventually pass into union with that which eternally IS. When most of the puzzles of life are examined in relation to the limited freedom of a life which is immanent, and to the timeless activity of Transcen- dence, in which the spirits of men are in perfect union with God, their explanation is made clearer, or at least less hopelessly incomprehensible. However feebly we have striven to follow our Ariadne-thread through the difficult maze, the thread itself is a sure guide. The winning of freedom ; the self-limitation of the Godhead, Immanent in His Creation ; the eternal nature of Personality ; the com- pletion of activity in the communion of Eternal Life ; these are the strands of which the thread is spun. If we have traced its course aright it leads at last to the Throne of God. It guides us through the age- long strife of the animal kingdom; through the achieval of self-consciousness; through the dark misery of sin; through faith; through aspiration and prayer; through revelation and atonement; through time and space; to realms where time and space cease alike to be, and there is no more death, but only life in an activity that is love without beginning or end. In presence of such Reality the problems of the many and the one lose their meaning, for they Condusion 299 appear in their true guise as problems of Time, not of Eternity. Men, after all, in their highest imaginings can but hope to be spinners of thought. But if there be any truth in our belief in an ultimate idealism, linked, in the realm of duration, with a kind of dualism that is phenomenally real, the strands we spin will form a rope strong enough to draw all the world, when they are at last twisted together. These two books represent an attempt to form a thread out of a few such strands. Strong enough to support any great strain it cannot be, for it is but one thread, and not a rope. But yet I dare to hope that, though I cannot ease the burden of your fears, Or make quick-coming death a httle thing. Or bring again the pleasure of past years, Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears^. Yet there may be found herein something that may help a few towards a faith and hope that have become very real to myself in following out, during some ten years, the line of thought I have tried to write down, however faultily. For faults, for obscurities, for inaccuracies of thought, I ask the pardon of my fellow-students. If they will but take such fragments as seem to them helpful, and forget the rest, small harm will come, and perhaps a little good. 1 William Morris, The Earthly Paradise. 300 Additional Note Additional Note on Prayer for Material Benefits. One side of the whole problem of prayer for material benefits has not been reviewed, and it is perhaps impossible to sketch, even in broad outline, a satis- factory solution of the difficulties it presents. Never- theless a brief analysis which places the issues clearly before the reader may not be unprofitable. Our statement that the matter of the body is influenced and modified directly by mind, and so by prayer, and that this influence may mediate, indirectly, a change in matter outside the body, is simple and, I think, incontrovertible. And the conclusion that no distinction can be made between answers to prayer involving mind, and answers involving matter, perse, follows logically. But one may still doubt whether a line should not be drawn between matter animated by spirit — matter which constitutes the immediate ex- perience of a mind, as the body does — and matter pure and simple, not animated by spirit, and constituting a mediate experience only. A strong and sensible objection to the rather sweeping statement that no line can be drawn between answer to prayer in the Additional Note 301 spiritual and in the material spheres may be raised, and argued, if the line is drawn, not between spirit, and matter per se, but between matter animated by the vital impulse and matter that is not so animated. For in living matter the laws of katabolic determination are in a measure suspended, or superseded, by the anabolic impulse of life. If matter is the expression of God's self-limitation, absolutely determined in its action and relations, would not any interference in this sphere, even if an ordinary causal chain of pheno- mena were the actual means used, imply a change in the Will of God which originally brought about the self-limitation? Are not all cases in which such interference appears to have taken place susceptible of some other explanation? With the last point we are not concerned. Our object is to discuss in the abstract whether prayer could be answered in this way, without any limitation of the freedom of man or any self- contradiction in the Will of God, and not to prove or disprove specific instances. The arguments on the other side may be stated somewhat in the following form. Matter is the expression of God's self -limitation. Without irreverence we may say that it is the material Body of the Immanent God, and constitutes part of His immediate experience. It is not external to His Will, but is rather Its expression. Man can un- doubtedly "make a tool" of God — make use, that 302 Additional Note is, of the Spiritual Environment, to further his own freedom. The Will of God is set towards the freedom of man — God is reaching down to help man win more freedom, and as soon as man is able to see where help lies, and to demand it, it is given lovingly and joyfully. This involves no limitation of man's freedom, as we have seen. It would seem, then, not wholly irrational to believe that man could ask for, and expect, help through matter outside his own body — as, to take an extreme instance, by praying for rain. For this matter, though it is not part of his own immediate experience, is yet part of the immediate experience of God — that is, of a Person. It may be argued, also, that an answer to such a prayer would not involve any change in the Will of God towards man — for that has always been towards the granting of freedom — but only a change in the method of action of that Will, through the temporary and partial supersession of God's self-limitation. We must, of course, remember that this could only occur if the action really tended to man's highest good; and whether this could ever be so is quite another question — ^in any case it would appear to be extremely rare. But granting this to be the fact, in some imaginary instance, man's freedom would clearly be unaffected, and the Will of God towards man would be unaltered, and so no self-contradiction would be involved in this aspect of the problem. Would, then. Additional Note 303 a change introduced in katabolic matter — a new impulse in some region, acting temporarily and for a specific purpose — involve a change in the plan of Grod ? I am inclined to think that it would not, since it seems to me the plan of God must be founded ultimately in His Will, and not in His method; but I state this opinion with considerable diffidence. Having thus formulated the alternatives I leave them to the reader. I cannot claim to have a very definite opinion on the matter. Scientific training inclines the mind towards the former alternative, while, I think, the logical application of our general argument tends, if anything, towards the latter. But this opinion is stated very tentatively, for a long period of thought must be the only justification for a definite suggestion, even if it were possible to arrive at any conclusion at all; and this time I have not been able to give, since the problem has only recently come before my mind in its present form. CamfariUge : PBINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY FKESS By the same author Evolution and the Need of Atonement Second edition, revised and enlarged. Crown 8vo. 4s 6d net. Extracts from Press Notices "The Dean of Westminster rightly deems that the book is 'entitled to the thoughtful consideration of the theologian* as well as of the scientist.'. . .We can only add that such a study as this is valuable not less in itself than for the issues that it raises, and we sincerely hope that its author will feel encouraged to pursue them further." — Times "This little book is the work of one who combines the gifts of a thinker and a teacher. We can cordially recommend it to those — and they are many — who are keen to know more of the light which is coming from Science and Philosophy to aid us in our reconsideration of the deepest problems of our hfe. ..Mr McDowall has done much more than present a careful report of the labours of others ; he has thought deeply for himself, and he gives us his results with freshness and courage." — Guardian "A really valuable contribution to modern thought in its relation to Science and the Christian doctrine of the Atonement. The author has written this small volume to show how one whose training has been almost entirely scientific expounds this great doctrine of the Church so as not to violate the discoveries of modern science. Quite independently, Mr McDowall has arrived at certain conclusions akin to some of Bergson's in his now famous 'L'Evolution Cr6atrice,' a fact which greatly enhances the interest of the present volume. It is filled with close reasoning. ... A book which we are convinced will count as it becomes known." — Commonwealth 'While it is probable that orthodox philosophers and theologians may solve difierently, in part, the double problem (the scientific and rehgious) of Mr S. A. McDowall's Evolution and the Need of A tonement it is with the greatest sympathy that we recommend this book to the close study of all who are capable of serious investigation of either element in its thesis. It is of special interest to see how, philosophically, Mr McDowall anticipated Bergson in the outline of much of what he says. . . . The book is written with that Christian humility which is more than modest}'. It offers a synthesis and a noble vision of the unity of God's working in the whole universe." — Month "An essay which we recommend with confidence to thoughtful readers. ... It shows a firm grasp not only of scientific and philosophical principles, but also of spiritual facts, especially the fact of Sin, which it discusses in the light of evolutionary theory. . . . Incidentally many recent theories upon Sin and Atonement are discussed, and the criticisms are always penetrating." — Spectator "The Dean of Westminster in a prefatory note speaks of this as 'a remarkable little book,' and unquestionably the writer has dealt with a perennial problem in a manner both striking and original In spite of its brevity the book is in a high degree suggestive and stimu- lating, and may be heartily commended to all who feel the need of a theory which postulates continuity, a logical sequence, in the evolu- tionary process. Mr McDowall shows, with real ability and insight, that man's history, viewed from the biological standpoint, necessarily involves the fact of atonement of sin. The book deserves to be widely and carefully read." — Oxford Magazine Cambridge University Press C. F. Clay, Manager: Fetter Lane, London SELECT WORKS The Realm of Ends, Or Pluralism and Theism. The Gifford Lectures delivered in the University of St Andrews in the years 1907-10. By James Ward, Sc.D., Professor of Mental Philosophy, Cambridge. Second Edition, with Some RepHes to Criticisms. Demy 8vo. t2s 6d net. "The whole spirit and substance of the book is admirable. Learned, candid, fair and openminded ... rising frequently to a high level of insight. . . the book gives one great pleasure in reading." Philosophical Review Philosophy: what is it? By F. B. Jevons, Litt.D., Pro- fessor of Philosophy in the University of Durham. Fcap. 8vo. IS 6d net. "Professor Jevons has written many excellent books, but nothing more delightful than this. . . . He gives his readers a clear and lucid account not only of what philosophy purports to be, but also of the various philosophical schools that have had their vogue. ... Professor Jevons's book is in every way praiseworthy. It entirely dissipates the notion that philosophy at best is a dull and unpractical business." — Aberdeen Journal The Individual in the Animal Kingdom. By Julian S. Huxley, B.A. Cloth is net. Leather 2s 6d net. "Though Mr Huxley is concerned chiefly with biology. . .he is anxious to make it plain that he is also treading upon the threshold of philosophy, and that it is his design to write for those who are familiar with neither branch of knowledge. Let us say at once that in this he is successful, and that his book may be read without difficulty by the layman." — The Spectator The Psychology of Insanity. By B. Hart, M.D. Cloth IS net. Leather 2s 6d net. "The author points out that modern science is attacking the problem of insanity along two different routes. . . . The author's presentation of the case is lucid and thorough, and we can imagine no work of the size giving a clearer exposition of the current hypotheses." — The Lancet Forgiveness and Suffering. A Study of Christian BeHef. By Douglas White, M.D. Crown 8vo. 3s net. "The view of the Atonement set forth in this striking little study is in general accord with the spirit of the New Testament. ... It is a view, we will venture to add, that will appeal with undoubted force alike to the intellect and to the heart." — Canon Vaughan in the Church Family Newspaper The Concept of Sin. By F. R. Tennant, D.D., B.Sc. Crown 8vo. 4s 6d net. The Origin and Propagation of Sin. Being the Hulsean Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge in 1901-2. By F, R. Tennant, D.D., B.Sc. Second edition. Crown 8vo. 3s 6d net. The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin. By F. R. Tennant, D.D., B.Sc. Demy 8vo. 9s net. Cambridge University Press C. F. 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